Giving an enemy a chance to breathe was the same as giving him a chance to kill you. Lang Jiuchuan would not make that foolish mistake, and she would waste no time on arrogant empty words. The moment Zhengyang Zi was sent hurtling backward, she had already given chase, moving like a silent wraith.
Strike while he is weak. Take his life.
And so, even though she had exhausted her spiritual energy in the barrage just now — causing her soul to throb with a stabbing pain — Lang Jiuchuan did not stop.
She wiped the blood seeping from the corner of her mouth, drew a Five Thunder Talisman from the supply she had prepared on her person, and threw it.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Zhengyang Zi was blasted into a sorry state — hair disheveled, robes torn to shreds. Had he not encased his body in his True Yang protective energy, his skin would have split open and his divine soul gravely wounded.
Seeing this, Lang Jiuchuan’s fighting spirit surged even higher.
A cultivator on the verge of Foundation Establishment — truly difficult to kill, and more troublesome than any of the people the Rong Family had sent before.
But what of it?
Lang Jiuchuan threw two more Five Thunder Talismans, attacking from front and back in tandem.
Rumble.
Zhengyang Zi let out a wretched howl and crashed into the lake, sending a massive wave of water surging outward.
His mind reeled with shock. He finally understood that this person was no ordinary demon or ghost — for how else could she wield so many righteous spiritual weapons that stood in direct opposition to dark and yin-natured things?
Just who was she? Someone with such power, yet reduced to seizing another’s body to survive after losing her original form?
But this was not the time to dwell on such questions. Zhengyang Zi knew in his gut that between the two of them, one of them had to die. No matter who she was — she had to perish.
Zhengyang Zi burst up from the water, drew his bow, and aimed it at Lang Jiuchuan. His voice was low and sneering: “No matter who you were in your previous life, right now you are nothing more than a ghost borrowing a dead body to walk among the living — a creature neither heaven nor earth will suffer. We were able to kill you in this body once. We can do it a second time. Die.”
So many useless words.
Lang Jiuchuan’s gaze touched the curve of his lips, and in an instant she seemed to see the viciousness and cruelty on his face as he had struck down this body — and the overwhelming malice he had taken pleasure in watching his prey struggle. In that moment, both her eyes turned scarlet, burning with a desire to destroy everything.
A blood debt — repaid in blood.
The Dizhong had accompanied her for half a year, and as her strength recovered, the resonance between them had grown ever deeper and more in sync — its power far greater than before.
When Lang Jiuchuan’s chest filled to the brim with fury and indignation, the bell too began to hum. Almost the very instant the Eight Trigrams Bow loosed its arrow, the Dizhong suddenly tore free from her hand of its own accord. With a reverberating hum, it enlarged, spinning wildly. Its thunderous peal shattered the incoming arrow — yet its momentum did not diminish. It continued forward, sweeping toward the Eight Trigrams Bow still in Zhengyang Zi’s hand.
Zhengyang Zi’s pupils contracted sharply. The vast battle-intent and Dao resonance — as keen as a blade — caused the hand gripping the bow to flare with sudden agony even through his protective energy, and instinctively, he loosened his grip.
The Dizhong came spinning in, carrying a destructive aura that made one’s very soul tremble. The enormous bell mouth unleashed a ferocious gust that sucked in the Eight Trigrams Bow the moment it left his hand — and then the bell crushed it, mercilessly ground it to nothing.
“No!” Zhengyang Zi’s pupils shook violently. How could this be?
With the Eight Trigrams Bow destroyed, his vision blurred and a sharp pain exploded in his chest. He vomited another mouthful of blood. His silver hair turned dull and gray-white, and his already pallid face began to crack apart.
These were the signs of spiritual energy greatly depleted — of cultivation level regressing.
Lang Jiuchuan herself was stunned by the Dizhong’s power. It seemed that all this time, it had merely been playing around with her. Those previous displays of bell-might had not even come close to its true limit — she had not used her full strength, so naturally it had held back as well.
Yet this single strike had drained her spiritual energy at an alarming rate. She was now on the very edge of depletion.
Spell combat required a strong body and a robust divine soul to cultivate pure and powerful spiritual and mental energy. Without that foundation, one’s effectiveness was cut in half.
Zhengyang Zi had not been wrong about that. With the broken body of the original host, Lang Jiuchuan could not unleash greater bursts of power — the body worked against her, making every effort cost twice as much for half the result.
At this moment, not only had Lang Jiuchuan’s spiritual energy been heavily depleted, but her entire body was trembling violently.
She had to end this quickly.
Zhengyang Zi stared at the Eight Trigrams Bow being devoured and ground to dust by the Dizhong, his eyes wide with frenzied fury. He gasped out between heaving breaths, glaring at Lang Jiuchuan: “You vile woman — you dare destroy my spiritual weapon!”
