Chapter 65: Severing Ties

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Madam Jiang sobbed until tears and snot streamed down her face. “You’re my daughter! You’re my daughter!”

How could something like this have happened?!

Before today, Madam Jiang had never thought there was anything wrong with the way she treated her husband’s illegitimate daughter. Jiang Ying’s birth had been like a resounding slap crashing into her face, shattering all her beautiful dreams about marriage.

She had never yearned for the perfect love stories found in fiction. She had not even minded her husband taking concubines, because their statuses had never been equal to begin with. But her husband had chosen to favor a secret prostitute and even let that woman bear his child. It was as though he had thrown Madam Jiang’s pride and dignity onto the ground and trampled them over and over again.

Even though that wretch was already dead, her bastard child was still alive. As long as the girl lived, she was like a fishbone lodged permanently in Madam Jiang’s throat. As the mistress of the household, Madam Jiang saw absolutely nothing wrong with tormenting the daughter of an outside mistress.

And if Jiang Ying could sacrifice herself for Madam Jiang’s daughter, then that was simply her fate.

Madam Jiang was a selfish opportunist. She did not believe there was anything wrong with what she had done. Even though she vaguely understood that the soul-swapping art might not be an orthodox technique, as long as it benefited her daughter, she saw no problem with it at all. When Jiang Fengnian first proposed the method, she had even felt, for once, that he was a reasonably competent father.

The more relieved she had been back then, the more regret she felt now.

Jiang Fengnian had no heart at all. He was not fit to be a father! Had she known he was this kind of man, she would rather have married an ordinary mortal than coveted the status of a cultivator’s wife.

“My poor daughter. I didn’t know it was you. I truly didn’t know! Had I known, I definitely would have…”

Madam Jiang wept as though her heart were being torn apart, but Jiang Ying no longer needed any of this.

“You definitely would have what?”

“I…” Their eyes met, and Madam Jiang abruptly fell silent.

“You couldn’t have done anything. Or perhaps you would have pretended not to see or hear. At most, you would have stopped sending people to scheme against me. Am I wrong?” Jiang Ying said with perfect calm. “Your clan would never willingly give up a cultivator they could rely on. As long as Jiang Baozhu remained your daughter, no one would care who was actually living inside her body. Isn’t that right?”

Madam Jiang’s maternal clan and Jiang Fengnian had long since bound their interests together so tightly that they could no longer be separated. Moreover, because Jiang Baozhu possessed three spiritual roots, they had poured enormous resources into nurturing her. They were waiting for the day Jiang Fengnian reached the end of his lifespan and perished, so that another cultivator would be there for them to depend upon.

Jiang Baozhu was the heir jointly cultivated by both families.

As for Jiang Ying…

She was merely a marginalized exile, mistreated and humiliated. Even if they learned about the soul-swapping, their shared interests would make it impossible for them to truly turn on Jiang Fengnian. At most, they would put on a performance in order to bargain for greater benefits.

Jiang Ying had long since seen through the selfishness of both her parents.

In the end, she had simply been unlucky enough to be born into the Jiang family.

“No! No! You’re wrong!”

Madam Jiang shrieked like a cat pinned down by terror. Her emotions crumbled further and further, as though her mind might shatter completely at any moment.

Yet even in this state, she earned no one’s sympathy.

After all, had she not mistreated the child from the beginning, had she not poured all her malice onto Jiang Ying, then Jiang Ying could never have suffered such a miserable past.

In a way, Jiang Fengnian truly was the person who understood his wife best in the entire world. He knew exactly how to inflict the greatest possible revenge upon her within the limits of what he could do.

“Tell me. Once Jiang Fengnian and Jiang Baozhu fall, what do you think will happen to your clan?”

What would happen?

Madam Jiang did not dare imagine it. She had never expected the consequences to be so severe once the truth came to light.

She had only…

She had only wanted to save her daughter.

Looking at Madam Jiang’s haggard face, soaked with tears, Jiang Ying found her own state of mind unexpectedly calm.

Perhaps she had learned of her origins when she was very young. In her memories, she had probably never once called this woman Mother. She had already been old enough to remember things when she was first brought into the Jiang household. Back then, Jiang Fengnian had treated her reasonably well. At the very least, she had never lacked food or clothing.

Only after returning to the Jiang residence had her life truly plunged into the abyss.

Madam Jiang was skilled at maintaining appearances, but the methods she used in the rear courtyard of the Jiang estate were perhaps not even fully known to Jiang Fengnian.

On the surface, Jiang Ying had lacked nothing.

But in private?

Her winter coats had been stuffed until they looked thick and warm, yet inside there had been nothing but reed fluff that could not keep out the cold. One winter, she had nearly frozen to death in an empty, icy room.

Her hands and feet had been covered in festering chilblains, yet for one inexplicable reason after another, she had still been forced to kneel in the snow and ice as punishment.

Whenever Jiang Ying looked back, she saw only the weak, powerless child she had once been.

And so, she never looked back.

Whether she was Jiang Ying or Jiang Baozhu no longer meant anything to her.

“I owe you nothing. So I will not acknowledge you.”

After leaving those final words behind, Jiang Ying never looked at Madam Jiang again.

Yet Madam Jiang was devastated by what she had said. She sobbed uncontrollably, but no longer had the courage to step forward and stop her.

Because perhaps she truly was unworthy of being this child’s mother.

Madam Jiang sank into utter self-loathing and despair. She looked like a living body from which the soul had already departed.

Jiang Fengnian’s cultivation had been sealed, but his emotional state was visibly much steadier.

Perhaps to a Foundation Establishment Realm cultivator whose cultivation had stagnated and whose lifespan was nearing its end, death was not particularly frightening.

