Old Master Cui was equally surprised. He looked at Lang Jiuchuan in her lake-blue dress, his gaze deepening slightly.

They had met only a few days before, yet seeing her again now, he felt that her aura had improved markedly. The otherworldly, transcendent quality about her made it difficult to look away.

Lang Jiuchuan stepped forward with Jiangche in her arms and gave a slight nod. “Old Master, what brings you here?”

She glanced at a young servant boy standing not far behind him, who was carrying a basket containing paper ingots, candles, and incense — the unmistakable supplies for paying respects to the dead.

And he was standing outside the Ren estate.

“Are you here to pay your respects because you had some connection to the Ren family?” Lang Jiuchuan asked.

Old Master Cui’s expression grew somewhat complicated. “Your mother never told you?”

“Hmm?”

“The Cui family once had a young woman who married into the Ren family. She gave birth to a daughter named Ren Yao. The relationship is a somewhat distant one, but still within five generations of kinship — by those terms she and your mother would have been something like cousins.”

Lang Jiuchuan’s pupils contracted. Someone born of the Cui bloodline had actually lived in this Ren household.

She looked toward the Ren estate, pressing her lips together. So it was no coincidence — and so when she had entered this place before, the feelings of resentment and bitter hostility that had arisen within her — had those been a response to the pull of shared bloodline, or something else entirely?

Old Master Cui continued: “That she never told you is understandable, I suppose. After all, the Ren family’s massacre happened right around the same time your father’s death notice arrived.”

Lang Jiuchuan’s gaze grew ever more profound. The Ren family’s massacre — the timing aligned almost exactly with when the soul inhabiting this body had been switched. Could that be a coincidence?

She reached up and touched her face, then asked: “Have you ever met the daughter of that young Cui woman who married in?”

“Of course.” Old Master Cui’s expression softened with reminiscence. “That child was bright and spirited, with some resemblance to your mother. Her nature was warm and sunny. A pity — such a pity.”

“Had she ever married?”

“I never heard that she had. When the incident occurred, I was away serving in an official post elsewhere.”

“The Ren family massacre — do you know anything of what lay behind it? Was it a revenge killing?”

His tone. Those questions. Old Master Cui said nothing, studying her for a long moment before asking: “Why are you so focused on the Ren family massacre? What are you after?”

“Merely curious.” Lang Jiuchuan’s expression didn’t shift. She moved to the side gate, set Jiangche down, and the latter leapt up to the top of the wall and opened the door from the inside. She stepped through, then looked back at Old Master Cui. “Were you not here to pay your respects?”

Old Master Cui’s eyes nearly popped. How had she simply walked through that gate without the slightest trace of guilt or discomfort?

He looked left and right — no one was watching — and gave a light cough, then clasped his hands behind his back and walked in.

The moment he entered the Ren estate, his brow furrowed. An acute unease ran through his entire body. Though the weather had turned warm enough for spring garments, the yin energy here was pervasive and relentless, seeping into his meridians and bones, cold as ice against his flesh.

He was well past fifty. His years of serving in posts far from the capital had won him many enemies; his path had not been smooth. He had suffered from ambushes and hidden attacks, and the old wounds on his body had never fully healed. Now, as yin energy seeped into him, his breathing dimmed by several degrees, his complexion growing subtly pale.

Lang Jiuchuan glanced back at him, paused, and said: “Feeling unwell?”

Old Master Cui kept a straight face and did not answer that. Instead he observed: “The Ren estate was only destroyed a little over ten years ago — yet this mansion has already decayed as though it lay abandoned for decades.”

“A massacre occurred here — no monk or Daoist has performed rites to guide the spirits onward, and no one has lived here since. Without living human presence there is no yang energy. When yin and yang fall out of balance, decay is inevitable.” Lang Jiuchuan observed the yin energy permeating the estate. “Over a hundred lives were lost here. The yin energy is far too heavy. Finish your respects quickly and go.”

She looked again at his complexion, then added: “You’ve never thought to have an imperial physician take your pulse? People ought to listen to good advice.”

Old Master Cui was rendered speechless.

Lang Jiuchuan produced two protective talismans, handing one to him and one to the servant boy. “These are safety talismans. If yin energy enters the body, it brings misfortune and illness.”

