In the distance, most households were awake, their low murmurs and lamplights visible from the windows. Unfamiliar voices drifted from the chief's courtyard. To his ears, they sounded like the sect disciples.
He soon reached the village center, glanced at the backs of the curious crowd gathered in the chief's courtyard, then walked forward and melted into the assembly.
From within the crowd, he took in the scene. His eyes first landed on the massive, wounded corpse of a striped buffalo beast lying behind several disciples, its hulking form still radiating a faint, oppressive weight.
Then his gaze shifted to the battered, blue-robed disciples tending their wounds. They stood paces away from the beast. Finally, he turned his eyes to the corpse that held everyone's attention.
It was the body of a young man—their fellow disciple, he assumed. Strangely, it was suspiciously intact, with no visible wounds beyond tattered robes.
As a coffin maker and burial man, however, Wuji was not concerned with the cause of death. He was a man of endings, a guide of souls to the next life.
He parted from the crowd and stepped forward, drawing every eye until he stood before the young woman keeping vigil at the corpse's side.
"My condolences," he began, but before he could finish, she whirled on him, her eyes red-rimmed and wild.
"He is not dead!" she cried, her voice fraying into sobs. "Senior Brother Ling is not dead! His… his…"
Stammering, she opened her trembling palm to reveal a small jade sword pendant pulsing with a faint, steady yellow glow. "His soul jade still shines."
Wuji froze at her words. His questioning gaze snapped toward the other disciples. Some turned away; others stared back. Then his eyes settled on the man who stood slightly apart, the one whose bearing marked him as their captain for this clearing mission.
"Old man, proceed with your work. This is not unheard of," the captain said, his tone detached and calm. His gaze silently added, Ask, and you will learn.
"If you say so," Wuji replied flatly. His fist clenched as he turned back to the grieving young woman. He crouched by the corpse and felt for a pulse at the neck but found nothing.
The disciples' behavior, and the young woman's desperate words, confused him. As someone who had only ever buried mortals, he did not know if cultivators possessed a different anatomy.
Thud!
The sound of the coffin striking the ground made everyone turn, and also pulled Wuji from his contemplation. For the young woman, the sight of that plain, unadorned coffin made the truth she had been denying feel irrevocably, crushingly real.
A raw, wrenching sob tore from her throat, so intense it seemed for a moment to swallow the whole village before its echo vanished into the darkness.
In the flickering torchlight, some villagers' faces showed a flicker of helpless pity. Others were simply blank, hardened by the grim routine of such nights.
After letting her cry for several long minutes, Wuji raised his right hand. Wang Da responded at once, lifting the coffin lid and retrieving a thick stack of folded spirit paper, its edges gilded with silver. He came to stand before the young woman and offered it to her with a bowed head.
She slapped it away without looking. The papers scattered into the air and across the ground.
Wuji did not react. He simply gestured again to Wang Da, and together they moved to transfer the corpse.
"NO!" she screamed, lunging forward and throwing herself over the body. "His soul jade still glows! You're burying him alive! I'll report you! I swear by the heavens, the sect will hunt you!"
Her words felt like daggers in the silence, making the crowd and even some of the disciples flinch. But Wuji didn't flinch, or rather, he couldn't, not with the captain's gaze burning into his back.
He knew before any sect could reach him, this man might act. The cut on his own cheek was a clear testament to how seriously they took this matter.
With grim, practiced efficiency, they lifted the body as two female disciples held the young woman back. They arranged the lifeless limbs, hefted the lid from the ground, and closed the coffin. To the young woman, the soft click of the lid settling into place was like the sound of the world ending.
With the reluctant help of four other male disciples, they carried the coffin beyond the village toward the forest's edge, where the cemetery lay.
Minutes later, cold air thick with the smell of damp soil and a watchful, creeping silence greeted them. They went directly to the back of the cemetery and set the coffin down.
Wuji descended into the ready-open grave first. From above, Wang Da and the others lowered the coffin to him, settling it into the earth.
With the coffin in place, Wuji extended his right hand. Wang Da passed him the ritual hammer and a pouch of silver nails and glass beads.
He took a silver nail. One by one, Wuji began to seal the coffin shut from the edges.
Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!
The silver nails were a ward, a supposition, a well-ordered myth passed down from cultivators to mortal coffin makers. They were told these nails could restrain wandering spirits, prevent possession, corruption, even the transformation of the dead. In eighty years, Wuji had never seen evidence.
As his hammer fell in a steady rhythm, his brow furrowed. Beneath the percussion, he was certain he heard something else: a faint, irregular scrabbling, a muffled thump that answered each blow from inside the coffin.
