Wuji's eyes darkened to bloodshot crimson, the veins on his forehead swelling into grotesque ridges. A raw, animalistic scream tore from his throat, growing sharper with each breath as fragmented, foreign memories ripped through his fragile mind.
He saw faces he didn't recognize, felt pain that wasn't his own, and witnessed death ending in lack of air.
His wavering gaze snapped onto Wang Da.
Wang Da's eyes darted frantically between Wuji and the captain. Rage, fear, and helplessness simmered beneath his skin. His fists clenched until his nails bit deep into his palms. He was torn between the desperate urge to strike and the humiliating instinct to kneel and beg the captain to stop.
Wuji's body convulsed one last time before the screaming stopped abruptly. It wasn't because the pain had faded, but it had finally surpassed his capacity to feel it.
The world went unnaturally still, and sound dulled to a low thrum. The woman's sobs became distant echoes, and even Wang Da's frantic voice sounded as if it were calling to him from behind a thick wall of water.
Wuji's unfocused gaze drifted upward and settled on the top of Wang Da's head.
There, blurry, ethereal numbers and words of bronze light hovered in the air. They pulsed with a dull, steady glow, indifferent to the chaos around them.
A single thought surfaced through the fog of agony: "Hallucinations." Before the thought could finish forming, darkness swallowed him whole.
As his knees buckled, Wang Da lunged and caught Wuji's limp body before he could hit the ground. Without sparing a glance for the captain or the onlookers, Wang Da hoisted the trembling old man onto his back and sprinted toward home.
The onlookers—the sect disciples, the villagers, and the captain—stood in stunned silence.
"What was that?" the village chief muttered, his voice little more than a whisper.
"Did he go mad?" one disciple asked, his disdain tempered by a hint of pity. "Did the news of his sons abandoning him finally drive him insane?"
"What else could it be?" another disciple replied flatly, already dismissing the old man.
The captain remained silent. "Pathetic," he thought, curling his lip in a private sneer. "If he's this fragile, he's of no use to us." His gaze shifted slowly toward the young woman. She had stopped crying, and her red-rimmed eyes stared vacantly at the ground.
As he tucked his small array plate away, a predatory calculation flickered across his face.
"Perhaps his corpse would be more valuable than this wretched walking shell of a man."
Back at the house, Wang Da carefully laid the old man on the bed. He checked for a pulse, relief washing over him when he felt the steady, rhythmic rise and fall of Wuji's chest. He pulled the thin blanket up with care, as if the old man might hurt under a careless touch.
Then, he sat down beside the bed on a small wooden stool. Minutes bled into hours. Wang Da's face was a mask of calm, but his mind seethed. Rage churned in his chest; his knuckles whitened as he gripped his knees.
He knew it was the captain that caused this with their mysterious spells. The cold indifference he had seen wasn't the look of a man who had witnessed an accident; it was the look of a man who had probably caused one.
Yet, as the silence stretched on, fear crept in to cool his fury. "Maybe this happened because I spoke out of turn," he thought bitterly. "Maybe it is a punishment or a lesson." This realization hit him harder than anger.
Against a sect disciple, his life was worth less than the dirt beneath their boots. In the end, he could do nothing but wait.
Within Wuji's mind, however, chaos reigned as foreign memories burned into his consciousness like brands of hot irons. He saw, no—experienced—the buried young man kneeling before a sect elder, his hands shaking with a mixture of terror and exhilaration.
He felt the phantom pulse of nervous joy at being accepted, the crushing weight of choosing a master, and the quiet, hollow dread of falling short.
Then came the softer and more poignant memories: stolen glances and hesitant smiles with her, awkward whispers under the moonlight. He saw the young woman's laughter, felt her sharp disappointments, and tasted the salt of her tears.
He felt the young man's deepest insecurities: the fear of not meeting everyone's expectations, the shame of being unworthy of her love, and the guilt of disappointing his family.
These foreign emotions spiraled into Wuji's exhaustion and grief, and the two lives became indistinguishable.
