Lang Jiuchuan looked at Fuqi’s grin — his back teeth and all — and felt genuine warmth and satisfaction seeing that within just a few short days, he had already learned to suppress and contain his yin miasma.

But she still offered one word of caution: “Ghosts have their own path. Cultivate it properly, and you may ascend to immortality or rise to kingship. There is only one rule: never accumulate the karmic debt of innocent lives slain in pursuit of higher cultivation. That path offers no return. Remember this well. Remember it always.”

Fuqi clasped his hands in acknowledgment.

Only then did Lang Jiuchuan turn to A’Piao and say, “I have something I would like to ask your Pavilion Master to keep safe for the time being. Could you pass it along for me?”

A’Piao was somewhat surprised. “What sort of thing?”

Lang Jiuchuan’s eyes flickered briefly — and she had not actually found it strange. She was making a request of the Pavilion Master, after all.

Hmph.

All that talk about being in closed-door cultivation and seeing no one — and now there was no mention of closed-door cultivation.

Liar.

Lang Jiuchuan handed him the silk-wrapped seal and, seeing him move to unwrap it, said, “Do not open it. I have placed a Concealment Talisman on it — break the talisman and the aura will be exposed.”

A’Piao’s hands paused. This cautious?

He hesitated, but thinking of the helpless, long-suffering expression his own Pavilion Master had worn when it came to this particular little adversary, he said nothing. He glanced at what she had yet to pull from her bundle and asked, “Just this?”

Lang Jiuchuan pursed her lips, then produced an incense box and handed it over, saying, “This is the everyday soul incense.”

Immediately after, she brought out the merit incense box, opened it, and removed one stick to pass to him. “This is for you — merit incense. I only managed to produce a little over ten sticks in total. This one is yours to keep. The rest are an offering to the Pavilion Master, to repay him for the trouble of keeping this thing safe for me.”

One look at that incense and A’Piao knew it was no ordinary thing. The color of the incense, the fragrance, the aura of vow-force and spiritual energy emanating from it — he had seen many fine objects in his time, yet even he felt as though his eyes had been opened to something new.

“It is best used during cultivation. Use it sparingly — I dare not produce much of this kind, not until I have recovered completely.” Lang Jiuchuan said this with unmistakable implication.

A’Piao asked, “Can it be broken into pieces to use a little at a time?”

“Of course.”

A’Piao’s ghost eyes brightened with delight. “Many thanks.”

He called for an attendant to bring a fresh incense box, placed the stick inside with great care, and tucked it away. Then he said, “One good turn deserves another. Let me give you a piece of news — I only received it two days ago.”

“What is it?”

A’Piao said, “The young master of the Rong Family — it turns out that when he entered seclusion last year, he suffered a qi deviation. Not a single word of this has leaked out. Not even the other Xuan clan families know.”

Lang Jiuchuan’s expression sharpened at once. “Is this truly so? When did this happen?”

“It should have been on the day of the Ghost Gate opening in the seventh month.” A’Piao tapped the incense box lightly and continued, “This young master of the Rong Family is eighteen this year — the only individual in the Rong Family with a cultivation root in the past twenty years. Named young master at the age of one, raised as their most precious treasure, with every resource of the Rong Family poured into her cultivation. No one expected them to push too hard — and bring about a qi deviation.”

“How did you come by this news? Were you not unable to enter Rong Family clan grounds? How was it possible to investigate?”

“It was something of a fortunate coincidence. At the base of the cultivation cliff-cave where the young master was in seclusion, there grew a mature Heaven Serpent Grass that had nearly come into its own, just waiting for last year’s seventh month to bear fruit. Guarding this Heaven Serpent Grass was a white deer on the verge of awakening, likewise waiting for the fruit to ripen. What no one anticipated was that when the Ghost Gate opened, the young master suffered a qi deviation inside. Not only was the cliff-cave destroyed, but the surrounding vegetation suffered as well. The white deer had been stationed right beside the Heaven Serpent Grass that day — watching the yin period arrive, the fruit nearly ripe — when that violent, uncontrolled force came crashing through and incinerated the Heaven Serpent Grass. The white deer did not escape the disaster either.”

