The pressure bore down like Mount Tai pressing upon the earth.

Lang Jiuchuan’s silhouette froze for a single instant. Then she slowly turned around. The presence she had been suppressing released entirely, meeting that surging force and deflecting it with a smooth, yielding motion. Her form swayed slightly as she withdrew from before the window and came to stand suspended in midair.

She looked toward the Daoist master before her — dressed in a purple Eight Trigrams robe, wearing a jade Jade Clarity crown atop his head. His face was gaunt and sharp-featured, three long whiskers hanging at his chin. Though he was said to be already a hundred years of age, his appearance suggested a man barely past fifty. His Daoist robes and sleeves drifted in the stillness, lending him an air of transcendent otherworldliness — yet the eyes that narrowed slightly beneath his brow flickered with the cold and piercing light of a hunting hawk or eagle. This was none other than the abbot of Canglang Temple: Dao Jicang.

As expected of someone who learned under the old fox — he has genuine ability in his hands.

Dao Jicang was also shaken inwardly. The other party was no older than a young woman just past her coming-of-age ceremony, and yet she had been able to deflect his pressure. Who was this woman?

Looking at Lang Jiuchuan’s face, a single thought flashed through his mind — gone before he could grasp it, vanishing without a trace.

Lang Jiuchuan’s eyes flickered lightly. She said: “While touring the temple grounds I strayed carelessly into this place. I have disturbed the abbot’s quiet cultivation, and I ask your pardon. This little one will now take her leave.”

She made a show of moving to depart.

But Dao Jicang flashed to block her path: “Strayed carelessly? This place is layered with formation upon formation — any intruder will trigger the restraints. Yet you moved through it as though there were no one to stop you, coming and going at will. Such refined skill in concealment and barrier-breaking speaks to profound Daoist cultivation. You expect one word of ‘wandered in by accident’ to account for all of that?”

He pressed another step closer, his presence sharp and cutting, his gaze locked upon Lang Jiuchuan: “Exactly who are you? What are your intentions in infiltrating my Canglang Temple? If you speak plainly, this poor Daoist may, given your youth and the difficulty of your cultivation journey, see fit to show mercy and spare you.”

His tone offered what appeared to be a path of retreat — yet beneath that surface, killing intent lurked, coiled and ready to strike at any moment.

Lang Jiuchuan laughed to herself. She couldn’t play the fool anymore — so she simply stopped pretending.

She was here already, after all.

Without wasting further words on him, her mind moved and her intent followed. She compressed a bolt of palm thunder in her hand and launched it directly at him.

Dao Jicang’s pupils contracted sharply. He immediately called forth a Pure Yin Fire-Dissolving Talisman and used it to dispel the bolt of palm thunder that had arrived in front of him in a single heartbeat. A thunderous boom rang out as the hermitage trembled faintly.

Yet even as the palm thunder was neutralized, a thread of thunderous force traveled along a thin line of water that had appeared on the ground at some unknown moment and coiled up his leg. His spirit and soul were struck through with a piercing stab of pain that spread in all directions.

Dao Jicang immediately mobilized his spiritual power to stabilize his soul, his cultivated facade of calm now completely stripped away, replaced by a look of dark malice laced with wariness. She had used neither talisman nor incantation. In nothing more than the span of a single breath, she had already unleashed the crackling might of thunder and lightning — and he had still taken a blow from it.

At such an age. With such talent. There was only one person this could be…

His eyes hardened with a flash of sharpness. He swung his horsetail whisk in a powerful arc — tens of thousands of silver threads transformed in an instant into countless writhing venomous serpents, shooting toward her with a piercing shriek that split the air, saturated with toxic and malevolent energy. At the same time, his left hand formed a silent seal, and the surrounding formation blazed into radiant activation, instantly brought to full power. Streaks of killing light poured in from all directions, bearing down to shred her apart.

Let him see what she is truly capable of — why the Venerable One would regard her with such gravity, going so far as to prepare his stratagems so far in advance. What has she done to deserve it!

Lang Jiuchuan’s eyes went cold as frost. He truly intends to kill her.

It was fortunate she had not let her guard down.

Facing those tens of thousands of silver threads and the relentless streaks of searing killing light converging on her from every direction, her body did not retreat but pressed forward. Simultaneously, her hands formed a seal, and two streams of Profound Dark true energy burst forth from the seal with a violent force — one flowing around her entire body as a shield, the other condensing into a dim and shadowed barrier that took the full brunt of the horsetail whisk’s strike head-on, while a separate tendril broke off and shot directly at Dao Jicang himself.

“Supreme Pure Yin, Profound Dark banishes all evil!”

Boom.

A deafening crash shook the entire courtyard of the dwelling quarters. Light burst outward in all directions. The formation seemed to have a corner of it shattered — and all at once, its power began to leak and dissipate.

