Lang Jiuchuan sat upon a great boulder, regulating her breath. She let out a slow, long exhalation. Her eyes remained closed, both hands forming a seal resting on her knees, her brow and eyes calm and cool.

“If you want to ask, then ask.”

Jiangche leaped up and settled beside her knees. “How have you grown so much stronger?”

Lang Jiuchuan opened her eyes and looked down at her hands. “My cultivation has indeed been flowing more smoothly these days, and comprehension comes more easily than before. Perhaps it is the support of meritorious virtue and wish-power?”

Her spirit frequently rested and recovered within the Xiaojiu Pagoda. When she was comprehending the dual Daoist and Buddhist meanings left behind by Master Luoluo, the insights came more fluidly and completely. She could feel her strength growing — but whether it was truly due to meritorious virtue and wish-power, she could not say with full certainty.

Jiangche said, “If it were the support of meritorious virtue and wish-power, you ought to be glowing with light — but the way I see it, that merit seems to sink into the depths without a trace. Yet your spirit has grown stronger.”

Lang Jiuchuan fell into thoughtful contemplation.

After a moment, she summoned the Xiaojiu Pagoda, sent her primordial spirit inward into the soul-nurturing array. The array spun rapidly, the Dao-intent inscribed within the formations converting into spiritual energy that circled through the array, at intervals seeping into and refining her spirit.

Lang Jiuchuan probed carefully. Forcibly separating out a single strand of thought, she attempted to observe her own primordial soul — and found that the golden light of meritorious virtue within her soul was forming a faint, broken ribbon that drifted out of the array and dissolved into the void, while another current of energy spiraled back to settle upon the primordial soul.

Like a bridge connecting two shores.

Her primordial soul gave a sharp, sudden ache.

Lang Jiuchuan immediately withdrew her intent, silently recited the Heart Sutra, and activated the array’s spiritual energy to circulate the great heavenly circuit through her soul and refine it.

After one full circuit, she returned her soul to her physical body, then drew the vital energy of the trees and grasses of the surrounding mountains inward, transmuting it into spiritual energy and guiding it into her core. Only then did she open her eyes. She looked at her porcelain-pale hands and said, “My primordial soul just now produced a resonance.”

Jiangche was startled. What did that mean?

“It must be that one soul and two spirit-forms.” Lang Jiuchuan rose to her feet, her eyes brilliant and clear as stars. “The meritorious virtue and wish-power nourishes my primordial soul, and then a thread of it flows out into the void — as though someone is drawing upon the meritorious virtue within my soul. Yet I feel not the slightest resistance to it. Jiangche — only for something that is truly my own self would I willingly, gladly share what is mine.”

Jiangche understood, but still pushed back: “Couldn’t it just be you nourishing something else?”

“Do I look like that selflessly generous a person to you?” Lang Jiuchuan gave a derisive laugh. “If it truly is as I say, then it means the one soul and two spirit-forms and I are mutually sustaining each other — which is why my soul grows more solid, and my cultivation and comprehension advance.”

“Then did you locate that one soul and two spirit-forms during the resonance?”

Lang Jiuchuan gave a frustrated smile. “That, I could not. But even a trace of resonance is sufficient proof that my one soul and two spirit-forms have found a place to reside. Sooner or later, they will merge with my existing two souls and five spirit-forms. When that day comes, you shall see what I am capable of.”

Jiangche watched her look of excitement and could not resist pouring cold water on it. “Have you considered — what if that one soul and two spirit-forms have landed in someone else? What if that person is lacking two souls and five spirit-forms — a simpleton, in other words? And you must choose between two versions of yourself — which one would you give up?”

Lang Jiuchuan went rigid.

It was not an impossibility. If that day came — what then?

“Surely Heaven would not play such a trick on me?”

“Who can say? As you yourself put it — to return from death and be reborn must come with a great trial. Where your trial lies, no one can know.”

Lang Jiuchuan fell silent, her brow knitting tightly.

Jiangche saw her expression darken and thought to himself that she had only just finished a fight — what was the point of adding to her troubles? So he said, “All of this is just our speculation. Don’t dwell on it. Whatever the outcome, cultivation cannot be neglected — and your meritorious virtue and wish-power are better accumulated in abundance, especially now that you have discovered you are also channeling some to sustain that one soul and two spirit-forms. As for the future — when the time comes to meet her, Heaven’s will shall reveal itself.”

