Forged from the soul, commanded through the talisman.

Easy words to say, yet they required vast and surging spiritual power and divine soul to accomplish. But what Lang Jiuchuan intended to do extended far beyond this — she would also expose the face that Tantai Wuji had kept hidden for years, and reveal it to the world.

This time, she would utterly tear away his false and vicious mask!

Standing aloft in the sky, the chill of early spring wind sent her plain azure robes snapping and billowing. She took in the entirety of Wu Jing within her gaze, eyes sharp and cutting as she observed the strange demonic energy — a murky, dark red — that blanketed the city.

Born of the righteous path, the pursuit of the Great Way was not wrong in itself. Yet one should not use living souls as sacrificial offerings to achieve the Great Way one sought. That was not the Way — it was sin.

What Tantai Wuji had done was to court karmic catastrophe, to willingly fall into the demonic path — a transgression so deep and heavy that he should never know rebirth through all eternity!

Lang Jiuchuan drew a long breath. Her hands formed seals. The moment her mind stirred, the golden core within her spun with sudden ferocity, and the pure, immense core energy surged and roiled outward. The spiritual energy around her body glowed brilliantly.

She held two fingers pressed together like a brush, and using her own divine soul as the guide, she blended the power of the golden core with the golden light of merit she had obtained long ago from resolving the corpse poison. Slowly, she began to trace strokes through the void.

With each brushstroke, a dazzling golden talisman script lit up in the air — ancient Dao-resonance woven within it, stirring the spiritual energy of the heavens and earth into sympathetic harmony. This was no attack. It was a talisman edict containing supreme righteous energy and a summoning intent, a decree born of the golden core’s will.

Below, the Head of the Gong Family and the others watched, their hearts surging with excitement.

This is the might of a golden core Zhenren. The Dao Sect still has hope!

It was the first time Liuxiu felt that the Head of the Gong Family had done something genuinely good — all that coercion and persuasion, exerting every effort to trick him down from the mountain. Otherwise, how would he ever have witnessed the bearing of a true Zhenren?

Her Way was one he yearned for, and toward which he would strive!

As the talisman edict Lang Jiuchuan had forged and inscribed took shape, she flipped her left hand over, and a luminous reflection stone no larger than a fist — carved with mysterious array inscriptions and radiant with flowing light — appeared in her palm.

The corner of her lips curved. Tantai Wuji had fabricated the claim that she was a demon cultivator disrupting the Great Phan — then let the world see for itself who the true demon cultivator was, who was truly bringing calamity upon the living.

The magical tool in her hand was a reflection stone that had been passed down several years ago. The array inscriptions and Dao-resonance intent etched upon the stone gave it the ability to record images — it was one of Feng Ya’s most treasured possessions. On the day they went to set the fire, he had deliberately brought it along as part of their plan for the future.

What the reflection stone now held was precisely the recording made within the imperial mausoleum that day — a complete and truthful account of everything that had transpired inside the Hall of Supreme Heaven!

“Go!”

Lang Jiuchuan uttered a light command and flung the stone upward with one hand. The reflection stone floated aloft and burst into ten thousand rays of light. She struck it with a hand seal, and in an instant, the light expanded rapidly — forming a vast, crystal-clear illusory light screen in the high sky!

“What is this?” The Head of the Gong Family stared at the light screen in astonishment.

Feng Ya crossed his arms and said, “A manifestation of evil.”

Liuxiu’s expression grew grave, his face heavy with solemnity.

Lang Jiuchuan used her divine sense and spiritual power to project the light screen outward at maximum reach, spreading it ever further — as though unfurling a sky-curtain across the heavens so that all people under this sky could see with perfect clarity.

Everyone gazed in fright at this suddenly appearing light screen, convinced that the end of days had arrived. They fled in all directions, calling out to one another, craning their necks upward.

What was this?

Everyone asked the same question — but very quickly they understood. For the scenes within the light screen began to shift, to unfold, to narrate.

