Killing a Willow Immortal — Lang Jiuchuan had no belief whatsoever that this small old woman could have accomplished such a thing on her own. There must have been someone helping her, and that person had left behind something to serve as a safeguard.

What a pity. She herself had been protected — but her children and grandchildren paid with their lives in her place.

Three children. Three lives. One could only wonder whether that was enough for her to feel any regret.

Lang Jiuchuan instinctively glanced toward the old woman’s children’s palace, and what she saw left her at a loss for words. She shook her head slowly. It wasn’t just three.

What terrible wrongs had been done.

Her gaze was too direct, too contemptuous. Old Madam Bai found it grating and deeply unpleasant — this girl made her irritable and wary, but most of all afraid.

Lang Jiuchuan was so young, and yet those eyes of hers were far too sharp.

Old Madam Bai disliked people with sharp eyes — just as she had decades ago with the Willow Immortal she had worshipped. Its vertical pupils had been beautiful, yet equally piercing, as though they could see straight through to the depths of one’s heart. But what had that amounted to? It had still died.

And yet even in death, it had not forgotten to take its revenge — to take its revenge on the Bai Family.

When she thought of the children who had died too young over all those years, and of those who had never even had the chance to be born, Old Madam Bai’s face went hollow with defeat, and her eyes turned murky.

“Grandmother, Ning’er cannot afford to wait any longer.” Zuo Yan, seeing Old Madam Bai remain silent, could not help pressing her urgently.

But Old Madam Bai looked at Lang Jiuchuan and said, “Is it truly a curse?”

Lang Jiuchuan answered, “I once used my spiritual power to examine the meridians within her body. I found dark malevolent curses clinging to the meridians, pressing all the way to the heart meridian. These curses cause the meridians to become obstructed and the blood flow to stagnate. When that happens, the five organs and six viscera cannot achieve harmony between yin and yang — and without that harmony, one cannot be healthy. One grows frail. And when a person is too weak, their lifespan will not be complete.”

Old Madam Bai thought of her eldest son’s body — had it not been exactly like that? She had thought it was simply a weak constitution. Then her second son drowned, and she had taken that for an accident. And her third child had died in difficult labor — but what woman did not walk through the gates of death when giving birth? Besides, her third had never been particularly robust, either.

It was only after she kept conceiving yet being unable to carry any pregnancy to term that she began to feel something was wrong. Could it be that the Willow Immortal’s death at her hands had brought this retribution? And so she had turned to Buddhism — and in the second half of her life, she had spent more time in the prayer hall than she had spent in all of the first half combined.

Yet devotion to Buddha had not stopped the misfortune from coming — it had simply passed to the grandchildren’s generation. And this misfortune — was it truly a curse?

Old Madam Bai pursed her lips and said, “I had never intended to kill her. I began making offerings to her when I was ten years old. I gave her incense and devotion continuously, praying that she would bring me blessings — that she would help me find a suitable husband, that wealth and honor would never be out of reach. In time, I did indeed marry Kuang Lin. He passed the imperial examinations, earned the rank of Jinshi, and eventually entered the Imperial Academy. She and I — we were as close as sisters.”

Then her expression twisted into something fierce.

“But then she developed feelings for my husband. She actually proposed that she and I share him as our husband together, without distinction of wife or concubine.”

Lang Jiuchuan and Zuo Yan were both speechless.

A Willow Immortal — truly struck senseless by the delusions of love?

She looked toward Old Master Bai Kuang Lin, sitting in the corner. Even now in his old age, he still carried the bearing of a man of letters. It was not difficult to imagine the grace he must have possessed in his youth — the kind of refined young gentleman whose every gesture carried elegance and flair.

But that was all he was.

Why would a Willow Immortal not be content with her existence? Why would she want to become an ordinary mortal?

“She called herself a Willow Immortal, but she was nothing more than a white snake — how could she presume to become human, let alone covet another woman’s husband?” Old Madam Bai said furiously. “It was I who supplied her, who revealed her greed — and what I could give, I could also take away.”

