Gong Tinglan’s message left Lang Jiuchuan and the others feeling deeply uneasy, especially since they had only just learned what she had endured in her previous life. To suddenly hear now that two ancient clans of a thousand years had met with catastrophe — could this be a coincidence?

Drawing a connection to Lang Jiuchuan’s own ordeal, a terrible suspicion rose in their minds: the accumulated ancestral fortune of these long-standing noble families had likely become a granary for certain individuals to feed upon.

Lang Jiuchuan had originally planned to return to the Lang Family, but she no longer dared to delay. She sent Fuqi to handle affairs at the Ren residence, while A’Piao was to continue gathering useful intelligence — particularly regarding the movements of the imperial family, the National Preceptor, and others. Even if they could not yet discern his methods, accumulating more information would allow them to perceive the larger picture from the smaller details.

Having settled these arrangements, she took Jiangche with her, broke open the shadow path, and transformed into a dark wraith, heading straight for the Huayin region where Gong Tinglan was located.

Fuqi and A’Piao exchanged a glance, both their eyes turning cold and still. The tree wishes to be quiet, but the wind will not cease — what lay before them was a hard battle. Could they win?

Huayin. The Yang Family ancestral estate.

The once-bustling thousand-year clan, whose gates had formerly rung with the sound of carriages and horses, now lay deserted and cold, shrouded in a veil of gloom. Above the ancestral manor, a great mass of black and ominous clouds pressed down and refused to disperse.

The moment Gong Tinglan saw Lang Jiuchuan, he immediately went to meet her. After two steps, however, he hesitated, not quite daring to recognize her. Only after opening his Heavenly Eye did clarity dawn — a strange light flickered in his eyes, and he clasped his hands in a bow: “Reborn from nirvana — congratulations on attaining enlightenment.”

“By sheer luck,” Lang Jiuchuan waved her hand dismissively, then looked Gong Tinglan over once more. He still carried that transcendent, refined air of his, yet the weariness and worry between his brows could not be concealed. “It seems your travels have been rather troubled,” she said.

Gong Tinglan seemed about to speak, then stopped himself. Seeing a steward-like figure approaching, he dropped the subject. “Come with me first to look at the young master of the Yang Family. His condition is very poor. I have even used spiritual medicines from the Gong Family’s stores, and they can only barely keep a single breath in him — yet his life force, I cannot hold onto.”

The two followed the steward through layer upon layer of courtyards. Along the way, Lang Jiuchuan had already heard from him about the three great clans. To call it the extermination of a clan was accurate — the bloodlines of each clan were dying off in all manner of deaths, and those who had married into outside families were no exception.

A thousand-year-old noble family has branches and leaves spreading far and wide, with countless relatives by marriage — the bloodlines entangled were beyond counting. This was precisely why Gong Tinglan found it so thorny, and why he had asked her to come out of seclusion.

“If you had come a little later, I probably would not have received your message,” Lang Jiuchuan said. “I only just came out of closed cultivation. But as for this matter — I have some suspicions, though I cannot say for certain.”

Gong Tinglan’s gaze deepened. Was she saying she knew who had committed this act?

Knowing this was not the time to press for details, he asked nothing further, and simply waited for the immediate matter to be resolved.

They arrived at a bedchamber thick with the scent of medicinal herbs. Gong Qi came forward to meet them, and upon seeing Lang Jiuchuan, he too was momentarily uncertain whether to recognize her.

“Gong Qi specializes in the art of medicine — I had him come to oversee things here. But unfortunately…” Gong Tinglan looked toward the young man lying on the bed and gave a faint sigh.

Gong Qi hesitated, then called out: “Miss Lang Jiu?”

“Fellow Daoist Gong, it is I.” Lang Jiuchuan smiled and nodded, then likewise looked toward the figure on the bed. The man’s face was the color of wax, his breath barely perceptible — this was Yang Xiuyong, the last remaining hope of the Yang Family.

She stepped forward to examine him closely. His eye sockets were sunken deep, his lips a dusky purple. Though he was still young, he gave off the withered, decaying impression of a lamp utterly spent of oil.

She pressed her lips together, extended two fingers, and lightly rested them upon Yang Xiuyong’s wrist pulse. The skin her fingertips touched was ice cold.

Gong Qi stood silently at one side, watching Lang Jiuchuan’s every movement.

