Rong Family — you’ve provoked the wrong person.
Jiangche looked at the smile curling at Lang Jiuchuan’s lips and found it genuinely unnerving. It silently lit a candle of mourning for the Rong Family’s future. Why did you go and provoke her?
As Lang Jiuchuan had said — having already killed the original soul and left not even a trace of the spirit behind, the sensible thing was to take no further action. After all, whoever now resided in this body was an unknown. The one certainty was that it was no longer the original soul.
If they were lucky — if it turned out to be an ordinary wandering spirit — that spirit might very well destroy itself through sheer bad fortune. Taking over a body always came with the weight of Heaven’s causality, and one wrong step could mean an early death regardless. A wandering spirit of that sort might be too afraid to die, and would likely have no particular desire to seek revenge either. Such a spirit, alive or dead, posed no real threat.
If they were unlucky — they encountered someone like this one. Someone utterly unhinged. Leave her in peace and she might have remained relatively calm; but poke her and what you got was someone who repaid every grudge to the last, who would fight to the bitter end without regard for her own safety.
And now Lang Jiuchuan had already peeled back a corner of the truth. From here on out, she would peel back every layer until the whole of it lay exposed — and when that day came, the Rong Family could expect no good end.
Especially now, when they clearly knew there was a foreign soul in this body and still could not let it go — even this, they wanted to eliminate. Which meant it wasn’t just the original soul’s debt anymore. Her own score was being added to the ledger too. Was the Rong Family going to come out of that unscathed?
“Even supposing you’ve confirmed the Rong Family is behind this — the major Xuan Clan families are intertwined through generations of marriage alliances, their relationships entangled like the roots of old trees. As I said before, cross one family and you cross all four.” Jiangche pressed its paws to its head. She was only one person — how was she supposed to break out of this encirclement?
Lang Jiuchuan was using a few carved wooden blocks to build a small bridge. At his words she said without looking up: “Every enemy has a weak point. If my opponent is too powerful to shake for now, I can wait — dismantle it piece by piece, defeat them one by one.” She pulled out a single block. “Break open one gap and the entire bridge comes down. It’s simply a matter of finding where that gap is.”
She pulled the block free, and the bridge she had assembled collapsed across the table in a heap. She gathered the blocks together. “There is a saying: a dike a thousand li long will crumble at a single ant’s burrow. One misstep leads to every step going wrong. They’ve already made one misstep. As for being bound together by a common foundation?”
She looked at Jiangche with a curl of her lips. “Little white tiger — have you ever heard the phrase divide and conquer? Even within the Xuan Clans themselves, there will always be those who are dissatisfied with what the others are doing. I can see that Gong Qi of the Gong Clan — use him well, and he becomes exactly the kind of gap I need.”
Could she please not smile like that — the unhinged energy was off the charts.
Jiangche said, “Gong Qi looks like he’s unhinged in his own right. You saw how he suddenly snapped today — who knows what’s wrong with him. If he can’t be controlled, he becomes a liability and brings trouble down on us.”
Lang Jiuchuan slanted a look toward it. “Us? Your choice of words — does that mean you’re willing to stand with me and face our enemies together?”
Jiangche froze, then leaped up as though its tail had been stepped on. “What wishful thinking. The moment I find a host body, I’m gone. Do you think I’d fight monsters alongside you? Look at the Gong Clan’s senior and junior brothers — their foundation is solid. And the Feng Family alone — just their enemies — already have something like a Diamond Pagoda. Who knows what else they’ve got buried away. And what do you and I have? We’d go in empty-handed and get bombarded from all sides — a couple of short-lived fools! The math does not work, not even a little!”
Lang Jiuchuan reached out, took hold of it by the scruff of its neck, and gave it a gentle pat. She could distinctly feel a slight texture — if only it had a real, solid body to go with it.
Jiangche’s tiger eyes narrowed to slits. It hunched its neck but offered no resistance.