Or perhaps, because his cultivation had stagnated, Jiang Fengnian had already spent years living as a lucid madman.

When he saw his only daughter finally standing before him, Jiang Fengnian could still apologize calmly.

“I’m sorry. I was the one who harmed you. You may kill me with a single strike if you wish.”

Patricide.

Ha.

This man was merely certain that she would not kill him in front of the disciples of Yonglu Mountain.

Jiang Ying picked up the sword lying on the ground. She recognized it. It had once belonged to Jiang Baozhu. Every gemstone carved into it proclaimed its value.

And now, its true owner was bound off to one side, staring at Jiang Ying with hatred blazing in her eyes.

“I won’t kill you. Wouldn’t killing you be letting you off too easily?”

As Jiang Ying spoke, she drove the sword into the dantian of the nearby “Jiang Ying.”

She twisted it with all her strength.

Forget the spiritual roots. Even the dantian itself was completely destroyed.

No one had expected her to strike at that moment.

“Jiang Ying” stared with eyes wide open as terror finally spread across her face. She desperately tried to cover her dantian, but the spiritual energy dispersed even faster than she had imagined.

“No—no!”

Her anguished wails echoed throughout the Jiang estate.

“Jiang Ying” had once again become an ordinary mortal.

“Why aren’t you arresting her?! She ruined me! She destroyed my dantian! My spiritual roots!”

The other disciples of Yonglu Mountain either raised their heads to stare at the sky or lowered their eyes to study the ground.

Wen Xu did not even need to do that. He could still speak.

“My apologies. I am a blind man who cannot see.”

Bian Chunzhou: “…Pfft.”

Jiang Fengnian, however, was stunned by his daughter’s ruthlessness. For the first time, shock appeared on his face.

“Don’t you… want to swap back?”

Jiang Ying gave a soft scoff.

“Do you think I’m you? Do you think everyone in the world values the status of a cultivator more than their own life? Jiang Fengnian, you are an evil cultivator.”

“No! I am not an evil cultivator! Shut your mouth!”

Jiang Ying understood the man before her far too well. Naturally, she knew exactly how to provoke him.

“Only an evil cultivator would toy with the fates of others. When you swapped my soul with hers, was it truly only to take revenge on your wife?”

“I doubt it. Had you truly been an orthodox cultivator, how could you possibly have kept an evil soul-swapping art? Rather than saying you did it to take revenge on her, it would be more accurate to say that revenge was merely a convenient bonus. Your real goal was to test whether the evil art worked, wasn’t it?”

This was the main reason Jiang Ying had come to see Jiang Fengnian.

“The truth is, I’ve always known.”

“What have you known?”

“I know that you never truly cherished your Baozhu. Sometimes, the way you looked at her was not very different from the way you looked at me. You would disguise yourself in front of others, but because I was weak, incompetent, and contemptible, you could not even be bothered to pretend in front of me.

“That was why, in the past, I envied Jiang Baozhu for having a mother who loved her, but I never envied her for having a good father.”

Because such a thing as a good father had never existed in the first place.

Well, well.

As expected, that old bastard surnamed Jiang had never been honest.

Junior Sister Jiang was magnificent!

“That’s impossible! That’s impossible!”

Jiang Ying’s words caused “Jiang Ying” to break down first.

Clearly, this Baozhu had never realized that she was not truly Jiang Fengnian’s precious jewel.

Jiang Fengnian, on the other hand, chose silence.

“Now, I think I can guess what you were trying to do.” Jiang Ying finally revealed the dagger hidden behind the map. “Jiang Fengnian, did you truly use your soul-swapping art only on the two of us?”

In that instant, a string in Jiang Fengnian’s heart trembled.

He said nothing and did nothing.

But the moment Jiang Ying spoke those words, Yonglu Mountain would inevitably investigate every detail of the past century and a half of his life.

And when that happened, there was no telling what they might uncover.

Jiang Ying had achieved her purpose.

She would not kill him with her own hands. Instead, she wanted him to suffer a fate worse than death, trapped in darkness for the rest of his existence.

Perhaps, without Yonglu Mountain, she truly would have lost all strength to continue onward. Given her personality, she might very well have chosen to perish together with this entire family.

But someone had heard her final, despairing cry for help.

It was as though the world itself had desperately tried to hold her back, telling her not to shatter herself along with them.

Killing them would certainly have relieved her hatred.

But someone who murdered both father and mother would bring shame upon Yonglu Mountain.

Even though Yonglu Mountain did not care about the condemnation of the world, and would never change because of a single outer disciple, Jiang Ying thought:

I must keep control of my Dao heart.

Even now, when her path of cultivation had already been cut off.

As long as she remained Junior Sister Jiang for even one more day, she would not waver. She would not become another unrecognizable version of herself.

In that instant, a rich current of pure, ethereal energy gathered around Jiang Ying.

Had her spiritual roots been intact, she would certainly have entered enlightenment and advanced by leaps and bounds.

But at this moment, her body’s spiritual roots were damaged and her soul unstable. The pure energy instead helped stabilize her soul and repair her spiritual roots.

This was a gift from heaven and earth.

“I hereby sever all familial ties with you.”

Jiang Ying heard her own voice ring out with the force of a stone striking the ground.

“Whether Jiang Ying or Jiang Baozhu, neither one is me. I will abandon this surname and this name. From this day forward, I am myself. I am neither Jiang Ying nor Jiang Baozhu.”

Riiip.

The sound came from the void itself, like silk being torn apart, and entered the ears of everyone present.

Cultivators possessed an instinctive sensitivity toward fate.

At the very least, in that moment, Wen Xu, Bian Chunzhou, and even the blunt-minded Chen Zui all clearly understood the meaning of that tearing sound.

Every bond of blood and kinship that had shackled Junior Sister Jiang was severed.

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