Path of the Sect Leader

Chapter 158: Reunion with the Woman in the Coffin

Sword light cut south across the Death Marsh like a startled heron. The lone cultivator looked about thirty, features ordinary enough, yet something in the way he carried himself—sharp eyes, steady shoulders—marked him as someone accustomed to being obeyed. Right now, though, obedience was the last thing on his mind.

Pale as fresh paper, lips trembling, he turned a blank talisman over and over in his fingers. Held it to the sun. Sprinkled clear water. Dipped it in spiritual liquid. Nothing. The paper stayed stubbornly empty.

“Nothing… nothing at all…”

Qi Xiu—Chu Qin’s sect leader, barely scraping the bottom of Foundation Establishment—finally gave up. He tucked the talisman away with exaggerated care, as though handling something fragile and poisonous.

“Guess it’s down to Fate-Weaving Technique after all. Ten years of yang lifespan… ten years…”

He had gone south on the pretense of courtesy, personally delivering Chu Qin’s Foundation Establishment invitation to South Chu Sect. Really, he wanted face time with Chu Duo—hoped the man could point out the next step on his stalled path after Mind Enlightenment and Danger-Dodging. Weeks of waiting. Then this: one blank sheet. The message couldn’t have been clearer. Nothing. No guidance. No future.

The weight nearly crushed him. Without that last resort—Fate-Weaving—he wasn’t sure he could stomach another round of the suffocating stagnation he’d known back at Qi Refining layer two, when every day felt like drowning in place. Foundation Establishment had given him status, strength, decades more life. To lose momentum again so soon…

He forced the thought down. Chu Huixin only reached Golden Core. Her natal gift didn’t match his. The strange generational borrowing method couldn’t be copied perfectly. Qi Refining was one thing; Foundation Establishment was another beast entirely. Ten years of borrowed life in exchange for a shot at a real path forward? Fair trade, he told himself. Had to be.

Decision made, he turned north toward Immortal Grove Hollow. The sooner the ceremony ended, the sooner he could burn that decade and roll the dice with Fate-Weaving. Every day he spent stuck like this felt like slow suffocation.

The mountain gate came into view—rebuilt, polished, almost proud. The main hall stood twice as tall now. Side wings demolished. The forecourt expanded, leveled, paved with low-grade spirit bricks that caught the light just so. A temporary canopy of silk and bamboo ringed the plaza; figures darted beneath it, hanging lanterns, arranging cushions, putting final touches on tomorrow’s spectacle.

“Hey! Our exalted sect leader finally deigns to show up!”

Yu Denou bounded forward, grinning ear to ear. “Li Tan brought Mo Jianxin back. And get this—buy one, get one free.”

Qi Xiu’s brows knit. “Li Tan didn’t deliver my message clearly? Mo Guinong wouldn’t be that shameless.”

“Not the old man. You’ll see.”

Yu Denou jerked a thumb toward the hall. Inside, Mo Jianxin sat talking with Bai Muhan. Beside him knelt a woman dressed like a mortal kitchen hand—coarse winter clothes, head wrapped in gaudy printed cloth even indoors in daylight, a cheap silk flower tucked awkwardly at her waist. She looked more like one of the sect’s mortal cooks than any cultivator.

Mo Jianxin spotted Qi Xiu and immediately dropped to his knees, pulling the woman down with him. Tears already brimmed.

“Sect Leader Uncle, I… I…”

Words failed him. The shame of returning after betrayal choked everything else.

Qi Xiu waved it away, tired. “You don’t need to explain. Your grandfather took you for your own good. Letting you come back is also for your own good. Remember how much he loved you. Never forget it. But him? I can’t take him back. You understand why. Get up. Things go back to how they were. No need to dwell.”

He glanced at the kneeling woman. “And this is?”

Mo Jianxin steadied himself. “A wandering cultivator I met by chance in Luo territory. She’s older, never really cultivated, doesn’t know how vicious the world is. Felt sorry for her. She seemed… drawn to me. So I brought her along.”

He turned to her, voice gentle. “Dongmei, greet the sect leader.”

The woman lifted her head just enough. “Greetings, Sect Leader.”

Then she looked up fully.

Qi Xiu’s body jerked as though struck by lightning. The world tilted. He collapsed onto the nearest bench, breath ragged, voice a raw scrape.

“Impossible. Impossible.”

Bai Muhan and Yu Denou exchanged stunned glances. In all the years they’d known him, they had never seen Qi Xiu lose composure like this.

Yu Denou hurried over, half-lifting, half-dragging him to the host’s seat.

Dongmei tilted her head, frowning slightly. “Wait… I remember you. You saved me…”

“No!” Qi Xiu shook his head violently, hands flapping. “Not me!”

But the face before him—skin pale as though long submerged, high cheekbones, features of a capable, unremarkable woman in her thirties—was unmistakable. The priceless flesh body from the Soul-Scattering Coffin at the bottom of幽泉. Exactly the same.

Bai Muhan looked between them, bewildered. “Sect Leader…?”

