The twelfth lunar month. Heavy snow fell thick and fast.

Lang Jiuchuan stood beneath a city gate, raising her head to look at the two archaic seal-script characters on the gate above her, now somewhat faded and chipped: Pan City.

This ancient walled city nestled between two mountains looked, at first glance, no different from any other border town. People came and went, heads filled the streets, the market clamored with noise — as though the catastrophic disaster that had nearly annihilated this place two years ago had never occurred at all. Yet the water stains on the cliff faces outside the city walls, not yet fully faded, and the occasional reverence and gratitude that surfaced on the faces of residents when they mentioned that miraculous event, all bore quiet testimony to the desperate and terrifying events of the past.

It was a past that could not be forgotten.

Lang Jiuchuan exhaled a soft sigh. Pan City — not the place where her bones were buried, yet it was the place where she had bound herself. For the sake of one city’s worth of people, she had willingly walked into the trap, binding herself within it.

Right here — two years ago — her dear master Tantai Qing had laid a killing trap for her in this very place, using an entire city of living people and exploiting her compassionate heart to lure her into it.

Lang Jiuchuan lowered her gaze, and had just made to enter the city, when the corner of her eye caught a white figure darting out from the void, followed by a tall, lean silhouette.

She stood still and watched the one tiger and one ghost with a smile.

“Sure enough, it’s here.” Jiang Che caught sight of her, and his tiger body trembled with excitement as he leapt over, landing just a foot away from her. He circled her twice, his pair of tiger eyes gleaming brilliantly: “Sure enough, she’s different now — she actually looks like a proper person.”

This little lady really is quite lovely-looking.

Fu Qi looked her up and down as well, and an expression of relief crossed his face: “Everyone has been waiting for you for a long time. Fortunately, you have lived up to all expectations. You’ve had it hard.”

Lang Jiuchuan said: “I’ve worried you all. How did you manage to find me here?”

“Jiang Che said he sensed your presence, so we came to look.”

Jiang Che leapt lightly, perching on her shoulder just as he always had, and complained in an aggrieved voice: “That ghost general of Feng Ya’s wouldn’t let us follow you, so we could only cultivate while we waited. Are you whole and complete now, all of you?”

“As you can see.” Lang Jiuchuan’s aura shifted ever so slightly, releasing a faint breath.

Jiang Che sensed it and immediately stiffened in alertness. She was stronger than before — considerably so. And that breath of hers carried a feeling of sharing the same origin as him. Not the same sect, but… the primordial essence of a divine beast?

“Then — have you remembered everything from your previous life?”

Lang Jiuchuan nodded: “I am a disciple of the National Preceptor. My Daoist title is Qingyi.”

East is the direction of the Azure Dragon, of wood, of the character Yi. It was the Daoist title she had given herself at the age of two, cradling a piece of azure dragon wood in her arms.

Fu Qi was astonished: “You are also a disciple of the National Preceptor? But didn’t he have only one disciple — the Holy Maiden? He has two disciples?”

The fact that the Tantai imperial princess was the National Preceptor’s disciple was known throughout all of Da Phan. That Lang Jiuchuan was also one had never surfaced as rumor — yet the breath of power she had just released was more than enough to reveal her talent. A person of such gifts should never have remained in obscurity.

“Right, I’ve never heard that the National Preceptor has two disciples right now.” Jiang Che was equally baffled. Even when her divine soul had been incomplete, her gifts and abilities had been on full display — one could only imagine how exceptional she must have been in her past life. Someone like that should never have been kept out of sight.

Lang Jiuchuan’s eyes flickered, and she said: “If there is only one disciple, then when the other shadow disappears, there will be no questions asked.”

So in all those years, she had never suspected anything was amiss, nor felt that anything was wrong. Was it not simply secluded cultivation? To her, it had not been tedious — for in the mountains, time held no meaning, and such cultivation was not dull. Never seeing outsiders had not felt improper. Having only one companion had never felt too few.

The two of them — in the end, which one was the shadow of the other?

It made no sense at all.

Jiang Che and Fu Qi exchanged a glance, both their expressions turning grave. They asked cautiously: “What have you managed to remember? When you were searching the Rong family head’s soul, did you already know the truth of the substitution? The one behind it — could it truly be the National Preceptor?”

