Lang Jiuchuan did not wander around. She brought Jian Lan and the others first to the meditation chamber where Zhuang Quanhai and his group had been settled. Upon hearing she had arrived, everyone came forward to greet her, and the elderly Madam Ding made to kneel again.

Lang Jiuchuan glanced at Jian Lan beside her. The latter stepped forward and helped Madam Ding to her feet, saying, “Our young miss does not care for such formalities — please, everyone sit and speak.”

Zhuang Quanhai immediately guided Lang Jiuchuan to the table and sat her down. His son, Zhuang Huayi, picked up the teapot and poured tea for Lang Jiuchuan, presenting it to her with respectful hands.

“Jian Lan, stay. The rest of you, wait outside.” Lang Jiuchuan dismissed the servant women who had followed.

Everyone withdrew.

“Miss, miss, please save my son — our Ding family has been wronged!” Madam Ding’s tears fell in great drops the moment she opened her mouth.

Zhuang Quanhai said, “Madam, do not be anxious. The young miss is still but a child growing into her abilities — let us first explain the full story from beginning to end, and then ask her for her judgment.”

Madam Ding nodded and sniffled.

Only then did Zhuang Quanhai turn to Lang Jiuchuan and heave a sigh. “Young miss, your divine calculation — every word you spoke that day came true. Except…” He glanced at Madam Ding and sighed, “Except for the fact that the child Su Qiu has still not been found, Ding’s elder brother has already fallen into the calamity of imprisonment.”

Lang Jiuchuan took her tea and listened as he recounted the story in full.

On the very day she had divined that Ding Mangu’s daughter was already dead and that great disaster would befall him, Zhuang Quanhai had not dared delay for even a moment. He immediately sought out Ding Mangu, swore upon his very life and character, and conveyed what had been said.

At first, Ding Mangu naturally did not believe it. Such a shocking thing — how could anyone believe it based solely on the word of a young girl after just one meeting?

But Zhuang Quanhai also told him what Lang Jiuchuan had divined about himself, and when Ding Mangu thought again about the strange behavior of the Zhuo family, he began to half-believe it.

If his daughter had truly only fallen ill, why would they refuse visits? The Zhuo family was a household that had risen to wealth in under three years — where did they get such strict family rules?

Unless they simply could not let him see Ding Suqiu.

Ding Mangu was, after all, a man who had navigated the merchant sea for many years. After hearing Zhuang Quanhai out, he did not alarm the Zhuo family. Instead, he quietly spent a little silver among the beggars to make inquiries about the young mistress of the Zhuo household. When he learned that the young mistress had not left the inner courtyard for quite some time, his heart sank.

Even so, Ding Mangu kept his composure. He did not dare tell his family, but quietly made some arrangements with his business affairs in secret. He also found Zhuang Quanhai and entrusted him with a large sum of concealed silver.

Having done all this, he began calling at the Zhuo family’s door. They refused to let him in? He brought hired muscle from the streets, smashed the Zhuo family’s gate open, and went straight to his daughter’s courtyard.

The result was as one might expect — the courtyard was empty of its person. Only then did his son-in-law Zhuo Yu, with an expression of deep sorrow, say that Ding Suqiu had eloped with a fellow student of his named Meng Chenqian. He had kept it secret because he too had been searching for news of the pair the whole time, and had even found some evidence of where they had gone.

The witness testimony came from Ding Suqiu’s personal maidservant who had grown up with her since childhood. Furthermore, that Meng Chenqian had formerly been a scholar that Ding Mangu himself had sponsored, and he and Ding Suqiu had long been acquainted. The physical evidence was a series of letters in which the two had poured out their hearts, as well as writings in which Ding Suqiu expressed her resentment and fury at the Zhuo household for her prolonged failure to conceive — which, it was claimed, had driven her to stray and elope with Meng Chenqian.

How could Ding Mangu believe such a story? Did he not know what manner of person his own daughter was? He declared outright that Zhuo Yu had killed Ding Suqiu and went to report it to the authorities. Zhuo Yu was unafraid, for he had an entire chain of evidence on his side.

It was Ding Mangu himself who, upon going to the authorities, never came back out — because his rice and grain shop was found to have been using short weights, and a pastry shop of his had a customer die from eating there, which was then followed by his being entangled in a lawsuit involving helping clansmen purchase official titles with bribes.

The moment Ding Mangu entered prison, his business came under devastating attack. His shops were either swallowed by competitors or betrayed by his own managers; even his residence was seized and sealed to pay off debts. This unrelenting series of blows brought the Ding family to a catastrophic ruin the like of which they had never faced before.

