Rong Chen Zi descended the cliff and quickly found the place in the southeastern corner where the formation’s power had weakened. The vegetation nearby was lush and dense. He probed with his spiritual sense, and saw only a vast, white expanse below — as though veiled in a thin mist, impossible to see clearly — yet his heart sank. If this entire expanse was Three-Eyed Snake eggs…

There was no trace of any other magical fluctuation within the formation. He drew gradually closer, just stretching out the sticky pole, when a tremendous suction force suddenly rose from beneath the cliff. Rong Chen Zi felt a surge of alarm. His injuries were only just healed, his vital energy still unstable. Though he had been guarding against exactly this, he could not withstand it — he was pulled directly downward.

He was alarmed, but he did not cry out. Qingxuan and Qingsu above had no idea what was happening. If they heard him and came down, they would likely be unable to protect themselves. As for that He Bang…

Her image flashed through his mind like lightning — and he stopped there, refusing to think further. She was a scar to him, one he wanted to tuck away somewhere even he could not see.

Up on the cliff, He Bang had been lying there when she suddenly transformed back into human form. The residual image of her previous form still lingered in Qingxuan and Qingsu’s eyes when she had already flung herself headlong down the cliff. The momentum of Rong Chen Zi’s fall suddenly slowed. The suction of the formation below did not diminish in the slightest. He only felt a warmth against his chest — and there was a person pressed against him. Pressed, rather than embraced. The ancient formation was like a layer of solid ice, seizing him and He Bang tightly together.

He Bang pressed flush against him. In the urgency of the moment, she used a freezing technique to crystallize the moisture in the air below the cliff, working in tandem with the ancient formation to resist the suction from beneath. The result was that there was not a hairsbreadth of space between them.

Her body was too delicate and tender to endure the compression of solid ice, so she could only press deeper into Rong Chen Zi’s arms, the two of them clinging together.

Soft jade, warm fragrance, filling his embrace. Rong Chen Zi stood unmoved. “The formation has cracked. If we pull ourselves free now, what is below may escape its confinement. No matter what, we cannot let it reach the surface — the consequences would be unthinkable.”

He Bang was clearly not listening. Since the last time he had grabbed her by the throat, she had kept her distance from him. At this moment, her little face was scrunched into a tight knot, her body pressed as far forward as possible, not sparing him a single glance.

Rong Chen Zi frowned, but his voice remained steady. “I need a quarter hour to gather the mountain’s spiritual energy and repair the formation. Can your freezing technique hold?”

He Bang’s nose wrinkled faintly. She drew a sharp breath, her eyes luminous with a wet glimmer. She seemed about to say something — but looked up, saw Rong Chen Zi’s stern expression, and in the end said nothing at all. She simply gave a small nod. Rong Chen Zi formed hand seals and began drawing the nearby spiritual energy together. Looking back, he saw He Bang’s upper teeth biting into her lower lip, on the verge of tears. He let out a soft sigh, and then suddenly extended his right hand, forcing it between He Bang’s lower back and the solid ice. The gap was impossibly narrow. The back of his hand was scraped raw, blood dyeing the ice layer red. He Bang looked up at him. Rong Chen Zi lowered his head and met her gaze. A moment of silence — neither of them spoke again. By some means or other, he channeled the spiritual energy into the damaged ancient formation, and it began to thicken slowly. The suction force below seemed unable to hold much longer — it vanished abruptly.

Rong Chen Zi felt the weight beneath his feet lift. He held He Bang as the two of them emerged from the ice layer. Back on the cliff top, he withdrew his hand before Qingxuan and Qingsu rushed over. From his right elbow down was a mangled mess of raw skin and blood. Fortunately, it was only a surface wound — it looked terrible, but was not serious. He didn’t even furrow his brow, simply casting a minor blood-stopping incantation with a casual wave, tearing a strip from his inner robe, and preparing to bind the wound.

He Bang inhaled the scent of that divine flesh and blood, swallowing back she didn’t know how many mouthfuls of saliva. But seeing Rong Chen Zi’s grave expression, she managed not to say a word. She only quietly picked up a shard of ice soaked in his blood and tucked it in her mouth to curb her craving.

The Liu Mansion.

Chunyu Lin was leading a squad of soldiers through the various parts of Lingxia Town, spreading wood ash along the roads. The early winter air was already biting with cold. The soldiers were all dressed in padded jackets. He alone stood in brilliant red, vivid as blood, light as a spirit, as though he did not belong to the mortal world.

He leaned against a eucalyptus tree whose yellow leaves had fallen bare. The sky was a pale grey, like a face with a sullen expression. The sun hung thin and wan, like a flat disc of pale ice, dangling in the air without strength. Chunyu Lin watched a few late-migrating birds, and suddenly thought of the fine-grained, sand-like years that had passed in the waters of the Lingxia sea.

“Sacrificial Priest.” A girl’s voice came from behind him, soft and warm as winter sunlight. “It’s gotten cold — you should wear more layers.” A pale grey cloak was draped over his shoulders. Chunyu Lin turned and saw Liu Qinfang.

She wore a smoky-blue dress and jacket embroidered with golden-beaded orioles, her jade ornaments and pearl earrings carefully selected. Light powder and rouge had been applied to her face. She was fourteen or fifteen years old — like a bud on the cusp of blooming, fresh and young. But her eyes, for some reason, were red from what must have been a long night of weeping.

Chunyu Lin shifted his footing and stepped back half a pace. “Thank you for Miss Liu’s kind thought, but…”

Before he could continue, Liu Qinfang had already slipped away, red-faced.

