The Gong Family Head swept his gaze around the stone chamber, thought for a moment, and drew out another scroll. He brushed away its sealing principles, glanced at the contents, and gave a slight nod before handing it over.

“This elder had a great fondness for compiling unofficial histories. Much of what he gathered were small scraps of rumor picked up during his travels, without any real evidence. Although I have read through these, I never gave them much thought in the past. Even hundred-year geniuses, remarkable as they are, did not seem particularly strange to me.” The Gong Family Head said with some embarrassment: “Perhaps we have long been living within a comfortable cocoon of our own making. As long as the family remained stable and flourishing, we would not entertain too many theories of conspiracy — especially over these past two hundred years, when the noble clans have been placed on such a high pedestal that many of us grew somewhat carried away.”

Gong Tinglan fell silent. Was he not exactly the same? Unless something touched directly on his clan’s interests, he had never bothered to pay much attention to the winds and waves stirring in the outside world.

What does not concern me, I hold aloft beyond reach — that was the thinking of most people.

Lang Jiuchuan did not judge them for it. “The rise and fall of dynasties is itself a natural rule of Heaven’s Dao — the same is true for a clan’s flourishing and decline. Based solely on what Elder Baixiao recorded, there is nothing that stands out as profoundly strange. Who would truly investigate whether there might be a conspiracy lurking within? In truth, if I had not been suppressed and planted as a living stake myself, I would not be entertaining conspiracy theories either. It was only because I was planted — only because I felt the full horror of it firsthand — that I went looking for answers. So your perspective can only be called human nature. After all, no matter how supremely clever one is, one is still just a person — who would read a few lines of unofficial history and immediately wonder if there was a conspiracy buried within?”

She glanced at the scroll and continued: “As for the lack of evidence in these writings — there are times when unofficial histories and unverified records, precisely because they exist outside sanctioned channels, are closer to the actual truth than the accounts the world at large accepts. It is simply that ordinary people find it difficult to judge.”

The Gong Family Head bowed his hands toward her in a gesture of deep respect.

Lang Jiuchuan turned to this second sheepskin scroll. What was written on it were death records of the various Tantai clan geniuses. The accounts were somewhat vague and not entirely clear, but without exception, every one of them had cultivated to the high stages, surpassing their contemporaries — and yet failed at the critical moment of breakthrough. Some had not even attempted a breakthrough, but suddenly began to deteriorate, and like the time before their awakening, grew ordinary again, withering away at a shocking pace until their deaths.

“Conversing freely with a dear friend over wine in the moonlight, my companion Lanruo Dao Friend once remarked that the Tantai clan’s thousand-year inheritance made the notion of a curse laughable. Gain one genius, enjoy a hundred years of peace and fortunate stability; when one falls, a new genius is born without fail — one dies, one is born, a seamless succession, the envy of all of us…”

Gong Tinglan pressed his finger against this passage, his expression grave. “Hundred-year geniuses are extraordinarily rare — whether in Daoist cultivation circles or secular noble clans. Yet the Tantai clan, in the era before the State Preceptor, truly did have this seamless succession as the elder described? The outside world knew nothing of any of this. Especially after the Tantai clan became the imperial house two hundred years ago, even fewer people knew of their origins and early history. Even the official histories of the Great Dan begin only from the founding emperor Tantai Jing.”

This included himself — he had grown up practically living in the archives, yet what he knew and understood best was mostly the events of the last two hundred years, which was already the result of extensive reading. The era before that, he did not fully understand.

“Once the Tantai clan became the ruling house, if they had any motivation to downplay the history of their origins, it would not be surprising that no one knew of it.” The light in Lang Jiuchuan’s eyes sharpened. “Then why would they wish to downplay it — why would they not want people to know? If one desired to leave a glorious name for all ages, one would hope for everyone’s praise. Yet they did the opposite.”

