The first day of the New Year. Night lay deep and dark.

Lang Jiuchuan sat within the formation, her hands flying through a rapid and intricate sequence of hand seals pressed against her knees. In an instant, her primordial soul flew out from her spiritual platform and plunged wholesale into the Diamond Pagoda.

With her primordial soul gone, Jiang Che sensed it immediately. It drifted in, cast a single glance, then crouched down in front of the pagoda and kept quiet watch.

The primordial soul could not leave the body for too long. Lang Jiuchuan had no choice but to move swiftly. Especially given that her soul was already incomplete — using her focused will and cultivation to engrave talisman patterns would drain far more soul energy than it would if her physical constitution were robust and her soul fully intact.

Jiang Che had not been wrong. This act of hers was somewhat reckless — she ought to have proceeded only when completely sure. But she did not want to wait. She also wanted to test herself — what was the limit of her cultivation while her soul remained incomplete? Could she break through it?

Inside the pagoda, everything was as before. Lang Jiuchuan summoned the talisman brush and performed the first step: drawing the malevolence-purging talisman. No talisman paper — she drew in empty air.

The talisman brush stood upright before her. Lang Jiuchuan cleared her mind of outside thoughts. Her slender fingers, fine as scallion stalks, moved, and from the depths of her mind, powerful talisman incantations surged out like a tide. Her fingertips moved without any hesitation as she formed the talisman seal.

A formidable Daoist intent rose from her body. The talisman brush moved and began drawing the talisman in empty air.

What she intended to draw was the Heaven and Earth Purification Divine Talisman — capable of dispersing impure energy, slaying demons, and binding evil. But within this talisman formula she added a further Malevolence-Suppression Seal; applied to objects and vessels, it could also expel malevolence and purge impurity.

Drawing with the intent of the Dao, completing the talisman with the meaning of the Dao — this was not as simple as drawing a talisman on paper. Especially since drawing a talisman required it to be completed in one unbroken stroke. Therefore, she had to give everything without reservation.

Lang Jiuchuan’s soul-consciousness drove the talisman brush, drawing talisman patterns stroke by stroke through the void. Each pattern vanished into the air as though falling into nothingness, yet she remained single-minded and undistracted. Her soul moved with her heart — even as that soul was being pounded by hammers of a thousand pounds weight, not a single trace of retreat appeared in her.

Outside, Jiang Che felt its heart nearly stop. Even its spiritual consciousness was trembling.

It shared a Heaven and Earth Covenant of cause and effect with Lang Jiuchuan — whatever pressure she bore, it had to shoulder a portion as well.

Jiang Che did not hesitate for even a moment. It used the vow-power it had painstakingly accumulated — and was now losing — to wrap around its spiritual consciousness and hold it firmly at the spiritual platform.

Lang Jiuchuan smiled, and drew the final stroke of the talisman pattern.

The talisman emerged. Ten thousand feet of golden radiance blazed up from within the pagoda — like the sun rising at dawn. Everywhere the golden light touched, all darkness was swept away, purifying every last trace of blood-malevolence and Yin energy that lingered within the pagoda.

Including the malevolent energy that clung to Lang Jiuchuan’s own primordial soul.

Bathed in the golden light, Lang Jiuchuan opened her eyes, drove straight to the top of the pagoda, switched to a new hand seal, and transformed the talisman brush into a talisman blade to engrave new talisman patterns at the pagoda’s pinnacle.

Hundreds of years ago, the monk Luole, who had cultivated in both Buddhist and Daoist traditions, had forged this Diamond Pagoda — capable of suppressing and nourishing souls. She would now add upon its surface a layer of talisman patterns capable of devouring and slaying malevolent spirits: the Nine Star Celestial Curse.

When the Celestial Curse was unleashed, it resounded like nine star curse talismans, with golden light blazing ten thousand feet, able to devour evil spirits.

One pagoda with three functions — that was a truly supreme treasure. Even if the Feng Family tried to seize it in the future, they would first have to verify ownership. Oh — and if they were shameless enough to take it by force, she would be even more shameless than them.

Adding new talisman patterns inside the pagoda while ensuring the old ones remained undamaged and the new ones reinforced them — this required far more of her soul-consciousness and soul energy than drawing a single divine talisman.

With every stroke of the talisman blade that Lang Jiuchuan drove with her will, her soul energy scattered by a measure. Her soul trembled. It cracked. It ached.

Jiang Che had the sensation that its own spiritual consciousness was on the verge of dissolving.

It was only sharing the Heaven and Earth Covenant — and this was already its state. Then for Lang Jiuchuan herself, truly enduring the cracking of her soul — what must that be like?

