That afternoon, a curious visitor arrived by Madam An’s quarters. That man looked normal in all respects: tall and thin, he had dark hair and an ageless face.

He dressed as a Daoist priest, held a string of Buddhist prayer beads in his hands, and titled himself a master of both Daoism and Buddhism.

“Spiritual Master, please have some tea.” Madam An took the teapot from her maid’s hands and poured him tea herself.

The master did so in a lofty, imposing fashion before initiating the conversation. “Madam, did you invite me here today because of the matter you described last time?”

“That’s right,” Madam An sat by his side and responded, “the realgar wine you provided didn’t seem to be of much use against the demon. I believe her cultivation might be too high for regular methods to have much of an effect, and I’ve invited you here to have a look at the demon for yourself, Master.”

The spiritual master stroked his shiny beard as he listened to Madam An’s words.

Madam An could personally attest to his accomplishments. Before she had gotten married, one of the red foxes that a concubine in the An household kept as a pet had morphed into a wild demon. This fox slept in the same bed as the concubine each night, gradually stealing away her vitality until her jade-like beauty crumbled to nothing but skin and bones.

Madam An’s father was particularly fond of this concubine, and he’d summoned physicians from all over the county to try to treat her. However, the physicians all came up with the same conclusion: the concubine’s body was exceptionally weak, and she needed rest and recuperation.

When those physicians attended to the concubine, they couldn’t help giving the old Master An strange looks. However, none of them dared suggest that the seemingly virile old man refrain from having too much sex with her.

Despite her increased rest and consumption of all sorts of recuperative tonics, the concubine’s body only got worse with each passing day. Within the household, rumors began to spread that the concubine had been possessed by a demon, and her body was failing as a direct consequence.

Madam An’s curiosity was so piqued by the rumors that she couldn’t help sneaking a look at the concubine while no one was around. The woman lay in bed, her blankets drawn. Her body was paper-thin, her head almost skeletal. She took large, gulping breaths with her mouth open wide.

Hidden behind the curtains, Madam An was terrified by that concubine’s appearance. She was just about to turn and creep slowly away when she saw a red fox jump into her bed through the open window.

Madam An recognized this red fox: the concubine’s pet, one that she’d had since she was a child. It was as fussy as a cat, and had been pampered so much that it wouldn’t suffer anyone’s touch. She watched as the red fox leaped onto the concubine’s bed, before climbing down her neck and into her blankets. The thin, shapeless blanket rose up as it tunneled down her body.

Following that, the lifeless concubine suddenly began to move. Her glazed-over eyes suddenly began to sparkle with life, and her gray-white skin turned a rosy red. Even more strangely, she opened her mouth wide and began to moan.

The moans reflected both pain and passion, and the teenage Madam An was yet too young to understand what they signified. Regardless, her heart beat faster and her face began to flush as the concubine’s moans grew more erotic.

Just as she was at a loss as to what to do, a thunderous voice boomed from outside.

“Demon, know your place!” A Daoist leaped in through the door, a flask of wine in one hand and a string of Buddhist beads in the other. With bright, spry eyes, he honed in on the bump under her blankets.

When the fox heard the voice, it scrambled out of the blankets and tried to run.

The Daoist tossed the string of beads in his hands like a lasso and promptly caught the red fox. “To suck up someone’s vitality through such a disgusting technique…!”

Incredibly, the fox began to defend itself. It spoke in a particularly deep and magnetic male voice. It claimed not to be a demon, but rather a spirit who had obtained insight into cultivation, one that had a chance of becoming an immortal. As long as the spiritual master spared it, it surely wouldn’t forget his gratitude once it achieved immortality.

On the Chenyuan continent, humans weren’t the only race who could absorb spiritual energy from the heavens. Any living creature would be able to cultivate. Through cultivation, they would be able to develop the intellect and emotions of humans; at that point, they were termed spirits. Continuing to cultivate would allow them to morph into humans, and, further along the path of cultivation, to even become immortals.

Of course, these were mostly legends. Regular civilians had no chance of meeting the truly accomplished cultivators, let alone the near-legendary demons, spirits, or monsters.

The reason the red fox emphasized that it was a spirit, rather than a demon, was because the two types of mystical creatures were intrinsically different.

Demons were departed souls left behind after a human’s passing that had somehow managed to latch onto a living creature. That creature could be a human, but also some sort of animal. Unlike spirits, demons couldn’t use this living body to cultivate. Rather, they had to use alternative, usually cruel and malicious, techniques to extract vitality from other human beings.

As a result, demons were by and large a sly and treacherous lot. In order to exterminate them, a new profession had sprung up on the Chenyuan continent: the demon hunter, whose specialty was trapping and catching demons.

This spiritual master was such a being. Ignoring the red fox’s claims, the spiritual master stepped on its tail and poured the wine from his hand over its proney body.