Chunyu Lin could only sigh inwardly and return to directing the soldiers in their ash-laying.

Liu Qinfang walked back to the Liu Mansion and only then felt the ache in her feet. Her bound feet were barely three inches — she could not walk long distances. She sat down in the small triangular pavilion beside the rear garden pond, her heart entirely filled with the image of red robes and black hair, that half-smile of his, breathtaking and otherworldly.

“You hold him in your heart, but he may not care for you.” A voice behind her was pitched low, edged with caustic mockery. Yet its timbre was nearly indistinguishable from Liu Qinfang’s own.

Liu Qinfang startled and spun around. There was no one behind her. She sprang to her feet. The voice came again, with a cold laugh. “That Sacrificial Priest is indeed beautiful as an immortal, but the clam spirit at his side is no ordinary demon. Something she keeps close to her — would she easily give it to you?”

“Who are you?” Liu Qinfang searched warily in all directions. That voice… it was coming from the lake!

“You know perfectly well who I am. You pretend not to, because I can give you what you long for day and night.” The voice drew out its words at a leisurely, comfortable pace. “I could have eaten you — and yet I let you go. How could you not know who I am?”

Liu Qinfang’s expression changed at once. “It’s you!”

A snake’s head suddenly extended from the lake beside the pavilion — no larger than an infant’s fist, yet the body behind it was as thick as a grown man’s wrist, dark patterns on a green ground. Liu Qinfang did recognize it — it was this very creature that had devoured the brains of her birth mother, cast her body into the lake, and sealed Liu Qinfang herself inside a wall.

The snake’s third eye fixed itself forward. It made a cold, scornful sound — an actual laugh. “Indeed, it is I. And I am the only one who can give you and that beautiful Sacrificial Priest a life together.”

Liu Qinfang bit her lip. Since the death of her birth mother, she had grown much harder. “Why should I trust you? You killed my mother!”

The snake slipped entirely beneath the water, its voice becoming muffled. “If not for your mother’s position, you, as the legitimate daughter of Senior Official Liu, would likely have been well matched long ago. Would you have been sent by your father to serve as a concubine to a Daoist?”

Liu Qinfang curled her hands into fists, her fingernails digging into her palms. The snake did not surface again, but its voice was perfectly clear. “She deserved to die. And besides — she is dead, but you must still go on living. In any case, I can let you obtain the one you love, and live with him together, forever. If you are willing, come here at the hour of midnight tonight. Remember — midnight. I will not wait past then.”

He Bang and Rong Chen Zi had climbed back up the cliff and were preparing to descend the mountain when two woodcutters came walking down from the summit. Each carried a bundle of firewood on his back, a sharp axe and leather water flask hanging at his waist, trouser legs rolled to the shins, muscles packed and thick-looking.

He Bang paid them no attention whatsoever. She bounced on ahead without a care, thinking of dinner and what Chunyu Lin would make. Rong Chen Zi stepped into her path and stretched out his left hand without expression. He Bang wrinkled her nose, and after a long moment quietly withdrew a white snake egg from within her robe and placed it in Rong Chen Zi’s palm. Rong Chen Zi said evenly: “Mm?”

She hesitated, then produced another. Seeing that he still said nothing, she finally puckered her lips and handed over the remaining few as well. The eggs were all the size of chicken eggs, pure white, and when held up to strong light, a faint pale-blue shadow could be glimpsed within.

Rong Chen Zi no longer knew how to describe this He Bang — at a moment of life and death, this creature had still managed to think about her egg custard…

The two woodcutters drew ever closer. Rong Chen Zi gradually fell back to the rear, with Qingxuan and Qingsu following behind He Bang. When the two woodcutters reached the group, they swiped a sleeve across their sweaty brows, still caked in earth on their hemp clothes. “Daoist Master, we brothers came up to cut wood and our provisions tumbled down that cliff over there. We’ve had nothing to eat since morning. Could the Daoist Master perhaps…”

The two men pressed close to Rong Chen Zi, then suddenly flipped their hands — two sharp axes sliced through the air in a sweeping blow. Rong Chen Zi’s expression was still as water. His horsetail whisk swept out, and both axes flew from their hands. The woodcutter in brown hemp leaped forward in an instant, while the other opened his mouth and spewed a jet of dark green venom.

Rong Chen Zi deflected it with a burst of palm force. Meanwhile, He Bang had already moved to stand beside Qingxuan and Qingsu. Two ice lances materialized in the air in a flash. He Bang’s voice was delicate and crisp: “Six liang!!” Then came a thud — the ice lances flew like arrows, burying themselves directly in the chests of both woodcutters. Rong Chen Zi had not yet stepped back when the woodcutters’ chests burst apart with a thunderous crack.

Lungs, hearts, and entrails were flung in every direction. Inside the cavities lay two dead snakes, bodies severed from heads. Unable to avoid it entirely, Rong Chen Zi found his hair speckled with blood and flesh. He turned to look at He Bang. He Bang was already bouncing her way onward, looking entirely elsewhere.

Qingxuan and Qingsu fell back into step behind Rong Chen Zi. “Did Master see through these two from the start?”

Rong Chen Zi nodded. “It is already the beginning of winter. Those two were still dressed for summer. How could that not be suspicious?”

Qingxuan was puzzled. “Since Master knew the two were strange, why wait until they came close before acting?”

Rong Chen Zi’s expression was grave. “Human life is not something to be trifled with. One must be absolutely certain before acting.”

These words had barely fallen when the great He Bang came bouncing back.

Rong Chen Zi looked up. On the narrow mountain path ahead, more than a dozen figures dressed as villagers were making their way slowly down.