Chapter 82
Chapter 82: Take Back What’s Yours!
Shao Heng stayed silent, watching the scenes in the mirrors unfold.
In the first mirror, she was four or five, already arrogant and proud. A maid had slighted her—carelessly, thoughtlessly—and little Lu Shao Heng ignored the woman’s desperate pleas, had her punished harshly, and driven from the manor.
In the second mirror, not long after Jiang Yun Jiang entered the marquis manor, Lu Shao Jia said for the first time, “Be a little more forgiving. Yun Jiang suffered before. What’s the harm in letting her have this once?”
Thirteen-year-old Lu Shao Heng’s face went cold. She slapped them both—hard enough that the sound rang.
In the third mirror, during lessons, she tore through everything the female tutor taught. She begged her father to let her listen to the great scholar he’d hired for Lu Shao Jia’s lectures, but Lu Yuan brushed her off.
She agreed out loud.
That night, she hugged her knees and cried in silence. The next day, she slipped into the study, hid behind a screen, and listened anyway.
In the fourth mirror, she was seven—lively, reckless, always eager to run and play.
Then her mother returned from a banquet dabbing at her eyes, delicate as pear blossoms in rain.
A daughter ached when her mother ached. Lu Shao Heng asked around and learned the reason: Jiang Yun had made a mess of the household affairs and been laughed at.
So seven-year-old Lu Shao Heng swallowed her love of play, learned abacus and accounts, took over the inner affairs from Jiang Yun, and spent her days sorting chaos into order.
The scenes continued, one after another, a relentless parade.
The voice pressed harder, sharp as a chisel.
“Do you see clearly? You don’t truly have no regrets. You use lies to paint over the weakness in your heart, clinging to ridiculous pride.”
“Look at everything you once did for Mother, for your brothers—for all of them. You’re full of regret.”
“You’re a complete joke.”
The mirrors kept changing. Every scene showed her at her worst—cold, cruel, delighted by someone else’s pain.
Shao Heng watched quietly. Her face didn’t change. If anything, her gaze grew clearer.
The voice snarled, sensing it wasn’t winning. “And your character is low. Your mind is vicious. You think you deserve Master’s inheritance?”
Shao Heng finally spoke.
“You really want me to regret things,” she said, voice almost amused. “You want to drag me into the mud.”
She looked at every version of herself in the mirrors and smiled—not embarrassed, not ashamed.
“So that’s what I used to be like.”
…
Jiang Yun Jiang finally stepped into the seventy-second layer of illusion.
She had used Meng Ling Zhi’s spear strike to shatter the Heart-Link Bracelet and had been badly hurt herself. Even if Ji Fei Guang was sharp, he couldn’t voice his doubts openly now. To do so would be reckless suspicion, cold enough to chill everyone’s hearts.
Free of those four burdens, Jiang Yun Jiang pushed forward with everything she had.
She drove her Heart-Bewitching Eye at full force, trying to break out as quickly as possible and buy time.
Unfortunately, the Ling Long Illusion Realm didn’t judge only willpower. It tested the strength of a cultivator’s spiritual sense as well.
Her cultivation was only mid First Realm. Even with the lucky chances she’d gained in the secret realm, she had forged only about four hundred furnaces of spiritual power.
Her spiritual sense was limited. The illusion blurred her awareness again and again, dragging her toward forgetting.
If Heart-Bewitching Eye hadn’t protected its owner by instinct—yanking her mind back each time—she would have sunk into the stories acted by the fakes. She would have forgotten that Jiang Yun Jiang even existed.
Now, standing in the seventy-second layer, she examined everything around her with fierce caution.
This last layer should have been the strongest.
The scene shifted and shifted until it finally froze into something uncannily grand.
Palaces hung in the sky, built of white jade. Dragons roared; phoenixes danced; immortal music rang as if poured from the heavens.
Jiang Yun Jiang looked closer and saw a city so vast it seemed to stretch beyond sight, like the dwelling place of immortals. Before its gate stood a blue-stone monument carved with three ancient characters—characters she somehow understood.
White Jade Capital.
The scenery shivered. A hazy figure flew out of the city—and the entire city vanished behind her like mist.
