Cui Shi’s manner of someone entrusting a child before death terrified Nanny Cheng and the others. And beyond this, she had also summoned the Marquis, and while Old Master Cui was present, she spoke directly of her wish to have the fourth son of the main branch, Lang Caize, adopted into the second branch as its heir.

Lang Zhengping was somewhat surprised — at a time like this?

Old Master Cui was also somewhat surprised. Even if his granddaughter was a girl, succession could still be arranged through bringing in a husband — an adopted son-in-law would serve.

“Elder brother need not feel I am asking for one thing and taking two,” Cui Shi said faintly. “Agree to this for me. Once the fourth child is adopted, any son Madame Pan bears in the future will be the heir’s son as well. The second master will have descendants to make offerings at his shrine — and I will ask for nothing more.”

“Second sister-in-law…”

“This body of mine — who knows when it might give out entirely. While I am still here, I can at least make decisions for the second branch. Must we truly leave it to Jiuchuan to determine? However capable and clever she may be, she is still a child — still a girl. She should not have to bear the name of someone overstepping her bounds.” Cui Shi said evenly: “Once the adoption is formalized, everything belonging to the second branch will be inherited by the fourth child. My dowry — all of it goes to Jiuchuan. Whether she wants it or not is her affair. How she chooses to manage it is also her decision. I ask the eldest uncle and my father to bear witness. Nanny, remember this as well.”

Nanny Cheng pressed her hands to Cui Shi’s shoulders, weeping. “My lady — how has it come to this?”

Old Master Cui’s expression went dark, and he rebuked: “If you are ill, then have yourself treated. What is the meaning of all this talk now? Cannot withstand even a single thing — is this how I raised you, in the Cui Family?”

Cui Shi did not argue. She sat with a heart as still as standing water.

Seeing this, everyone present felt a heaviness settle deeper in their chests.

“Molan, bring paper and brush.”

Molan wiped her tears, brought the paper and brush, and following Cui Shi’s dictation, wrote out the document — three copies in total. Cui Shi personally affixed her private seal and her fingerprint, then looked toward Old Master Cui and the Marquis with a beseeching gaze.

Old Master Cui looked at her eyes, which had lost all their light, and his gaze shifted slightly — his pupils contracted ever so faintly. At her temple there was a single thread of silver white.

At the sight of that thread of white, Old Master Cui felt a wrenching pain in his heart. This daughter of his had been stubborn since childhood, and remained so now. He closed his eyes for a moment, then said: “As you wish.”

He took out his own personal seal and pressed it down.

Lang Zhengping had nothing more to say — he could only agree as well.

Cui Shi, seeing this, kept one copy and handed each of them one of the remaining two. “When the ancestors are honored at the Qingming Festival, please attend to having the clan genealogy updated. Nanny — don’t go find her…”

Her words were not yet finished when every last trace of her spirit and energy dissolved. She collapsed softly backward.

“My lady!”

Qichi Pavilion fell into chaos.

Cui Shi’s sudden adoption of the main branch’s Lang Caize caused an uproar throughout the Lang household. Yet Lang Jiuchuan, who was at the shop of ten thousand matters, still knew nothing of it. At this moment she was carefully examining the bone-bell.

The willow spirit’s bone held spiritual energy — being made into a protective talisman back then had been sufficient use of it. The person who had forged the bone-bell must also have had considerable cultivation, for after so many years, the bone-bell still retained a faint spiritual energy — proof enough of that person’s attainment.

If that was truly the case, then it was genuinely a little troublesome. The other party still held a demon fetus, and who knew what stage of growth it had reached.

Lang Jiuchuan tapped her fingertip against the bone-bell thoughtfully, and made a decision. She looked at the water spirit floating in mid-air nearby and asked: “Have you given it proper thought these past days? Follow me — or return to the water to cultivate on your own?”

“And if I wished to return to the water?” the water spirit shot back.

“Then I will send you to a place of beautiful mountains and clear waters.”

The water spirit was somewhat taken aback. “I am so useful to you, and you would still let me go?”

Lang Jiuchuan smiled lightly. “You may be useful, but only if you are willing. If you are unwilling, and you betray me at a critical moment, would that not be raising a tiger to invite future calamity? If you wish to go back to the water, I will find you a fine mountain spring or lake — whatever you prefer. Consider it establishing a bond of good will between us. That is always better than making an enemy.”

