Heavenly fire, fallen stones. Heaven’s punishment upon the Tantai clan.

The cry of alarm spread through all of Longtan Town and carried outward, farther and farther still. This Heaven’s punishment would later be recorded in the annals of history as the first year of Jian’an — the shocking upheaval at the imperial mausoleums, when heavenly fire descended from the sky.

For now, deep within the imperial mausoleums, the chaos ignited by the heavenly fire was growing more severe. The outer formation had been violently destroyed by Lang Jiuchuan’s heavenly fire. She then drew upon the power of the Nine Abyssal laws, combined with the skeletal bone-stones she had previously buried, drawing out the black baleful energy to spread rapidly, contaminating the imperial dynasty’s vital fortune — some of it was smothered, some quietly dispersed.

The grand formation continued to collapse. The fire, whipped by the wild gales, was fierce and violent — and yet a boundary seal contained it, preventing it from spreading outward to the forests beyond. It also sealed off the shouts of the guards and the clamor of those trying to fight the fire. They could not breach the boundary to put it out.

“Heaven’s punishment — it is Heaven’s punishment! The imperial family has angered the heavens, and this is the retribution descending upon them!” one guard screamed shrilly, kneeling on the ground as he stared at the raging inferno.

A garrison commander kicked him aside and gazed at the mausoleum fire with deep, brooding worry. They could not fight the fire — something seemed to be blocking them. Was this truly Heaven’s punishment? Was it because of the plague, and the coldness the imperial family had shown toward their own people? Or was it because these mausoleums harbored something that should never have existed?

Whatever the case, the suspicion and the fire provided Lang Jiuchuan with the most perfect cover.

She seized the chaos to penetrate layer after layer of tomb passages and mechanisms, not forgetting to throw down one or two enhanced Five Thunder Talismans as she went — using brute force to destroy the formation mechanisms, even as countless dangers surged toward her in the process.

Lang Jiuchuan was racing against every second. She had to retrieve those skeletal remains before the old monster arrived.

The road was fraught with peril at every step, yet Lang Jiuchuan pressed through it like a female general who had cut down countless enemies. The black hair at her brow was damp with sweat, clinging to her forehead and cheeks. She drove straight into the deepest, most central part of the imperial mausoleums — the Extreme Heaven Hall.

The hall doors, forged from finely-worked stone, were tightly shut.

Lang Jiuchuan stood before them and examined the carved engravings on the doors — a ritual altar formation diagram, the figures and objects carved upon it vivid and lifelike.

She fixed her gaze upon it, and a dizziness began to rise in her mind, as though she were about to be dragged into the altar. Just as her consciousness was on the verge of being pulled away and Feng Ya was about to call out to interrupt her, Lang Jiuchuan’s eyes snapped open. The tip of her foot pushed off and she scaled the door. Both hands formed seals, and the tips of her fingers gathered a vast and majestic resonance of the Dao. At the topmost point — the Taiji Bagua formation — she channeled her spiritual power to shift the arrangement of its positions.

Click. Click.

The mechanism engaged. The heavy, intricately carved stone door began slowly swinging inward.

Feng Ya asked: “How did you figure it out?”

Lang Jiuchuan pressed her lips together briefly. “When I was young, he taught me.”

When that old ghost had instructed her in Daoist arts, formations, and talismans, he had indeed put forth his genuine abilities, cultivating her with great care. But what was his true intention — to raise a powerful instrument for his own use, or to see how far the talent and potential of someone he had personally molded could go?

Lang Jiuchuan stepped into the Wuji Hall. Though her memories were fragmented, they were not entirely absent. One look at the scene inside made her pupils contract sharply. A searing, bone-deep pain spread through her entire body, making her bend slightly at the waist.

For above the domed ceiling of the hall hung a great star atlas, with night-luminescent pearls inlaid as stars. A formation drew in the faint radiance of starlight to cascade downward, forming a thread of vital life energy flowing straight to what lay below.

And below, a golden river — crystallized entirely from the purest dragon-vein energy — meandered through the hall. At the center of that dragon-vein river, a massive sacrificial altar, stacked high from dark abyssal mysterious stones, stood towering and immovable.

