Lang Jiuchuan and Gong Tinglan lay flat on the ground, watching as the corpse specter’s skeletal remains were reduced to cinders within the chaos fire — then scattered by the wind, not a single trace of presence remaining. The two exchanged a glance, let out a long, slow exhale, and lay motionless, staring up at the sky with ghostly pale faces.

Snow was falling from above. Yet neither of them had even the strength to sit up.

Gong Tinglan’s incapacity came from having drawn upon his foundational essence blood, causing a severe depletion of vital energy. He would need to recuperate for a good long while before he could safely exert his spiritual power again — otherwise it would affect both his lifespan and his cultivation level.

Though there was also one benefit: having burned it all, if he comprehended something within his meditation, he might well break through to the next level — and his cultivation would advance dramatically.

Lang Jiuchuan’s exhaustion, on the other hand, came from having drawn upon her soul force. She had poured chaos energy into the inscription brush and pushed her divine might to its absolute limit, striking through the corpse specter’s trace of source power to wound the National Preceptor, Tantai Wuji.

A long-range strike through a medium. Just like that.

It was precisely because Lang Jiuchuan had recognized whose power the corpse specter had unleashed that she had been so furious. She had once been Tantai Wuji’s disciple, and had spent over a decade at his side. He had guided her to the Dao and imparted his teachings upon her. How could she not be intimately familiar with his energy?

Indeed, some of what she herself knew had come partly from him — which was precisely why she could tell whose source power the corpse specter carried.

It was exactly that recognition — and the shock and rage at his utterly inhuman, completely unhinged conduct — that had driven her. Say whatever one likes about people acting in self-interest: what he had done, conjuring the corpse specter as a weapon of slaughter to devastate the world of mortals, all for the sake of paving his own ascension to the heavens — was this something a human being could do?

Whatever the Great Dao — there had to be a bottom line.

What Tantai Wuji had done had obliterated the most fundamental bottom line of being human.

If heaven truly allowed him to achieve his ambitions, then the Dao itself had ceased to exist.

Within the valley, the thick death-resentment energy that had been smothering everything began to slowly disperse along with the corpse specter’s annihilation. Snowflakes drifted down, and the suffocating sense of oppression gradually dissolved, leaving only a faint lingering yin chill.

After resting for a long while, Gong Tinglan finally mustered the strength to sit up — barely. He supported himself with both hands against the ground, gazed at that swath of black where the ashes and remnants lay, and let out another long exhale of relief. A gleam of joy and relief shone in his eyes.

“I have been tracking her for a long time now — like a cat-and-mouse game, being baited and led around every single time. Now, at last, we can count her as annihilated. Would you not say that we have eliminated a great scourge from the world on behalf of all living beings, and accumulated great karmic merit?”

With the corpse specter destroyed, it was equivalent to cutting off the source of the poison. The people she had bitten and infected — those who could be saved would be saved, those beyond saving would have to be handled accordingly. And with the antidote now in hand, the panic this corpse-venom plague had brought would gradually subside. Common people would no longer live in daily terror wondering whether the person beside them might suddenly transform into a corpse fiend and bite and infect others.

This was the principle of cutting down the enemy general first — the most difficult to kill and the most vicious had been destroyed. What remained was a scattering of disarray. Even if it would take some time, peace would eventually be restored.

As for those who died in the process of being treated — that was beyond their control. It was no different from war. There was no such thing as a war without casualties — even an ordinary plague was the same.

They had done everything they could.

Lang Jiuchuan gave a wry smile: “Of course it counts.”

The moment her words fell, both of them gave a faint shudder. At the same instant, they felt a dense, powerful surge of karmic merit and faith enter their soul seas. This great quantity of karmic merit caused Gong Tinglan — whose vital energy had been severely depleted and spiritual power greatly drained — to visibly and rapidly recover. His complexion brightened before their very eyes, no longer as deathly pale and haggard as before. He could not help but let a look of delight cross his face.

Lang Jiuchuan experienced the same — but this time, she truly could not feel even a trace of happiness. There was only mounting fury and desolation, and because of it, her expression darkened into something bleak and shadowed.

Gong Tinglan noticed this. His smile faded slightly. He followed her line of sight toward the blackened earth and asked: “What is it? Something wrong?”

