In the dimly lit depths of the forest, the cool night wind whispered through the trees, ushering forward several disciples dressed in shadow-blue robes. They moved like phantoms between the massive trunks, their swords quiet in their sheaths and their footsteps leaving no trace on the mossy ground.
Deeper they went, into the untamed heart of the forest where countless wild beasts roamed, their steady, cold gazes sweeping the shadows.
Every movement they made carried the silent, lethal precision of apex predators closing in on their prey.
Meanwhile, deep in the forest, a massive, crimson-striped buffalo—Blood-Stripe Buffalo—lay sprawled before the entrance to a cavern. Its three-meter-long body was marred by faintly glowing scars that pulsed like embers in the damp gloom, healing, yet unhealed.
From within the darkness, the soft, restless bleating of its calves echoed as they circled a frail purple orchid, its sickly light glazing the damp stone walls.
By instinct, the great beast remained vigilant. However, neither its pain-dulled senses nor the calves' innocent distraction could pierce the forest's silence deeply enough to sense the danger tightening around them.
At the same time, to the west, a village of three hundred thatched roofs huddled together under a starless sky. All were dark, swallowed by the chilly night, except for one lone flicker of dim candlelight.
It came from the center house of three, clinging to the northern edge of the settlement. There, the deep silence of the night was torn again and again by the raw, hacking cough 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 slow 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 let the pot drop.
It struck the packed-earth floor with a muffled thud. For a brief moment, so brief it might have been imagined, the blood inside glimmered faintly, catching a light that was not there.
Then the glow vanished, and the blood returned to its dull, lifeless black, as if something vital had been taken from it.
He sank back onto the mattress, its surprising softness an obscenity in the narrow, decaying room. Under the flickering candlelight and the cold wind seeping through the wall cracks, its comfort felt like a mockery.
Minutes passed, marked only by the persistent taste of iron on his tongue, it was 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 remained condemned to witness its slow arrival.
When rest refused him, he pushed himself up once more. 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 assaulted him at once, sharp and biting. Instinctively, he pulled the robe tighter and surveyed the quiet darkness, it was a quiet he knew would not last, not even tonight either.
He turned left. Beside his home stood the workshop. Against its outer wall, wooden coffins were stacked from right to left, their long, dark shapes patient in the gloom as if waiting for the dead to arrive.
He stopped before one, raised a hand, and ran his fingers over the smooth wood. The surface felt like memory under his calloused fingertips. For a moment, the scents of pine, resin, and sawdust were displaced by another: the faint, painful sweetness of her perfume, a ghost he had missed dearly for the last decade.
The lantern's glow illuminated his stern, wrinkled face, softening the lines around his eyes with a profound and peaceful melancholy.
"Wait for me a little longer," he mumbled to the stillness. "It seems my time is nearing."
He moved slowly to the workshop door and pushed it open. The dry hinges groaned as he stepped inside. The air was cold and musty, thick with the scent of damp wood and old resin.
He lifted his lantern and lit the candles one by one, using the lamp's flame, until a small, fragile warmth pushed back the darkness and the chill clinging to the room's corners.
His gaze, almost by habit, settled on the coffin at the northern end of the workshop.
It was nearly three meters long and made of a wood unlike any he had seen in his years of dealing with timber. Its lid was too tight, too heavy, and too imposing for a village like this, yet it still looked, for all its strangeness, like a normal coffin. He had found it months ago among a traveling merchant's wares.
As merchants often do, the man had spun a wild tale of its origin, claiming it was used to bury giants, perhaps even the mythical titans. For a dozen minutes, Wuji had listened to the exaggerated pitch, and in the end, he was swayed.
He paid an exorbitant sum, twenty gold coins, feeling in that moment like the cunning protagonist of a story, turning hidden treasure to his advantage.
Now, looking at it, no matter how dim the candlelight, the name carved into its side seemed to catch the glow: Heaven Burial Coffin.
It was an absurd name, too grand, too blasphemous for a world that bowed its head to the heavens and feared their judgment like gods.
For the first two weeks after acquiring it, Wuji had tried everything he knew, or had read in novels, to open it. No amount of strength, leverage, or persistence worked. When force failed, he turned to the only other method he could think of: blood refinement.
He tried again and again for days, until dizziness overtook him and liters of his precious blood were wasted on the workshop floor.
Despite the sacrifice, despite the strange rites, the coffin did not react. By the fifth month, he had left it where it lay, assuming it would gather dust like every other lie ever sold by a wandering merchant.
Wuji turned away, no longer giving the strange coffin a second thought. A familiar tightness seized his chest, and he coughed, spitting 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.
Yet as he worked, a familiar unease took root. Unbidden, memories of his two sons surfaced. Fifteen years had passed since they had last parted. By the time they returned, if they 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 grave 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, ruthless and precise, to his youth, to the day of the spirit root test, and to the moment his world and hopeful future quietly collapsed.
He could still hear the dispassionate voice of the sect disciple: 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. For 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, in its cruel way, had worn away the edges of his old grievances, 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 and even to the kingdom as his own.
Loneliness, he had learned, was the true tax on pride. Only family could be endured. Yet even forgiveness had its limits. 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.
But he knew, 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, 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 through 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 carried 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 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 his 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.