Starlight above. Dragon-vein energy below. An endless cycle of renewal, nurturing new life.

Lang Jiuchuan’s body trembled faintly. Her gaze fell upon the sacrificial altar, and her feet seemed to be seized by something — she could not take another step forward. She could only stand there, staring fixedly at that… figure.

Could it still be called a figure?

No. It was nothing more than a skeleton of bleached white. Though the skeleton had long lost all flesh and blood, it still maintained a seated cross-legged posture. Its bone age was not great — some of the bones had not even fully fused — yet the skeleton was exceptionally crystalline in quality, with a faint, pure, upright, and unyielding resonance of the Dao circulating within it, and a faint, delicate fragrance drifting from its bones.

Lang Jiuchuan’s nose grew sore, and tears welled and overflowed into her eyes.

This was her previous life.

I’ve found you, little one.

Six soul-binding chains of dark abyssal mysterious iron — each inscribed with intricate cursed talismanic runes — pierced through the four limbs, the skull, and the sternum. The other ends of the chains were buried deep within the dragon veins, with vein-energy climbing along the chains, and the golden vital fortune swirling around the altar also converging upon the skeleton — then transforming into pure energy that was channeled down into some hidden place beneath the base of the altar on which she sat.

Her skeletal remains had been refined into a fortune-diverting, tribulation-deflecting converter — endlessly squeezed and extracted, without end.

All the fortune he enjoyed. All the suffering she bore. What a scheme.

Fury blazed up in Lang Jiuchuan’s eyes like a fire that could incinerate heaven — but she forced it back down. This was not the time for grief. Blind rage would only waste precious moments.

She made her decision without hesitation. Channeling a thick aura of righteous energy to protect herself, with a talisman brush in hand and the resonance of the Dao infused within it — she transformed the brush into a divine blade. With a push of her tiptoes, she launched herself directly onto the altar. The hand that wielded the blade swept down.

To gently undo the formation and cautiously release the bonds? Impossible. She smashed through with brute force. Even if it achieved nothing else, she would strip this Reincarnation Fortune-Devouring Formation of its purpose.

Crack.

The dark abyssal energy of the soul-binding chains and the overwhelming power of their restrictions immediately struck out at her — but were suppressed by the formidable divine might emanating from the divine blade. With a sharp ring, one chain was severed.

She would cut through every shackle binding these bones, just as she had once severed the willpower shackles on that devotional effigy in Pancheng.

One. Two. Three…

When the final chain fell, every last fragment of Lang Jiuchuan’s soul released entirely — no more suppression, no more restraint. A flash of realization came crashing through: so that was it. Even after her nirvana and rebirth, with her soul and body merged as one and her spirit and Dao unified into a wholly new Lang Jiuchuan, she had always sensed a faint gap within her soul that had never been filled — so that whenever she delved into the Buddhist Dao of Venerable Luole, she always felt as though something was still missing.

It had been these skeletal shackles. She had never broken free. And so somewhere in her subconscious, she had always been held by this lingering regret.

Now the shackles were severed. She was completely free. There was nothing left undone.

“I’m taking you with me.” Lang Jiuchuan pulled a large piece of plain cloth from her bundle, wrapped the skeletal remains within it, sealed it with a hand seal, and set it in one corner of the altar.

Old Lord Huang waited on the other side, trembling with fear. He had nearly been dissolved by the formation restrictions within the hall. Now, seeing the bones secured, he did not delay for a single instant — he caught the bundle in his teeth and left the Extreme Heaven Hall, disappearing into a rat tunnel without a trace.

Lang Jiuchuan felt the weight lift from her heart. Even if the bones ended up scattered to the eight winds, she would rather that than leave them in this place of evil.

Endless renewal?

He does not deserve it.

Watch me destroy this life — and sever his ambitions.

At that very moment, Tantai Wuji felt the restriction suppressing Lang Jiuchuan’s skeletal remains snap. A sharp pain tore through his spiritual platform. His eyes blazed with savage fury, and his figure moved like lightning through the shadowed paths — every ghost he collided with was torn to shreds.

Faster. Faster.