An Unchanging Heart

The White-Cloth Woman stood motionless. Had her face not been swathed in bandages, one could surely have seen her features twisted together in a hideous grin, ugly beyond all measure.

She made no move to stop Xinxia. She simply laughed that cold, sinister laugh and said with undisguised contempt, "My curse was meant to kill you — I didn't expect your soul to be quite so peculiar, little girl..."

Things had already come this far. The White-Cloth Woman didn't mind Xinxia exposing the truth to everyone present. She had won. She had dealt with the Flame Enchantress — Jiang Feng — and there was no one left here to stop her from claiming the Fire Calamity Fruit for herself.

"She was consumed by the Heavenly Calamity flames. The Fire Calamity Fruit couldn't save her completely — so she had no choice but to abandon her physical body, letting her soul attach itself to a new life, surviving in the form you see before you now..." Xinxia's voice was barely above a whisper, but she channeled her Mind Element magic to ensure every person present could hear.

"Then who is this woman?!" Zhao Yulin had already backed far away from the terrifying White-Cloth Woman. He pointed at the horror wrapped head to toe in white bandages and demanded, "How does she know everything about Jiang Feng?"

Zhao Yulin was no fool — of course he had tried to verify the White-Cloth Woman's identity.

This woman had clearly known everything about his time with Jiang Feng — even private secrets that Zhao Yulin had never breathed a word of to a single soul, she had known them all.

"Mind Element..." It was not Xinxia who spoke next, but Nan Jue, who was supporting her. "She's a Mage who cultivates both Mind Element and Curse Element!"

The female officer Nan Jue fixed her gaze on the White-Cloth Woman and said coldly, "You must be the Ghost Woman — the one our military has kept on the wanted list to this very day. The disgrace of the Dunhuang Garrison."

The Ghost Woman's laughter was shrill and piercing. She was genuinely surprised that someone had seen through her real identity — that was a matter from over a decade ago.

"So someone still remembers me after all this time. Fitting — it means I haven't dragged this charred, disfigured corpse of a body this far for nothing!"

"She is a deranged fiend our Dunhuang military has hunted for more than ten years — a shame to every soldier who served under our banner. We believed she was dead, never imagining she had been living all this time under another identity..." Nan Jue had followed the trail all the way to Shanghai because she had found something beneath the Star-Whispering Celestial Tree that pointed to the Ghost Woman.

She couldn't be entirely certain — but when the life of the instructor she admired most was at stake, Nan Jue had resolved to come here in search of the truth.

Even she hadn't anticipated this outcome, because she had never once suspected the White-Cloth Woman's true identity, and would never have guessed that the real Jiang Feng had been living on as the Flame Enchantress.

It was clear now: the Ghost Woman — a master of both Mind Element and Curse Element — had pried into every corner of the Flame Enchantress's life, including fragments of her memories, then used that knowledge to impersonate Jiang Feng and infiltrate the Zhao Clan...

If the woman had simply stayed in her disguise and lived out her days in peace, that might have been the end of it. But she had been plotting this day all along, because she wanted to use the Fire Calamity Fruit to be reborn.

The return of the Heavenly Calamity flames was the moment her plan could finally be set into full motion.

She knew that Jiang Feng had become the Flame Enchantress, devoting herself entirely to guarding the Fire Calamity Fruit while still longing for her daughter — so the Ghost Woman deliberately brought Chenying to her, then spent years conditioning the girl's mind, steeling her resolve to seize the fruit on her behalf...

In truth, even if Chenying hadn't followed Mo Fan and the others to the Blazing Plains, the Ghost Woman would have brought her there herself — because the Flame Enchantress's only weakness was Chenying.

So all those years of patient hiding had led to a single, unspeakable scheme: to make a daughter kill her own mother with her own hands. The sheer malice of it sent a wave of cold through everyone who knew the truth — a chill that seeped into the very marrow, raising goosebumps across every inch of their skin.

"She saved you when those same Heavenly Calamity flames burned you, and she exhausted herself trying every method she could to keep you alive — and you repay her with something this vicious?! Your heart is that of a venomous scorpion! No — *you are* the scorpion. You haven't one shred of humanity left in you!" Xinxia forced her cursed body upright, her voice raw with barely-leashed fury as she lashed the words at the Ghost Woman.

Xinxia was shaking — trembling with rage from head to toe.

Ingratitude alone would have been the act of a beast. But this Ghost Woman had gone even further: she had made the Flame Enchantress's most precious daughter drive a blade into her own mother's heart. Twice.

And through it all — through this tragedy that outraged heaven and humanity alike — the Ghost Woman just laughed. That shrill, piercing sound was the most unbearable noise in the world, sharp enough to make one's heart bleed.

The Flame Enchantress had drawn her shadow flames back the moment Chenying stepped into her Domain.

Even unto death, she had refused to let her daughter come to harm.

Even after the Scorn-Breaker: Specter Thorn had been driven through her heart — even as the calamity flames on her body Released beyond her control — she still raised her hands to carve out a small sanctuary, ensuring not a single lick of fire would touch even an inch of Chenying's skin...

None of this had stirred even a flicker of sympathy in the Ghost Woman. Had even one thread of pity existed within her, this tragedy would never have come to pass.

So Xinxia's condemnation was not wrong in the slightest. This woman was not merely viper-hearted — she *was* the viper, a hundred, a thousand times more terrifying than any Demon-Beast.

**Whoooooooooo—**

A sea of fire, vivid as blood — and within it, one small pocket of stillness, untouched by even a single flame.

Among Chenying's oldest memories was one from when she was very small: a torrential downpour, and herself curled in her mother's arms without a single drop of icy rain touching her skin. That warmth, that shelter, had never left her — which was why she had wanted so desperately to do something for her mother who had suffered so much.

She never imagined it would come to this.

*I killed her with my own hands.*

And in the final moments of her life, her mother had still protected her — just as she always had, unwilling to let even the smallest harm befall her.

In that small patch of stillness within the raging sea of fire, Chenying's knees crashed to the ground. The grief flooding her had nowhere left to go but rage — a torrent of fury directed entirely at the viper-souled Ghost Woman.

"She didn't change... not at all..." Zhao Yulin stood there in a daze, murmuring the same words to himself over and over.

Not long ago, he had said to the White-Cloth Woman: *You've changed.*

Her answer had been: *People always change.* Those words had actually given him a measure of comfort at the time, because he knew he had changed too.

But now he wanted to tear himself apart with shame — to rip every inch of that laughable skin from his bones.

The Jiang Feng he had known had not changed. She had once sacrificed herself to save him, and because of that, Zhao Yulin had survived.

And now, she was doing the same.

She had endured those searing flames. She had lost her body. Her soul had lived in solitude beneath an ancient tree for over a decade — and no matter how tremendous the power she had come to command, her soul had not been tainted by even the faintest shadow.

*And then look at me...*

*What difference is there between me and a Demon-Beast?*

When the Ghost Woman had incited Chenying to go kill the Flame Enchantress, if he had only stepped in — spoken against it — this tragedy between mother and daughter might never have come to pass. He had let greed blind him until he had become something unrecognizable.

"The Fire Calamity Fruit — if we can seize the Fire Calamity Fruit, there might still be a chance to save her!" Something suddenly flashed through Zhao Yulin's mind, and he cried out.