Lang Jiuchuan formed a seal with one hand, while the fingertips of the hand taking the pulse condensed a thread of true energy blended with refined spiritual consciousness, which she carefully guided into his body.

With that single probe, she furrowed her brow slightly, her expression turning grave.

Within Yang Xiuyong’s body — there was nothing but utter stillness and death.

“The pulse is dire. His twelve primary meridians and the eight extraordinary vessels have blockages at multiple critical junctures. The qi of his five organs is feeble beyond measure, the five-element cycle is nearly at a standstill, unable to drive the circulation of qi and blood through the organs. This last remaining thread of vitality is like a candle guttering in the wind — and it is still being continuously drained away by some invisible force. Were it not for the spiritual medicines keeping him alive, he would likely have long since… Even now, though he clings to that one breath, it is treating the symptom, not the root.”

Lang Jiuchuan withdrew her fingers and let out a quiet sigh. This was by no means an ordinary illness or injury — it was more akin to a withering from the very root of existence itself.

Gong Tinglan nodded. “It is the same as what I observed, and it is precisely for this reason that I had no choice but to ask you to come — to see whether you could preserve and prolong his life force.”

“Do you have an old friendship with the Yang Family?” Lang Jiuchuan asked, raising a brow.

Gong Tinglan gave a faint smile. “One could not quite call it an old friendship. The Yang Family’s founding ancestor rose to prominence through the merit of supporting the founding of the dynasty, and their descendants carried on for a thousand years, living through several dynasties. Their clan produced many notable figures. Though they have not been as illustrious in the past two hundred years, they are still a rare and venerable noble house. I had a connection with his father.”

He gestured toward Yang Xiuyong. “His father — Yang Chengling — had exceptional expertise in water conservancy, yet was poor at official politics. He was a man of excessive candor; his words were too blunt and direct, with no skill at tactful maneuvering, and he was often ostracized. Yet when it came to water conservancy, whoever called upon him, he would go. What he labored for was not fame or gain — it was for the people.”

As he spoke, his expression dimmed. “But a man like that met his end in the very thing he was most skilled at — carried off by a flood, his life taken by the water. What makes it absurd is that the riverbank was no deeper than his waist.”

Good men never live long.

A silence fell. The atmosphere grew quietly sorrowful.

Lang Jiuchuan broke it. “You and I are both practitioners of the Dao — I will not speak in roundabout terms. His meridians are now sealed and obstructed, his qi mechanism severed, and his life force is draining away. This cannot be remedied by medicine or stone needles alone. His condition resembles the backlash of an entire clan’s accumulated fate, or perhaps some force has forcibly cut off the very source of his vitality.”

Gong Tinglan’s expression turned cold and somber. “Are you saying someone has tampered with the Yang clan’s ancestral fortune?”

Lang Jiuchuan nodded. “The extermination of a thousand-year clan is not the death of one or two people. To indiscriminately harvest every single clan member — the only way is for something to have gone wrong with the ancestral tombs and clan fortune. We can discuss this more later. For now, let us first deal with him.”

As her words fell, she unfastened the bone bell at her waist and offered it above Yang Xiuyong’s forehead. The spiritual energy of the bone bell instantly burrowed into the Spiritual Platform at the center of his brow.

Lang Jiuchuan then retrieved her golden needles. With both hands forming seals, her slender hands turned — and several needles, as fine as ox hair and shimmering with golden light, appeared between her fingers. She drew a measured breath and then moved with the swiftness of lightning, the golden needles striking with precision into the major acupoints all over Yang Xiuyong’s body.

Her movements were so swift that Gong Tinglan and the others could only perceive a blur of needle-shadows. When she finally stilled, every needle had entered the body. She shifted into another Daoist hand seal, murmuring an incantation under her breath, her hands passing over the golden needles as she drove true energy imbued with refined Profound-Void qi into each needle. The tips of the needles rang out with a single unified hum, and all of them began to tremble in unison.

Yang Xiuyong, still unconscious, could not suppress a muffled groan, and beads of sweat seeped from his brow — yet the color of his face began to undergo a subtle, gradual change.

It was these needles, slowly dredging open those clogged meridian junctures, re-igniting the faint, weakened circulation of true energy within his body.

Gong Qi’s eyes burned with passionate admiration. This was the sublime artistry of acupuncture — Lang Jiu was worthy of being called his teacher!