Lang Jiuchuan was truly furious. She absolutely could not endure that someone had used a child’s body as a container to cultivate a Gu — an act so malicious and underhanded that its perpetrator deserved annihilation.

Fuyi saw the murderous intent in her eyes. Through the Nine-Palace Eight-Trigram Formation, he understood that she harbored within her a killing force capable of slaying gods — and he feared she might lose her rationality in the heat of the moment. He said: “Xiaojiu — it’s cold, and the ground is cold too. Let’s get this woman propped up and revive her first, lest she not make it through.”

Lang Jiuchuan dragged Madam Song up and laid her on the bed. Looking at the death aura on her face, she pulled up Madam Song’s sleeve and felt for her pulse — her emotions had surged violently upward, fury and grief had attacked the heart, cold aura was stagnating and obstructed, and her qi and blood were severely depleted. This body had been worn down by long illness. Lang Jiuchuan also examined her arm — the veins there were clearly visible as well.

While Madam Song’s body did not carry the smell of a rotting corpse, Lang Jiuchuan still drew a small cut on her finger with the talisman brush. The blood that came out was still red. She let out a small breath of relief.

It seemed the Corpse-Rot Gu on her daughter had not yet reached full strength, and had not yet transferred to another host. But seeing that Madam Song’s death aura was this dense, she estimated there was only a day or two left at most.

Lang Jiuchuan looked at Song Yuedie, who lay entirely still and motionless, and felt pity — but even more than pity, fury.

She drew a cut on her own finger with the talisman brush, squeezed out the blood, and used the brush tip dipped in blood to paint a Gu-Suppression talisman on the child’s face, temporarily pressing down the malevolent aura of the Gu insects within her body, keeping the Corpse-Rot Gu from acting up — forcing it to lie dormant.

This would not draw the Corpse-Rot Gu out, but it could prevent it from running rampant, sparing the child from the agony of headaches and the sensation of a thousand insects boring through her mind.

As for Madam Song — Lang Jiuchuan left her in her fainted state. Better to remain unconscious for now; waking would only send her emotions into further chaos. Better to “sleep” through it.

Lang Jiuchuan turned her cold, sharp gaze upon the malevolent ghost that Fuyi had bound, and asked: “You have been clinging to this mother and daughter — what is the connection between you? What cause and effect binds you here?”

He had been haunting them, yet had not killed them. That was somewhat strange.

The malevolent ghost raised his head and glared at Lang Jiuchuan, his expression carrying a few threads of fear. He had not forgotten that this woman had struck him on their very first encounter and set his soul burning as though scorched by fire.

She was more fearsome than any ghost.

“She ate the flesh of this body of mine — Zhao Xin’s body.” The malevolent ghost stared at the small girl on the bed, malice gleaming in his eyes. “Anyone who dares eat my flesh must pay a price.”

A wave of cold disgust ran through Fuyi. The killing aura he had been holding in check slipped loose for a moment, and he came down hard.

Zhao Xin let out a shriek, his ghost-form going faint and hollow.

Lang Jiuchuan asked in a stern voice: “The Corpse-Rot Gu on her body — was it cultivated from your corpse?”

“Yes, yes — stop piercing me!” Zhao Xin’s ghostly energy surged with raw, seething menace, but his howls were piteous.

Fuyi opened his mouth without a trace of remorse and said: “My apologies — a moment of inattention, and I came down too hard just then.”

Zhao Xin: You bastard — are you even human, saying something like that?

“Tell me everything you know, clearly and completely, and I will send you to the Underworld. If you are not cooperative — I will destroy you.” Lang Jiuchuan’s cold gaze swept over him.

Destroy him!

Zhao Xin thought to himself that he was already dead — what was there left to destroy? But pinned down by the ferocious spirit binding him, that killing aura, he had no idea where it came from, only that it was immensely powerful — the kind that could shatter his soul into oblivion. And even without that god of violence, there was still that woman, more fearsome than any ghost.

Going to the Underworld was better than falling into their hands.

Pain had a way of clarifying the mind. Those who knew what was good for them knew when to bow. Zhao Xin had no desire to fabricate anything; he just said it plainly: “It is as I said. They cultivated Gu larvae on my corpse, carved out the flesh from around my heart, made it into a broth, and fed it to this child.”

