Shen Jizhi and Ran Mu'er were both looking at Jian Huan.
Jian Huan, with one hand on her hip and the other rubbing her temples, silently sat back down and said, "I just didn’t expect this matter to be related to the Jiang family."
"Neither did I," Ran Mu'er replied, pressing lightly on her wound through her clothes. The pain made her frown slightly. "The Jiang family has been in the spotlight recently. The current head of the Jiang family, Jiang Wei, is said to be upright and impartial, unyielding in his principles. For the sake of ordinary cultivators, he has offended many in the cultivation world. Some sect elders see him as a thorn in their side and often slander him, but he is still deeply loved by the common people. Moreover, he has a close personal relationship with your Jade Pure Sect's leader, Master Dao Xuan..."
At this point, Ran Mu'er paused, her gaze shifting between Jian Huan and Shen Jizhi. "That’s why he sent his only daughter, Jiang Qiaoqiao, to train at Jade Pure Sect under Master Dao Xuan."
Jian Huan listened quietly, not saying much.
These details had already been mentioned in the book.
"Logically, I shouldn’t trust you," Ran Mu'er said softly. "But my grandmother and brother both say you’re trustworthy. I know my own abilities are limited. If I were to break into the Jiang family alone, I doubt I could uncover anything. I need your help..."
Despite her unhealed injuries, she stood up, walked to the edge of the bed, and bowed deeply to Jian Huan and Shen Jizhi. "I lost the Bodhi Pagoda. If—" Ran Mu'er lowered her eyelashes and smiled faintly, "if I’m still alive after retrieving it, I will turn myself in and accept the punishment I deserve."
Jian Huan looked at Ran Mu'er, her mind racing with calculations.
This mission would undoubtedly be dangerous.
But Ran Mu'er was offering 1.2 million, and if they found the Bodhi Pagoda, they could get another 1 million, totaling 2.2 million.
Moreover, this matter likely wasn’t just about Ran Mu'er’s family.
It involved the male and female protagonists from the book, and the hidden truth behind it all probably had something to do with Shen Jizhi.
Jian Huan even felt, in some inexplicable way, that it was connected to her as well.
She let out a soft breath, her delicate brows arching slightly as she said to Ran Mu'er, "Sister Mu'er, if you sincerely want our help, you can’t keep half the truth from us, can you?"
Ran Mu'er’s eyes flickered, and she asked softly, "What do you mean?"
"How did Yin Yusheng come to suspect that something was off with Qi Wan in Yujiang City?" Shen Jizhi, who had been silent until now, spoke up calmly.
Back then, he and Jian Huan had followed the trail of the Chu family’s girl to Yujiang City.
But what about Yin Yusheng? Those who noticed Qi Wan were usually parents desperate for a son. Yin Yusheng was just a young man in his twenties, without a partner. Why would he pay attention to something related to childbirth?
Ran Mu'er’s hands trembled slightly, and like an elderly person on the verge of collapse, she slowly moved back to the stone bed.
She sat on the bed, hugging her legs, her chin resting on her knees. A single blink sent tears rolling down her cheeks.
Ran Mu'er wiped them away, her face calm but numb.
Her pale lips moved as she spoke, her voice tinged with the pain of memories that were like knives buried deep in her heart. Just thinking about them made the knives twist, causing her heart to ache.
"This goes back... a long time..."
...
Nineteen years ago, the Mu Family was a well-known cultivation family in the Nine Provinces.
Spiritual roots were crucial for cultivation. If a family could produce a child with a single spiritual root, they could easily secure a place of prominence in the Nine Provinces.
So, her grandfather took in several concubines and had many children, ensuring the family line flourished.
Every child born into the Mu Family was taken to have their spiritual roots tested shortly after birth. If their roots were good, they were taken from their parents and raised by their grandfather.
These children, still in swaddling clothes and unable to speak, were bathed daily in spiritual elixirs to cleanse their meridians.
The medicinal properties of these elixirs were too potent for infants just a few months old. Every day, the sound of babies crying incessantly could be heard from the main courtyard where her grandfather lived.
As the children grew older and began to walk and talk, they were forced to practice swordsmanship and compete against each other.
The winners received praise from their grandfather, while the losers were locked in dark rooms to reflect on their failures.
From time to time, children in the Mu Family would die young.
But her grandfather didn’t care. The Mu Family had too many children. He only wanted the best one, the one who could elevate the Mu Family to new heights, making it the leading family in the Nine Provinces.
The other children, though they carried the Mu Family’s blood, were merely stepping stones.
Her grandfather called this "sacrifice."
A sacrifice for the Mu Family.