Dao Jicang was struck by that stream of Profound Dark true energy. He was sent flying backward and crashed into a stone lantern, coughing up a mouthful of refined blood. His horsetail whisk fell to the ground, its luminescence extinguished, its spiritual nature heavily damaged. His spirit and soul felt as though ten-thousand-year ice spikes had been driven into their depths — an icy, agonizing cold that penetrated to the core. Most catastrophic of all was what was happening to his internal spiritual power: it was as though an extreme cold had frozen it solid, and he could scarcely mobilize more than a sliver of it. How could that meager fraction be enough for anything?

He stared at Lang Jiuchuan in disbelief and terror.

Profound Dark true energy?

No — ordinary Profound Dark true energy would never carry power like this. Her true energy was more akin to the dark and abyssal energy from the deepest depths of the Nine Underworlds, combined with the Daoist resonance of the Pure Yin Eight Trigrams, so that its force carried within it the power of the Nine Underworlds — icy cold, sharp as a blade. How had she cultivated and awakened this kind of power?!

“You — you dare to cultivate such sinister and deviant power!”

Lang Jiuchuan looked at her own fingertips and drew the Profound Dark true energy back in. “Abbot, do not speak carelessly,” she said, her tone light. “What sinister and deviant power? I study many disciplines and simply cultivated one more art of Profound Dark true energy. The Profound Dark is also the divine name of the kidney, drawn from The Inner Landscape Scripture of the Yellow Court, Chapter on the Heart Spirit — named Profound Dark because the kidney belongs to water. Cultivating this energy technique can nourish the water of the kidney. I have frail health and so I cultivated it, and happened to refine a Daoist resonance into it somewhat inadvertently. Any practitioner of medical arts would know this — surely the abbot is not unaware?”

“Cease your sophistry!” Dao Jicang pressed a hand to his chest, his gaze dark and venomous as he stared her down: “Profound Dark true energy cannot carry the power of the Nine Underworlds. Who taught you this? Was it—”

“I climbed my way up out of the Nine Underworlds — is it not reasonable that my spirit and soul would carry its energy naturally?” Lang Jiuchuan narrowed her eyes: “If the abbot wishes to learn it, why not die once yourself and see whether you can emerge reborn from the Nine Underworlds?”

Her words were vicious, but she was not wrong to say that the power of the Nine Underworlds was something her spirit and soul carried naturally — though not cultivated from the Nine Underworlds itself. Rather, it was infused into her when Feng Ya nourished that one soul and two spirit forms within her with his own soul force. After her spirit and soul reunited and she was reborn, she had discovered its presence.

Learning to apply it in combination with Profound Dark true energy — drawing out its full might — was something she had derived through study and reflection inside the Pagoda of the Nine Towers, from the privately preserved texts of the Venerable Luole. Today, she had simply used Dao Jicang as the edge to sharpen her blade against, testing in practice the power of this Profound Dark true energy suffused with the force of the Nine Underworlds. The results had not disappointed her.

Feng Ya — like a second parent, gifting her life. And the Venerable Luole — who had passed her knowledge and skill, and could rightly be called her master.

This body of blood, bone, and soul she possessed — was precious, and weighty.

It must be cherished with great care.

Lang Jiuchuan ripped the Dizhong from its place and hurled it squarely at Dao Jicang, catching and twisting his right hand. The scarlet fire-serpent talisman his fingertips had just barely managed to condense was torn apart by the overwhelming surge of thunderous energy, and she laughed aloud: “The esteemed abbot of Canglang Temple — still resorting to sneak attacks? What underhanded methods are these — learned from whom? Your honored master, the great National Preceptor?”

The sneak attack having failed, Dao Jicang held back his shock and fury with great effort, his expression darkening with malevolence: “Impudent child — how dare you insult the Venerable One! You deserve death!”

Lang Jiuchuan laughed and directed the Daoist resonance at her fingertip toward the Dizhong — the mysterious inscriptions on the bell’s surface seemed to come alive, coiling like electric serpents and rapidly winding around his throat: “Insult him all I want — so what? Come and hit me!”

The force of the thunder and lightning gnawed without cease at his spirit and soul. Dao Jicang’s body convulsed violently, his pupils shrinking to pinpoints, his blood and vital energy churning in violent upheaval.

“Pft!”

Dao Jicang staggered back several steps, blood seeping from the corner of his mouth. He stared at Lang Jiuchuan in utter disbelief, his face written over with shock, defeat, and… something almost overflowing — a twisted, contorted envy.

She was even stronger than she had been when she stirred the winds of turmoil through the Rong family?

His hundred years of cultivation — and he could not withstand even a single exchange.

How could this be possible? In less than half a year, how had she advanced so swiftly? This was talent — this was what the Venerable One meant by a genius that comes once in a generation?!