Without warning, his toes pushed off the water’s surface, and his body soared into the air. His Daoist robes snapped in the wind. His hands moved in rapid, intricate Dao seals — a stream of true words poured from his mouth swift as rolling thunder — and from his sleeve he launched an ancient bronze ritual seal, which expanded into a colossal golden imprint hanging in the sky.
Lang Jiuchuan’s gaze grew cold and steady. As expected of a Daoist Zhenren on the verge of Foundation Establishment — he had cultivated to the level of having a world stored within his sleeve.
She gave a quiet sound of contempt and looked up. Beneath the golden imprint, words were carved in ancient seal script: “Suppress the Wicked.” The imprint contained a vast and upright Dao intent, and scorching golden light blazed from it like a raging inferno, filling the heart with dread.
Zhengyang Zi’s incantation grew faster and faster — then suddenly, the golden imprint erupted with blinding radiance and, with the speed of thunderclap, came crashing down upon Lang Jiuchuan.
“By the vast expanse of heaven and earth, I borrow the power of the cosmos — by the might of thunder and lightning, I smite the wicked and subdue the cursed — Seize!“
Lang Jiuchuan felt the crushing weight of that oppressive force — like Mount Tai bearing down upon her, seeking to drive her divine soul into the dust, to force it out of this broken body and grind even her spirit into powder.
This was a true high-level Daoist artifact — a supreme Daoist treasure, the Bronze Upright Imprint, capable of serving as a formation anchor to suppress demons and monsters. Against a restless spirit? It would be overwhelmingly effective.
She was a soul that had seized a dead body — her karmic debts unresolved. She was to be suppressed, expelled, and destroyed. That was the righteous order of things.
But — by what right?
The Panguan told me to return this soul. He told me to inhabit this body. By what right do you drive me away — is it simply because you are thoroughly corrupt?
My blood debt remains unsettled. My divine soul is not yet whole. How can I be permitted to fall at the hands of my enemy?
She refused to accept this.
Beneath the overwhelming force bearing down upon her, Lang Jiuchuan’s pupils were cold as ice. Blood stirred within her eyes. Cracks split across her skin and blood seeped through. In one sudden motion, she spun and launched herself skyward — and bit down savagely on the tip of her tongue. A mist of blood sprayed from her lips and onto the Dizhong.
That mist of blood carried the essence of her divine soul — and the vital breath of her life’s core. She offered her primordial yang life force, paid as tribute to the Dizhong.
“A blood debt repaid in blood — Zhengyang Zi, you are the first.” The words left Lang Jiuchuan’s lips in a voice cold and desolate as a tomb. Her wrist snapped sharply.
The Dizhong, drenched in her blood essence, seemed to receive an infusion of power. It erupted with even more blazing golden light. The thunder runes and cloud seal scripts on its body seemed to come alive — transforming into streams of golden radiance that surged forward to clash with the bronze imprint.
Clang — clang — clang…
The Dizhong released a deep, prolonged, resonant hum. A terrifying force far greater than the bronze imprint exploded outward — transforming into blinding golden lightning that burst from the bell mouth, roaring as it coiled around the bronze imprint and tore into it.
A world-shaking boom.
The entire lake shuddered. The water surged upward and came crashing back down. The lake bed sank. Water flooded the surrounding banks, sweeping the grass and trees along the shore flat. Some of the older, poorly maintained structures nearby — shaken by the shockwaves — partially collapsed.
The already-dark sky suddenly opened up with rain. The drops fell, then thickened into curtains, growing heavier by the moment.
Those in the vicinity of the Surveillance Division spotted the scene and immediately mobilized — combat between powerful cultivators was the only thing capable of causing such an upheaval. Who dared to engage in spell combat within the city of Wu Jing?
And in the wake of that golden lightning — after it blazed with blinding radiance and struck the bronze imprint — the imprint seemed to have been stripped of all its light. Every trace of its glow vanished. With a heavy plunk, it fell into the lake.
“No.” Zhengyang Zi was overwhelmed with horror, his mind and soul both shattered. The aftershock slammed into his body — flames erupted across him, and he disappeared into their roar with a wretched shriek, only to burst apart a moment later.
A weakened nascent soul fled the flames, desperate to escape — and then darkness fell across it. A small pagoda descended from above and swallowed it whole.
The pagoda dissolved back into Lang Jiuchuan’s divine soul. The Dizhong returned to her hand on its own. She smiled — a wide, savage grin full of bloodstained teeth — and let out a cold laugh: “Should have died long ago. A cultivator who hadn’t even reached Foundation Establishment, and he made me push myself to the absolute limit.”
The last syllable had barely left her mouth when blood burst simultaneously from all seven of her orifices, and she plunged straight down into the lake.