At this point, Ran Mu'er’s lips curled into a faint, bitter smile.
Even now, she sometimes thought that everything the Mu Family had gone through since then was retribution.
Karma always comes full circle.
Nineteen years had passed, but she could still vividly remember the cries of those children, the madness that consumed the Mu Family.
The uncles and aunts, though they clearly cared for their own children, still desperately tried to send them to her grandfather’s courtyard, never objecting.
Everyone in the Mu Family knew that the children raised in her grandfather’s courtyard would receive the best pills and the best mentors. They would have the chance to become the head of the Mu Family, with a future that others could only envy.
Children with poor talent couldn’t enter.
Ran Mu'er and her brother Yin Yusheng couldn’t enter.
It wasn’t because their talent was poor—both siblings had dual spiritual roots.
It was because their parents couldn’t bear to see their children suffer the hardships of cultivation from such a young age. They had gone to great lengths to find Medicine Granny from South Dust Immortal Island to obtain pills that could interfere with the spiritual root tests.
Her father was the third son of her grandfather’s concubine, with poor talent and little standing in the Mu Family.
When she and her brother tested poorly for spiritual roots, no one suspected anything.
The siblings grew up carefree under their parents’ protection.
While their cousins of similar age had already reached the Qi Refining stage, able to wield swords and cast minor spells, she and her brother remained idle, spending their days running wild, catching birds in the mountains, and fishing in the rivers.
The Mu Family had no expectations for them, and their parents indulged them, never scolding them for their behavior.
Until nineteen years ago, when she was seven and her brother Yin Yusheng was ten—
Their sister was born.
On the day their sister was born, auspicious clouds appeared in the sky, and spiritual energy surged in the courtyard where the family lived.
The phenomenon caught her grandfather’s attention. He suddenly appeared in the courtyard, overjoyed at the sight of his newborn granddaughter. Ignoring the pleas of his son and daughter-in-law, he took the baby away.
Their mother, already weakened from a difficult birth, fell ill after losing her youngest daughter and never recovered.
Their father, overwhelmed with grief, had no energy to care for them and sent them to their maternal grandmother’s house temporarily while he returned to the Mu Family to find a solution.
Tears welled up in Ran Mu'er’s eyes as she murmured, "...That was the last time we saw our parents..."
Her mother, pale and weak on the sickbed, had still mustered the strength to sit up and hold their small hands, softly urging them to be good at their grandmother’s house, not to cause trouble, and assuring them that they would be brought home in a few days.
Her father, riding away on horseback, had turned back repeatedly to wave at them, telling them not to stand at the gate but to go inside.
And their sister, whom they had eagerly awaited, talking to their mother’s belly during the ten months of pregnancy, but whom they never got to meet after she was born.
Then, in less than three days, the Mu Family collapsed as suddenly as a summer afternoon storm.
It was said that her grandfather had colluded with demons, and the evidence was irrefutable. Every member of the Mu Family showed signs of demonic influence, and the family was revealed to be a hidden nest of demonic activity.
Their sister, just three days old, disappeared without a trace, as if she had never been born.
Officials from the Imperial Pacification Office came to their grandmother’s house to arrest her and her brother.
But perhaps it was a familial bond, a premonition—that night, Ran Mu'er woke from a nightmare and ran to wake her brother, crying that she had seen their parents covered in blood.
Worried for their parents, the siblings secretly left their grandmother’s house that very night.
They faced countless dangers on the road until they were found by Medicine Granny, who had come looking for them after hearing the news.
And so, they became children without parents or a home.
For the past nineteen years, they had lived in hiding, unable to explain their story to the world, with no one to trust or believe them.
Back then, Ran Mu'er and Yin Yusheng couldn’t understand what had happened, but as they grew older, some things became clearer.
In those three days, the only significant event in the Mu Family was the birth of their sister.
They went to investigate the matter of the child, year after year, until it led them to Qi Wan.
Yin Yusheng infiltrated the situation and only then discovered why the birth of his younger sister had caused the downfall of the Mu Family.
Someone wanted his sister's spiritual root.
"...It happened so suddenly. None of us knew what kind of spiritual root my sister possessed, but the strange phenomena that day made it clear that her spiritual root was extraordinary," Ran Mu'er said, covering her face with her hands and forcing a bitter smile. "Jing Chi is Jiang Wei's personal guard, assigned to his only daughter, Jiang Qiaoqiao. And Jiang Qiaoqiao..."
Jiang Qiaoqiao is eighteen years old, born a year later than my sister, coinciding perfectly with the ten-month gestation period...
Moreover, Jiang Qiaoqiao possesses an extremely rare mutated wind spiritual root.
