Bang!

Lang Jiuchuan kicked open the tightly shut hermitage door. With a wave of her hand through the air, she seized Dao Jicang — still coughing without pause — and dragged him inside.

The hermitage was decorated simply and elegantly, hung with several paintings of Five Elements landscapes and scattered with miscellaneous yarrow-stalk ornaments and the like. Lang Jiuchuan paid none of it any attention. She followed Jiangche’s spiritual presence and continued deeper inside.

She discovered that behind Dao Jicang’s hermitage lay a second space — a true cultivation cave, facing a sheer cliff. Fresh, rich living energy from the surrounding vegetation rolled in through the cave opening that faced the rock wall, carrying no chill but instead a sense of spiritual clarity.

The moment Lang Jiuchuan stepped inside, the place felt vaguely familiar. Was this not arranged in likeness of that old fox’s own cultivation cave? Though it lacked the array formations of the other, this modest spirit-gathering formation was still more spiritually charged than any ordinary mountain cave.

Looking further at the Daoist scriptures and esoteric symbols carved into the cliff wall, Lang Jiuchuan recognized them too — a large portion were written in the old fox’s own hand, some with markings so old and weathered that they suggested he himself had cultivated here for a considerable stretch of time.

Lang Jiuchuan smiled coldly. She summoned her talisman brush with one hand, and facing that sheer cliff, painted several strokes of dark, foul-energy talismans into the air — then a resounding boom.

The talismans detonated. The dark foul energy transformed into countless streams of vile, malevolent miasma that poured into the inscribed scripture texts, turning them a dark crimson. She then materialized her talisman brush as a blade and began scoring over those darkened talismanic inscriptions, one stroke after another.

Sparks flew!

Dao Jicang’s eyes flew wide. “Wretch — what are you doing?!”

Those inscriptions carved into the cliff wall were the Venerable Master’s accumulated insights into the Dao, the fruit of many years of enlightenment — worth more than gold and irreplaceable, the kind of wisdom meant to be passed down through generations for the benefit of all righteous souls under heaven. Yet this wretched girl — what had she done? She dared to be this brazen, destroying them in an instant. How could she — how dare she desecrate the Venerable Master? She ought to do as he himself did, revering and serving him as a divine god.

What she was doing was making an enemy of him — and of all righteous souls under heaven!

Dao Jicang was so furious his eyes went bloodshot. The look he turned on Lang Jiuchuan was that of a man who wanted to devour her — the fierce, raw resentment of someone watching another eat their fill and not even leave the dregs of soup behind. The only reason he could not contend with Lang Jiuchuan was that his spiritual power had not yet recovered; otherwise, he would have this disrespectful, scripture-defiling rebel disciple kneeling at the Venerable Master’s feet right now.

Lang Jiuchuan looked at him coldly. She recalled her talisman brush and traced a Soul-Locking Chain across his body. “What I do, you need only watch. You and the others set this trap to lure me here — wasn’t it precisely to watch me do something? Now you’ve seen it.”

Dao Jicang’s complexion shifted from red to purple. His expression grew heavy as stone. “To show no reverence to your master — this is digging your own grave.”

Lang Jiuchuan ignored him. She walked toward where Jiangche was. On a small stone-slab bed lay a swaddled infant, flanked by two paper figures set there as guardians. When those paper figures saw her, they trembled like leaves before a force of destruction.

Lang Jiuchuan flicked her fingertip. The two paper figures instantly lost their animating spirit and floated gently to the ground. The destruction of his paper creations further drained Dao Jicang of color; he glared at her with dark, brooding eyes.

Without comparison there is no pain — he had harbored so many grievances before, but facing Lang Jiuchuan now in direct opposition, he truly felt the vast, overwhelming gap between them.

A hundred years of cultivation — truly not a match for her mere decade or so. This realization made him shake with a jealousy bordering on madness.

Was this what it meant that in the face of talent, effort and diligence counted for nothing?

Or had his heart of cultivation never once received the acknowledgment of the Heavenly Dao? And that magical artifact of hers — had the Venerable Master gifted it to her?

Dao Jicang attempted to break free of the purple-gold Soul-Locking Chain bearing its supreme Daoist intent that bound his body. Each struggle only made it cinch tighter, sending pain searing through his spirit and soul.

