When she woke, an unfamiliar ceiling filled her vision.

Luan Ling glanced around, then suddenly sat up, instinctively gathering her strength as if to summon her power—only to be stopped by a woman’s voice.

“Save your energy,” the woman said calmly. “You’ve already expended quite a lot today. Don’t waste what little remains on something meaningless.”

Luan Ling turned toward her, retreating warily and asking, “Who are you?”

The woman before her wore plain robes. In this palace-like, extravagantly luxurious building, she looked distinctly out of place. Yet recalling the strange events from earlier, Luan Ling quickly connected the dots.

This must be the female heretic the fish—no, the merfolk prince—had mentioned.

Seeing Luan Ling’s guarded expression, the woman seemed to realize what she was thinking.

“I don’t know how that merman prince described me to you,” she said, “but it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I’ve finally waited for you.”
She paused briefly, then corrected herself. “For you two.”

Luan Ling’s vigilance sharpened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The woman smiled faintly. “Whether you admit it or not is irrelevant. What matters is that I need your power.”

Luan Ling didn’t understand her meaning, but replied coolly, “Since you know the merman prince, you should also know that he’s already told me of your crimes. If you dare commit further evil, I won’t let you get away with it.”

Her words seemed to fall on deaf ears. The woman muttered softly instead:

Heaven-sent anomaly. Twin-born, twin souls. Spirits united. Divine seal to suppress demons.

Then she turned, preparing to leave.

Annoyance flickered through Luan Ling. She hated charlatans who spoke in riddles—it never helped solve anything. She reached out, drawing on some unknown reserve of strength, and slammed the door shut.

The heavy doors closed before them.

The woman showed no surprise. She turned back and looked at Luan Ling.
“Has this body been subtly influencing you as well,” she asked, “making you more and more like its former owner?”

Luan Ling frowned. She wasn’t entirely certain herself. Very few beings in the Heavenly Realm could tell that she and Si Zhuo had switched bodies—yet this mortal cultivator had seen through it. Could she truly be a once-in-a-millennium prodigy?

“You don’t need to be surprised,” the woman said. “There are two reasons I can deduce this. One is divination. The other—more important—is that I am not who I appear to be.”

Just as Luan Ling suspected more empty mysticism, the woman spoke again.

“My true name is Cen Yingyu. Have you heard it before?”

Luan Ling thought carefully, then shook her head.

Cen Yingyu was about to continue, but upon seeing her confusion, she chuckled softly.
“That makes sense. A devoted merman prince, bold enough to storm the imperial palace to rescue a woman he fell for at first sight—yet to this day, he doesn’t even know her name.”

Luan Ling suddenly looked up. “Then you are—”

“Yes,” Cen Yingyu said calmly. “I am the mortal woman who, after her boat capsized, tried to swim back to shore, only to have her foot grabbed by something strange in the sea. Thinking I’d encountered a monster, I pretended to remain unconscious.”

…So there was that version of the story too.

Luan Ling even found the mental space to complain inwardly.

“I didn’t know what he was,” Cen Yingyu continued, “but seeing he meant no harm, I thought I’d wake up and thank him. But the moment I opened my eyes, he left.”

Luan Ling lowered her head, thinking hard, then looked back up.
“If I told you he went back to fetch betrothal gifts,” she said, “would you really believe his feelings could come so suddenly—and so intensely?”

Cen Yingyu sighed. “That’s why, when I saw him again in the palace and heard why he’d risked so much to find me, I couldn’t believe it either. I didn’t think there could truly be someone in this world so reckless.”

“Though,” Luan Ling added dryly, “he’s not exactly human.”

“But wait,” she suddenly realized. “He came looking for you, yet…”
She studied Cen Yingyu carefully. “He doesn’t recognize you at all. What did you mean by ‘you are not you’? Did someone swap bodies with you?”

“Yes.” Cen Yingyu nodded. “My father ordered me to enter the palace for the selection of consorts. For the sake of my family, I had no room to resist. But on the night before the selection, something strange happened. I fell asleep—and woke up like this.”

“Before I could react, I smelled choking smoke. Through the haze, I saw myself standing there.”

Luan Ling murmured, “That must have been—”

“That was likely the heretic you speak of,” Cen Yingyu said. “She took my body and intended to kill me.”

She recalled the night vividly.
“The fire was almost at my bedside. I was certain I would die. I begged her to spare me—I offered her everything. She turned and walked away. Just before I suffocated, I stretched out my hand with all the strength I had left, and at that moment, I felt a strange power surge from my palm. The fire suddenly went out.”

Luan Ling raised her hand instinctively, nodding. “I know that feeling.”

Before swapping bodies with Si Zhuo, she had been born a god, naturally powerful in spirit, able to master spells effortlessly. She had never been particularly interested in common techniques or destructive elemental magic. Yet after the swap, Si Zhuo’s exceptional control over fire had unexpectedly accelerated her mastery of such abilities.

Cen Yingyu smiled faintly.
“When she realized I had gained such power, she panicked. She’d assumed she could burn an unresisting mortal to death, and had made no backup plans. In her haste, she tried to cast a spell on me—but I dispelled it with ease.”

