Just as Jian Lan and the others had been, everyone who laid eyes on Lang Jiuchuan in this ensemble was struck with a mixture of wonder and awe. How to put it — the Ninth Young Miss was already a girl of noble birth, but dressed like this, she possessed something beyond what an ordinary daughter of a great family carried: a quality that was difficult to name.

Cui Shi stared at Lang Jiuchuan’s face for a long while, then looked away with an almost flustered abruptness, her complexion a shade pale.

No matter how much she was unwilling to admit it — seeing Lang Jiuchuan dressed and composed like this, she felt the image blurring and overlapping with the memory of a certain young man.

By full daylight, Lang Jiuchuan and the others had already taken breakfast and made their way to the side hall. The rest of the Lang family was already waiting there. When they saw Lang Jiuchuan enter, every one of them paused.

This was the unapproachable, imperious young woman they had taken to be a common village girl, a short-lived thing?

She still looked slender, true enough, but she no longer had that frail air of someone who might draw their last breath at any moment. If anything, she seemed sturdier than any of them, aloof and above it all.

The one most visibly astonished was Lang Cailing. She nearly had her eyes pop out of her head staring at Lang Jiuchuan — the change was truly too great.

Lang Caiyao felt a pang of wistful envy. By rights, the most honored young woman in the household was none other than Lang Jiuchuan. Lang Cailing, though a marquis’s daughter, was a concubine-born child. And she herself, though born of the first wife, had a father who was merely a son of a concubine.

Only Lang Jiuchuan had a first wife father and was born of a first wife, and she held their grandmother’s deep affection. Even their eldest uncle indulged and favored her. Looking at her now — cool, elegant, and self-possessed — despite never having been schooled in the strict traditions of a great house, she had simply grown into the bearing a noble daughter ought to have.

Lang Jiuchuan paid no attention to how the Lang family was looking at her. She first paid her respects to Lang Zhengping and Third Uncle Lang Zhengwen, gave only a light nod to the brothers and sisters of the household, and went to confer with the presiding Xuanguang Master about the order of the ceremony.

At Huguo Temple, what was being held was a proper Buddhist memorial rite, with sutras and chants performed by monks rather than Daoist practitioners. Eight monks were already arranging the implements for the ceremony.

The location for the rite was the small courtyard before the side hall. The heavens cooperated: the ceremonial altar had been prepared, incense smoke coiling upward, the altar enshrining the Three Sages, whose compassionate faces gazed downward in serene contemplation of all living beings.

Buddhist precepts forbade meat, so the offerings were all vegetarian — though some were shaped to resemble meat dishes. The Lang family would separately arrange a table of food and wine at the household ancestral shrine back in the city.

Before the altar, Lang Zhengfan’s spirit tablet had been brought forward. Lang Jiuchuan herself took a clean white cotton cloth dampened in water steeped with pomelo leaves and wiped the tablet clean, then reverently placed it on the offering table.

She then drew out three specially prepared agarwood incense sticks from the incense box she had brought herself, lit them, raised them with both hands held high above her head, and bowed three solemn times before the spirit tablet.

Nearby, Lang Cailing murmured under her breath to Lang Caiyao: “Before it was always Elder Brother who did this…”

Lang Zhengping glanced over, his gaze cool.

Lang Cailing’s face went white and she immediately fell silent. The younger ones, catching the family head’s expression, all held their breath and made no sound.

Lang Jiuchuan silently recited Lang Zhengfan’s name in her heart, then set the agarwood incense in the bronze censer. Looking to either side at the offerings — flowers, incense, melons, and fruit all properly arranged — she saw that in a pale celadon vase, a single white lotus had been coaxed into early bloom.

In this season, to have cultivated a white lotus to bloom — as expected of Huguo Temple, and as expected of the memorial ceremony hosted by a household of noble rank. Common folk would never have access to such solemnity.

The fresh offerings were all seasonally appropriate fruits, stacked into pagoda shapes. Beneath the altar table was a heap of spirit money, gold ingots of paper, paper garments and shoes, and large paper replicas of precious horses and fragrant carriages, all embellished with gold foil.

“The hour has come.” The presiding Xuanguang Master stepped forward, stood solemnly before the Buddha, and struck a small handbell once.

The Lang family gathered to one side. The eight waiting monks each held their ritual instruments — small handbells, wooden fish drums — and arranged themselves in two rows, ready to begin the rite.

