In the first year of the Jian’an reign, that blood-drenched month swept past in blinding speed, leaving in its wake countless households shattered and ruined, the court frantic and overwhelmed, and the common people clamoring with grievances.

The greatest catastrophe to strike the dynasty — the corpse-toxin plague — had been brought under a measure of control, yet this epidemic was unlike any that had come before, terrifying beyond all precedent. It had sown tremendous panic and become the greatest crisis since the founding of the Great Dan dynasty. Though the court had eventually taken active measures to treat the sick and save lives, no small number of people knew that in the beginning, the Emperor had intended to contain the plague by burning the infected — he had produced no effective treatment of his own.

It was the ninth young lady of the Lang Family from the Marquis Kaiping’s residence in Wu Jing — the female Daoist, Qingyi, who had gold lotus testimony — who had snatched people back from beneath the flames of the imperial envoy’s torches, who had then formulated the antidote for the corpse toxin, and who had drawn countless spiritual talismans to serve as auxiliary medicinal agents. Although the plague had ultimately still claimed many lives, compared to a mass death event or widespread civil unrest, what had been accomplished was already a great good.

Lang Jiuchuan’s benevolence and merit were etched into the hearts of the people. Some had erected long-life memorial tablets in her name, and the first village where the outbreak had occurred — Guanjiang Village — had built a small living shrine in her honor. It was erected brick by brick and tile by tile by the villagers of Guanjiang and by those she had saved, built with the most devout hearts imaginable. The faith and votive prayers it held were pure and concentrated.

Her reputation for virtue, given a further push and swell by those with their own designs, reached its absolute pinnacle.

In stark and vivid contrast to her soaring fame and power, the Imperial Preceptor’s reputation had plummeted sharply. Throughout the entire corpse-toxin plague, the very person charged with the sacred duty of protecting the nation — the Imperial Preceptor — had kept himself completely out of sight and hidden away, claiming he was in seclusion to pray for blessings. Yet compared to the many Daoist priests who had personally participated in treating the sick and saving lives, what had his prayers and blessings truly accomplished?

The eyes of the people were bright. When they were mired in crisis, it was those Daoist masters, physicians, and even soldiers of the court who were diligently boiling medicines and saving lives, fighting for every day and every hour. Could prayer and blessings make the corpse toxin vanish?

So though the criticism had not yet reached the level of open denunciation, both the Imperial Preceptor’s credibility and that of the new Emperor had suffered a considerable decline.

A voice had even risen claiming that the Imperial Preceptor himself had deliberately manufactured the national catastrophe in order to cultivate some wicked and unorthodox technique. There was no way to verify such a claim — it lacked the foundation to be widely believed — and so it was quickly suppressed. But it had nonetheless planted a small seed in the hearts of some.

The misfortunes brought by the corpse-toxin plague left the new Emperor vexed beyond endurance. In particular, when the death toll was tallied, he suffered a splitting headache over the numbers.

The sheer count of deaths was already distressing enough. But to prevent the deceased from turning into corpse wraiths, their heads had to be manually severed and the bodies burned — something many of the common people, who prized the ideal of peaceful burial, found deeply difficult to accept. Though they knew it was the right course of action, their hearts could not reconcile themselves to it. They had no outlet but to vent — cursing the new Emperor as lacking the virtue to match his position, cursing the Imperial Preceptor for being blind enough to have chosen an Emperor worse even than the late one, and laying the blame for the people of Great Dan having no peace on him.

The new Emperor felt profoundly wronged. He had been on the throne barely half a year. He had not done a single thing — and yet he had shouldered the blame for all of it!

And more painfully still, the corpse-toxin plague had barely reached its tail end — with some people not yet recovered — when in the second month, out of nowhere, a mountain landslide appeared as an ill omen. Fortunately there were no casualties, and only a wealthy merchant’s estate was swept away and destroyed.

Yet no sooner had the landslide occurred than another town witnessed the spectacle of ten thousand rats moving through the night. Hard on the heels of that came a mild earthquake. Across various regions, unusual natural disasters arose one after another, monsters and spirit beasts ran amok, and the hearts of the people filled with mounting dread and fear.

Wave upon wave, each one before the last had settled. Was this truly not divine punishment?

