Lang Jiuchuan’s soul drifted up from her body, giving Jiangche a terrible fright. It rushed over at once and pressed down on her.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Lang Jiuchuan looked at her body — drenched in blood — and said weakly: “Too much spiritual power was spent. My soul can’t stay in this body anymore.”
Defeating an opponent several tiers above her had felt glorious, but the cost was immense. Her two souls and five spirits had been drained of spiritual power until they were pitifully weak — unable even to remain anchored within her body.
When all was said and done, she and Lingxu Zhenren were alike in one way: both were ordinary human beings. No matter how gifted, no matter how strong her cultivation, this body she now occupied was still flesh and bone — there was only so much it could endure.
Jiangche grumbled: “Quickly call out the Small Nine Pagoda. Where’s the wooden fish? That useless block of wood can’t be counted on for a single thing — it can’t even take the initiative to draw you in on its own. What is it good for? Useless!”
Before the words had left Jiangche’s mouth, the Small Nine Pagoda floated up from within Lang Jiuchuan’s body and slammed violently into Jiangche — scolding it was one thing, but don’t even think about getting in here to recover.
Lang Jiuchuan was pulled inside.
Jiangche, whose spiritual power was itself nearly depleted, was sent tumbling by the impact. Furious, it broke into a string of curses: “No wonder you’re just a wooden fish — not a bit human about you—”
“Stop quarreling — we need to regroup quickly. We still have to go to Qingyang Temple!” Lang Jiuchuan’s voice drifted from within the Small Nine Pagoda. “Xiao Shui, wrap up my body.”
The water spirit floated out from the bone chime, transformed into a great sphere of water, and wrapped Lang Jiuchuan’s entire body within it, using the water’s spiritual essence to cleanse and nourish her wounds and the blood upon her.
Jiangche sulked with a grunt, then limped over to her body, lay down beside the bone chime, and drew in its spiritual energy while converting all of Lingxu Zhenren’s residual soul’s remaining spiritual power entirely into its own.
The mountain gorge returned to stillness. Only some small animals, still shaken and wary, crept quietly back — and spotting the water sphere, crept fearlessly closer, sneaking a little spiritual energy for themselves.
The Rong Family Estate.
The Head of the Rong Family was seated deep in meditation when his brow suddenly furrowed. He opened his eyes, his voice resonant as a great bell as he demanded: “What has happened to cause such panic?”
Someone came tumbling through the outer door on hands and knees, prostrating themselves on the ground, their expression wild with terror: “Head of the Family — it is terrible news. Elder Lingxu’s — his soul tablet has shattered.”
The Head of the Rong Family’s pupils constricted in an instant. He shot to his feet and strode out, covering the distance in great strides, vanishing from the room in moments. He made his way directly to the sealed chamber where the soul tablets of the clan members were kept.
The sealed chamber had been constructed with extraordinary care: it was enclosed within a formation array, guarded by dedicated sentinels at all times, and supplied with an ever-burning lamp and the finest incense — all measures to preserve life through the soul tablets and nourish the spiritual awareness within them.
But now, the soul tablet belonging to Lingxu had shattered into fragments. This meant he had fallen — and not even his soul remained.
Just like Zhengyang Zi. No — compared to Zhengyang Zi, his death had been far more violent.
The Head of the Rong Family stared at the specially-crafted fragments of the soul tablet, his complexion ashen and iron-grey. His lips pressed into a thin line. His face was pale enough to resemble ice — and beyond that pallor was an expression of disbelief and dread.
Another one.
A second Elder ranked in the Rong Family’s top five had died. Who was responsible?
Lingxu had only been tasked with escorting Rong Huanxuan to Qingyang Temple, with the added assignment of investigating the circumstances of Zhengyang Zi’s death. And now, the man was gone?
Something was wrong — Huanxuan was in danger!
The Head of the Rong Family immediately went to check on Rong Huanxuan’s soul tablet. Fortunately, it bore not a single crack — but the tablet was shrouded in a layer of dim and murky energy. His eyelid twitched. He turned and walked away immediately, saying to those behind him: “Not a word of this is to be leaked.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Head of the Rong Family exited the sealed chamber and looked up. An enormous dark cloud hung overhead, radiating an aura of ill omen — making his already grim complexion several shades darker still.