Unlike the Lang family, Lang Jiuchuan took her place at the side of Master Xuanguang. The Lang family members found this strange, but since Lang Zhengping said nothing, none of them dared to speak either.

As Master Xuanguang formed the seal of Amitabha Buddha, opening the ritual space and sealing its boundaries, Lang Jiuchuan had already unclasped the Dizhong bell from her waist. She gently closed her eyes, bringing to mind the Buddhist understanding she had come to grasp in her time with Master Luole, then opened her eyes with sudden clarity — her intention moved.

The Dizhong bell in her hand rang out: once — twice — three times.

Three peals of the bell-drum, resounding to the Nine Underworlds — the departed soul is called to hear.

In the underworld by the Wheel of Reincarnation, Lang Zhengfan looked up with a momentary confusion — then broke into a smile.

At the ceremonial altar in Huguo Temple, Master Xuanguang began to chant the opening sutras, cleansing the altar with willow branches dipped in water, reciting the Great Compassion Mantra to set the ward and keep evil from entering.

Lang Jiuchuan stepped back one pace and gently swung the Dizhong bell. Invisible to the naked eye, the resonant waves of the bell’s sound spread outward in all directions, and within the bounds of the altar, those sound waves drew themselves into a ring of golden light, a ward of protection.

This altar, today — she would guard it. In a daughter’s name.

Everyone was transfixed.

Lang Jiuchuan sat cross-legged and began to ring the bell steadily. By then, the eight monks were already lightly sounding their handbells and wooden fish drums, together chanting the Amitabha Sutra — the sound of the scripture blending with the sound of the bell, rising and falling in unison, resonating deep within the heart.

All the Lang family members present wore expressions of grief, their eyes reddening. Cui Shi was already weeping, unable to hold back her tears.

When the Amitabha Sutra was finished, the recitation shifted to the Rebirth Mantra — the full forty-nine repetitions — beseeching the soul to rest in peace and ascend early to the Pure Land.

The spirit-guiding banner before the altar snapped in the wind, as if a wandering soul had come home.

When the forty-ninth recitation of the Rebirth Mantra was complete, Lang Jiuchuan rose. She received the sacred sand from Master Xuanguang’s hands and scattered it over the spirit tablet, then took up the eulogy she had written herself and began to read aloud in a clear, measured voice:

“In the year Yi Si, the third month of the Ding Chou cycle, your filial daughter Lang Jiuchuan humbly presents offerings of plain food, fragrant flowers, and fine wine, and pays tribute before the spirit of her late father, Lord Lang, saying thus…”

Cui Shi’s legs gave way beneath her. She wept silently, held up on both sides by Nanny Cheng and the others.

Lang Jiuchuan’s eulogy contained no flowery embellishment — it honored Lang Zhengfan’s accomplishments and wove within it an unspoken assurance that the injustice done to him would one day be brought to light. The others could not parse the hidden meaning, and only felt that this eulogy was somehow different from those of years past.

Only Lang Zhengping understood. His hands clenched tight, his eyes brimming with hot tears.

Second brother — do you hear her?

You will not have died in vain. Your own flesh and blood will avenge you. Rest easy.

Lang Jiuchuan finished reading the eulogy and burned it in the spirit-offering brazier, watching it catch flame on its own. The pale smoke rose straight up, unhurried, as though it had taken the shape of words and traveled directly to the realm of the dead, falling into the hands of the departed soul.

With the eulogy burned, the ceremony was nearly complete. The monks shifted to chanting the Dedication of Merit to Great Compassion Bodhisattva: “May the merit of this ceremony adorn the Pure Land of the Buddha…”

Lang Jiuchuan lifted the spirit tablet and cradled it in her arms, walking to the spirit-offering brazier. Only then did Lang Zhengping direct the Lang men to bring the paper ingots and paper offerings forward, burning them in the brazier one after another.

Watching the ashes spiral in the fire — lingering, unwilling to disperse — Lang Jiuchuan’s fingers gently traced over the name carved into the spirit tablet.

Rest easy and enter the cycle of rebirth. This place — I will watch over it.

As if her words had been heard, the ashes and the incense smoke spiraled together upward and poured into the clouds above.

Ding ding, dang dang.

From the eaves of the Ksitigarbha Hall, the copper bells hanging at the corners began to ring in the wind — as though the hand of the departed had brushed past them — their sound rising to meet the grief of the living in quiet and distant reply…