Before the eyes of the watching world, every corrupt scene within the Hall of Supreme Heaven appeared without concealment. The so-called State Preceptor was in truth the thousand-year-old patriarch Tantai Wuji, who had seized the body of one of his own descendants — and now had further taken possession of the Holy Maiden’s flesh. The ferocious face he revealed and the radical tone of his words, every exchange utterly chilling to the bone. The altar built and nourished with netherworld stone, the dark chains engraved with soul-binding rune inscriptions used to suppress the skeletal remains of Lang Jiuchuan’s previous incarnation — using her to nourish his original body, enrich the dragon vein, and steal destiny and fortune for himself. The fierce battle of magic between him and Lang Jiuchuan after his original body was seized. And the venomous gaze he cast as he finally abandoned the imperial princess’s body and fled in disgrace behind a blood shield technique.

Scene after scene, raw and harrowing, made souls tremble and eyes nearly burst from their sockets.

These real and unaltered images were like a silent thunderclap, detonating within the hearts of every citizen of the Great Phan, and even the cultivators who had secluded themselves from the world.

The great clans that had been declining for years without ever finding a reason — every one of them was shattered within their hearts. So that was why.

And Yang Xiuyong of the Yang Clan saw it. He stepped forward, his face streaming with tears and blood alike, and confirmed everything. The disappearance of the three great clans — Qian, Li, and Yang — had been the result of exactly this malicious theft of fortune and calculated destruction. Had it not been for Lang Jiuchuan, he, the lone remaining branch of his line, would have been taken as well.

In an instant, curses and rage erupted in every corner of the land. The awe with which the people had once regarded the State Preceptor was now precisely matched by the depth of their loathing and fury. The common folk — feeling they had been deceived, penned up like sheep awaiting slaughter — burned the longevity tablets erected in the State Preceptor’s honor, toppled and smashed and set fire to the shrines and statues built in his name.

What manner of thing had they been offering reverence to? This was clearly an evil god.

Every ounce of reverence they had held for him transformed entirely into repulsion and hatred, lashing back at Tantai Wuji without mercy.

This scene fell upon Tantai Wuji’s own eyes as well. His eyes went wide with fury as he let out a roar of rage. He had calculated every possibility — but he had never anticipated that Lang Jiuchuan and her companions still had this reserve move, this killing weapon, to tear away his face and expose him to the world.

Now the backlash of the masses came crashing over him like a boundless tide, gnawing at his divine soul and consciousness, churning within his core energy center. Every strand of fortune he had ever accumulated scattered away from his divine soul, and he could not hold onto a single thread.

“No — this cannot be!” Tantai Wuji’s face revealed a fear and panic he had never known before.

His divine soul had always depended on the fortune he had gathered over a thousand years for its nourishment, enabling him to continuously cultivate. Without it, he dared not imagine what his cultivation would regress to. Even having transformed into a demonic entity, it might no longer remain within his control.

Tantai Wuji summoned the Blood Soul Lamp, bit through the tip of his tongue, and spat a mouthful of refined blood onto it. An unceasing stream of demonic energy connected to him. He sat cross-legged, steadied his mind, and gathered all that backlash — all that surging fury and resentment — compressing it entirely into pure demonic energy that he wrapped around his divine soul.

The demonic energy roiled violently across his body and began to spread outward.

On the Lang Family’s side, every face had gone pale as they watched those scenes — especially Cui Shi and Lang Zhengping. Even though they had already learned the truth of the switch from Lang Jiuchuan herself, they had never known that her death in her previous life had been so brutal and so devastating.

“He is not human — he is a demon!” Lang Zhengping screamed out, his eyes burning red.

Cui Shi coughed up a mouthful of blood from the heart and collapsed softly into Cheng Nanny’s arms, her breath faint and barely there, two trails of bloody tears forced from her eyes.

The rest of the Lang Family stood in silence, eyes red, as the clamor from outside grew — the Imperial Guards and townspeople, their minds corroded by demonic energy and crying out that the demon cultivators must be uprooted, pressing forward in an attempt to break through. A thread of fierce, wrathful energy rose unbidden in every heart.

“I’ll fight them to the death!” Lang Caizhao snatched up her red spear and charged out. The others followed immediately.

Demon cultivator — who in hell is the demon cultivator? That old monster Tantai is the one!

No one held back these young men. The fire burning in their hearts had to be released — kept inside, it would only fester and erode their fighting spirit. The people of the Lang Family could not keep hiding in the rear!