Judging by the vague way she was speaking, one couldn’t help but think more into it.

“It was him. He took me away, painstakingly taught and shaped me, cultivated my talents — and in the end, delivered me a killing blow right here.” Lang Jiuchuan looked at Pan City, her voice steady and composed.

A brief sentence, yet it encompassed all the grievances and entanglements, all the debts of grace and enmity.

Two years ago, she had only just achieved Foundation Establishment. Perhaps she had been too outstanding — growing too quickly. The moment her wings began to spread, Tantai Qing had grown afraid: afraid she would fly beyond his control, afraid that years upon years of scheming would come to nothing. And so he had prepared a perfect killing trap for her.

She looked toward the mountain formation on the left, shaped like a dragon’s head. In order to imprison her, he had not hesitated to use secret arts to rouse the array eye of the Imprisoned Dragon Formation laid out across this terrain, causing the dragon vein’s violent qi to hover on the verge of eruption — requiring only a single seal and talisman to unleash it. At the time, it had been a season of unrelenting rain, and the water accumulated on the mountainside had long since reached a critical level. Were things to spiral out of control, the flash flood would inevitably pour down, and the city of Pan below — together with the border garrison troops — would see ten thousand lives buried as its offering.

She had been dispatched to suppress the situation. It was also to serve as her first trial after achieving Foundation Establishment. Though she had harbored some misgivings about it — even Feng Ya had once warned her in no uncertain terms to be vigilant of Tantai Qing.

She had come anyway.

Not to verify anything. Only for the sake of one city’s worth of people.

As it turned out, the so-called Imprisoned Dragon Formation did not imprison the rampaging dragon vein — it imprisoned her. The great formation used the lives of an entire city as a threat, forcing her to voluntarily enter the array, forcibly suppress the raging violent qi, and physically reroute the surging flood waters, redirecting them around Pan City to dissipate elsewhere.

She saved one city’s worth of people — and in doing so, entered the formation, and was imprisoned by him.

Jiang Che and Fu Qi looked toward the mountainside, where the traces of the flash flood still faintly lingered, and then at the people walking the streets below. Both fell into silence.

“So… you died here in your previous life?” Fu Qi asked, his tone somewhat bitter.

“Not here.”

Jiang Che was puzzled: “He was the one who raised you. If he wanted to deal with you, why go to the trouble of using an entire city as a threat? Even if you had achieved Foundation Establishment, his cultivation is surely far above yours — there was no need for such elaborate measures.”

Lang Jiuchuan gave a faint smile: “The merit and virtue accumulated by saving one hundred thousand lives — do you think it is great?”

Jiang Che was taken aback.

That would be an extraordinary amount, naturally. One hundred thousand lives — the merit gained from that was not quite perfect virtue, but the power of those fulfilled wishes would be more nourishing to the divine soul than almost anything else.

The National Preceptor was mighty in his Daoist arts. To go to such lengths, then, was not a matter of lacking confidence in his ability to subdue her — it was a matter of waiting for her to claim this merit, and then…

Every strand of white fur on Jiang Che’s body stood on end. He cried out in shock: “He wanted you to claim this merit first, and then seize you — was he after you carrying that merit and that power of fulfilled wishes upon your person?”

Fu Qi instantly thought of the great formation that had continuously burned the heroic souls of himself and the three thousand soldiers of the Fu family, and looked at her with an expression of fear: “Was it the same as what was done to us? He took you to anchor an array, using you to generate national fortune and lay the foundation of Da Phan?”

Jiang Che heard this and his tiger eyes turned vertical in their pupils, his great body trembling slightly.

If that was the case — where had she been taken, what array had she been used to anchor, and what was he trying to accomplish?

“Where — where is it? You said you didn’t die here, so where were you imprisoned in your past life?”

“It should be the imperial mausoleum of Da Phan.” Lang Jiuchuan looked toward the direction of the imperial mausoleum, and said with complete calm: “Using my body to anchor the mausoleum. Using my breath to nourish the dragon vein. Using my soul to enrich the national fortune. I died a far worse death than the fake Lang Jiu.”