Watching Lang Jiuchuan put on another performance, Gong Qi was more than a little irritated. Think about it — he and his martial brother had been cultivating in peace when several malevolent ghosts suddenly swarmed in, and they fought them off, only to have a whole horde arrive.

That was fine. A cultivator encountering demons and monsters should purge them. It was their duty.

But this Lang Nine — clearly capable — had done nothing to help in full force. Fine, that too could be overlooked. Yet the moment they finished purging the evil and subduing the malevolence, she was right back to her act.

Who exactly was she guarding against? Was she treating them like fools?

The moment Lang Jiuchuan bowed, Gong Qi’s Binding Immobilization Spell came flying at her. She had long been on guard against him making a move. The hand hidden in her sleeve formed a counter-seal and deflected it back, while she herself stumbled a step backward and fell to the ground, her complexion turning ashen. She looked up at Gong Qi.

“What is the meaning of this, Daoist?”

Gong Qi watched her still performing, and laughed despite his irritation. “We’re all foxes who’ve lived a thousand years here,” he said. “There’s no one else around — drop the act. What are you going for with this pale face, trying to pin the blame on my martial brother and me?”

Lang Jiuchuan was breaking into a cold sweat, her breathing ragged as she pressed her hand to the center of her spiritual platform and let out a quiet grunt.

This time, it was not an act. That dead ghost Cui Panguan had moved the Panguan Brush — this was his revenge for her “borrowing” the brush without permission.

But in Gong Qi’s eyes, she seemed to be laying it on a bit thick. He was about to press further when Gong Four pulled him back and shook his head. “Don’t touch her. It doesn’t look like she’s faking.”

What?

Gong Qi was startled. He blinked and looked more carefully. “I only cast a Binding Immobilization Spell on you — I didn’t touch your soul. Don’t go trying to pin that on me.”

Why did her soul seem unsteady?

Gong Four stepped forward. “Forgive the intrusion,” he said.

He gripped Lang Jiuchuan’s wrist and took her pulse. His expression changed. He frowned deeply. “Such a faint pulse — barely there at all. How are you still alive?”

Women were Yin in nature, and many did have unstable or weak pulses. But even the weakest should not be like hers — barely detectable.

This was too fragile.

He had seen that she was delicate, but had not imagined it was this extreme. With a pulse like this, she wouldn’t live long.

Gong Qi looked at Gong Four, who was clearly not joking, and his own brow furrowed. So she was genuinely this feeble?

Not faking?

Looking at Lang Jiuchuan’s pale and ashen face, Gong Qi felt a pang of unease. After all, this was the only daughter — the sole heir — of his mother’s closest childhood friend. If he’d actually harmed her, he might well be beaten to death for it.

Gong Qi reached into his robes and pulled out a porcelain vial, tipping a medicinal pill into his palm and holding it out. “Take this. It’ll keep you alive.”

Gong Four glanced at it and opened his mouth, then stopped himself. That medicine was running low, wasn’t it?

Lang Jiuchuan didn’t move. Gong Qi, assuming she no longer had the strength to act, stepped forward and without further ceremony shoved the pill into her mouth. It dissolved the moment it touched her tongue, its efficacy striking hard.

She seemed to detect the flavor of Soul-Anchoring Herb.

As the medicinal energy spread through her limbs and bones, Lang Jiuchuan inwardly marveled once again at the depths of the Xuan Clan’s resources. They truly had rare medicines like Soul-Anchoring Herb stored away.

She settled into a cross-legged position to regulate her breathing, then pushed herself to her feet, clasping her hands toward Gong Qi in a bow. “Thank you, Daoist, for the gift of medicine.”

Out of respect for the Soul-Anchoring Herb alone, one bow was not too much to give.

Gong Qi snorted. “Stop putting on airs. We’re all practitioners here. This whole routine you’re pulling is insufferably hypocritical.”

Lang Jiuchuan smiled faintly. “I wouldn’t dare call myself a fellow practitioner. I only picked up a smattering of superficial techniques from a wandering Daoist — I wouldn’t presume to display my meager skill before two such accomplished cultivators.”

She surveyed the wreckage before her, her expression sobering. “If you two hadn’t happened to be guests in the manor, my entire Lang Family might have perished at the hands of this treacherous technique — and tomorrow, word would have spread through Wu Jing that the Lang Family had done something to deserve it, that vengeful spirits came to collect their due, and not a soul of the entire household was spared.”

