A burst of seven-colored pearl light scattered across the night sky, spiritual energy drifting like mist. Even the demons and malevolent spirits in the area endured the overwhelming pressure of the thunder and lightning, drifting closer and hovering at the periphery to absorb what they could.
Inside Huguo Temple, the abbot Xuanneng was visibly agitated. His fingertips instinctively began calculating, but before he was even halfway through, a dull ache flared in his chest and a trickle of blood seeped from the corner of his mouth.
He clenched his fist. It was a Buddhist treasure — no, that wasn’t quite right. It seemed to be something else as well.
Yet he could not divine what it was.
But it was undeniably a supreme treasure, for the mountain was alive with spiritual energy.
Xuanneng wanted to ascend the mountain, but then he heard a burst of startled cries. His brows furrowed, and he looked in the direction of the screams — toward the guest meditation courtyard within the temple, and from the women’s quarters at that.
“Go have someone check on the guest quarters and see what the matter is,” Xuanneng instructed the novice monk.
The novice, rubbing his sleepy eyes, went off to do so.
Xuanneng looked toward the mountain once more, then turned and walked back to his meditation chamber, letting out a quiet sigh: “Gain and loss alike are fate.”
He was simply not destined for that spiritual energy.
Besides him, others had also sensed the commotion on Lang Jiuchuan’s end and were swiftly making their way up — Gong Qi among them. But very quickly, they changed direction.
For they had heard unmistakable tiger roars that shook the forested mountain in the quiet of night, and a dense surge of spiritual energy was emanating from that direction.
Could it be that a spirit beast had emerged into the world?
The reason none of them suspected otherwise was that this entire mountain peak fell within the domain of Huguo Temple and sat atop a dragon vein. The feng shui of the mountain was therefore excellent, and it was hardly surprising for mountain spirits or spiritual creatures to appear here.
Had they not heard tales of mountain beasts secretly coming to temples to listen to sutras and meditate on the Dharma, eventually achieving enlightenment, awakening their spiritual intelligence, and taking their first true steps upon the path of cultivation?
So the appearance of a spirit beast in this area was entirely natural.
A spirit beast, at that — if one could obtain it and train it well, it would be a tremendous asset to any cultivator, no less valuable than a magical instrument for banishing evil and destroying malevolent forces.
Over on that side, Lang Jiuchuan watched as the thunder fire extinguished, revealing the form of the nine-tiered Coercion Pagoda. She was both astonished and delighted.
Compared to the original Diamond Pagoda, the nine-tiered Coercion Pagoda was now more refined and compact — only the size of her palm, fitting easily in one hand with room to spare, and all the more convenient to carry on her person. Against the backdrop of white snow, the pagoda gleamed a deep, lustrous black shot through with faint hints of a profound purple, far more mysterious and unfathomable than before.
Lang Jiuchuan was thoroughly perplexed. She had only added a single tier of coercive curse inscriptions — how could that have caused the pagoda to shrink?
A sobbing cry drifted out from within the pagoda.
Lang Jiuchuan’s consciousness stirred. She sent her spiritual sense inside the small nine-tiered pagoda, and her soul abruptly stiffened. She immediately activated every thread of her Dao intent to shield herself, guarding against the unknown yet formidable remnant consciousness within.
A voice laughed and first scolded the weeping wooden fish: “Stop your crying. Have you no shame? What begins must end — all things scatter in time. To receive a new master is also your good fortune.”
“Master…” The wooden fish was inconsolable.
It understood — once the sarira emerged, he would be gone entirely. This was the moment its bond with the master came to its end.
Lang Jiuchuan was startled: “Master Luole?”
“It is I.” Master Luole’s remnant consciousness laughed softly. “You are indeed as I divined — the one destined for this. My sarira did not wait centuries for you in vain.”
Lang Jiuchuan bowed deeply: “Your junior greets the Master.”
“Rise. The sarira has already been refined into the pagoda by the thunder fire, and this remnant consciousness of mine will soon dissolve. As for why the pagoda held my nirvana sarira — that is a long story, and so I shall simply not tell it.”
Lang Jiuchuan: “…”
Master Luole spoke in a gentle tone: “I refined this pagoda for the sake of all living beings — for the living and the dead alike, to shelter and nurture souls. How it is used depends entirely upon the one who wields it. With a heart devoted to the Dao, the Seven-Star Diamond Pagoda will become a protective treasure. Used for evil, it will ultimately turn against its wielder. Remember this well. Over these centuries, it passed through many hands — both righteous and wicked — and was ultimately reduced to an instrument of corruption for breeding malevolent spirits. This was the trial and near-death of both the Seven-Star Diamond Pagoda and the wooden fish. Without you, they would have eventually sunk into the river of history, becoming a vessel of extreme yin, evil, and malice — throwing the order of the mortal world into chaos.”