Fuyi: “…”

Lang Jiuchuan pressed sharply: “This they — who are they exactly? Cultivating Gu requires knowledge of Gu arts — that is exclusively the domain of shamanic practitioners. Do you know who it was? Grievances have their origin and debts have their creditor. You know what was done to you and how — if you wanted revenge, why not go after those two? Why instead take it out on this helpless mother and daughter?”

“This…” Zhao Xin’s gaze flickered.

Lang Jiuchuan took one look at him and let out a cold laugh. “Could it be that you bully the weak but fear the strong? The shamanic practitioner used your corpse to cultivate the Gu, and you were furious — but the other party has talismans to protect themselves, and you could not get near them. So you followed the scent and found this poor, vulnerable mother and daughter to vent your helpless rage upon.”

She had guessed it with perfect accuracy.

Zhao Xin was livid with indignation. “It is a fact that she ate my flesh! In what you Daoist practitioners always have on your lips — cause and effect, retribution—” “Ow.”

Fuyi’s killing energy stabbed at him hard. He sneered: “You think you’re alive? I’d find a rotting corpse and force-feed it to you, then let the death-soul of that rotting corpse come haunt you — how would you like that? You speak as though this child chose to eat your rotting flesh with pleasure — if someone offered it to you, would you eat it?”

Zhao Xin whimpered and wailed at length, then said with trembling voice: “I had no way — I simply could not beat that shamanic practitioner, so I thought to wait for an opportunity. I also thought about possessing her body and taking it over, but those insects kept growing, and I…”

He shrank back in terror, eyes darting to the skin-and-bones child on the bed. When he had tried to possess her, he had clearly felt that thing moving through the body inside — feeding on her blood, gnawing at her flesh, boring through her skull. One thread, then two, then countless.

Utterly terrifying.

“I — I was actually about to put her out of her misery just now,” Zhao Xin said haltingly. “Things couldn’t get any worse than this anyway. Better to just die and be done with it, rather than suffer the torment of the Gu insects gnawing at you.”

Lang Jiuchuan asked again: “Which living soul did you harm?”

“The woman who did this to the child, of course,” Zhao Xin said. “You two don’t know how vicious that woman is — she’s not even human. The child called her auntie so warmly and affectionately, and she just smiled and personally spooned that bowl of meat broth into the child’s mouth. Heaven above — in all my living days I never saw anyone so malicious.”

“What use are your words if you didn’t stop it?”

Zhao Xin shrank back. “She was wearing a protective talisman given to her by that dead shamanic practitioner — I didn’t dare get close to her. I managed to kill her only because her husband drank himself into a stupor and started beating her, tore all her clothes off in the process, and I was able to seize the opportunity in that moment.”

Lang Jiuchuan’s brow furrowed. “Who is this woman?”

“She’s this young madam’s good friend from childhood, apparently — the daughter of a landowner, but her father was a ruinous gambler who lost all the family’s property and then sold her into a noble household as a servant. After that she was married off to a widower who beat his wife, and it seems he even laid hands on her when she was about to give birth — which ended in a stillborn daughter.” Zhao Xin curled his lip. “Then she happened to run into Madam Song again. Their circumstances were worlds apart — one was in the heavens, the other had fallen into the earth — and her heart turned black with envy. The jealousy of a woman, they say, is truly a terrifying thing.”

“Where is this woman currently serving?”

“In a marquis manor — which one I’ve forgotten for the moment.”

“Zhenbei Marquis Manor,” Lang Jiuchuan said, recalling what Madam Song had told her — that it was Zhenbei Marquis Manor that had commissioned the embroidered Guanyin image. If the woman worked in the manor, she would likely have had contact with the embroidery house in coordinating the commission, which would naturally have led to encounters with Madam Song.

And when two girlhood friends reunite years later to find their lives in vastly opposite circumstances — one flourishing, the other in ruin — envy would take root in that heart. Left to fester and grow, that seed of malice would eventually blossom into the catastrophe that destroyed a family.

Lang Jiuchuan looked toward Madam Song — who had, without her noticing, come back to consciousness. She lay staring blankly up at the canopy above the bed, as though her soul had left her body. From her lips came a name, murmured softly:

“Luo Chan.”