Chapter One: Return Home, Unrecognized by Mother

Wu Capital, the first snow was falling in fluttering flakes.

Lang Jiuchuan gazed at the two large white lanterns hanging under the eaves, each inscribed with the character for mourning, swaying violently in the northern wind. Her eyes were half-lidded.

The divination did not deceive me.

Someone truly died.

The deceased was the grandfather of this body she now inhabited—Marquis Kai Ping, Lang Pu.

"Miss Jiu, hurry and put this on."

Lang Jiuchuan lowered her gaze. The glaring white of mourning attire pierced her eyes. As a granddaughter, she was naturally expected to don sackcloth and pay respects.

How ironic. When she was unwanted, she was cast away. When needed, she was summoned back to serve as the dutiful granddaughter at a funeral.

Seeing her stand motionless for some time, the servant woman grew impatient. Just as she was about to urge her again, the mourning clothes were snatched from her hands. The servant glanced over—those slender, bony hands were as pale and lifeless as the mourning garb itself.

They looked like the hands of the dead.

Lang Jiuchuan draped the mourning robes over herself, fastened the hemp belt around her waist, pulled the mourning cap over her head, and turned to the servant, pulling her lips into a grim, twisted smile. "Do I look mournful enough for you?"

The servant’s heart skipped a beat. She instinctively retreated two steps, cold dread creeping up her spine.

This Miss Jiu had been silent and gloomy the entire way, her presence so deathly still. Now, clad all in white, with that pallid, bluish face, she looked even more ghostlike.

No wonder no one liked her. With such a deathly, eerie air about her, who could possibly feel affection?

Lang Jiuchuan saw through the servant’s thoughts at a glance and snorted softly. Indeed, she was nothing more than a ghost now.

If a skilled sorcerer were present, they would instantly see through the illusion cloaking this ruined body, patched together as it was in such a pitiful state.

When this flesh was found sprawled at the mass grave, the tendons of its limbs had been severed, the eye sockets empty, a bone missing from the chest—broken and tattered like a discarded rag doll.

And she had been forcibly pressed into this shattered form, returned to life by inhabiting a borrowed corpse, becoming Lang Jiuchuan, a daughter of the Marquis Kai Ping’s household.

Looking back, she really ought to go find that judge of the underworld for a reckoning. With such a hellish beginning, if this wasn’t personal vengeance, she wouldn’t believe it. Out of all the dead in the world, why was she given a body so utterly ravaged?

Lang Jiuchuan tilted her head slightly. A round eyeball tumbled out, but she caught it deftly and pressed it back into its socket.

Tsk. A dog’s eye really doesn’t suit a human body; it keeps falling out. Only a human eye will do.

At that moment, in the mass grave, the wolfdog whose eyeballs had been gouged out lay dying atop a pile of corpses, howling pitifully: I spent my days gnawing on corpses, yet it was a corpse that stole my eyes—what cruel irony!

The servant, seeing her properly dressed, led her toward the side gate. A steward was already approaching, face dark and brows furrowed. "Why are you so slow?"

The servant was about to reply when Lang Jiuchuan brushed past the steward and stepped inside.

He was momentarily stunned, his face turning even darker.

Raised in the countryside, she had no sense of propriety.

He hurried after her.

Lang Jiuchuan walked straight toward the mourning hall, ignoring the steward’s incessant nagging in her ear. Through her pair of dog’s eyes, her spirit’s vision took in the scenery of the marquis’s residence.

The closer she drew to the mourning hall, the more the droning chant of Buddhist scripture seeped into her ears—the monks were reciting the sutra for the dead.

"Miss Jiu, this way." The steward blocked her path to the main hall, gesturing toward another direction.

Lang Jiuchuan gave him a sidelong glance and walked down that path.

Cold sweat trickled down the steward’s back.

That one look had made his heart quail.

Entering the small courtyard the steward indicated, she saw an older matron standing beneath the corridor. At the sight of her, the matron seemed moved, stepped forward, and gave her a discreet once-over before speaking in a trembling voice, "Is that Miss Jiu?"

Lang Jiuchuan did not reply, but looked past her. Someone was emerging from the house, and their gazes met.

Dressed in deep mourning, the woman was thin and expressionless. Her eyes, as she regarded Lang Jiuchuan, were cold and distant.

Lang Jiuchuan’s fingers, hidden in her sleeve, twitched. She blinked. Was this woman her mother?

She felt a subtle, inexplicable connection.

The matron turned to the woman, her voice choked, "Second Madam, our Miss Jiu has returned home."

Second Madam of the Marquis Kai Ping’s household, Cui Shi, birth mother of Lang Jiuchuan, looked down from on high at the frail figure standing in the courtyard and walked over, coming to a halt before her.

The matron stepped forward and said to Lang Jiuchuan, "Miss Jiu, quickly greet the madam—this is your mother..."

"You are not my daughter!"

The cold voice abruptly cut the matron off.

Her expression changed sharply to one of astonishment, and she soon spoke again, helplessly, "Madam..."

Cui Shi ignored her attempt to intercede, simply stared fixedly at Lang Jiuchuan, her gaze tinged with a chill, and repeated, "You are not my daughter!"