The soul-searching technique required formidable willpower, sufficient cultivation, and abundant spiritual energy to trace back through a person’s memories.

This was not Lang Jiuchuan’s first time performing a soul search — but searching the Rong Family Patriarch’s soul proved far more difficult than before. His soul-consciousness was resisting with deliberate intent. Or rather, his soul-consciousness appeared to have a protective barrier of its own.

Yet what Lang Jiuchuan intended to uncover, she would not rest until she had found. Her intent surged with great force, her Dao will powerful and unyielding, as her divine consciousness crashed through the obstacles and forced its way into the shattered, chaotic sea of the Rong Family Patriarch’s memories.

Fuqi looked at Lang Jiuchuan’s deathly pale complexion, visibly worried. “There won’t be a problem, will there?”

A’Piao’s expression was equally laced with concern, but he said: “To wear a crown, one must bear its weight. This is her fate, and her Dao.”

Jiangche stood guard nearby, his vigilant gaze sweeping the surroundings to ensure no one might suddenly intrude and interrupt the process — or launch a surprise attack.

The scenes of the Rong Family Patriarch’s memories flickered past like shadow plays, rapid and fleeting. As he himself had believed, his entire life had been one continuous act of scheming — all for the sake of the Rong Family’s prestige. His ambitions had never been confined to keeping the Rong Family as a minor obscure clan among the Xuan clans. He had wanted to go further, to last longer. He had wanted to climb higher — even if he could not attain the legendary ascension to immortality that the ancestors of a thousand years past had achieved, he at least wanted to lead the Rong Family to the pinnacle of power, revered by all, remembered for generations, and established as a supreme household of the Xuan path.

His hunger for power and for advancing his cultivation in the Dao arts knew no bounds. He would stop at nothing and spare no effort — even defying the will of his ancestors. As long as one could reach the ranks of the powerful, right and wrong ceased to matter. The only thing that counted, in his view, was sufficient cultivation strength. That alone placed one in an unassailable position. Everything else could be disregarded.

He had cultivated himself by stepping over countless bodies. The good and the wicked, all who stood against him, were destined to become nothing more than stumbling blocks beneath his feet.

What a pity that the Rong Family had produced Rong Qingcang — a rebellious son, and of all things, his only child, a rare and gifted heir with extraordinary talent. When the Rong Family’s standing was already precarious, no matter how rebellious this son was, he had no choice but to endure him.

But Rong Qingcang could not be permitted to violate the ancestral rules and take a common mortal as his partner — even if she came from a noble family. This was forbidden.

The Rong Family’s heir could only wed someone from the Xuan path, to ensure that the next generation would be equally outstanding. The heir especially could not be allowed to act on his own whims.

If Rong Qingcang was rebellious, then that rebellious streak simply had to be broken. Once a person fell into the grip of love, they acquired a weakness. If he wished to keep that weakness safe and alive, he would have no choice but to bow that proud head of his and comply meekly with the arrangements his clan had set out.

And so, with just a small stratagem, he had placed Ren Yao’s life on the line, compelling Rong Qingcang to return and exchange the Great Restoration Elixir to save her — then, bound by the oath he had sworn, to go through with the marriage the clan had arranged for him.

He had not killed Ren Yao because he knew that if Rong Qingcang found out, he would lash back with everything he had. Losing an heir over a woman was simply not worth it.

Who could have foreseen that on his son’s wedding day, he would fall into a cultivation-induced qi deviation and succumb to a heart demon, committing an unforgivable sin — giving Rong Qingcang both a reason to wallow in depravity and a hold over him? Least of all could he have anticipated that his daughter-in-law would conceive a child as a result of that transgression. One misstep had led to another, and then another.

The child born from that union was tested and found to possess a pure Dao root. He had been overjoyed beyond measure, taking personal charge of raising the child. Considering his daughter-in-law’s contribution, he had indulged her generously in all things — and in doing so, overlooked the depths of her resentment. She had taken action against Ren Yao, driving his rebellious son into a frenzy of rage in which he threw aside his oath and all concern for the clan’s fate, threatening to drag the Rong Family into ruin. He had been utterly disillusioned.

To pacify the family and suppress his rebellious son’s defiant nature, he had enlisted the help of a supremely capable individual to cast a soul-sealing technique upon Rong Qingcang.

Lang Jiuchuan’s pulse quickened as she reached this point in the memories. This is where it begins.

She looked toward that figure — but the person always stood with their back to her. Yet she could see their robes and their silhouette, and it was unnervingly, achingly familiar. So familiar that her divine soul throbbed with sharp, stabbing pain.

She watched the Rong Family Patriarch kneel behind him and swear a blood oath — never to betray, like a loyal soldier pledging his devotion.