Madam An recalled hearing that red fox let out a pained scream before a gray, smoky substance began emanating from its mouth and nose. That smoke slowly congealed into the shape of a man, which was then sucked into the spiritual master’s prayer beads.

This was Madam An’s first, and only, time seeing a demon hunter capture a demon.

“From your descriptions, Madam, this young miss does not appear to be a demon,” the demonologist concluded after hearing Madam An’s recounting of the events.

Madam An wasn’t clear of the distinction between demon, spirit, monster, and mystical creature. Indeed, most folk were confused about these concepts. When she heard the spiritual master’s words, she couldn’t help but hesitate. After Yi Qianying conjectured that Yun Ruoyan was a demon, Madam An gradually became more and more convinced of this reality. When the spiritual master disagreed, she couldn’t help but be shaken.

“That’s impossible, Spiritual Master,” Madam An hurriedly responded. “There’s no way that a person would be able to change so much in such a short period of time. In terms of her bearing and behavior, she’s like a different person entirely! Furthermore, she’s advancing so quickly in her cultivation that it’s unbelievable. Unless she’s been possessed by a demon or some other sort of creature, I can’t think of any other possible explanation for these changes.”

“Madam,” the spiritual master asked as he put down his cup of tea and began to manipulate his prayer beads, “Have there been any strange murders in the capital lately, or unusual illnesses?”

After thinking for a moment, Madam An responded, “My husband’s responsible for the going-ons in the capital, and I don’t recall him bringing up any such cases.”

“Then this miss is surely not a demon,” the spiritual master concluded. “And in that case, the realgar wine naturally wouldn’t have any effect on her.”

“Then… then…” Having her worldview so suddenly disrupted left Madam An unable to respond coherently to the spiritual master’s claims.

“But,” the spiritual master began once more, “based on your descriptions, Madam, this miss does seem to be hiding some secrets. Would you allow me to meet her?”

Within the pocket dimension, Yun Ruoyan was sitting cross-legged, floating in the middle of the space alongside Qiuqiu. The dense spiritual energy swirled in a vortex, and Yun Ruoyan was in its center. As she continued meditating, spiritual energy flooded into her body and was rapidly added to her spiritual vortex. As the white mist in her spiritual vortex became denser and more concentrated, Yun Ruoyan finally felt her spiritual vortex slowly starting to expand.

Along with this expansion, she felt a dreadful lethargy.

“Mistress, qiu, Mistress!” Qiuqiu called out to her. “Mistress, you’ve been cultivating day and night! If you don’t rest, you won’t be able to handle it.”

Yun Ruoyan finally opened her eyes and stopped meditating. “Qiuqiu, I feel like my spiritual vortex was just starting to expand,” she replied tiredly. “I really don’t want to stop just when I’m seeing some progress.”

“That’s because you’ve been using so much spiritual energy lately, Mistress. You need to be almost at capacity to be able to expand your spiritual vortex, so that’s why you’ve been having such a hard time lately.” Qiuqiu continued, “In order to expand your spiritual vortex requires slow, steady effort, and you’ve already been doing very well, Mistress.”

Only then did Yun Ruoyan let out a faint smile.

After her cultivation, Yun Ruoyan had Peony and Xi Lan prepare a bath for her so that she could relax and have a good sleep. As she soaked in the bathtub, Yun Ruoyan closed her eyes and probed the extent of her spiritual vortex, a small routine that she had been performing constantly over the last few days.

When she felt the spiritual energy all around her, Yun Ruoyan would become particularly gratified with herself. Conversely, if she couldn’t feel dense spiritual energy, she would begin to fret before cultivating as if her life depended on it until her spiritual vortex was full once more.

After her bath, Yun Ruoyan prepared to sleep before beginning her fire-attunement spiritual training. However, as soon as she lay down, she heard her maids shouting in the yard.

The first thing she heard was the voice of Hong Yu, Madam An’s head servant. She couldn’t help but frown at her intentionally loud tone, designed to create a disturbance.

“Peony, how dare you! Madam An wants to see the second miss immediately. As a servant, how could you try to prevent her from doing so?”

“Miss Ruoyan is resting, and we can’t bother her at the moment,” Peony replied, not backing down.

“How can she be resting when it’s so bright outside?!” Hong Yu pointed an accusing finger at Peony and Xi Lan. “If the old madam and master were to find out about this, you servants will be in trouble too! Hurry, call her over!”

In the past, Hong Yu had frequently come over to Yun Ruoyan’s quarters to make a big ruckus, shielded as she was by Madam An. But now, even after Yun Ruoyan had regained some of her authority, she continued doing the same thing.

Xi Lan stood by the side, her two fists clenched, ready to start slapping Hong Yu the same way she had slapped Xiangcao and Qiuhong the day they’d gone to the Minghuang mountain.

Just then, however, the door opened and Yun Ruoyan stepped out.