In the streets and alleyways, everyone was discussing how the frequent disasters were the result of the imperial family provoking the wrath of the heavens, bringing the nation’s vital fortune into instability. Some, driven by the need to vent their resentment, toppled and burned shrines and temples dedicated to the Imperial Preceptor, demanding the new Emperor issue an edict of self-reproach.

“Following what you instructed, without anything being stated outright, the discourse has already begun to spread.”

Within the Tongtian Pavilion, A’Piao reported respectfully to Lang Jiuchuan, her gaze falling on the small Jiuta Pagoda. She had even managed to involve her own master — she was truly something.

The natural disasters and rumors spreading across various regions now all had her people quietly working behind the scenes, driving events forward. The goal was to shake the Imperial Preceptor’s credibility and that of the imperial family.

Lang Jiuchuan understood clearly: Tantai Wuji had appropriated the vital fortune energy of countless thousands to nourish himself, and this depended in great measure on the sustaining support of the faith and votive prayers of the tens of thousands of people. This was both his source of power and the very foundation upon which he was revered as a god. She could not shatter this faith and those votive prayers in a single stroke — she could only erode them gradually, just as she had carved a small hole in the Imperial Mausoleum to let the vital fortune energy leak away.

So long as there was erosion, he would suffer backlash from those votive prayers. And once faith collapsed entirely, that backlash would be even stronger, even more impossible to resist.

She intended to disrupt his cultivation and create fractures in the foundation of his power — keeping him scrambling and overwhelmed — so that he would be too preoccupied to attend to other matters. That would give her the opportunity to blast open his Imperial Mausoleum, dig up his grave, grind his remains to dust, and scatter his ashes. In doing so, she would also be weakening a portion of his strength — and even if he arrived in time, it would be too late to do anything.

Otherwise, how was she supposed to contend against this countless-thousand-year-old demon who had drawn on limitless vital fortune energy?

Moreover, elevating her own reputation served two purposes: one was to increase her own energy reserves; the second was to protect her family by the weight of her standing. The greater her fame, the more the imperial family or any other hostile party would hold back out of wariness, not daring to make a move against the Lang Family.

“It is still not enough. Attack all the shrines, temples, and Daoist monasteries that house enshrined likenesses of the Imperial Preceptor. The extreme elements — if they get hurt, they get hurt. You and Fuqi each lead a team, and Jiang Che should move as well. But do not harm ordinary people or the innocent.” Lang Jiuchuan said. “As for the Canglang Monastery, I will attend to that myself.”

She intended to set fires everywhere — to have things flourish in all four directions at once.

Fuqi hesitated for a moment. “When something abnormal happens, it must have a cause. If fires are lit all over the place, will it not make him suspicious? One incident might be a coincidence, but two or more locations — especially when all of it targets and weakens the Imperial Preceptor’s power — might backfire and instead make the common people feel it is a deliberate attack on the Imperial Preceptor, which could only increase the votive prayers directed toward him.”

“No need to worry. We are not hurting people — only creating panic. What matters most is that his tendrils can be severed by us one by one.” Lang Jiuchuan smiled. “He is exceedingly arrogant. Before, through the corpse wraiths, I employed the technique of striking a mountain from across its peak to cause backlash upon him — which was also an expression of my fury. He knows my temperament clearly enough. He will only think that this is me venting my anger over the corpse wraith affair and stirring up a few troublesome matters that are, on the surface, harmless — even if these troublesome matters genuinely will preoccupy his attention and disrupt his cultivation. So long as he does not perceive my true intent, he will play along with me at a leisurely pace.”

But these nuisances and obstructions were real — they would genuinely divide his attention, and might even cause backlash from his votive prayers.

Once his faith suffered damage and the backlash from his votive prayers threw his mind into turmoil, that would be the optimal moment to go straight for his heart.

She did not seek to annihilate this ancient monster in a single stroke. She was not that greedy. First she would grind his remains to dust, ruin his plans, and frustrate his cause — that would be considered half of her revenge for the life-destroying enmity settled.

And all these various actions that on the surface resembled a child throwing a tantrum while playing house — they served only as self-protection, as a means to chip away at a portion of his power, so that when it came time to dig up the grave, she might accomplish twice the result with half the effort. If even that was not achievable, then it would simply mean heaven was not in her favor!

Lang Jiuchuan rose to her feet, her eyes gleaming with brilliant, fierce light. “The night is dark and the wind is high. Scatter — and go play with fire.”