He paused, feeling the coffin tremble. His knuckles whitened around the hammer's haft as he glanced up at the disciples looking down into the grave, their faces illuminated by torchlight.
He could see their faces showed no concern, no doubt, only detached, expectant stillness.
The suspicion solidified in his gut. He was sealing a living man inside. A wild urge to stop seized him immediately. This is madness, a cruelty I never imagined.
Yet his arm, as if controlled by another will, did not falter—could not.
To stop now would invite questions he could not answer, entangle him in schemes he could not afford, incur a wrath he would not survive. He was just an old man, and he did not wish to accompany this unlucky soul tonight.
Besides, each silver nail was expensive, difficult to procure. To remove one was wasteful; to obtain more would mean a week-long journey to the city. In this situation, he couldn't stop.
As a coffin maker, he knew the ritual, once begun, must not be broken, lest something far worse take root. Even though he didn't truly believe it, deep down he knew: where there's smoke, there's fire.
"Or perhaps," a cold voice whispered inside him, "I'm just a coward."
The silence from the disciples above seemed to grow heavier, a coercion settling on the back of his neck, raising the hair all over his body.
For minutes the hammer rose and fell, each strike sealing the young man's fate, until the last nail sat flush with the wood, silencing the weak, final scratches from within.
He laid the hammer upon the sealed lid and took the ritual glass beads and straws from Wang Da. He began the ritual mantra to send the soul to the underworld—a feeble hope that it might allow a safe transition and a better life in the next reincarnation.
His voice was a dry rustle in the pit of the grave, his eyes solemn and focused.
"Earth receives the flesh," he began, scattering the straws around the coffin. "Wood receives the bones." He placed a glass bead upon the lid.
"Breath returns to the wind." He placed another bead. "Blood returns to the soil. What was borrowed, I return. What was owed, I do not keep." He placed the remaining beads, one after another, thirteen in all.
"Walk the dark road without fear. Do not linger. Do not look back. Heaven counts the living. The dead are beyond its gaze."
After the final words of the ritual mantra faded, he pulled himself from the grave with Wang Da's help. He took up a shovel and began the slow work of filling it, stroke after heavy stroke, until the soil lay flat and the gravestone was set.
Only then did his strength leave him. He slumped to the ground, his breath shallow, limbs trembling with a deep, bone-aching exhaustion, the white robe stained with dirt.
Seeing their sect brother finally interred, the disciples turned back toward the village without a word to him.
Wuji watched their retreating backs, then stood slowly, his robe caked with more soil, and leaned lightly on Wang Da's offered arm.
Concern was plain on the younger man's face. For a moment, he wanted to repeat his old advice, that this work was too much for an old man, that he should retire while he still could.
But he knew better than to speak. Wuji, as always, would not have listened. To Wuji, this grim work was his inheritance, passed from his great-grandfather, to his grandfather, to his father, and then to his own hands. It was woven with too many memories to be a simple legacy to abandon, with no one left to inherit it.
And in a strange way, it also granted him a peculiar kind of peace. Being near death made his own fear of it fainter, though the fear itself never truly left.
As someone who had died once before—a dagger piercing his heart in a previous life—the visceral agony of that moment had never faded from his memory. He hoped not to die again.
But given how things had gone these last few months and years, death felt increasingly inevitable.
Minutes later, as the village lights drew near, he pushed those wandering thoughts aside. Straightening his back with an effort of will, he stepped away from Wang Da's support and approached the captain.
"The burial is complete," he stated, extending his dirt-stained hand for payment.
The captain removed a fist-sized pouch from his waistband and counted out twenty gold coins, their surfaces glowing faintly in the torchlight, and placed them into Wuji's waiting palm.
Wuji counted them again, his touch deliberate, and bit down on one to test it. "Good. Now ten remain."
"You'll get them later," the captain said dismissively, as if shooing a fly. "We travel light on these missions. I didn't carry more."
"How long should I wait?" Wuji asked.
"A week. Perhaps two," he replied, already half-turned away.
"I cannot wait that long," Wuji said, his voice low and firm. "Silver nails aren't cheap. Do you have anything else of value? Silver, if not gold. Copper will do."
"Of value?" The captain gave a short, derisive laugh. "I don't peddle trink—" He paused, a flicker of cold amusement crossing his face. "Wait. I do indeed have something."
He retrieved a thin, worn manual from his pouch and tossed it toward Wuji's feet. "A basic breathing method. Since you look half in the grave already, it might lend a corpse some vigor. Consider it a courtesy to an elder."
Wuji did not look down. The booklet landed in the dirt between them with a soft, insulting thud.
"Young man," he said, his voice as cold and flat as a tombstone. "Do you presume I know nothing of the Way?"
