After hurrying nonstop for several days, Little Snake and the others arrived at a secluded village nestled amid encircling mountains.
This was the temporary outpost of the Ren Merchant Group’s Fourth Steward. Only their own people could find this place.
Spotting the carriage flying the secret signal flag speed toward them, the guards pushed aside the roadside barricades and cleared a straight path into the village.
The environment here couldn’t compare to the previous water city, but it excelled in safety.
“Eldest Young Lady is back!” “It’s the Eldest Young Lady!” “Quick, quick—notify everyone, the Steward’s returned!”
Everyone immediately crowded around, hemming in the carriage so tightly that not even a drop of water could seep through.
Ren Tan was the backbone of this group. Without her, they all felt deeply uneasy.
Her three brothers already had the power to dispatch Innate Experts to hunt them down. Did these people truly still have any hope of turning the tables from the brink of defeat and reclaiming the merchant group?
The carriage curtain parted, and Ren Tan stepped out beaming with confidence. She addressed the crowd.
“You’ve all worked hard. This trip wasn’t for nothing!”
Seeing the Eldest Young Lady appear before them hale and whole, many heaved long sighs of relief. Some even burst into tears of joy.
While aboard the Ghost King Ship, she hadn’t been able to send any messages to the outside world. With days of silence amid these turbulent times, the elder stewards in charge had been frantic, on the verge of wailing in despair.
As long as she was back, they had their pillar of strength once more!
After exchanging greetings, Ren Tan beckoned a trusted aide and asked in a low voice.
“How is Mother’s condition?”
“The Matriarch is stable.”
At those words, the Eldest Young Lady relaxed visibly. She led Yin Luan and Xiao Luo straight to the most heavily guarded courtyard in the village.
They had barely stepped inside when blooming lilies filled their view, carpeting the ground so densely there was nowhere to place a foot.
“What is that girl up to?”
Xiao Luo was utterly baffled.
“Watch your step—don’t trample my kin to death,” came a young maiden’s voice from within the house. “It took me a ton of effort to plant them all and nurse them to life.”
The door swung open, and Lily walked over as she spoke.
“Lilies have a calming, mind-soothing effect. I figured they might help Mother Ren, so I planted a whole bunch…”
With that, she promptly stepped right on one of the lilies.
“…”
She warned others not to step on them, then did it herself?
“No worries—lilies are tough. A little stomping won’t kill them,” Lily amended. “Judging by that irrepressible delight on your faces… you found the treasure?”
“Mm-hmm!” Ren Tan nodded with a smile. “We got the Soul-Reviving Pill. Let’s head in and give it to Mother.”
Trampling lilies underfoot, they entered the room. There, the young maiden Ah Man—who had fled the Fisher Village with them—was gently wiping the face of the woman lying on the bed.
This was Yin Luan’s first glimpse of Ren Tan’s mother. She widened her eyes and peered closely.
The woman looked to be in her mid-twenties, dignified and elegantly beautiful. Her features bore seventy or eighty percent resemblance to Ren Tan’s, with a beauty mark just below her left eye. Even with her eyes closed, she radiated an aura of refined intellect.
No wonder they said dragons beget dragons and phoenixes beget phoenixes. With Eldest Young Lady Ren Tan so stunning, her mother was a rare beauty in her own right…
Side by side, the mother and daughter resembled sisters more than parent and child.
Of course, Mother Ren was surely not as young as she appeared. Eldest Young Lady Ren wasn’t exactly a girl anymore; in an ordinary family, she’d long since be of marriageable age…
Little Snake sidled up to the bed and gave a vigorous sniff.
She was alive, but her state was odd. Her soul lingered, yet it seemed peeled away from her body, utterly unfused.
For a more precise read, Yin Luan lifted Mother Ren’s hand to her lips.
“Smack.“
Everyone knew Little Snake was performing a diagnosis, but watching her slip the finger into her mouth with that rapt, savoring expression made it seem like she was taking liberties with someone’s mom…
A moment later, Yin Luan spoke up.
“She is no ordinary person.”
“We checked that ourselves,” Xiao Luo said. “She’s been in a coma for years, maybe longer, but her body shows no signs of atrophy. With Qi and vitality this abundant, she’s probably at Postnatal Peak—or even an Innate Expert.”
After locating Mother Ren, Ren Tan and the others had subjected her to the most meticulous examinations. They’d even tapped various connections to verify her background.
But their findings had been meager.
Shortly after giving birth to Ren Tan, Mother Ren had vanished under mysterious circumstances, leaving no trace. Father Ren had always been tight-lipped about her origins, never breathing a word.
It was said that Mother Ren was someone Father Ren had fortuitously rescued during one of the caravan’s transport missions. Afterward, she married him with her body as repayment and lived in the Ren Family for a time.
Mother Ren had a frail constitution and rarely emerged from her room on ordinary days. She interacted little with the other residents of the Ren residence, so even the old butler and veteran servants knew little about her.
“The Great Zhou Kingdom’s top merchant paired with a fallen beauty of the Innate Realm,” Lily remarked. “Ah, what a wonderful tale. I wish someone would keep me in style too…”
“Can’t you talk like a normal person?” Xiao Luo punched her companion. “What do you mean ‘keep me’? That’s called true love between two people!”
“Right, right, true love. Eldest Young Lady, please don’t get mad. In the future, I’ll be counting on you to keep me…”
Given Father Ren’s status, it wasn’t impossible for him to join forces with an Innate Expert who was in dire straits and desperately needed aid.
Innate Experts were human too. While they generally looked down on ordinary mortals, the power of wealth was still effective at that level.
But…
“I’m afraid it’s not that simple,” Yin Luan explained. “Do you know why she shows no signs of life, yet her soul hasn’t scattered? It’s because the immense vitality in her physical body is forcibly anchoring her soul, preventing it from dissipating. I’d wager that even if her body were left like this for another ten or twenty years, it wouldn’t change in the slightest.”
“The physical body anchoring the soul?”
Everyone exchanged bewildered glances; this was likely a concept they’d never heard before.
“The vitality in her physical body is extraordinarily vast,” Yin Luan said after a moment’s thought, offering a comparison. “It’s roughly equivalent to ten times that of Xiao Luo—and that’s while she’s in a dormant, weakened state.”
“Ten… ten times?” The Little Radish Spirit’s face filled with shock. “You’re joking, right? I’m a sprite—my vitality is already far stronger than a human’s!”
Vitality wasn’t the same as lifespan, but as a general rule, the higher a being’s cultivation base, the more immense its vitality became.
“Then… what realm is my mother at?”
Eldest Young Lady Ren Tan asked, her voice tinged with tension.
“It’s not easy to judge in this condition,” Yin Luan replied carefully. “I’d say at least Innate Peak, though even higher isn’t out of the question… Now that I think about it, Ren Tan, for you to reach Postnatal Peak at your age, it might have something to do with inherited talent?”
“Innate Peak… or even higher…”
A rare flicker of uncertainty appeared in Eldest Young Lady Ren Tan’s eyes.
How could a cultivator of such power end up with an ordinary merchant? And why would she give birth to her?
Could she… truly not be just an “ordinary young lady from a wealthy family”?
