Lang Jiuchuan glanced at the dried corpse on the ground, her brow furrowing briefly before it relaxed. She let out a quiet sigh.

The King of Hell had a strict sense of principle — if he decreed someone was to die before midnight, he would not let them linger past the first hours of dawn. Not a moment’s delay.

“How can this be?” Gong Qi stared at the corpse in stunned disbelief, his pupils trembling as though he could not accept what he saw. He pulled out a fire striker, lit a piece of dried wood, and brought it close to the body to make out the face — then instinctively looked toward Lang Jiuchuan.

Shengong and the others followed his gaze, their expressions darkening. The man raised his sword toward Lang Jiuchuan again: “Sorceress, was this your doing?”

Lang Jiuchuan’s brow furrowed. She looked at Gong Qi: “Are all people from the Xuan Sect like this — pointing fingers at anyone they come across and calling them a demon or evil?”

Gong Qi rose to his feet and pressed Shengong’s sword down: “Shengong, it was not her.”

“If not her, why is a young woman here alone in the dead of night?” Shengong was deeply suspicious. Admittedly, the timing and location of Lang Jiuchuan’s appearance were far too coincidental, made worse by this horrifying development.

It was not that he was targeting Lang Jiuchuan specifically — but ask a hundred people outside, and a hundred and one would find something amiss. A slip of a girl fragile enough to be blown over by the wind, braving a wild mountain forest like this, and then stumbling upon a gruesome murder scene — would anyone not harbor doubts about her connection to it?

Lang Jiuchuan laughed coldly: “What if I was sleepwalking? Is that not allowed?”

“You—!”

“If I were in your position, I’d be chasing the evil rather than standing here throwing accusations. While you’ve been wasting your breath, that evil has long since fled — and for all you know is already feeding on its next victim.” Lang Jiuchuan’s tone was cold and measured.

Shengong’s expression shifted again. He exchanged a glance with the older Daoist, worked a few finger signs, then burned a talisman and left behind a disciple called Huatong and Gong Qi, before chasing after the trail of yin malevolence.

“Who are they with?” Lang Jiuchuan asked.

Gong Qi was still reeling from the shock of this girl having vanished within the mere two hours since he had last seen her. Hearing Lang Jiuchuan’s question, he hadn’t quite come back to himself yet.

Daoist Huatong answered: “Shengong and the Bagui Daoist are masters of the Feng Family.”

Jiangche let out a surprised sound: “One of our arch-rivals, no less. Another moment later and the Diamond Pagoda would have been exposed.”

Lang Jiuchuan replied with a smug lilt: “They will never find that Diamond Pagoda now.”

Jiangche: “?”

Lang Jiuchuan said nothing further. She walked over to the dried corpse and looked at the face for a moment, and a brief, dazed feeling came over her.

Earlier today, that face had been so vivid and full of life. Now it was nothing but skin over bone — all blood and flesh utterly gone.

“She was always fated not to escape your crow’s mouth,” Jiangche sighed.

The dried corpse before them was none other than that unlucky child, Qisi. Earlier, Jiangche had felt rather displeased when it thought Lang Jiuchuan had told Gong Qi that this woman’s death was imminent out of some surge of mercy.

But now, seeing the state of her corpse — and what a strange and horrifying death it was — even it felt a twinge of melancholy, a feeling like looking at something from another lifetime.

Just this morning, the other woman had been strutting about with that arrogant, self-satisfied look of someone flaunting her status. By nightfall, she was this husk of desiccated skin and bone, her eyes frozen wide in terror.

How utterly impermanent.

Lang Jiuchuan scanned the area. Qisi’s soul was nowhere nearby. She extended her hand toward the body’s spiritual terrace, formed a seal with her fingers, probed carefully — then shook her head at Gong Qi: “Her soul essence is also gone.”

Gong Qi’s face turned grim.

Lang Jiuchuan turned the body over, pulled open the collar, and revealed two bloody puncture wounds: “This may confirm our suspicion. Look here.”

Gong Qi leaned in, and Daoist Huatong immediately raised his torch to get a closer look. He sucked in a sharp breath: “What kind of demon beast made wounds like that?”