Everything was going wrong.
Where had things started to go astray?
The Head of the Rong Family walked quickly back to his cultivation cave, first retrieving a long-distance transmission talisman to order Rong Huanxuan to return, then setting out yarrow stalks and an eight-trigram diagram and other items before him. He sat with his face as still as dark water.
Since the incident involving Huanxuan, the Rong Family had been declining further and further. Setting aside the successive losses of their members in previous incidents, two high-cultivation Elders had now fallen — one of them at Foundation Establishment. This filled him with deep unease; he sensed that the Rong Family’s great calamity was imminent.
In the depths of his mind, a suspicion had formed that he dared not acknowledge — but now he had no choice but to face it squarely. Could it be because of that child?
The Head of the Rong Family closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, they held a cold and ferocious clarity.
No matter who it was — the Rong Family could not fall.
The Head of the Rong Family steadied himself. He washed his hands, lit incense, burned a talisman, and then began forming seals, focusing with absolute concentration as he performed a yarrow-stalk divination. He needed to identify the person who had brought the Rong Family to defeat again and again.
The cave was wreathed in curling incense smoke.
As the Head of the Rong Family’s complexion grew paler and paler, the final hexagram line fell — and the reading appeared before his eyes.
A slender, slight young woman materialized within his vision. She turned slowly, and a pair of cool, remote eyes seemed to break through the boundaries of time and space to gaze straight at him — eyes that carried a cold killing intent and a mocking disdain.
The Head of the Rong Family’s pupils contracted sharply. Her face was both unfamiliar and faintly recognizable — it was her, and yet it was not her.
All at once, the blood and energy in his chest surged in revolt. A mouthful of essence blood erupted from him. The yarrow stalks and eight-trigram diagram on the table shattered apart with a bang, their fragments flying in every direction.
The Head of the Rong Family pressed a hand to his chest and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. His expression was haggard, and his spiritual power dissipated with alarming speed.
Staggering, he reached for a lacquered box on the shelf in the room, opened it, poured out a cinnabar-red medicinal pill, and swallowed it to calm the chaotic rebellion of his blood and energy. He crossed his legs, formed seals, and worked to smooth the flow of energy through his meridians.
After a long while, he opened his eyes again. A dull ache still lingered in his chest — but it was nothing compared to the fury in his eyes, and a trace of something complicated beneath it.
Of all people, it had to be her.
Was this fate?
Or was it, as some inscrutable heavenly will had decreed — that all of this was cause and effect, retribution and consequence?
Lang Jiuchuan. Whatever manner of being now inhabited that body — how had she, by her own power alone, brought the Rong Family to such a state of ruinous defeat?
If he had never agreed to what Xiyu had asked of him back then and had simply brought that child back himself — would none of this have happened?
The Head of the Rong Family felt a flash of agitation, then pushed the thought aside. Impossible. Something gained always means something lost — he could not have both.
“Head of the Family, the Fourth Mistress requests an audience,” a young Daoist attendant outside announced with careful deference.
The Head of the Rong Family’s voice came out harsh: “Tell her I will not see her. Relay my order — the Fourth Mistress has shown disrespect toward the head of the family. She is confined to Yun Yuan, and may not leave without my explicit permission!”
That woman was nothing but a source of irritation. If not for her reckless behavior causing all this chaos, and costing the Rong Family two Elders — making the Rong Family’s already precarious standing even more desperate — he would have been done with her long ago. If she were not Huanxuan’s mother, he would have already disposed of her. What a fool!
“Yes, sir.”
The Head of the Rong Family picked up a fragment of the broken yarrow stalk, his eyes deep and brooding. Lang Jiuchuan — this woman must be put to death. But it should not only be the Rong Family paying in blood.
News of the Fourth Mistress’s confinement spread through the entire clan estate before long. And in a forbidden zone of the estate that no one dared to approach, a man dressed entirely in white sat in a wheelchair, reading a copy of the Yanhua Sutra. Several steps behind him, a young Daoist attendant dressed in black relayed the news in a low voice.
Rong Family’s Fourth Master, Rong Qingcang, did not lift his eyes from the scripture. He said, his tone perfectly indifferent: “Dead is dead. If the whole lot of them died, it would be of no consequence.”
He simply did not care.