Mo Jianxin, equally lost, closed his eyes and tried to recall. “I was traveling through Luo lands when I noticed her trailing me. Poorly dressed, unwell. Asked where she came from. Said she was a servant from some Huang household—somehow ended up lost. The moment she saw me, she felt… inexplicably close. Followed me ever since. I saw she had Qi Refining layer one but no real cultivation knowledge. Took pity. Brought her on the sect’s spirit beast ship back here. That’s all I know.”

Bai Muhan opened her mouth to question the woman directly.

Qi Xiu shot to his feet, scooped her up in a swirl of sleeve, and flew straight toward the rear halls.

…

Inside the sect leader’s grass hut, Wei Minniang was chatting with Yue’er and Kan Qin. The door burst open. Qi Xiu barreled in carrying a woman dressed like a servant. He barked at the three of them to leave.

Wei Minniang’s phoenix eyes flashed with anger. Husband’s word still trumped everything. She swallowed the retort, gathered the other two, and withdrew—tears already gathering.

Alone now, Qi Xiu stared down at the woman who had just upended his world for the second time.

“Tell me everything you remember. Every detail. Leave nothing out.”

His Humanity-Seeing talent locked onto her like iron clamps. He would miss nothing.

“Yes… my lord…”

Dongmei dropped to her knees again, voice small, and began.

“I was born a servant’s child in the Huang household. No family name. Everyone called me Dongmei…”

“Started as a young lady’s maid. When she married out, I was matched to a steward in the inner court…”

“Twenty-five, became a cook in the small kitchen…”

“Never bore children. Thirty, promoted to manage affairs in the inner quarters…”

“Never left the Huang estate more than ten li in my life. Thirty-eight, my husband fell gravely ill. Doctors useless. Someone suggested praying at a Daoist temple thirty li outside the city…”

“Kneeling there, praying… then everything went black. After that… nothing. Like drifting in some yellow spring underworld, soul adrift…”

“Years? Decades? I don’t know. Then a sword flew toward me. I… I swallowed it. Don’t know why. Mind cleared instantly…”

“Saw you and two others arguing over my corpse. Listened. The other two were bad—they wanted to sell my body. I panicked. Threw myself back in. Then… nothing again.”

“Woke in a cave. An old woman’s corpse beside me. Terrified. Ran naked. Two days and nights before I reached a farmhouse. Stole clothes, food…”

“Then I saw young master Mo. Felt… close. Followed him all the way here.”

Her story came out plain, orderly, unadorned. Half an hour later Qi Xiu had it all—cross-checked against everything Humanity-Seeing fed him—and the pieces clicked into place with sickening clarity.

Dongmei possessed an extremely high-grade Single-Natal supreme cultivation aptitude. Yet fate had somehow kept her from the path.

At some unknown point the Soul-Scattering Coffin’s owner had targeted her, imprisoned her soul inside the coffin. For untold years her spirit wandered the secret chamber at the bottom of幽泉—formless, invisible, a peerless ghost no one detected.

When he, Duoluonuo, and Shēn Gù arrived, that ghost fused with the illusory moon intent inside Mo Jianxin’s Illusory Moon Spirit Sword—gaining power from the match. No wonder she felt drawn to Mo Jianxin the moment she sensed that natal gift.

Shēn Gù and Duoluonuo quarreled too long over the body. The ghost seized the opening—returned to its flesh.

Shēn Gù never noticed. Took the body away to sell. The buyer? Almost certainly Luo family matriarch Luo Feng—four hundred-plus years old, staring down her final decades. Motive. Means. Opportunity.

Luo Feng acquired the body but dared not tell a soul. The alliance with Artifact & Talisman Alliance? Cover for her secret excursions to take possession. Once separated from the coffin, the flesh began to age naturally. Time ran out.

But Dongmei’s soul had already reintegrated. Possession failed. Golden Core cultivator Luo Feng fell on the spot.

Everything lined up. The coincidences weren’t coincidences.

Humanity-Seeing swept her natal gift again. The Flowery Vanity Case was gone. In its place: Flowery Illusory Moon Sword Case.

As though the heavens themselves had orchestrated his Foundation Establishment epiphany, sent him racing across thousands of li, just to deliver one Illusory Moon Spirit Sword into her hands. Shēn Gù, Duoluonuo, even one of the architects of the three-way war—Golden Core Luo Feng—mere puppets on strings, all to drag this ignorant mortal woman out of the abyss.

Qi Xiu shook his head, a bitter laugh escaping.

“Pathetic. Hilarious.”

The grand collision of fates he thought centered on him? Turns out the true protagonist was this middle-aged woman who still didn’t know what cultivation even meant.

“Fine. Join the sect. Walk the path with us. Keep cultivating. In time you’ll understand everything.”

He paused.

“But you have no surname. Dongmei is too vulgar. I’ll take you as my god-daughter. Take my name—Qi. Single character Zhuang.”

“If anyone asks, say you’re from my old Qi family home in Qi Cloud Village. My blood daughter who came seeking me after I reached Foundation Establishment…”