The figure was clearly a woman. Her face remained indistinct, yet her immortal grace was undeniable.
In her hands she held a gray, oval object wrapped in threads of light.
A cocoon.
With a simple motion, the Gray Cocoon merged into her body.
“Why does she feel… familiar?” Jiang Yun Jiang’s breath caught.
She stayed on full alert, staring.
The woman seemed to dissolve into a wisp of clear qi, split into three streams, then condense into three separate figures, each with a different bearing.
Jiang Yun Jiang’s mind raced. After entering the One Yuan Sect, inner sect resources had opened to her. She had studied every scrap she could find.
“This looks like One Qi Transforms into Three Pure Ones…”
It was said that One Qi Transforms into Three Pure Ones was a famous divine ability from ancient times, ranked third on the Great Thousand Divine Ability Rankings. Using one’s true spirit, it could create three completely independent incarnations, each cultivating separate immortal arts to deepen its Dao.
When the three incarnations merged back into one, their Dao insights fused together, complementing one another. The result was far beyond simple addition.
Jiang Yun Jiang had only seen hints of its might in old texts. The scene in front of her looked similar, but she couldn’t be sure.
Then a fierce craving for the Gray Cocoon rose in her—violent, sudden—as if it had always belonged to her.
A voice, neither male nor female, neither pleased nor angry, sounded at her ear:
“You must take back what is yours.”
“My… thing?” Jiang Yun Jiang frowned hard, emotions churning.
The moment she questioned it, the scene shattered like glass.
She stumbled, startled.
When she looked back, seventy-two dream bubbles floated behind her, glimmering like dew.
“That’s it… I cleared it?”
“Or am I still inside an illusion? What did any of that mean?”
Shock surged through her. Everything felt wrapped in fog.
She drove Heart-Bewitching Eye to its limit, forcing every thread of spiritual power and what little spiritual sense remained into the six-pointed sigil in her eyes, trying to pierce all falsehood—
—and found nothing. Not a single ripple of illusion.
Heart-Bewitching Eye was made to counter illusions. Senior Dan Hua had told her that with it, she would become a master of them. She had even practiced mesmerizing arts herself.
And yet everything around her held no flaws at all.
Had the seventy-second layer… broken on its own?
A figure stumbled out ahead.
A woman. Her aura was faint, but her eyes still shone.
Jiang Yun Jiang’s expression tightened. “Fellow Cultivator Xuan?”
Xuan Yun An looked her over, then clicked her tongue. “Your One Yuan Sect really is something. First there was that unknown Shao Heng, and now there’s a mid-stage disciple too.”
Jiang Yun Jiang’s heart clenched. She steadied herself and forced her voice calm. “Do you mean Junior Sister Shao Heng? Has she already obtained the inheritance?”
Xuan Yun An shook her head, regret flickering across her face. “If she had, we would’ve all been swept out by now. She should still be in the trial. I’m the one who failed.”
Jiang Yun Jiang clasped her hands. “May I ask what trial you faced, Senior Sister Xuan?”
Xuan Yun An answered without hesitation. “The Secret Realm Spirit made me fight a puppet formed from pure force. Third Realm. Impossible.”
She let out a harsh laugh. “I held out for a hundred moves. Then I was thrown out.”
Even with astonishing talent and 993 furnaces of spiritual power, Xuan Yun An could only barely save her life against a Second Realm cultivator.
Defeating a Third Realm puppet was fantasy.
Jiang Yun Jiang’s expression eased, just a fraction.
“Thank you for sharing so generously, Senior Sister Xuan,” she said. “I should go.”
After offering a proper thanks, Jiang Yun Jiang turned and walked into the light gate ahead.
The moment her back faced Xuan Yun An, her eyes sharpened with pure determination.
Ever since she entered the secret realm, she had sensed the Inheritance Spirit calling her. Clear as a thread pulling at her soul.
She had been chosen.
Then there was that seventy-second layer just now—its meaning unclear, yet unbelievably easy…
Didn’t all of it point to one thing?
Ling Jiang’s inheritance could only be hers.
“Shao Heng,” Jiang Yun Jiang thought as she vanished into light, “even if your spiritual sense is sharper, even if your talent is monstrous… so what?”
“What belongs to me—no one takes.”