Consort Yi knelt on the ground, begging for a long while, but no one around showed the slightest willingness to help. Watching the Crown Prince’s and Prince Wu’s struggles grow more and more sluggish, despair gradually flooded her eyes. Glancing about frantically, she suddenly spotted Yuan Jue nearby, watching her with venomous hatred, and as though grasping at her last lifeline, she scrambled up from the ground and rushed to his side, dragging him toward the deep pit where Consort Hui’s body had once been buried, crying out sharply, “Isn’t this what you wanted—to use me for the formation? As long as you save my two children, you may do whatever you wish with me. You Buddhists preach compassion for all—surely you wouldn’t extend your wrath to the innocent. What happened back then has nothing to do with my two children—I only beg you to spare them, let everything fall on me alone!”
Hearing this, Qing Xuzi’s heart stirred. Ever since learning that Nüxiu was indeed A’Ling, he had been consumed with worry. Though her descent into demonhood had not been by choice, she had killed far too many innocents after breaking the formation, and the blood on her hands would inevitably become her own sin, clinging to her like a parasite to bone, impossible to shed or wash clean. Even if A’Han’s blood could restore her senses, the weight of her crimes meant she could never again enter the cycle of reincarnation.
Carrying this anxiety, in this short span of time he had already considered countless ways to help A’Ling escape heaven’s punishment. After much thought, only the “Soul-Swapping Technique” seemed the most thorough method currently known.
Called soul-swapping, it was in truth a method of exchanging the birth charts of two deceased individuals, so that after the exchange, the sins committed by one would be borne instead by the other. But this formation was extraordinarily vast and intricate, perhaps the most demanding of all Daoist forbidden formations, requiring untold manpower and resources, and a full forty-nine days to complete—otherwise it could neither successfully deceive the Lord of the Earth to steal the soul and swap fates, nor forcibly compel the one taking on the burden to endure the punishment meant for another.
And from ancient times to the present, who besides the imperial family could possibly command the resources to orchestrate such an immense formation? This was why, though the method had long existed in ancient Daoist texts, it had rarely been successfully carried out.
Thinking this over, Qing Xuzi cast a grave glance at the emperor, lost in grief and despair, and made up his mind to at least attempt it.
He steadied his breath, which had grown somewhat erratic from anxiety, gave a low shout, and flung out the straw rope, temporarily binding A’Ling’s arm. Then, exerting all his strength, he pulled hard, forcibly dragging her body back several feet.
Because A’Han’s fingertip blood had already dispelled some of her resentment, Nüxiu’s killing aura had weakened considerably, and Qing Xuzi’s pull caused the hand gripping the Crown Prince and Prince Wu to loosen involuntarily.
The Crown Prince and Prince Wu, suddenly delivered from the brink of death, fell to the ground and began coughing violently.
Overjoyed, Consort Yi rushed toward the Crown Prince and Prince Wu, hoping to pull them far away from Nüxiu.
But before she could reach them, Qing Xuzi gave a cold laugh and, with a flick of his arm, deliberately released his grip on the straw rope.
Just as he expected, the moment A’Ling broke free of the rope’s restraint, she immediately seized Prince Wu and the Crown Prince from the ground again without hesitation, hoisting them up and gripping each tightly with one hand.
Everything had returned to where it started.
Before Consort Yi could even feel her brief relief, her sons were once again caught in Nüxiu’s grip, as though cast down from the clouds back to earth.
“You wretched Daoist!” she screamed shrilly, rushing at Qing Xuzi, clawing and biting at him. “Where is your conscience as a man of religion? Where is your virtue? I already said the matter back then is mine alone to bear, with no connection to them at all—yet you allow this demon to slaughter the innocent unchecked. You disgrace the Daoist tradition—no, you’re not even human!”
Qing Xuzi shoved her roughly away and laughed coldly. “You, a poisonous woman, dare speak of conscience? When you caused Consort Hui’s death, did you ever once consider her innocence? When you tore A’Han from his mother forever, did you ever consider his innocence? When your formation drove Consort Hui to demonhood and left A’Han a simpleton for twenty years, did you ever once consider their innocence? Yet now you dare shamelessly accuse others—do you think yourself worthy? Let me tell you this: if you wish to save your sons, you’ll do it my way. Otherwise, you can watch your sons die a horrible death before your eyes, and taste for yourself what it means to be torn from your own flesh and blood!”
The emperor heard every word with perfect clarity. The countless suspicions he had been unable to piece together before now fell into place with sudden clarity. His body swayed, and ignoring his leg wound, he forced himself toward Consort Yi, grabbing her by the hair, his eyes blazing with fury. “You wretched woman—”
The emperor’s grip was brutal; Consort Yi, unable to dodge in time, nearly had a great clump of her hair torn out. Despite the searing pain, her body instinctively recoiled, but even through the agony, her eyes remained fixed on Qing Xuzi.