Lang Jiuchuan gave a nod. He was right.

“But the Rong Family — I’m afraid we’ll need to stay on our guard going forward.” Jiangche said, “Now that Elder Wanfang bore the title of Elder, he must have had some genuine ability. In his circle, who knows how many more stand at the same level. Now that you’ve destroyed him, the Rong Family will certainly take notice.”

The previous skirmishes had been small things. But now that Lang Jiuchuan had destroyed Wanfang — a genuine Elder — it was tantamount to declaring open war on the Rong Family.

Bringing Lang Jiuchuan to heel was impossible. That left only eliminating her. The Rong Family would never allow what they viewed as a jumping flea to keep leaping about and grow into a serious threat.

After all, who would willingly leave a weapon of mass destruction alive to threaten themselves?

Lang Jiuchuan said, “I have already prepared for this. As I said to Abbot Xuanneng — it is they who cannot tolerate my existence, which is why they send people to harm me again and again. Since that is how it is, then let us simply get it over with.”

Let the Rong Family send one person, and she would kill that one. Send two, and she would kill them both.

Jiangche leaped onto her lap and said, “Strange, isn’t it? They already killed the original inhabitant of this body — they didn’t even spare her soul. Knowing full well that you are a different spirit inhabiting this body, why would they still go to such lengths to deal with you, and make trouble for themselves?”

“First — arrogance and pride. They are convinced the Rong Family could not possibly fail to eliminate a single wandering ghost. Second — they likely despise me so intensely that they cannot bear for this body to walk freely in this world.” Lang Jiuchuan touched her own face as she said it.

A flash of inspiration struck Jiangche. “A woman’s jealousy.” He stared at Lang Jiuchuan’s face. “Could it be that the original owner of this body was Rong Family blood? That Xi Yun’s jealousy drove her to commit murder, and alongside the jealousy there was also dread? People are really no different from animals — the moment their interests or territory are threatened, they will do whatever it takes to protect themselves and eliminate any rival without scruple.”

Lang Jiuchuan’s mind drifted to the pettiness and scheming of inner households. “Such as — the original owner was the rightful young master all along?”

The two looked at each other, turning the possibility over in their minds.

“If that were true, then everything Cui Shi believed all along was right — and this body I inhabit was never born of her.” But if Cui Shi’s own child had been swapped — where had the real child been taken?

And if the original owner’s body was Rong Family blood, how could the Rong Family have stood by and allowed a woman’s jealousy to drive the slaughter of their own bloodline?

Something felt inconsistent, yet there was not a single thread of evidence to follow.

At the Rong Family clan grounds.

Xi Yun, the Fourth Mistress — the young master’s birth mother, and the most honored woman in the household — received the news that Elder Wanfang had been destroyed and flew into such a rage that she smashed everything in her rooms.

Not one of the attending servants dared to make a sound. Ever since the young master had been rejected in a marriage proposal by the Gong Family and the unfavorable news that followed, the mistress’s temperament had grown more erratic and dangerous by the day. The number of servants who had died under her hand this recent stretch could not be counted on ten fingers.

Xi Yun smashed and raged until her eyes were blood-red, grinding her teeth as she cursed, “What a mere wandering ghost — yet so impossibly difficult to deal with. Had I known, I should have burned that body to ash from the beginning.”

She had left the body intact simply for the petty satisfaction of venting her rage — and now that indulgence had bred nothing but trouble. A careless mistake, truly.

Xi Yun drew a long breath, smoothed her hair back into place, and walked out the door straight toward the Dao Court — the most revered hall in the entire clan. Passing the main hall, her gaze swept toward the isolated Dao compound perched on the cliff’s edge, hemmed in by green bamboo, and she paused. Her expression darkened, her fingernails digging sharply into her palm. Then she turned and continued toward the patriarch’s residence.

After the page boy announced her arrival, she entered the courtyard and sank to her knees before the stern-faced Daoist there — a man with his hair bound in a Daoist topknot. “Patriarch, that wandering ghost from the Lang Family cannot be left alive any longer. Otherwise she will certainly become a serious threat to Xuanxuan. You must act for Xuanxuan’s sake. She is your own—”

“Silence. This is a mess you caused!” The Rong Family patriarch cast a cold glance at her. Xi Yun’s entire body trembled. She lowered her head, closed her mouth, and prostrated herself.