Jiangche sat nearby licking his paw, inwardly scoffing — pretty words, but the real truth was: if you won’t submit willingly, you get beaten into submission!

This person truly knows the art of playing hard to get.

Sure enough, the water spirit fell for it, and asked with a faint air of hesitation and longing: “What would you do exactly? If I attach myself to you, can I truly cultivate?”

Lang Jiuchuan said with composed pride: “I have not yet fully recovered my full strength, but I will most certainly not stop where I am now — I will advance without cease. Whenever I break through to a new stage, would you not receive the beneficence of heaven as well?”

The water spirit was somewhat moved. It was of course aware that when a cultivator transcended the tribulation of advancement, a gentle heavenly rain would descend, nourishing all living things. But what use was cultivation to it?

It was merely the spiritual essence of water.

This thought slipped out of it almost unconsciously, and Lang Jiuchuan smiled. “What use? Perhaps in some single instant you would feel complete.”

The water spirit was startled.

Complete?

“You are by nature the spiritual essence of water. This bone-bell holds spiritual energy — I will engrave some Gathering-Spirit array patterns upon it, to collect and concentrate spiritual energy. You may attach yourself within it, so that your spiritual essence and the bone-bell’s energy complement and sustain each other in an endless cycle.” Lang Jiuchuan tapped her fingertip lightly against the bone-bell. “Once your cultivation has achieved success, you may even gain control of the bell’s sound — whether to bewitch the mind or to attack — and become whatever manner of spiritual implement you wish to be.”

As the water spirit listened, a faint yearning stirred within it — then it suddenly sharpened into clarity again and said: “But for you, this bone-bell would be of great use, wouldn’t it?”

“Of course. Do you see me keeping anything useless around me?” Lang Jiuchuan cast a disdainful sideways glance at a certain white tiger who had only just grown new fur and couldn’t stop licking it.

Even saying it wasn’t like a house cat would be a stretch.

Jiangche sprang to his feet with a low growl — that was directed at me!

The water spirit had nothing more to say. With a show of haughty indifference, it said: “Fine then — cultivation is cultivation regardless of where. It’s all the same.”

It had agreed.

The gaze Lang Jiuchuan had been keeping downcast curved with a faint smile.

Reforging the bone-bell had to be done in one unbroken session. Lang Jiuchuan first prepared some spiritual talismans, then arranged the study room to prevent any leakage of spiritual energy.

Her hand touched something odd inside the large pouch at her side, and she drew it out. “This is…?”

It was neither bone nor wood — somewhat lustrous, no larger than half a palm, a thin sliver of something like a bone fragment.

“Oh.” Jiangche sat upright. “That’s what you pulled out of the lake at that haunted house. How has it changed like this? It was dull and grey before.”

Lang Jiuchuan picked it up and turned it over and over, but could make nothing of it. After a moment’s thought, with a movement of intent, she channeled her Dao energy into resonance, and gripped that fragment of bone.

A surge of pure, overwhelming power transmitted from the bone fragment — and the palm of her hand went suddenly ice-cold.

Lang Jiuchuan was startled. She let go — and the fragment of bone instantly transformed into a wisp of pale blue radiance, a thread of light that shot whistling into the bone-bell, sending it spinning wildly in mid-air.

“Water spirit — get in.” Lang Jiuchuan’s hand moved, and a pulse of Dao energy shot out, hooking the water spirit and forcibly pushing it toward the bone-bell.

When the water spirit entered the bell, a sudden transformation erupted.

A deep resonant hum.

The bone-bell rang of its own accord with no wind, emitting a faint, clear, lingering vibration. The bell, which had been a luminous white, was flooded across its entire surface with a dense, rippling pattern of blue-green lines like flowing water — then in a single flash, they were gone.

Spiritual energy pressed outward in waves.

Lang Jiuchuan and Jiangche instinctively formed seals, drawing that spiritual energy into their meridians to flow through their bodies.

Hum… ding. The bell tone rippled outward, that indescribable, vital, and pristinely pure aura bathing their souls. Lang Jiuchuan exhaled a long breath of wonder: “We have stumbled upon a treasure.”