The memories continued. Driven by relentless malice, Qi Wu had been consumed by determination to destroy Ren Yao — particularly upon learning of her pregnancy, when her jealousy reached its apex. It had been the Rong Family Patriarch who, with the full weight of his authority, had suppressed her and kept both Ren Yao and the child in her womb alive. After all, the child carried the Rong Family’s bloodline — what if it proved to be of use?

He would not pass up anyone who might prove advantageous to the Rong Family.

Then the memory advanced to the day before Cui Shi was due to give birth. The Rong Family Patriarch received the person to whom he had pledged his loyalty. A black cloak embroidered with sun, moon, and stars draped over that figure’s form, standing in the shadows like a specter. Only the gold-embroidered stars shone with a blinding light.

“That child,” the figure said, “shall become my disciple. Bring her to me tomorrow. Handle it cleanly — let the Lang Family believe she has died.”

The Rong Family Patriarch did not understand why collecting a disciple required such elaborate measures. But he asked no questions, and simply carried out the instructions. In secret, however, he had quietly performed a divination — and discovered that the child’s birth time carried all four pillars in the sign of the dragon. A person born under such an alignment held a destiny of extraordinary nobility and would surely carry great fortune.

He had filed this away in the back of his mind. When he saw that the Lang Family was thrown into chaos by Lang Zhengfan’s death in battle, and Cui Shi was long overdue in labor, he made a detour to the Ren household. By chance, Ren Yao gave birth that same day. He took the child and, recalling his son’s temperament, and knowing that Ren Yao had always been a source of trouble, resolved to deal with the matter entirely in one stroke. He set up a Yin-gathering formation, summoned malevolent spirits, and carried out a massacre that lasted through the night. Those who perished in agony — their vengeful souls were collected by him through a secret technique.

A calamity like her deserved to die long ago. It was only the child in her womb that had bought her time to live.

Lang Jiuchuan’s entire body trembled. Even her divine consciousness was suffused with fury. So it had truly been malevolent spirits coming for her life — but spirits that had been deliberately conjured by human hands.

He truly deserved to die.

When Cui Shi’s child was born, the Rong Family Patriarch arrived with his own child in arms. But since he had expended a great deal of spiritual energy the night before, and was now carrying a child on top of that, his capacity to cast an illusion was strained and insufficient. He nearly made an error that would have alerted the Lang Family.

It was at that moment that the figure appeared in time — with effortless ease, casting a misdirection technique, then lifting the newborn girl: freshly separated from the umbilical cord, still covered in blood, with a crescent-moon birthmark at the nape of her neck.

“You defied my instructions in secret and nearly ruined my plans,” the figure said, holding the infant girl. The face beneath the enormous hood of the cloak remained concealed in shadow. The voice that emerged was cold and pitiless. “If you do it again, the Rong Family need not continue to exist in this world.”

The Rong Family Patriarch prostrated himself on the ground, with a reverence and terror unlike any he had ever shown before. In a trembling voice, he answered: “Yes.”

The figure stepped forward and examined the Rong Family Patriarch’s child for a moment, and an expression of mild surprise crossed their face. After a brief pause, they said: “Leave this girl in the Lang Family. Let her fend for herself. Do not meddle further — you would only invite suspicion.”

“Yes.”

Lang Jiuchuan strained with every ounce of effort to see the face concealed beneath the cloak’s hood. The figure was looking down at the infant girl cradled in their arms, then slowly began to raise their head. Suddenly, a surge of energy — extraordinarily concealed, powerful, and mysterious — erupted from within the fragments of the Rong Family Patriarch’s memory.

A soul restriction.

This restriction was ancient and overwhelmingly powerful. There was no way the Rong Family Patriarch could have set it himself — it had been placed there by the figure lurking in the shadows, as a barrier of self-protection to prevent any prying eyes from seeing.

The moment the restriction was triggered, the Rong Family Patriarch suffered an instant backlash. His remaining divine soul let out a shriek of absolute, total anguish, on the verge of completely dissolving.

And Lang Jiuchuan’s divine consciousness was struck by the force as well. She coughed up two mouthfuls of dark blood — but she did not withdraw her divine consciousness. Enduring the excruciating pain, she fought with every ounce of will to keep looking.

In a flash of lightning.

A refined and elegant, handsome face flickered past for just an instant — and simultaneously, her divine consciousness was met by the frenzied retaliation of that restrictive force. Her divine soul felt as though it had been struck by lightning, exploding with a deafening thunderclap in her mind.

Spit.

Lang Jiuchuan tilted her head back and vomited a mouthful of true essence blood. She was hurled backward through the air.

At that very same moment, deep within a Daoist cave retreat nestled in a mountain range abundant with spiritual energy, the chest of a man clad in robes embroidered with sun, moon, and stars gave a single jolt. He looked mildly surprised, then both eyes ignited with a blazing, incandescent light. Beneath his breath, he murmured: “Mountains upon mountains, rivers beyond rivers — so it is like this after all…”