Holes that large — surely no ordinary human or ghost had teeth that size?

Still, though — this young woman seemed so feeble, and yet she was boldly examining a desiccated corpse like this?

Huatong studied Lang Jiuchuan. How to put it — somehow, she set his nerves on edge even more than the corpse at their feet.

Gong Qi reached into the collar of his robe and drew out a silk cord. Suspended from it was a wolf fang, etched with Dao inscriptions, worn so long it had taken on a smooth, warm sheen.

He removed the wolf fang and held it up against the puncture wounds. He felt the symbol-carved fang grow hot in his hand: “Whether it was a beast or an evil entity, it was certainly done by fangs — and longer and sharper than even the fangs of this wolf king of mine.”

Huatong was unnerved. Did that mean there was some fanged evil creature walking among the living, preying on people?

“Could it be a jiangshi, as Elder Brother says?” He recalled records stating that corpses which failed to decompose could, over time, develop fangs after being transformed.

“A jiangshi? What jiangshi?” Shengong and the others had returned — and from the look on their faces, they had failed to catch the creature.

Gong Qi gestured for them to come and look at the puncture wounds on the corpse: “The Records of Strange Phenomena of Ten Thousand Chapters contains an account of corpses that did not decay over a hundred years, absorbing the extreme yin energies deep in the earth. Over many long years, these corpses transformed into jiangshi, who delight in consuming blood to sustain themselves — human blood above all.”

Hearing this, the others looked at the puncture wounds, and one by one their expressions changed.

Could this really be the bite of a jiangshi?

Lang Jiuchuan was lost in thought. If a great demonic evil had already emerged into the world, the celestial signs should have shown some disturbance — and yet Qisi’s manner of death did indeed resemble the work of a jiangshi. Something was not right. Had she miscalculated?

That would never do.

She intended to make her name as a yin-yang diviner. If she could not even get it right here, in front of the Xuan Sect, would she not be ruining her own reputation?

Lang Jiuchuan suddenly sensed a scrutinizing gaze and turned her head. Sure enough, it was Shengong — his eyes filled with undisguised appraisal.

He suspected her?

Lang Jiuchuan bared her teeth at him — two neat rows of small white teeth, each one like a grain of rice. Add ten of them together and they still would not be as large as one of those puncture wounds.

See? These are what my teeth look like. If you think I did it, go right ahead.

The silent self-defense and mockery turned Shengong’s face green.

Huatong’s mouth twitched as he fought back a laugh, and quickly looked away.

Gong Qi had also caught Lang Jiuchuan’s expression, feeling somewhat exasperated. He looked at Shengong: “Setting aside for now whether this was done by a jiangshi, the creature did not merely drain the blood and flesh — it also devoured her soul essence.”

Shengong was shaken: “You are saying the soul is gone?”

Gong Qi nodded gravely: “We brothers set out from the sect in the first place because our young master divined that an evil entity was about to emerge and sent us to investigate. From what we see now, that divination was clearly accurate. We have already sent word to the sect, and I expect the young master will also send word to the elders of the Feng and Rong Families. If an evil is truly running rampant, it is imperative that we bring in more fellow Daoists to join forces and eradicate it.”

Shengong nodded in agreement.

When demon evils brought disaster to the mortal world, the various families would dispatch their Daoist disciples to deal with it together — that was an unwritten rule the Xuan Sect had upheld for generations, and was the very foundation upon which they were respected by the world.

Even so, Lang Jiuchuan herself remained a mystery.

“We pursued the tracking talisman just now, and there was not a single trace.” Shengong looked at Lang Jiuchuan: “This young lady, however — perhaps she can resolve our confusion. How did you know there was yin malevolence here? Do not try to wriggle out of it. If it were not for you leading the way, we would not even have noticed this matter.”

Gong Qi frowned, and the look he gave Lang Jiuchuan held a trace of concern. Shengong was not a bad person, but he was rigid to a fault — he clearly suspected Lang Jiuchuan had something to do with this. If she could not give a clear account of herself, she would be walking into serious trouble.

After all, the female corpse before them was a young woman of noble birth.