The captain arched an eyebrow in mock surprise. "Of course not, Senior. You are, after all, the esteemed father of the Twin Sword Elders of the outer courtyard."
"Hmm, you know that," Wuji stated, his words hanging in the air like a condemnation. "And yet you offer me a child's primer? A technique my own sons outgrew before their first decade in the sect?"
The captain's smile thinned to a razor's edge. "Let's not pretend, Senior. Everyone in the outer courtyard—no, everyone in the entire sect—knows your sons severed their mortal ties for the ruthless sword path. Do you truly believe they would risk a flaw in their Dao hearts for a dying, worthless coffin maker?"
Wuji's body stiffened. The words were not a mere blow to his heart and mind, but a dissection, laying bare the last fragile hope he had nurtured these past few years: the dream of healing, of reconciliation.
The captain could see inside him, and something quietly broke. He grinned as if he had been expecting it.
"You—how dare you—!" Wang Da spat, rushing forward.
"Enough!" Wuji's voice cracked like a whip as he turned on the younger man with startling, pure ferocity. "Are you determined to die a fool's death? You dare raise your voice to a disciple of the sect?" His jaw was clenched so tightly his teeth ached.
Wang Da flinched as if struck, his face a storm of hurt and impotent rage. "Master, I only meant to—"
"I said ENOUGH!"
Even shaken, he retained some clarity. His will was strong, and he understood the boy's loyalty. But now, with his imagined refuge stripped away, he could not afford a spark of hostility, not a word, not even a single misplaced glance.
Slowly and stiffly, he bent and picked up the breathing technique manual from the dirt. He did not look at the captain again. Without a word, he turned and began the slow, dark walk back to his workshop, the worn pages a bitter weight in his hand, his eyes hollow and dark.
Wang Da followed, fists clenched tightly at his sides. The captain watched their retreating figures, a cold, mirthless smile touching his lips. "Good. The seed is sown," he thought. "Let's see how steadfast the Twin Elders remain on their ruthless path once they learn their father withers in the mortal dust. Will they rush back… or will they persevere?"
His smile vanished as a sudden, frantic cry cut through the night behind him.
"NO! NO!" The young woman's wail pierced the air. In her trembling fingers, the soul jade pendant, which had clung to a fragile glow, flickered, dimmed, and went utterly dark.
Wuji and Wang Da halted mid-step and turned at the sound, but before Wuji could look closely, a cool, unfamiliar sensation washed through his body, then vanished as if it were merely the night's chill.
Yet he felt that something had changed within him, something he couldn't understand. He closed his eyes for a moment, sensing a pull, a connection he couldn't name. His body felt the same, yet fundamentally altered.
All at once, his eyes snapped open as a knowledge that was not his own surfaced in the depths of his mind.
[Lifespan obtained: Three years]
Before he could grasp the meaning of the strange thought, a more violent disruption erupted within his mind.
Flashes of stolen memory, alien and vivid as if they were his, assaulted him; the sights, sounds, and emotions of the buried young disciple lancing through his consciousness.
He felt a first kiss stolen behind the training halls, the crushing weight of a senior's disdain, the desperate, soaring ambition to prove himself worthy to his master.
They did not feel like memories recalled, but like experiences injected, a brutal, chaotic torrent threatening to drown his own identity. He collapsed to his knees, his body convulsing as if struck by invisible blows.
His fingers clawed into his skull as a painful headache tore through him, the world around him dissolving into a storm of another man's life.
His head felt as though iron nails were being driven into his brain, twisted and hammered without mercy. A raw scream tore from his throat; hoarse, animalistic, unrestrained, drowning out the wailing of the woman behind him.
Veins bulged across his forehead, the whites of his eyes flooding red. His vision blurred and his hearing dulled; the world faded into a distant, ringing haze.
Through it all, one sound barely reached him: Wang Da's frantic, broken voice calling his name.
Every head in the village turned, shock spreading across their faces, tinged with fear and unease. Wang Da looked as if his own heart were being torn from his chest.
Only one man reacted differently: the captain, who watched in silence, his expression hardening not with concern, but with cold disappointment.
"Too weak-willed," he thought. "He broke far too quickly. Ruined the fun."
With a casual motion, he pulled a small array plate from his pouch and channeled his qi into it. The engraved inscriptions flared to life, shimmering faintly in the air.
At least this will be useful, he mused, a thin smile on his lips. "The sight of their father screaming like a dog… that should carve itself nicely into their so-called ruthless Dao hearts."
Satisfaction crept into his gaze as he imagined the reward waiting for him, already counting the merits before the echoes of Wuji's scream had fully faded.