Chapter 28: Always Some Fool Who Covets Me

 

Chapter 28: Always Some Fool Who Covets Me

“...A woman? How could it be a woman? And such a frail woman, one puff of wind and she’d topple over?”

This line, Lang Jiuchuan had been hearing the whole way, repeated again and again. That cluster of white mist before her kept twisting into different shapes—sometimes stretched into a strip, sometimes ballooned into a ball—while muttering that phrase, as if hesitating over something.

It did not move, and Lang Jiuchuan pretended not to notice its existence, her hand all the while caressing the Emperor’s Bell at her waist.

She could not tell what this spirit sense was, but there was a faint breath of familiarity upon it, like her own kind. That alone was reason not to take it lightly.

Indeed, the thing before her was no drifting cloud, but a cluster of spirit sense of unknown origin. Lang Jiuchuan held that the more unfathomable it appeared, the less it should be ignored—especially with her body in such a state.

It followed her all the way, murmuring. Only when they returned to her courtyard in the Lang estate did it seem to settle its mind.

“A woman is a woman—better than nothing. At least you’re this one’s chance of revival. Can’t let it go.” The spirit sense glared at Lang Jiuchuan, forcing out a sentence through clenched teeth: “A great tiger can be both hard and soft, male and female as needed. So long as I don’t say it, who could tell what I am?”

What?

Lang Jiuchuan’s eyelids twitched, her head snapped up—only to see the spirit sense dart toward her with a speed swift as thunder.

Buzz.

Her soul ached violently, almost wrenched out of her body, while the spirit sense rammed into her spirit platform, trying to shove her soul entirely aside.

Arrogant. Overbearing.

Lang Jiuchuan gave a cold laugh. So that was it? It had hesitated only because she was a woman, uncertain whether to seize her broken shell.

Just like the ghost in the mourning hall, now this nameless spirit sense too.

Truly, there were always fools without eyes who dared covet her body!

“Miss…” Xiaoman entered with a pot of tea.

Lang Jiuchuan’s voice was icy: “Out!”

Xiaoman startled, not knowing why her mistress had flared up so suddenly. She set down the tea in haste and retreated, heart thudding, closing the door behind her.

Inside, Lang Jiuchuan gripped the Emperor’s Bell, voice cold as frost: “Will you crawl out yourself, or shall I beat you out?”

At that, the spirit sense—busy claiming territory—shuddered like a cat with its fur bristling. “You… you can actually see me? You mean you’ve been watching me muttering all this way?”

“Don’t make me say it a third time. Get out of my body!”

The spirit sneered. “This body is my chance. If I seize it, I’ll rise again. And you? You’re no native to this shell either. Since neither of us belongs, let it be skill against skill.”

Skill against skill, eh?

Lang Jiuchuan’s gaze turned icy. The Emperor’s Bell rang, its peal long and deep. The sound, laden with boundless Dao intent, swept out like a tide, piercing to the very soul.

The spirit shuddered. Its form, about to root in her spirit platform, froze, scattering under the torment. A thousand fiery needles stabbed through its being, leaving it riddled with holes.

“Ah—you madwoman!” The spirit howled in pain, but its stubborn nature blazed all the hotter. “If I suffer, you won’t be spared either!”

The mist-like body not only forced its roots deeper, but surged throughout her limbs.

Lang Jiuchuan’s face blanched. She cursed inwardly, pouring all her will into the Emperor’s Bell. Its waves of sound crashed again and again, like a demonic chant, hammering the spirit.

Neither side relented. The first to flinch would lose.

Yet upon entering her shell, the spirit realized her body was already riddled with flaws. She looked whole, but only because Lang Jiuchuan sustained it with arts. Now that she was fighting, withdrawing those arts, the truth revealed itself—her dark eyes dangling wetly from their sockets, her limbs hanging limp, a gaping hole yawning at her chest.

The spirit recoiled in shock.

“Stop, damn you!” it cried.

But Lang Jiuchuan ignored it. Her face now no different from a corpse, she still drove the Emperor’s Bell, intent on breaking apart the spirit’s vast power of wish-force.

Wish-force! This wretch actually carried wish-force.

She craved it. Reaching to siphon a thread—yet the golden light scorched her, nearly flinging her soul from her body.

Her incomplete soul shrieked in pain at the clash.

But she could not lose.

What, die twice in such quick succession? Did she have no shame?

This wasn’t some game of endless lives!

She loosed the Emperor’s Bell. Just as the spirit exulted, thinking it had won, she drew forth the Jade-Bone Talisman Brush—the Judge’s Pen.

Swiftly she scrawled a talisman upon her palm. Golden light flared. She slapped it hard against her brow.

A single talisman to fix Heaven and Earth.

The spirit screamed, terror finally breaking it. It recoiled from her spirit platform.

Thud.

Lang Jiuchuan collapsed, her soul faint and wavering, nearly unable to hold on. She stabbed the pen against her brow again.

Soul-fixing.

“You mad shrew!” The spirit, weaker still, wrapped itself with a thin shell of golden wish-light, pointing at her where she lay gasping: “What good does this do you, tearing both of us apart?”

Lang Jiuchuan spat a mouthful of black blood, wiped her lips, and laughed hoarsely: “My body—did you ask my leave to seize it? At worst, we die together.”

The spirit almost dissolved from rage.

So this was one of those lunatics, fierce even against themselves?

Still, unwilling to flee, needing this body as its chance, it ground out: “If you’d said earlier that you could see me, we wouldn’t have ended like this. Couldn’t we talk it over?”

“Not familiar with you.”

The spirit forced a brittle laugh. “But after crossing blows, we’re not strangers anymore, eh?”

Lang Jiuchuan’s reply drifted out like a feather: “Defeated underling.”

Ah—she made it hard not to kill her.

But the Judge’s Pen and Emperor’s Bell in her hands gave him pause. Sensing her covert movements, the spirit hesitated, then parted with a wisp of wish-force, letting it flow into her.

Lang Jiuchuan accepted it greedily. A drought met with sweet rain—nothing more blissful. Wish-force and merit, true heavenly supplements.

Yet the miserly cur stopped short.

Her eyes reddened with hunger. The spirit smirked nastily. “Want more? Then we can bargain.”

(End of Chapter)