Soul-searching was Wu Youzi’s only remaining chance to glimpse what the original soul had truly looked like — and it was a brutal thing, for it would show him the very last moment that child had been alive in this world.

Wu Youzi felt a particular fear in his heart, yet he searched Xi Yun’s soul nonetheless. He watched her past unfold — beginning from the day after the grand wedding — fragments flickering past in rapid succession, until he saw Lang Jiuchuan being brought out of the manor.

To be precise, that was not Lang Jiuchuan. It was only the little girl who had lived for fourteen years under that name and identity. She did not look like the Lang Jiuchuan of today either — she resembled Yaoyao far more. Not identical, but six or seven parts alike, certainly.

She looked gentle and obedient, her nature quiet and still — or rather, solitude had become so habitual that she wore it naturally. She was composed. Even when abducted, though clearly frightened and panicked, when she finally faced Xi Yun directly and heard what Xi Yun had come to do, she had not groveled and begged. She had only looked back at her with quiet, still eyes.

Those eyes — too calm, too bright and clean, too pure. As though looking through Xi Yun’s own eyes straight into himself, filling him with shame.

Wu Youzi’s body began to tremble. His throat clenched tight. Tears slid ceaselessly from the corners of his eyes, and very soon his grief broke into despairing, howling fury.

The sinister, desolate baleful energy surrounding the area seemed to sense a kindred thing; it surged inward from all sides, enveloping him and Xi Yun both, growing denser and darker by the moment, coiling into a small dark vortex.

Jiang Che grew uneasy: “He won’t turn demonic, will he?”

“I won’t let him turn demonic.” Lang Jiuchuan’s expression was calm.

Time passed, drop by slow drop.

Wu Youzi suddenly withdrew his hand and turned his head aside, coughing up a mouthful of essence blood. He collapsed onto the ground, breathing in heavy, shuddering gasps. His eyes had gone blood-red. He fixed them on Xi Yun, and from his body unleashed a fierce, domineering wave of baleful energy.

Baleful energy like a blade — blade after blade stripping the flesh from the already blood-soaked woman’s bones, until the white showed through.

He summoned the wild dog forward. It began to gnaw and devour.

What a generous man — saving it the trouble of its own teeth.

Lang Jiuchuan stood quietly to one side and watched. Her expression was blank, her demeanor cool and distant. She looked at that unrecognizable, blood-and-flesh ruin of a woman, and gently pressed a hand to her own chest.

At last, when Xi Yun’s breath had completely ceased and her spirit and soul began to crumble and drift free from her corpse, Lang Jiuchuan brought forth the Dizhong Bell. She poured Dao resonance into it; the profound thunder-runes across the bell’s body blazed to life, and with a resonant strike, the bell’s sound transformed into a bolt of thunder-light and crashed down upon that drifting, dazed newborn soul.

Hum.

Xi Yun’s soul did not even manage a single shriek before it became a wisp of pale smoke — and dissolved into heaven and earth.

In the very instant of her complete disappearance, Lang Jiuchuan felt it with absolute clarity: the deep, buried resentment and hatred within her own body — left behind by the original soul, an obsession born from being brutally slain — was like a stretch of snow and ice suddenly caught in a blazing shaft of sunlight. Silently, it melted away.

A wave of relief — deeper and more complete than anything she had felt even after killing Lingxu Zhengyangzi and the others — swept through her suddenly, traveling to the very tips of her limbs, her spirit and this body drawing ever closer, ever more tightly knit. Only a faint hollowness remained, not yet entirely filled.

Just a little more.

Lang Jiuchuan felt her body and spirit relax. Her gaze was clear and luminous as she looked toward the distance. To full integration — she was only that much away.

Soon.

She walked over and helped Wu Youzi — who was weeping in anguished grief — to his feet. From the sleeve pouch she retrieved a porcelain vial, tapped out a pill, and offered it to him.

Wu Youzi swallowed the pill and looked at Lang Jiuchuan. “She was not as resilient as you,” he said, “but she was a gentle, good child. We adults failed her.”