“Karmic merit and faith, the more the better — and that goes not just for us cultivators, but for every living being and spiritual creature in the world. But this time — I would rather none of it had ever appeared at all. The karmic merit brought by human-made disasters is too heavy a burden to bear.”

Lang Jiuchuan’s voice carried a bone-chilling coldness, mingled with the icy snowflakes, making it feel especially desolate and cutting.

She was not being sentimental. She simply felt that those common people should never have had to live in such terror and dread — nor should they have lost their lives so needlessly. Especially not from a man-made disaster.

Gong Tinglan was no fool. In an instant he grasped the deeper meaning in her words. “You mean to say that this corpse specter calamity was the handiwork of that old monster, Tantai Wuji?”

“Before, I still harbored doubts. I had also tried to probe the situation — this plague would throw all of Dahan into turmoil and chaos, which runs entirely contrary to what he desires: thriving national fortune. My suspicion was only perhaps seventy or eighty percent. But just now, the last trace of power that the corpse specter expelled was his source soul force. He used his own power to craft this corpse specter — and ultimately brought about this catastrophe.”

Lang Jiuchuan said coldly: “He is more ruthless and more without limits than we ever imagined. He does not hesitate to use any means necessary to reach his ends. A man like this still harbors delusions of attaining the Great Dao? Is he trying to fall to demonhood and become some kind of dark patriarch?”

Gong Tinglan’s expression turned thoroughly ugly. “What is he trying to accomplish? What benefit is there to him in having this plague break out…”

His words trailed off as he frowned, thinking of how Tantai Wuji had harvested the fortune of the great clans — and was now harvesting the life force of common people. Was he not also collecting their fate and destiny in the same stroke? It was the same pattern.

And if someone arose to save the world, this person would naturally be one of great and flourishing fortune. If they succeeded, their karmic merit would multiply enormously — which would be of great use to him. It was exactly what had happened in the past: before Lang Jiuchuan had been suppressed by him, he had used one hundred thousand lives to force her to save the suffering and accumulate karmic merit.

The current corpse-venom plague was nothing more than a repetition of the disaster at Pancheng all those years ago.

And Lang Jiuchuan’s fate, then…

Gong Tinglan’s face settled into grim lines. “History repeating itself — this is aimed squarely at you.”

Lang Jiuchuan let out a mocking laugh. “More than that. Whatever happens, this scheme of his is a win for him on both counts — it is advantageous to him regardless of the outcome. In his eyes, the ants who died contributed their life force and fate, which he collected for his own use. And if I save the world, I accumulate karmic merit, my fortune flourishes — and I become even more useful to him. After all — in his eyes, I have always been nothing but that meddlesome little monkey who, no matter how much it leaps and bounds about, can never escape from his Five-Fingered Mountain. Have I not?”

Tantai Wuji was supremely arrogant. He believed that having lived a thousand years, he had long since glimpsed the workings of fate throughout those endless ages. He possessed more than enough patience to await the arrival of the right moment. The formations he had laid, the people and circumstances within them — no matter how they struggled, all of it lay within his grasp.

He had lived too long. Long enough to believe himself the foremost person under heaven, with no one capable of surpassing him.

And yet — who could have conceived that there existed someone who, by ceaselessly stripping others of their lifespan and physical bodies, had gone on surviving wretchedly, prolonging his existence across a thousand years?

He had treated the Tantai clan as his own personal nest, cultivating a den of creatures within it. Every member was his supply — and yet he did not know that everything he had done defied the very laws of heaven and earth. Even if he had used secret arts to evade the consequences of cause and effect, done was done. The fortune of the Tantai clan had grown shallower and more depleted with every generation, and its members had grown ever harder to bear Daoist roots and spiritual nature — this was heaven reclaiming what rightfully belonged to them. It was also punishment.

Gong Tinglan listened to her analysis, the hairs on his neck standing on end.

“His thoughts run deeper than a ten-thousand-fathom abyss. With such profound calculations — Little Ninth, does that not mean you are walking precisely along the board he has laid out?”

Lang Jiuchuan gave a single nod. Her expression was cold and resolute.

“One day — king shall not see king.”