“If you want me to save them,” Qing Xuzi said, unhurried, flinging the straw rope back onto Nüxiu’s arm, “the first thing you must do is confess everything in detail—how you colluded with Eunuch Mi to harm Consort Hui and her son, and how you moved Consort Hui’s body to the academy to set up the formation. Not a single word of it false!”
He knew very well that the formation required the emperor’s support and was extremely demanding—Consort Yi would not only be forced to offer up her own soul to bear A’Ling’s burden as a substitute, but would also be barred from reincarnation forever from that point on.
He knew the emperor had doted on Consort Yi for twenty years. If the emperor still harbored any affection for her, he might waver and abandon the plan midway through the process. So the most direct way to ensure that didn’t happen was to sever the emperor’s feelings for Consort Yi completely, leaving only hatred—and the clearest way to achieve that was to have Consort Yi confess with her own mouth exactly how she had harmed A’Ling and her son.
Having dealt in schemes and intrigue for over twenty years, Consort Yi naturally understood that the condition Qing Xuzi had set at this moment was far from simply speaking the truth—even if it didn’t cost her life, it would certainly cost her dearly. Yet how could she possibly stand by and watch her sons be killed by Nüxiu?
“I’ll tell you!” Time was short, and she dared not delay any further, gritting her teeth bitterly. “As long as you spare my two sons, I’ll agree to anything!”
Only then did Qing Xuzi exert his strength to subdue Nüxiu once more, releasing the Crown Prince and Prince Wu.
Seeing her sons saved, Consort Yi finally let out a breath of relief and sank weakly to the ground.
Qing Xuzi looked coldly at the emperor, his lips curling in scorn, and said, “Was it your doing that Consort Hui suffered a difficult labor back then? And how exactly did you switch your own child for hers under everyone’s noses?”
Hearing this, Consort Yi felt a stab in her heart.
“Switch?” she shrieked sharply. “The child Consort Hui bore was a pearl in the palm, while the child I bore was a fish’s eye masquerading as one?”
She turned to the emperor, resentment flooding her voice. “Your Majesty, both are your own flesh and blood—why must you favor one so unfairly? If you had known the Crown Prince was not born of Consort Hui but of me, would you ever have made him Crown Prince, would you ever have so much as glanced at him with affection? Just as you’ve treated Seventh Son all these years—merely maintaining the appearance of fatherly duty on the surface, without a shred of true affection, isn’t that right?”
“Stop talking nonsense!” The emperor stumbled toward Consort Yi, knelt down, and gripped her chin between his teeth-gritted fingers. “When A’Hui first went into labor, I never left her side in the birthing room for a single moment. I personally took the child from the midwife’s hands the moment he was born. What sorcery did you use to deceive me all these years?”
Having already burned every bridge with the emperor, Consort Yi no longer bothered to hide anything, laughing with great satisfaction, looking at him provocatively. “It seems Your Majesty is getting old—many things have slipped from your memory, haven’t they? Don’t you remember? Back then, there was a period when you would often mistake me for your beloved A’Hui—sometimes encountering me in the residence, you would slip and call me ‘A’Hui’ by mistake. Didn’t you find that strange yourself? Let me tell you—you had already been taking the drug Mi Dezhong gave you for three months at that point. He was testing whether his trick would work in advance. You watched with your own eyes as the attendants helped that person into the birthing room—but it wasn’t Consort Hui at all. It was me—”
Recounting this moment filled her with an indescribable satisfaction, and she laughed until her shoulders shook. “At the time, I went into labor at the same moment as Consort Hui, both of us giving birth in the birthing room, yet you only cared about her condition, ignoring me entirely. Hearing the child was slow to come, you couldn’t even be bothered with propriety—you insisted on barging into her room, staying anxiously by her side. How could you have known that the drug you’d taken had already been pushed to its peak effect, that even as you held my hand, you kept calling out ‘A’Hui’? And you had no idea that your true A’Hui, in another chamber, was already being deliberately bled out with needles, on the verge of death—”
“And when I gave birth to my son Zheng, you held him in your arms, overjoyed beyond words, and carried him outside to declare to the servants in the courtyard, ‘This is my heir! This is my heir!'” She laughed so hard she nearly fell over. “Your Majesty, every single word you spoke that day, I remember perfectly. You yourself gave the child his title—you can’t blame anyone else for that!”
The emperor stared fixedly at Consort Yi, his eyes brimming with hatred so deep it seemed to bleed.