The moment she heard it — the pattern of a prodigious genius arising from the ancestral line every hundred years — Tantai Princess’s expression shifted violently. The gaze she turned on Lang Jiuchuan held a trace of dread.

Every hundred years without fail, the Tantai clan would produce one of breathtaking, peerless brilliance. Yet each would fall — either at the peak of their power, or before ever reaching it. And then another genius would emerge in turn. How had Lang Jiuchuan come to know of this pattern?

She and Lang Jiuchuan had grown up together from childhood. She could not claim to understand her completely, but she believed few people knew her temperament better than her oldest and closest companion. And Lang Jiuchuan had never been one to fire blind shots without aim. Whatever she said, there was always an implication beneath the surface.

That she should now suddenly bring up the matter of the Tantai ancestral line caused Tantai Princess’s heart to clench. Especially since this very matter had once stirred suspicion within her — suspicion she had later not dared to pursue further.

The Tantai clan — was it simply that they possessed such tremendous karmic fortune that genius never ceased to emerge from their line? Until the National Preceptor’s own generation, when that pattern seemed to end. The National Preceptor had now lived beyond one hundred years — more than two hundred, in fact. If the pattern held, was his turn drawing near?

No — if a genius arose every hundred years, how had the National Preceptor broken this rule?

Tantai Princess did not dare follow the thought further. Her heart was pounding furiously, and she had an uneasy premonition that whatever was about to be said was not going to be good.

“What are you trying to say?”

“One in every hundred years — one dies, one is born. Is this pattern heaven’s design, or the work of human hands? Has anyone across these generations, your ancestors upon ancestors, ever stopped to wonder?” Lang Jiuchuan said lightly, with a faint smile. “Or did they simply believe that the Tantai clan was sheltered by heaven, and this was its destined fortune?”

Tantai Princess said nothing. This uncanny pattern — deliberately obscured in the clan records — had haunted every generation of Tantai descendants like a recurring nightmare. Even when she had happened upon it while searching the clan records and found it peculiar, she had not thought to probe deeper.

Especially after the Tantai clan had become the imperial family — everything prior to that had grown even more obscure in the records. What she knew and could investigate were only the records from after they had become royalty.

Now Lang Jiuchuan had suddenly raised this subject and mentioned human hands — her meaning was…

A thought flashed through Tantai Princess’s mind at lightning speed, and in that instant she was seized by a horror that left her entire body rigid, her breath coming in sharp, frantic gasps.

If one were to ask who Lang Jiuchuan hated most in this world, it was naturally their former master, the National Preceptor. She would certainly one day confront him face to face. The National Preceptor bore the surname Tantai — he was the ancient patriarch of their Tantai lineage, his lifespan having reached two hundred years. And Lang Jiuchuan had now raised the matter of human agency.

The tangled knot in her mind was, piece by piece, being teased open and straightened — until one single thread shot through and linked everything together in a straight, unbroken line.

All color drained entirely from Tantai Princess’s face.

This “human agency” — could it also be pointing at the National Preceptor? Was she saying he had seized the bodies of others to survive?

“I’ve heard that our esteemed ‘good master’ did not awaken until the age of ten — and from that point onward, displayed exceptional gifts and blazed with glory, going on to become the National Preceptor revered by all as though he were a god, living to a tremendously long age. Tell me — do you think the Tantai Qing who exists after the age of ten is still the same Tantai Qing who existed before it?”

Lang Jiuchuan’s voice was like the piercing cold wind outside the window, carrying with it a bone-deep chill that bored its way into Tantai Princess’s ears.

“And what of the geniuses before him — how did each of them arise in a blaze of brilliance, only to suddenly fall?”

Boom.

These words struck like a thunderclap directly overhead, shattering completely the last shred of hope and the last sliver of doubt that remained in Tantai Princess’s heart.

Lang Jiuchuan had stopped just short of stating outright that this ancient patriarch was a counterfeit who had seized others’ bodies.

