Within the shadow-dappled depths of the forest, the cool wind of the night whispered through the tree as several disciples clad in robes of shadow blue, moved like phantoms between the large trunks. Their swords rested in sheaths at their hips, and their footsteps left no trace on the moss.
They ventured deeper into the untamed heart of the forest, where countless beasts roamed. Their gazes were steady, cold and moved with the cold precision of apex predators.
Meanwhile, in the depths of the forest, a massive, crimson-striped buffalo lay sprawled before a large cavern mouth. Its three-meter-long body was covered in faintly glowing scars that pulsed like embers in the damp gloom as if they were healing.
From within the dark cavern, the soft, restless bleating of its calves echoed as they circled a frail purple orchid, which cast a sickly light on the damp stone walls. Neither the beast buffalo nor its calves sensed the tightening danger around them, though the injured beast remained vigilant by instinct.
To the west, under a starless sky, a village of three hundred thatched roofs huddled together. All were dark except for one, a lone flicker in the swallowing darkness of the chilly night.
It was the center house of three, clinging to the northern edge of the village. The silence was torn again and again by the raw coughing of an old man until, at last, it stopped.
Inside the house, Ye Wuji forced his frail body to sit up straight, each movement a negotiation with pain as his muscles and bones resisted his will. He reached for the clay pot beside his bed, spat a thick mouthful of dark blood into it, and dropped the pot.
It struck the packed-earth floor with a muffled thud. For a brief moment, so brief it might have been imagined, the blood in the pot glimmered faintly, as if it were catching a nonexistent reflection.
Then the glow vanished and the blood returned to its dull, lifeless black color, as if something had been taken from it.
He sank back onto the surprisingly soft mattress, which seemed out of place in the narrow, decaying room. Under the flickering candlelight and the cold wind seeping through the cracks in the walls, its comfort felt obscene.
Minutes passed, marked only by the persistent taste of iron on his tongue, a flavor as familiar as breathing had been for the past two years.
His eyes stayed open, fixed on the smoke-stained ceiling. They were heavy with a weariness that had nothing to do with sleep. It was the exhaustion of a man who had long since made peace with the end, yet was condemned to witness its slow arrival.
When rest refused him, he pushed himself up again. A heavy, black, woolen robe smelling of dampness settled over his thin shoulders. He lit a simple horn lantern and stepped outside.
The night air cut into him at once, sharp and biting. Without thinking, he pulled the robe tighter around him and surveyed the quiet darkness he knew wouldn't last long—not tonight, at least.
He turned left. Beside his home stood the workshop. Wooden coffins were stacked on top of each other against its outer wall, their long, dark shapes patient in the gloom.
He stopped in front of it, raised his hand, and ran his fingers over the smooth wood. The surface felt as smooth as memory under his calloused fingertips. For a moment, the scents of pine resin and sawdust were replaced by the ghost of her perfume—a faint, painful sweetness.
The lamp's glow illuminated his stern, wrinkled face, softening the lines around his eyes, not with pain, but with profound, quiet melancholy.
"Wait for me a little longer," he whispered to the stillness. "My time is nearing."
He slowly moved toward the workshop door and pushed it open. The dry hinges groaned in protest at his return. Inside, the air was cold and stale.
He lifted the lantern and lit the candles one by one, using the lamp flame, until a small, fragile warmth pushed back the darkness and chill clinging to the room's corners.
His gaze then instinctively settled on the coffin in the northern part of the workshop.
It was nearly three meters long and made of wood from trees unlike any he had seen in his years of dealing with different types of trees. Its lid was too tight, heavy, and imposing for a village like this one. He had found it months ago, half-buried beneath rotting crates among a traveling merchant's wares.
As merchants often do, the merchant had exaggerated its origin. Yet, no matter how dim the light, the name carved into its side caught the candlelight: Heaven Burial Coffin.
It was an absurd name—too grand and too blasphemous for a world that bowed its head to the heavens and feared their judgment.
For the first two weeks after acquiring it, Wuji tried to open the coffin with everything he had. But no amount of strength, leverage, or persistence was enough. When force failed, he tried the only thing he thought might work: blood refinement.
He tried again and again until dizziness overtook him, and liters of blood were wasted on the workshop floor for a full week.
Despite all this sacrifice, the coffin did not respond. In the end, he left it where it lay, assuming it would gather dust like every other lie sold by wandering merchants.
Wuji turned away, no longer bothered by it. His chest tightened, and he coughed. He spat blood onto the floor. Without his noticing, it glowed faintly and briefly before returning to its usual darkness.
He simply wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then shrugged off his outer robe, folding it carefully over a stool. Reaching for his tools, his fingers found the mallet, the chisel, and the saw, its dull teeth gleaming softly in the candlelight.
Without hesitation, he selected fresh planks of heart pine and laid them out with practiced ease. Then, with a rhythm that was solemn and too familiar, he began to work, shaping the wood into a coffin identical to the one he had made for his late wife with steady, measured strokes.
Yet as he worked, a familiar unease took root in his mind as his thoughts began to drift. Unbidden, memories of his two sons surfaced. Fifteen years had passed since they had last parted ways. By the time they returned, that is, if they ever returned at all, they would find only a name carved on stone.
A softer, internal voice tried to soothe him. "Don't trouble yourself. Worry will only shorten the little life you have left. The sect forbids contact anyway, what difference would a few letters make, whether sick or not?"