A’Piao continued, “Our people kept encountering that deer’s lingering resentful spirit haunting the area. They tried communicating with it — through a halting, fragmented exchange — and that is how they pieced together what had happened. But neither the Xuan clan nor anyone in the Rong Family has let even a breath of it slip. The number of people who know within the Rong Family must be very few.”

Lang Jiuchuan gave a cold laugh. “Of course they would do everything in their power to conceal it. Once word got out that their only young master had suffered a qi deviation, the Rong Family’s already precarious standing at the bottom of the Xuan clan hierarchy would become even less secure.”

They had already strained every effort just to hold onto that last position — how could they willingly be driven out of the Xuan clan altogether?

Not to mention that news of the young master suffering a qi deviation would be not just humiliating, but would invite opportunists to come circling, eager to carve off a piece of the Rong Family’s territory.

“The Rong Family is still officially maintaining that the young master remains in seclusion. My guess is that she is recuperating — a qi deviation is not something one recovers from quickly.”

Lang Jiuchuan fell into silence. Her eyes closed slightly, but her mind was turning at remarkable speed.

When she had first entered this body, it had been in an appalling state — every tendon in her hands and feet severed, her chest cavity opened, one bone missing, both eyes gouged out, most of her blood drained, and even the original soul had fled. Now that she thought about it, this may not have been simple torture for its own sake — there had been a purpose behind it.

Lang Jiuchuan opened her eyes. A fierce, violent energy surged through her entire body, enveloping her.

A’Piao grabbed Fuqi and stepped back two paces.

Lang Jiuchuan forcibly suppressed that violent energy and said, “The Rong Family’s young master suffered a qi deviation, and this body of mine was subjected to deliberate mutilation. This cannot be coincidence. I have a theory — tell me whether it holds.”

“Go on.”

“When she suffered the qi deviation in seclusion, she would have lost control of the rampant forces tearing through her body and soul, and she would have lost her conscious mind as well. Her meridians would certainly have been severed — and among those severed meridians, could there not be what the Xuan clan calls a cultivation root? In the name of the clan’s glory, the Rong Family would never easily abandon their sole heir and their only cultivation seed. They would exhaust every method to save her. If the damage was truly irreparable on its own — restoring her bones, reconnecting her tendons, replacing her soul — those measures would be absolutely necessary, would they not?”

A’Piao frowned. “You are saying that your mutilation was because they needed the bones, blood, tendons, and soul of this body?”

Lang Jiuchuan nodded.

A’Piao said, “But she belongs to the Xuan clan — and is someone with a cultivation root. How could they simply fuse just anyone into her…”

He stopped mid-sentence. A thought welled up in his mind.

“Have you guessed it? Either this body of mine happened to be compatible with her in birth alignment, or it shares compatible bloodlines with her.” Lang Jiuchuan said icily.

A’Piao was shaken. “How could that be?”

Lang Jiuchuan exhaled slowly. “Madam Cui has always believed the original soul of this body was not her own birth daughter. If my theory is correct, then perhaps she was not wrong after all — this body may truly not be hers.”

Lang Jiuchuan felt herself drawing closer and closer to the truth, yet what awaited her would inevitably be a deeply entangled, melodramatic storyline. When it finally revealed itself — who among those involved could bear it?

“Your identity in this body is shrouded in layer upon layer of mystery. To unravel it, one must approach it from the Rong Family’s direction. Whoever mutilated this body knew something.” A’Piao said in a low voice. He paused, then added, “If you truly are not of the Lang Family — could it be that you belong to the Rong Family?”

“I have a blood tie with Madam Cui.” If she were not, how could she have felt a blood tie with Madam Cui — surely she had not made such an error, feeble as that would be?

Fuqi, who had been silent all this while, suddenly spoke: “If one reasons along these lines, then Miss — you are the Lang Family’s true child? I do not mean this body — I mean you, from your previous life. It is said that a mother and daughter are bound heart to heart. Even if you are only a soul, there should still be a tie between you.”

A bystander sees most clearly.

With that one observation from Fuqi, Lang Jiuchuan felt as though the tangled knot of threads had finally revealed its end.

Lang Jiuchuan stood motionless where she was.