Lang Jiuchuan’s vision blurred, but her mind was abnormally clear. She formed a hand seal with one hand and pressed it against her spiritual platform. The talisman blade fell at the most critical point in the center of the formation at the pagoda’s pinnacle.

The vessel spirit stirred back to life.

Om.

From some unknown place, as if from the ancient past, a Buddhist chant drifted over — someone was reciting a Sanskrit scripture.

Within Huguo Temple, the incense smoke before every divine image and Buddha slowly rose to the sky, obscuring the faces of the deities within the halls. The karmic fortune mingled with that accumulated moral merit drifted through the void, invisible to ordinary eyes — drifting, piece by piece, toward one particular meditation courtyard, flowing in through the walls of the meditation chamber, and settling within the pagoda.

Jiang Che was suddenly shaken to its core.

No wonder. This is why you wanted to re-forge the vessel in Huguo Temple, isn’t it?

Not content with merely siphoning the incense smoke — you’re also skimming the karmic fortune. You reckless person, truly — audacious beyond all reason!

Within Huguo Temple, several monks who had been deep in meditation were simultaneously disrupted. They instinctively looked outward, brows creasing. A strange sensation — as if their meditation had stalled, as if the Buddha had left the temple.

The abbot of Huguo Temple, the Venerable Xuanneng, walked out of his meditation chamber and looked outward in the direction of the rear mountain. His eyes flickered with astonishment. This thunder — was it the Heavenly Thunder Incantation?

Someone here was actually activating the Heavenly Thunder Incantation?

The small novice monk sitting outside his room tilted his head slightly. Why had the abbot just now begun reciting the Three Lives and Causes Scripture?

Having delivered that final, most critical stroke, her soul-consciousness was nearly depleted. Her soul felt as though it had been mercilessly ground to pieces — the same sensation of drifting through the underworld’s purgatory, then slowly reforming, piece by piece, back into shape.

Lang Jiuchuan gave a sudden shudder. That brief lapse of focus caused her already incomplete soul to become even more insubstantial.

Somewhere, in an ancient tomb that led into the void, a voice cursed in a low, heavy tone. Under the anxious gaze of a ghost general, a hand formed a seal and directed a steady stream of soul energy into a seven-colored soul-nourishing lamp. But the person’s body grew more insubstantial by another measure.

Damned debt-collector!

Lang Jiuchuan looked down at her hand, which had slowly grown more solid again, and fell into contemplative thought — but she dared not allow her mind to wander further. She poured the entirety of her focus into the talisman blade.

Time passed, moment by moment. As midnight drew near, Lang Jiuchuan finally completed the full engraving of the Nine Star Celestial Curse within the formation patterns. Then, in one corner of the pagoda’s pinnacle, she engraved two more strokes.

Little Nine Pagoda — hers.

She put away the talisman brush. Lang Jiuchuan then used her soul as the seal, formed a Daoist hand seal, and called out to the vessel spirit from within the pagoda: “The formation as the foundation, the soul as the covenant, the Dao as the guide…”

A faint, weakened spiritual consciousness drifted down from the top of the pagoda. It quickly came into view within Lang Jiuchuan’s line of sight. When she saw its true form, even Lang Jiuchuan — composed as she was — could no longer maintain her composure.

This was — a wooden fish?

Help, could someone please tell her — what kind of peculiar taste did that monk called Luole have? Why would the vessel spirit of his Diamond Pagoda turn out to be in the shape of a wooden fish?

The wooden fish seemed to sense Lang Jiuchuan’s bewilderment and couldn’t help but knock itself once: “Wake up.”

This pagoda hasn’t truly been renovated yet, and you’re spacing out here?

Are you actually hoping to become a vessel spirit trapped inside the pagoda, just to give that advantage away to someone else?

Lang Jiuchuan heard the wooden fish’s knocking sound — like something hammering directly on her soul — and gave a shudder. “You are the vessel spirit of the Diamond Pagoda — how is it that you’re a wooden fish?”

“Is a wooden fish not allowed to be a vessel spirit? My master could not bear to see me fade away and reforged my spiritual consciousness into a treasured vessel, making me a vessel spirit. What’s wrong with that? You’d best stay sharp — keep spacing out like that and your soul is gone.”

The wooden fish let out a huff. Kids these days have no sense.

Hmph, quite the attitude!

Lang Jiuchuan was not about to indulge it. “Your former master long ago ascended to the Pure Land, and this Diamond Pagoda is no longer what it once was. From this moment forward, I am your master. And this pagoda shall be named the Nine-Layer Celestial Pagoda — shortened to Little Nine Pagoda. Understood? Come. Let us form the covenant at once.”

The wooden fish: “……”

What kind of attitude is this? This little brat dares be this brazen?