Yet beneath the practical excuse lay a deeper, rawer truth. He yearned, with an ache that hollowed his bones, to feel his family's warmth one last time, to speak without pretense, to bridge the silence of the last fifteen years.
He even caught himself imagining the shameful plea: to beg for a cure, a longevity pill, anything to borrow a few more years. A brief extension might grant him the chance he had surrendered long ago—the path of cultivation now forever closed to him.
But above all, sharper than the pain in his chest, was the longing to know. Had his sons found success on the path that had rejected him? Had their sacrifice, and his, been worth the stone that would soon bear his name? The mallet struck the chisel, driving it deep into the heart pine, each blow echoing the unanswered question.
Memory dragged him back ruthlessly and precisely to his youth, to the day of the spirit root test, and to the moment his world quietly collapsed.
He could still hear the dispassionate voice of the sect disciple telling him that flying swords and distant horizons were not meant for people like him, with waste spirit roots.
Exploration, immortality, the heavens themselves... They belonged only to the blessed by fate.
Seventy years. The bitterness had never truly faded.
But a different absence cut deeper now: his younger brother, who had vanished without a trace or a farewell. Time had softened Ye Wuji's heart, time had worn away the edges of his old grievances in its cruel way, teaching him the futility of clinging to them.
He had even forgiven the theft—the fortune his brother had amassed by stealing Wuji's own designs for soap and other clever items from his past life, selling them to the capital's merchants as if they were his own inventions.
Loneliness, he had learned, was the true tax on pride. Only family could endure. Yet even forgiveness had its limits within him. For the brother lost to silence, he felt a hollow, resigned peace.
But for the man he had once called friend—Mo Ran, who had stolen his very creations to buy his way into the sect's favor, there remained only a cold, piled-up hatred, patient and dense as stone.
Against a sect as vast and powerful as the heavens themselves, a mere mortal was no enemy at all. He could not fight it, not openly, not covertly, worse even, he could not even touch its lowest servants.
For a long while, he carved in silence. The blade whispered through the dim light, each stroke measured and deliberate. Insects chirped in the night, indifferent witnesses to an old man shaping his own coffin.
Boom!
A dull explosion rolled out from the forest's edge, loud enough to make him pause mid-stroke. He listened as sleeping birds erupted from the canopy and small animals scattered in the underbrush around his clearing.
After a long, still moment without further incident, he returned to his carving, the mallet moving with a slower, more deliberate rhythm.
"It's been weeks since the sect's disciples entered the forest," he murmured to the empty workshop. "I wonder when they'll return."
His gaze drifted to the sealed envelope resting on a shelf to his right, placed carefully beside a single, flickering candle flame.
Time passed, marked only by the soft, rhythmic scrape of blade against wood—until the sound was shattered by a new, urgent noise: hurried, stumbling footsteps on the path outside.
Wuji's hands stilled. He turned toward the door just as the latch rattled violently.
Bump!
The door burst open. Three young men in blue robes stood in the doorway, with the village chief behind them. The candlelight near the door and the torch they were carrying cast uneven shadows across their faces, each man wearing a different expression.
"Old Ye," the village chief said, stepping forward with forced familiarity. "You still have that bad habit of making coffins in the middle of the night."
"Old Lin," Wuji replied evenly, "it seems the time for your family to buy you one is drawing near."
The village chief's expression darkened at the ill-omened remark, but he swallowed his anger, keenly aware of who stood beside him.
"Surely you jest. You are the one—"
"We don't have all day." One of the disciples interrupted, his voice sharp with impatience. Without waiting for a response, he turned away.
"Come, Let's bury our fellow disciple."
The other two followed at once.
Before they had taken three steps, Wuji's voice rang out again, firmer this time. "Wait! The price for the rites—"
A flicker of silver in the torchlight was his only warning as a hidden dagger flew fast toward him. Wuji flinched, but too late. The blade bit into his cheek. Blood welled, then spilled in a dark line down his face, pattering onto the packed earth.
Several drops struck the wood of the Heaven Burial Coffin, where they gleamed for an instant before the faint light was swallowed by the grain. Wuji, his hand pressed to the stinging wound, did not see it.
The village chief froze, his eyes darting from Wuji's bleeding face to the indifferent backs of the departing disciples. For a heartbeat, conflict warred in his gaze.
Then, plastering on a conciliatory smile, he scurried after them, his voice rising in carefully crafted, obsequious tones meant to soothe men in mourning.
Wuji watched until the last flicker of their torch was swallowed by the night. Only when absolute darkness fell did he pull the black robe from his shoulders and press the coarse wool against his cheek.
Once the bleeding had finally clotted, he changed into the white burial robes and crossed to the house on the right, rapping sharply on the door.
A startled shuffle sounded from within. Wang Da, the mountain of a man who served as Wuji's laborer, emerged, sleep blurring his eyes but unable to mask his dense musculature.
"Hurry," Wuji said, bypassing all greetings. "We have a customer."
"This hour?" Wang Da yawned and rubbed his face. "Can't it wait until dawn? It's not like the corpse will run away."
"It's a sect disciple," Wuji replied. "One of those sent to clear the forest."
Understanding dawned on Wang Da's face instantly. "Then we must move quickly," he said, the sleep gone from his voice. "Before something else fancies his body."
"Bring a coffin," Wuji said, already turning back toward the center of the village.