Tantai Princess’s entire body shook. Before her eyes rose up the image of the National Preceptor’s coldness, his icy disregard for blood ties and familial sentiment — and those deep, fathomless eyes of his, as though they had accumulated the weight of immeasurable years, distant and unreachable even when he stood right before her.

A terrifying truth surfaced in her mind. Her heart was as though seized by an invisible hand, squeezing tighter and tighter, until she could barely breathe.

“No… that cannot be!” Tantai Princess’s lips — drained of all color — trembled faintly, her voice so low it was nearly inaudible.

This was no longer merely a collapse of faith. This was a total overturning of everything she had known. She felt as though she had tumbled into an abyss, where countless ghostly claws reached up from below, grasping at her, trying to drag her down into the darkest depths of hell.

Her vision swam. Without her noticing when it had happened, Lang Jiuchuan had taken several sheets of yellow spirit paper from the desk and torn them into small figures, spreading them out. She began from the first figure, stacking one atop the next, one after another — until the last one was placed. In the end, every figure had become one.

Tantai Princess was clever by nature, and having spent over a decade beside Lang Jiuchuan, she understood in an instant.

What brilliant, peerless genius emerging once every hundred years? What invariable death followed by new life? It was simply one soul seizing a new body — reborn again and again. From start to finish, they had all been the same person.

And so their sudden awakening and extraordinary gifts had never once been heaven’s blessing. The knowledge had always been there — the memories of past lives, the cultivation of past lives, growing stronger and stronger with each passing age, the soul’s lifespan stretching ever further.

Tantai Princess let out a muffled grunt. She clutched at her chest, which was gripped by a wrenching pain, her face contorted in anguish.

She had always taken pride in bearing the Tantai bloodline. She had made it her mission to guard the clan and protect Dahan. She had taken supporting the National Preceptor as her guiding principle. Yet the one she had guarded and followed — was he nothing but a malevolent ghost who had seized the bodies of one descendant after another?

What did the members of the Tantai clan amount to in his eyes, then? Vessels? Spent medicinal dregs?

Tantai Princess snapped her gaze toward Lang Jiuchuan, her eyes turning red. “Impossible. You are lying to me. You are driving a wedge between us. You hate him so bitterly that you would say something so outrageous.”

Lang Jiuchuan looked at the face twisted in collapse and breakdown before her. Not a trace of pity moved in her eyes — only an icy, absolute resolve.

“Ah Yue — you know me, and so you ought to know that I do not speak idly without basis. I am laying out the facts. Of course — you bear the Tantai surname after all, and Tantai blood flows in your veins. If the Tantai clan were to produce an immortal — or an even higher sovereign — even if it came at the cost of ten thousand lives, perhaps you and yours would welcome it gladly. If so, I shall not trouble you further.”

She turned to leave.

“Stop right there!” Tantai Princess cried out sharply. “Speak plainly. What immortal, what sovereign — how much do you actually know?”

“Do you even know what his Great Dao truly is?”

Tantai Princess was struck momentarily speechless. A look of confusion crossed her face. And suddenly she realized — she truly did not know. He had only said that she could assist him in achieving the Great Dao. But what that Dao was, he had never once spoken of it. And she had simply followed — because she believed in him. And more than that — because she feared him.

Lang Jiuchuan, seeing this, let out a mocking smile. “You see — he trusts no one. That includes both you and me.”

Tantai Princess stood rooted to the spot in a daze. “I don’t understand.”

She stared at those small paper figures stacked one atop the other, murmuring to herself: “Who is he, really? And what exactly does he intend?”

“The true founding patriarch of the Tantai clan bore the name Tantai Wuji. He vanished while attempting to break through to the highest realm — that is how your clan’s records tell it, is it not? But has anyone ever known — he never vanished at all. He has been here the entire time, within the Tantai clan, stripping away the fortune and bodies of his descendants, one generation after another, deceiving heaven and concealing it from the earth, surviving wretchedly on borrowed time.”

Tantai Princess stared blankly at the paper figures in her hands. Her hands gave a tremor. The paper figures fluttered down and scattered across the floor — yet in her eyes, they all bore the same face, the same form.

How utterly absurd. How could something so preposterous exist in this world?