“You alone never had the ability to destroy a Willow Immortal.” Lang Jiuchuan could not help cutting off her arrogance.

Old Madam Bai stiffened, then said, “That is correct. But what I could not do — there were others who could.”

As expected.

Lang Jiuchuan said, “Who was this person? What method did you use?”

“It was a Daoist ritualist called Wangsa Ying. He prepared a kind of incense called Dragon Ridge Incense — he told me to offer it day and night.” Old Madam Bai sank into memory. “I was told that this type of incense was irresistible to Willow Immortals. And indeed it was — she said the incense was wonderful, that it substantially solidified her divine soul. What she did not know was that when this incense has been burned for long enough, it would cause her reactions to slow and her spiritual power to become unusable.”

Lang Jiuchuan’s mind flashed through what she knew about Dragon Ridge Incense, and her brow furrowed. “Dragon Ridge Incense should be made using the saliva of a flood dragon — a jiaolong must cultivate for many years to become a jiao, and only after successfully surviving a tribulation can it transform into a true dragon. Calling it Dragon Ridge Incense is simply a more elegant-sounding name. A Willow Immortal sits somewhere between immortal and demon, and naturally yearns toward dragons — that such an incense would draw her in is not surprising. But incense alone would be far from sufficient.”

“Of course it was not sufficient.” Old Madam Bai looked sidelong at Lang Jiuchuan and said, “You are a woman — do you know when a woman is at her most vulnerable?”

Lang Jiuchuan’s heart sank.

“It is when she is giving birth.” Old Madam Bai said, without expression. “Whether it is a human, a demon, or a beast — at the moment of giving birth, the body is at its weakest. It is the moment when it is easiest to be taken advantage of.”

For a woman to give birth is to temporarily hand her life over to death itself. At that moment, she is at her most physically vulnerable — and at her most powerless to resist.

Lang Jiuchuan’s face went cold.

Zuo Yan looked at this woman he had called “teacher’s wife” and later “grandmother” for so many years with disbelieving eyes. He had never imagined that beneath that kind and gentle face lay a heart so ruthless and calculating.

Even without knowing the full picture, he could guess what she and the Daoist ritualist had done — they must have made their move while the Willow Immortal was in labor.

“Whose child was—” Zuo Yan had only just begun the question when he caught Old Madam Bai’s eyes sliding toward his teacher. He turned stiffly to look, and saw his teacher’s face had gone pale green, unable to conceal his shame and fury. His stomach dropped.

Surely not?

His teacher was a man of letters — how could he have done something so unconscionable?

Catching the disbelief in his student and grandson-in-law’s gaze, Old Master Bai’s face burned with humiliation, and he felt he could never face this student again. He said, “Had you not drugged me, I would never have —”

“You would not have. You simply went along with it willingly — only halfway.” Old Madam Bai could not resist adding a sardonic barb. “You have always been the upright and unblemished great man of letters. Anything dirty and foul — I was the one who did it. And you? You walked away clean and easy.”

Old Master Bai rose to his feet in fury. “You —!”

“Bai Kuang Lin. I am the one with filthy hands — but you are no better. You were an accomplice.”

Old Master Bai shook from head to toe, his fingers trembling uncontrollably. He looked as though the agitation might cause him to faint, his throat working repeatedly. After a long time he managed to say, “You are right. All of this is the evil we brought upon ourselves. It should be us who die — the children have done nothing wrong. On what grounds do we still live, while they could not even reach thirty? We are the ones who should have died long ago.”

Lang Jiuchuan heard those words and turned to look at him. His eyes were vacant, his spirit utterly shattered — and a wisp of deathly air had begun to rise upon his brow.

She was mildly startled. She looked toward Old Madam Bai. There, too, a mass of deathly air had gathered upon her brow.

Lang Jiuchuan lowered her gaze and said quietly, “So then — what happened after you carried out your scheme against her?”