“Unless they were concerned that this pattern, once known, would arouse suspicion.” The Gong Family Head furrowed his brow. “Those who have entered the Dao and wish to investigate would have to dig back into the past, and without the archives of a major Daoist sect or great clan, it would be difficult to unearth anything. Ordinary worldly people would never think to look deeper — in their eyes, the Tantai clan founding a dynasty that has endured two hundred years is already something supremely impressive.”

Most importantly — if no one had noticed anything amiss, why would anyone go digging through the secret history of an imperial clan for no reason at all?

Another stretch of silence settled over the stone chamber, the atmosphere growing steadily heavier.

“Who was the Tantai clan’s hundred-year genius in the generation before State Preceptor Tantai Qing?” Lang Jiuchuan suddenly asked.

The Gong Family Head thought for a moment. “It was Tantai Ji — an elder of the Tantai clan. In that era, the fortune of the Liang Kingdom was in decline, the people were suffering, and living beings were devastated. The Tantai clan also joined forces with several noble clans and cultivators of both the Buddhist and Daoist sects to save the world.”

He raised his hand and drew a jade slip from across the room with a gesture, brushing away its sealing principles. “This is a record of the noble clans joining with the Buddhist and Daoist sects two hundred years ago to save the world.”

Lang Jiuchuan read through its contents. “This Tantai Ji fell after the rescue was successful and the Tantai clan founded its nation. Immediately afterward, the new genius Tantai Qing was born — that is indeed one dies, one is born, a seamless succession. And to this day, no new genius has been born, because the old one has not died. Tantai Ji’s name differs from the founding ancestor’s by only a single character.”

Gong Tinglan instantly seized on the critical point. “Meaning this seamless succession must necessarily involve him ‘dying’ first and then being reborn. Combining this with the pattern of geniuses before — why would he repeatedly seize bodies?”

“This kind of body seizure is not truly death — it is merely surviving by changing physical vessels.” Lang Jiuchuan paced back and forth within the stone chamber, lightly tapping the body of the Dizhong at her waist, her fingertips striking out a faint but — within the sealed chamber — startlingly clear and crisp chime.

She did not know his motivations. So she would put herself in his position instead.

A person of reckless ambition and towering aspirations — upon failing a breakthrough attempt, would they lightly accept it and allow themselves to fall? No. If a goal is not reached, do not give up — to fail and then find a way to start over from the beginning: that would be entirely consistent with how her “master” operated.

Her footsteps suddenly stopped. She looked at the Gong Family Head and his son, and said: “Is there any possibility — when the founding ancestor Tantai Wuji failed his breakthrough attempt all those years ago, he did not actually fall? His divine soul suffered a devastating wound that could not be healed, perhaps was not even intact. And so he needed to continuously seize the bodies of the most outstanding, most fortunately blessed descendants of his own bloodline, using their physical vessels and fated fortune to nourish and repair his own fractured divine soul. Once a vessel’s fortune was drained dry, he would swap to another — and that is how the hundred-year cycle of one death and one birth came to be?”

“Something like what happened with the Cong Family’s corpse-dominated fiend last year?” Gong Tinglan recalled the hundred-year corpse fiend incident of the previous year, and felt that Lang Jiuchuan’s deduction already perfectly explained the puzzling points about the repeated body seizures. What other circumstances could require such constant switching of physical vessels? It could only mean that the vessel could no longer sustain the weight of his divine soul.

“The Cong Family’s ancestor was a true evil of refined demonic craft — but the principle is the same. In both cases, the divine soul did not die. The Cong Family ancestor intended to use a demonic offspring born from a union between the corpse fiend and a human to achieve an undying form. But Tantai Wuji…” A flash of inspiration blazed through Lang Jiuchuan’s mind. “First nourish and repair the divine soul — then, when the moment is right, do as I did: make a triumphant return, reborn through fire. Except his goal is not revenge. It is to fulfill the regret of that failed ascension — to traverse the Golden Core Great Dao once more and ascend to the Infinite Heavens!”

Her thoughts grew clearer and clearer, and her eyes suddenly blazed with a brilliant light. “His physical body — the body he had back then — it must still exist!”