The servant boy named Quanshou had been in a state of anxious dread from the moment they’d arrived. He set down the basket, received the talisman, and dropped immediately to his knees to kowtow before Lang Jiuchuan. “Many thanks to Cousin Miss for the talisman.”

Regardless of whether the talisman worked, a good servant knew how to read the room in front of the master.

And — not that it needed saying — but the moment the talisman touched his hands, he felt remarkably steadier, not nearly as cold and frightened as before.

Extraordinary thing.

Old Master Cui accepted his own talisman and was no less affected. He quietly slipped it into his pouch, then said to Quanshou: “Begin the offerings.”

Quanshou acknowledged the order and began laying out the items from the basket.

Lang Jiuchuan looked over the contents — they were quite thorough — and said: “Though the connection is distant, Old Master, you are quite considerate to have prepared so thoughtfully.”

Old Master Cui could take it no longer. He turned a dark expression toward her and said: “Old Master, Old Master — am I truly unworthy of you calling me Maternal Grandfather?”

“There is no feeling behind it, so I cannot say it.” Lang Jiuchuan replied evenly. “Calling you Old Master is already proper etiquette from a junior. Or perhaps I ought to address you as Lord Cui?”

Old Master Cui grew further incensed. “Your mother has truly lost her senses. A Cui daughter of proper standing, and she put not the slightest thought into your upbringing — raised you into someone like this…”

Someone so utterly infuriating!

“Indeed — she never taught me a thing. I was raised half-wild on a country estate, after all. But do not blame her for it. I doubt anyone ever taught her how to raise a daughter. And while we’re at it — there is a saying: like father, like child. Looking at her, I’d say her temperament and yours are not so very different.”

Both equally rigid. Both equally stubborn. Both equally unyielding, insisting on their own way to the last.

The pot calling the kettle black — what was the point?

Old Master Cui went bright red. “…”

He’d taken a rest day, a rest day! Wasn’t it perfectly pleasant to stay home drinking tea and reading the classics? No — he’d come out to pay his respects and had ended up encountering this vexatious little creature!

His dignity surged, formidable in its authority — but Lang Jiuchuan didn’t flinch in the slightest. She said: “Since the Ren family had a Cui woman married into it, and she perished in the massacre — did the Cui family not react at all? Was there no investigation into what actually happened?”

“Of course there was an investigation. But nothing could be found — no trace, no evidence. The Ren family had an heir of the Ink Clan line, and every avenue of inquiry led back to a connection with a grudge against the Ink Clan. The case became an unsolved mystery at the Court of Judicial Review, because there was simply no evidence whatsoever.” Old Master Cui pressed his lips together. “To be honest, calling it a revenge killing is less convincing than what people whisper outside — that it was grievous spirits exacting vengeance. Otherwise, how could there truly be no trace left behind at all?”

Lang Jiuchuan’s expression grew cold and still, her fingertips moving slightly.

No traces. No lingering ghosts. And yet so many skeletal remains beneath the lake.

How interesting. Who could possibly have the capability to manage things so thoroughly?

Old Master Cui looked at Lang Jiuchuan, wondering whether he had said something wrong — her aura seemed to have grown considerably colder all of a sudden.

“Sir, we’re ready,” Quanshou said, offering him the incense.

Old Master Cui set aside his thoughts, accepted the incense, lit it, and let out a quiet sigh. Raising it before his forehead, he bowed several times, silently reciting the names of the Cui woman and Ren Yao in his heart.

Beside him, Quanshou lit the remaining candles and incense for the others, murmuring prayers as he went, and began to burn paper money.

Lang Jiuchuan observed the master and servant in their rites, then pressed her lips together and unhooked the Dizhong bell from her waist. She gathered her Buddha-force.

Ding dong.

The bell’s sound rang out with a resonance tinged by sorrow. Even though no wandering souls drifted through this place, those who had perished here were buried here — their grievances remained.

Wronged souls must be guided onward.

The chanting of the Great Compassion Mantra rose from Lang Jiuchuan’s lips — compassionate and at peace.

Old Master Cui watched, his brow furrowed slightly in surprise. Such a young girl — to possess such depth of merciful compassion. And — was that golden light surrounding her?