“You should believe this: the me of right now can be struck down without much effort — but in the future, I will be impervious to blade and fire alike. As long as I keep growing, every soul-lock, every chain-talisman, every soul-annihilating fan they have — I’ll turn them all to useless scrap.” Lang Jiuchuan said, “I won’t be standing still forever.”
Jiangche gave a huff. “Comforting yourself with pretty words is all well and good, but what if they don’t give you the time to grow?”
“From the outside looking in — especially from the Rong Family’s perspective — the Lang household is now under the Gong Clan’s protection. They certainly won’t dare to move openly. As for me personally — if they have any sense, the smart play is to throw everything they have at me now, while I’m barely settled in this body. Crush me before I take root. Miss this window, and the opportunity is gone forever. If they retreat at this point, it’s already too late.”
“You think so highly of yourself — if you were in their position, you’d come down on them with everything you had?”
“Of course. They’ve already sent multiple people after me, and every one of them failed. That proves I’m a difficult and dangerous problem. Given that we’re already enemies — and to prevent me from growing more difficult and more dangerous — the logical move is to kill me while I’m still not fully fledged. Strike decisively, and they’ll be rid of me for good. If they pull back now, aren’t they handing me room to breathe and recover? I’ve said it from the start: doing nothing from the very beginning was always their best option. At this point, there’s no clean way out of this for them regardless.”
Retreat meant giving her the chance to grow.
And not retreating meant handing the Gong Clan a piece of evidence — which might just lead the Gong Clan to uncover the full scope of their intentions. If that happened, and the Gong Clan truly branded them as servants of the demonic path, then every shred of prestige and reputation the Rong Family’s ancestors had built up over generations would be reduced to ash.
“In short, what we need to do right now is dig into the Rong Family until there’s nothing left unturned — every disciple, every follower, every hidden connection, laid bare. Know your enemy and know yourself, and you will prevail in every battle.” Lang Jiuchuan narrowed her eyes. “This is a transaction I ought to be bringing to A’Piao and the others.”
Inside the Tongtian Pavilion, where revelry was in full swing, A’Piao suddenly felt its paper body burning hot — as though someone was about to set it on fire. Could someone be plotting against me right now?
And as Lang Jiuchuan had anticipated — the Rong Family’s actions had already caught Gong Qi’s attention.
“The Lang heir doesn’t have the ability to stir up trouble on his own, which means the Lang Family cannot possibly have done anything to offend the Xuan Clans. For Wumu Daoren and the others to use such vicious techniques against the Lang Family — something feels off. The Rong Family’s true aim isn’t the Lang household at all.” Gong Qi narrowed his eyes. “And then there’s that Lang Jiu. My sense is that she’s a foreign soul that has taken over the body. Could the real target the Rong Family is after actually be her?“
Gong Si was startled. “A foreign soul in someone else’s body?”
Gong Qi nodded. “I read her face — it looks like she was born with a short-lived fate. I tried probing her too, but nothing came of it. And yet now, looking again, she doesn’t quite seem like it either. Strange.”
Gong Si frowned. “If she’s a wandering spirit who took over a body, shouldn’t we report this…”
“Senior Brother — there’s no absolute right or wrong in this world. If she were bringing harm to others, I would end her myself. But she hasn’t. So I’ll act as though I know nothing. And on top of that, I’m not even certain this is a case of spirit possession — her fate-reading is simply strange.” Gong Qi shook his head. “Beyond that — what I care about more is the extraordinary encounter our young master spoke of. Could it be her?”
“If it is?”
“If it is — not only must I not move against her, I must protect her.” Gong Qi looked at Gong Si and said, “For the sake of the Xuan Clans — no. For the sake of the Gong Clan — Senior Brother, turn a blind eye. Hold your tongue. What’s worth examining right now is the Rong Family. Why have they gone this far?”
The Rong Family seems to be hiding something none of them know.