On the other side, Lang Jiuchuan looked at the baby girl in the swaddling cloth. The guiding talisman ignited without flame, and that sliver of life force from her heart’s blood entered the child’s spiritual platform — and then vanished in a flash.

This was indeed Wen Yue’s child. But the child’s complexion was dark and ashen, her breath barely there, her life force pitifully faint and frail. This was not a condition arising from constitutional weakness — rather, it was…

A flash of insight struck Lang Jiuchuan’s mind. She pressed her fingertips to the infant’s tiny wrist. A pulse wavered there, faint as floating silk, intermittent and fragile — and to her astonishment, it was subtly synchronized with the fluctuations of life force emanating from Dao Jicang, who stood bound and immobilized by her Soul-Locking technique nearby. Even more alarming: every measure of pain that Dao Jicang’s spirit and soul endured made the infant’s pulse weaken by an equal measure.

Her Heavenly Eye opened, and she saw a thread fine as silk extending from the infant’s spiritual platform, stretching directly to Dao Jicang in an unbroken line!

“A Life-and-Death Pact — they actually made one!” Lang Jiuchuan squeezed these words through clenched teeth. Towering fury ignited in her eyes in an instant. She turned her head to stare at Dao Jicang. “How dare you!”

The so-called Life-and-Death Pact was exactly what its name described. The one who cast it used their own lifeblood and soul as the anchor, binding themselves and the other party in a covenant of shared existence — from that moment on, both shared the same life force, and any harm inflicted on one was borne by the other as well.

No wonder he had said that if he lived, she lived; if he died, she would too. It was because of this pact binding them together.

So whatever suffering Dao Jicang endured, this child felt it immediately. And she was still only an infant — not yet half a year old. The harm she received was immeasurably greater than what a cultivator of Dao Jicang’s hundred years of cultivation experienced.

Now, though the child was frail, as long as the Life-and-Death Pact held and Dao Jicang remained alive, she would not die — she would simply have less life force than anyone else, clinging to existence at the very edge. To have such a technique used on her while she was small and defenseless, utterly unable to resist — she had been reduced entirely to Dao Jicang’s living human shield.

This man — to use such a vile and malicious technique on an infant still in swaddling clothes — was utterly devoid of conscience and without a shred of moral integrity.

To think she had seen through it so quickly. A brief spasm of twisted expression crossed Dao Jicang’s pale face before he broke into a laugh, spitting out a mouthful of bloody foam. “To share life and death with me is her fortune as well. As long as I live, she lives. Given her destined fate, she is bound to soar to great heights.”

Shameless to the bone — revolting beyond all measure!

Undisguised killing intent flooded Lang Jiuchuan’s eyes.

“Want to kill me? Then you want her life. You came here for her sake to begin with — how will you face her mother?” Dao Jicang saw her expression of barely-restrained fury and could not help the twisted satisfaction that crept across his face. “The Venerable Master always said your talent was exceptional — a rare genius not seen in several hundred years, a natural vessel of the Dao. I am no match for you in many respects. Yet he never considered that there is one thing you will never surpass me in — and that is experience. I have lived several decades more than you. I know far better than you how to scheme and calculate. A pity he never saw fit to acknowledge that. You want to kill me — I want to see whether you, this radiant light of the righteous path with your exceptional talent, dare to let this innocent infant die because of you!”

He provoked and taunted her with reckless impunity, confident that Lang Jiuchuan would be hamstrung — unable to truly take his life.

Some people were always like this — constrained by minor particulars, never understanding that some things need not adhere to the orthodox path to achieve success. Only by disregarding trifles could great matters be accomplished. He and the Venerable Master were kindred spirits — they would ultimately ascend to the supreme Dao.

Lang Jiuchuan looked at his nauseating face, then looked at the infant whose breath was growing weaker and weaker — the child instinctively furrowing her tiny brow, bearing shared pain she did not understand. The fury blazing in Lang Jiuchuan’s chest was like a volcano on the verge of eruption. She let out a cold laugh. “A Life-and-Death Pact? Do you truly believe there is nothing I can do about you?”