Gong Qi and Gong Four exchanged a glance and were about to speak.

Lang Jiuchuan looked toward them again. “My Marquis Kaiping’s manor may be on the decline, but our forebears earned their honors protecting this land. Though we are not without fault, we have never preyed on the common people, never treated human lives as playthings, never become the tyrannical scourge of the nobility.” Her voice was clear and unhurried. “So if we were to truly die beneath such a false accusation, I’m afraid it is we, the entire manor, who would be the ones unable to rest in peace — the true wronged souls. And if the two Daoists were to come to collect us then, please, lay us to rest with proper rites. Do not scatter our souls to the winds. Otherwise, we would truly have a grievance to rival even the most unjust of injustices.”

Gong Qi: “……”

Gong Four stared at her blankly.

The two of them looked at Lang Jiuchuan as though they had seen a ghost. Did you want to hold a mirror up to your own face right now? Listen to what you’re saying.

If everyone in this manor weren’t still breathing, we’d think you were already telling the truth — that all these people walking around are nothing but wronged spirits, and we had come here to collect them.

Beyond that — had they been shut away in their clan so long that they no longer knew the style of rhetoric used by the young women of Wu Jing today? Because apparently, the way they made their case here came with a twist: it sounded like an account of one’s own innocence and suffering, but was actually a rebuke of whoever had struck first — with a pointed jab at those cultivators standing right in front of them thrown in for good measure.

Well. A lesson learned. The art of conversation, indeed.

Gong Qi snorted. Appears frail and easy to bully — yet that sharp tongue doesn’t spare anyone. And for that matter, when she’s actually stirring up trouble, the same probably applied. She was absolutely not as harmless as she looked on the surface. The containment formation she had laid just now was proof enough of that.

This woman was not to be underestimated. Anyone who did would only end up losing out.

“Miss Nine is quite the eloquent debater,” he said. “Bringing up something that hasn’t even happened yet — isn’t that a bit too much anxiety over nothing?”

Lang Jiuchuan replied, “Then perhaps the young Daoist would be so good as to tell me: in a situation exactly like this, if it were to happen again, what exactly are we mere mortals supposed to do to defend ourselves? And this is not the first time it has happened.”

Gong Qi was momentarily at a loss.

Lang Jiuchuan’s gaze turned cold and distant. “To offend someone, and in return invite this kind of treacherous, lethal scheme against which ordinary people have absolutely no means of resistance — is this how Daoist arts are meant to be used? Both of you are accomplished cultivators of the Xuan Clans. I’d ask you to enlighten me.”

That was more than a little pointed!

Gong Four frowned. “Miss Nine, are you suggesting this was done by someone in our Xuan Clans?”

“Regardless of who did it, it was certainly someone versed in the Daoist arts. A person with no cultivation at all couldn’t pull this off.” Lang Jiuchuan gave a light smile. “The spectacle we just witnessed — are either of you familiar with it? We would very much like to know whose ire we have managed to incur, to bring this disaster down upon us.”

Gong Four’s expression became rather uncomfortable, though he couldn’t argue against it.

“There are plenty of people in the world who practice dark and deviant arts,” Gong Qi said, glancing sidelong at her. “Miss Lang Nine also knows a few ‘superficial techniques,’ doesn’t she? Doing something like this would be quite within your reach, wouldn’t it?”

Lang Jiuchuan’s eyes sharpened. “I’ll take that as a compliment on my abilities. But dark and deviant arts — I wouldn’t dare. My life is far too valuable to risk the retributive backlash of Heaven’s laws. Besides, even as a practitioner of the Daoist arts, one should know where to draw the line. There are things that can be done, and things that cannot. Don’t you agree?”

Gong Qi’s face flushed with heat at being put down so cleanly. The entire speech seemed to rebuke the Xuan Clans throughout, yet not a single word could be pinpointed as a direct insult. He had no way to refute it.

Lang Jiuchuan finished her verbal drubbing and immediately adopted a pitiful, aggrieved expression. “The Xuan Clans are powerful and have built their standing on purging evil and upholding the Way. Would you be willing to look into this for the Lang Family and find out which great practitioner we have somehow offended, so that this misunderstanding might be resolved?”

The two of them: “……”

That face-changing technique of hers — had she trained in Shu?