He paused and then continued: “Fortunately, you arrived as fated, sparing them from that fate, and sparing my life’s devotion from coming to nothing.”
Something stirred in Lang Jiuchuan’s heart.
All of a sudden, she felt something strange in her spiritual terrace — as though an enormous palm had pressed into it, smoothing the fractures of her shattered soul, yet also seeming to draw something away. She grew dizzy and disoriented, instinctively moving to defend herself, only to have that great palm gently brush her resistance aside.
Agonizing pain tore through her soul.
A boundless torrent of things poured into the sea of her consciousness — it was a Buddhist-Daoist inheritance.
“Even a remnant soul may achieve nirvana. Reborn facing the light, you shall surely reach the Dao.”
When Lang Jiuchuan came back to her senses, Master Luole’s remnant consciousness was gone from within the pagoda. Only the wooden fish’s choked sobs remained.
She looked down at her own hands. Her soul, which had been weakened from carving the Dao inscriptions, had stabilized — and was even more solid than before. And in her mind, there now resided the inheritance that Master Luole had forcibly imparted to her.
She was stunned.
For a long moment, Lang Jiuchuan knelt down, pressed both palms to the ground, and lowered her forehead to meet them — performing the full kneeling rite of a disciple before a master.
To receive a master’s inheritance — worthy to be called my teacher!
At this point, the wooden fish had ceased its sobbing and said: “I did not tell you before because the Master divined it all centuries ago through the Great Divination Arts — that someone would reforge the Seven-Star Diamond Pagoda a second time, and once the reforging was complete, his sarira would lend you its power, becoming a more formidable treasure than the Seven-Star Diamond Pagoda itself. Just now, if the Master had not suppressed the treasure’s overwhelming pressure, the disturbance here would have drawn countless cultivators.”
Lang Jiuchuan replied: “We’ll talk more later. First, let’s go save the tiger.”
She flashed out of the small nine-tiered pagoda. The moment her hand picked it up, a thought crossed her mind — and to her surprise, the pagoda slipped inside her body.
Lang Jiuchuan looked toward the gathered demons and malevolent spirits: “If you’ve absorbed enough, get going. If the righteous cultivators come, you’ll all be finished.”
Upon hearing this, the demons and spirits all bowed toward her and hurriedly departed.
Only then did Lang Jiuchuan speak to Jiangche’s spiritual essence in her mind: “Go toward your front-left.”
Jiangche quickly drifted in the direction she indicated, while Lang Jiuchuan activated a talisman technique, crossing a hundred meters with a single step. She quickly encountered Jiangche, and the moment it entered Lang Jiuchuan’s spiritual terrace, within just a few breaths, several figures in long robes appeared before her with a whoosh.
“Are you human or ghost, to appear here in the dead of night? And where is that spirit beast?” One of them pointed a long whip at Lang Jiuchuan. They had tracked the spiritual creature here only to find it vanished — could she have claimed it?
Cultivators had no fear of darkness, and with the mountain blanketed in snow, its reflected light made Lang Jiuchuan’s deathly pale complexion easy enough to see.
Gong Qi recognized her at a glance: “Miss Lang Jiu, what brings you here?”
Lang Jiuchuan was just about to offer an excuse when she suddenly looked toward the front right. She walked quickly in that direction: “Daoist Gong, you’ve come at just the right time. There is a great evil in the mountains — please follow.”
Gong Qi’s expression sharpened.
“Jingyi?” The Daoist with the long whip looked at him, seeming somewhat surprised.
Gong Qi fell in step behind Lang Jiuchuan and explained: “Shengong, this is a junior brother I’m acquainted with.”
The Daoist called Shengong was even more surprised. The person before them looked exceedingly frail, and was a young girl at that — alone in the deep mountain wilderness.
“Two fellow Daoists, please look up there.” Another older Daoist stared up at the night sky above where Lang Jiuchuan was headed, his expression one of shock.
The two looked up.
Clouds swallowed the moon, and drifting through the air was what seemed to be a thick, heavy scent of blood.
An ill omen.
The group quickly caught up to Lang Jiuchuan, and when they arrived at a low-lying hollow in the terrain, the sight of a fresh corpse — dried to nothing but skin and bone — lying on the ground instantly darkened every face present.