Lang Jiuchuan pressed her lips together. She could not find words of comfort — could not even bring herself to say “may she fare better in the next life,” because that child’s soul was already gone. What next life was there to speak of?

Wu Youzi gently moved her aside and went to stand before what remained of Xi Yun’s mutilated, ravaged corpse. His chest rose and fell in violent surges. Blood-tinged tears slid from the corners of his eyes. He stared for a long, long time — and finally, as though all strength had left him, he staggered, and released a sound that was half laugh, half sob, half suppressed and half let loose: a single, wretched exhalation.

Even with the great hatred avenged, he felt no satisfaction whatsoever — only an endless void, and a cold, desolate sorrow.

“Let us go. When a person dies, the lamp goes out. Our karma with her is concluded. Next — Rong Yiming!” Wu Youzi turned without looking back, his eyes fixing on the dark, heavy grove ahead. Within them, a bone-chilling hatred and resolve crystallized once more.

He was the one who had set everything in motion — the true mastermind behind all of it.

In the Rong Family’s offering hall — where the life tablets of the main lineage and important family members were enshrined — Xi Yun’s life tablet suddenly shattered with a crack. The caretaker on duty heard the sound and rushed in. One look at the fragments on the floor drained the color from his face, and he spun around at once to go report.

But as he turned to leave, he stopped and looked back — staring in horrified disbelief at the life tablet of the former young master, the family head’s own blood son. It had turned black — pitch black — deeply, strangely ominous. His expression became one of sheer, pale dread.

Something terrible was about to happen.

He stumbled away on unsteady feet and rushed to make his report.

And Rong Huanxuan suddenly opened her eyes. An immense, crushing grief struck her through the chest; pain flooded her face and she let out a low moan.

What was happening? Her heart ached so badly — and a powerful, suffocating premonition of dread closed over her, inescapable.

Rong Huanxuan lay in her bed, wanting to rise, but finding herself unable to. Hatred and fury rose within her, helpless. She had already been reduced to this state — what could be worse? Why was she still gripped by such unease?

It felt as though she had lost something of great importance.

Rong Huanxuan let out a low, soft whimper — then suddenly heard the rapid sound of footsteps. Someone came hurrying in and stopped before her bed, speaking urgently: “Young Miss Xuan, it is terrible news — word has come from the offering hall that the life tablet of the Fourth Mistress — your mother — has shattered.”

The maid spoke words that should have been chilling and sorrowful to hear — yet her expression was one of barely concealed glee. She was reveling in schadenfreude, watching her with eyes that saw nothing but a homeless, defeated dog.

Rong Huanxuan’s gaze turned darkly cold as she looked at her. “What did you call me? What did you just say?”

“Why, Young Miss Xuan,” the maid said, blinking. “Oh — you haven’t heard yet, have you? The family head has already issued an order revoking your title as young master. Everyone in the clan is now to address you as Young Miss Xuan.”

Young Miss Xuan. The same as any branch family member — nothing more than a courtesy name, without even the ranking of a main lineage daughter. Reduced to dust.

In other words, she — Rong Huanxuan — was now as crippled in status as she was in body. Her fate was no different from those clan daughters she had once looked down upon from on high, those girls used as pawns in political marriages and alliances.

The maid saw her stunned expression and could not help adding one more line: “The Fourth Mistress is dead. Your mother — she’s dead. Then again, you were always selfish and cold-hearted — you never thought much of your own mother to begin with. No different from how you never cared about the rest of us servants. Hah — this is what you deserve.”

Rong Huanxuan’s eyes went wide and round, and she screamed with fury: “Get out! Get out of my sight!”

The maid gave a derisive sniff, turned, and walked out.

Rong Huanxuan lay there, still and hollow. That worthless slave had just said her mother was dead. Why so suddenly? Had the family head done it — to conceal the revolting nature of what they had been to each other?

Then steady, measured footsteps approached. Rong Huanxuan looked toward them, numb — and when she saw who had come, her pupils contracted. A trace of fear surfaced in her eyes. Her whole body went rigid as she watched him walk to her bedside and met his bloodshot, crimson-edged gaze.

“You — are you going to kill me?” She understood everything, all at once.