She lifted her chin slightly.
“From that night on, a thought took root. Perhaps becoming her would be more interesting than remaining myself.”

Luan Ling frowned, a familiar unease rising again.

“At the time,” Cen Yingyu continued, “I believed that once I possessed such power, I would be intoxicated by it. That I could disregard imperial families and noble obligations, pursue this new strength, and carve out my own destiny.”

“But I was wrong.”

She laughed coldly.
“I forgot—if it were purely beneficial, why would that heretic ever trade bodies with me?”

“My body began to change. At times, I could barely control my own mind. I didn’t understand demonic qi back then—I only knew that the closer I was to the emperor, the more unbearable the pain became. I was in agony. I confronted that woman and demanded answers. At first, she refused. I was so furious I nearly killed her. Only then did she tell me the truth.”

“She had once been an ordinary cultivator, an outer disciple of a sect called the Xuan Sword Sect. By chance, she stole inner-discipline techniques. Her power grew rapidly—but demonic energy followed. Afraid her theft and corruption would be discovered, she traveled to the capital. With her abilities, she gained fame and was summoned by the emperor.”

“She thought she had risen overnight—becoming the national preceptor. But the deeper she stayed within the palace, the worse her condition grew. Unwilling to leave, she sought relief by empowering spiritually attuned plants and animals, then absorbing their strength. It barely sustained her. As long as she remained in the palace, the pain never ceased.”

“Eventually, driven by obsession, she turned her claws on palace residents. She poured the resentment of the murdered into an abandoned palace. For a time, it worked—but the backlash only grew stronger, nearly killing her. By then, leaving the palace risked complete qi deviation. With no other choice, she turned to a forbidden technique she found in the palace archives.”

A soul-swapping secret art—exchanging spirits, seizing a living body.

“She succeeded,” Luan Ling said quietly, looking at Cen Yingyu.
“If everything had gone smoothly, killing you would have allowed her to live on safely.”

“My body was that of an ordinary mortal,” Cen Yingyu said. “She relied more on forbidden arts than true cultivation. In my body, her first instinct was to burn me alive. She didn’t expect me to wake—or to extinguish the fire using her own body’s power. Using her authority as national preceptor, she then prophesied that she would bring disaster, preserving my life and body while restricting her movements, planning for the future.”

Cen Yingyu continued,
“Once I learned the truth, I knew that without a solution, my fate was sealed—and my death would be excruciating. I spent every day in the archives, attempting to reverse the soul exchange. But her accumulated power had been exhausted during the ritual, and I could not bring myself to kill others as she had. So I had no choice but to rely on the emperor—searching for capable individuals, seeking immortals, even… forcing members of her former sect to reveal themselves.”

Luan Ling cut straight to the point. “Did you find them? And why bring me here?”

Cen Yingyu shook her head.
“I didn’t capture you. I invited you. More precisely—I invited you two.”

“Every day in this palace is torment,” she said. “Yet I cannot leave. I must survive—and serve the emperor. For over a decade, I was nothing more than a woman who could read, write, and do embroidery. My one journey nearly cost me my life. I knew that whether as consort or minister, pleasing the emperor was paramount. I used minor spells to handle ceremonial matters, limiting myself to harmless divinations tied to ritual and festivals. The emperor is suspicious—I dared not interfere with governance.”

“But through those arts, I foresaw that to completely seal the demonic palace, one person is far from enough. Only when a heavenly anomaly appears—when divine beings descend and unite their power—can all demonic qi be sealed at its source.”

Heaven-sent anomaly. Twin souls. Spirits united. Divine seal to suppress demons.

Luan Ling looked at her.
“So you believe the divination refers to us?”

Cen Yingyu lowered her gaze, smiling softly.
“Before I answer that, you must answer me.”

She looked up.
“Do you possess the power to seal that demonic qi?”

Luan Ling pressed her lips together.
“Some things can only be known once attempted. But I promise you—so long as I am here, the evils within this palace will be resolved.”

Cen Yingyu studied her intently.
“You truly are the one I’ve been waiting for.”

“Before you arrived, the first unusual individual I met was the merman prince. His magical fluctuations were weaker than most cultivators, yet there was something special about him. He entered the palace effortlessly, bypassing obstacles, and went straight to my body. I overheard his agreement with the heretic. I wanted to see if he was the chosen one foretold by the divination.”

“I already sensed he wasn’t,” she admitted, “but I gave him a chance. If he could break through my illusion, it would prove he had the power to seal the demons.”

Her expression turned helpless.
“He said he loved me and wanted to take me away—but he couldn’t even see through the illusion. The next day, he accused me of deceiving him and demanded his ‘innocence’ back. Who knows what he saw in the illusion. In any case, if he couldn’t see others clearly yet insisted on true love, I decided to help him.”

“Anyone who could love him in his current form,” she said dryly, “must be true love.”

Luan Ling silently added: and fishermen, and cooks.

“I didn’t expect you to appear so soon,” Cen Yingyu concluded. “I have already brought you—and that other one… or perhaps that is truly you—into the palace. If you’re willing, we can begin discussing the sealing of the demons immediately.”

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