Ding Mangu had arranged for his son to flee far away to avoid the disaster, but the reckless child sneaked back on his own, and before even reaching Wu Jing, suffered a fall from his horse that broke his leg, leaving him bedridden and unable to move. Ding Mangu’s wife fell gravely ill, unable to rise from her bed. The whole family now squeezed into a small courtyard, barely scraping by.

Madam Ding alone, stubborn in her old age, held herself together. Accompanied by Zhuang Quanhai, she went about seeking people to intercede on their behalf — but with little effect.

They had come to Huguo Temple because Madam Ding knew that Zhuo Yu would come to the temple on the first day of the New Year to offer incense at his late father’s memorial and light a perpetual lamp. So she had followed him here, intending to force Zhuo Yu to rescue Ding Mangu from prison.

“If Zhuo Yu is indeed the one behind all of this, how could he possibly save your son? What would you do then?”

A flash of ruthless, icy light burst from Madam Ding’s clouded eyes. “Then this bag of old bones will die right in front of him, so that everyone will know what kind of heartless, ungrateful wolf Zhuo Yu truly is — killing a virtuous wife, framing his own in-laws, watching them perish without lifting a finger. That stain on his name — he will never wash it clean.”

“The Ding family’s suffering, no matter how great, leaves no evidence. And without evidence, no matter how many times you say it, it amounts to nothing more than a temporary setback for him.” Lang Jiuchuan said evenly. “Warriors and scholars, farmers, craftsmen, merchants — merchants sit at the bottom of the social order. Without a reliable patron and backing, how many can withstand the two-faced nature of officialdom?”

Madam Ding’s face went white, tears streaming from the corners of her eyes. “Just because my Ding family is of the merchant register, my Ding family deserves to have their home destroyed and their family ruined?”

Zhuang Quanhai said, “Young miss, Ding’s elder brother entrusted a sum of concealed silver to me — it was set aside against just such a turn of events. If we can save him, that silver is at your complete disposal. Silver, when it is gone, can be earned again. A man, when he is gone, is truly gone.”

Madam Ding nodded like a chicken pecking at grain.

“Do you have Ding Suqiu’s birth date and hour?” Lang Jiuchuan asked.

Madam Ding promptly recited them. Lang Jiuchuan pressed her fingertips together and calculated. Her heart stirred — all four pillars were yin. Hers was a pure-yin birth chart, and this set of four pillars and eight characters had already met its end in death.

Lang Jiuchuan lowered her hand and looked at Madam Ding with a measure of compassion. “This young woman is indeed no longer in this world.”

“Suqiu!” Madam Ding cried out in anguish. Her vision went dark and she swayed, nearly collapsing.

Zhuang Huayi rushed to support her, his expression alarmed.

Lang Jiuchuan grabbed her hand and gave a slight prick to the tip of her finger with her nail, keeping Madam Ding from losing consciousness — but the old woman’s tears fell without stopping.

“Do you have any of her belongings on you?”

Madam Ding trembled with grief. Hearing those words, she still managed, with shaking hands, to remove the brow band she was wearing at her temple and hand it over. Weeping, she said, “Suqiu embroidered this.”

Jiangche immediately guessed her intent and said, “You are not planning to summon a soul here in a temple, are you? You really have no reverence for the Buddha at all. And even if you could summon her, she would not dare enter a place like this.”

Lang Jiuchuan said, “Her birth chart is pure-yin — her soul has likely already dissolved and can no longer be summoned. The divination I cast in the carriage today arose because of seeing these people before me. I want to try — could there be a connection between them?”

All things have their cause and consequence. She wanted to test that causal link.

Jiangche fell silent. The other one knew more than it did.

Lang Jiuchuan glanced at Jian Lan, who immediately and wisely produced three copper coins and handed them over, then took out a sheet of paper and her brush from where she kept them on her person. The two completed the exchange in perfect unspoken accord, not a single word between them.

Jiangche: “……”

So it had come to this — even this maidservant made it feel like a useless tiger.

Lang Jiuchuan drew a talismanic inscription, then wrapped the brow band around a small paper figure she had written Ding Suqiu’s birth date and hour on. She lit a stick of incense and began the divination.

Whether it was because her soul was solid and substantial, Lang Jiuchuan’s divination was unusually swift this time. When she obtained the six-line hexagram and looked at the small paper figure that had suddenly turned a blotchy red-black, her expression subtly darkened. A causal connection truly existed.

Something supremely yin and supremely malevolent. A woman with a pure-yin birth chart. What was the connection between the two?

Parched throat and dry tongue — that ailment is the most vexing, drinking any amount of water feels like drinking nothing at all — yellow discharge from the nose, an external invasion of malevolent qi, the lung-defensive system out of harmony. Yes, in this season of deceptive warmth after the cold, this wretched author has caught a wind-heat cold again!