His consciousness sank under the collective weight of two men's burdens. For three days, the world remained dark for him.
Throughout those days, Wang Da tended to Wuji tirelessly, changing his clothes, trickling water into his mouth, and speaking softly to the silence that gave nothing back. Wuji could faintly sense this warmth like a distant light filtered through the heavy layers of earth.
However, his body remained a stone prison.
By the second day, the agony shifted. His eyelids now burned as if thousands of ants were crawling beneath his skin, biting and gnawing at the bone. He tried to scream, to scratch, to move even a single finger, but he couldn't. The itch grew unbearable, it was a frantic torture trapped within a paralyzed body.
Yet, as he endured this limbo, something deep within him began to coalesce, synchronizing with the dangerous, rhythmic glow of the coffin in the workshop.
Two more days passed. The light within the coffin finally dimmed and the turbulence in Wuji's mind settled with it. The fragmented memories stopped clawing at his consciousness. Instead, they sank, cataloged and absorbed, becoming a quiet, unsettling part of his soul.
When he finally opened his eyes, the light hit him like a physical blow. Pain stabbed through his skull, forcing him to wince as he instinctively raised a trembling hand to shield himself from the sunlight pouring from the open window.
He lay there for several breaths, waiting for the harsh white glare to soften into the familiar shapes of his room. He turned his head slowly.
Wang Da sat slumped against the wall with his hands folded loosely in his lap and his head bowed in heavy, exhausted sleep. The lines of fatigue were etched deeply into his young face.
A complex warmth stirred in Wuji's chest, a mix of gratitude, affection, and a stinging sense of shame. "Who would have thought," he mused, "that when I reached my end, it would be the simple laborer who stayed while my own sons—"
He cut the thought short. Even the ghosts of their names soured his spirit, dredging up a bitterness he no longer had the strength or desire to confront.
That was when he noticed it. Above Wang Da's head, faint but unmistakable bronze characters were hovering in the air. Wuji's gaze sharpened as his focus narrowed instinctively on the floating words:
[Lifespan: 24/90]
He stared, the words feeling heavy in his mind. "Lifespan: twenty-four," he murmured, his voice a hoarse rasp. "Destined death... ninety."
His lips twitched into a grimace, something between a bitter smile and a weary sigh. "So little," he muttered. "A mortal's life is barely a blink. Compared to a cultivator, we are no different than mayflies living in the shadow of a mountain."
A quiet resentment bubbled up, cold and sharp. "Why do some live for centuries, even millennia, why do some have the opportunity to have more lifespan while others vanish before they can truly begin to live? What can a man accomplish in a mere century? What sights can he hope to see?"
The thought lingered, turning inward like a blade. "Or am I simply greedy?"
He paused, a faint, dry chuckle escaping his throat as he answered his own question. "But what's wrong with greed? Wanting more days? More chances. More life." He looked back at the glowing numbers. "Isn't that what every living soul yearns for?"
His gaze shifted inward and another line of text appeared, clearly etched against the backdrop of his mind.
[Lifespan: 82/85]
"Three years," he mumbled, the words felt like lead. "Just three more years, and my destined death will arrive."
He let out a slow, measured breath. Relief washed through him, yet it was tempered by the chilling reality of his fragility. "Death nearly claimed me," he thought. "And it will try again. It always does."
Bottling his fear, he forced himself to sit up. His body protested with stiffness, but obeyed. Moving with practiced silence, so as not to disturb the sleeping Wang Da, he rose and stepped out into the open air.
The midday sun bathed him in a warmth that felt foreign after days of submerged darkness. He stretched slowly, his joints creaking like old floorboards.
He felt the heavy constriction in his chest lift just a little. Then, he felt it: a pull. It was a subtle yet insistent tug, like a tightly wound thread around his heart. His gaze drifted toward the workshop.
A small, knowing smile tugged at the corners of his lips as he turned and walked toward the building, his steps unhurried and deliberate. Inside, the massive coffin dominated the room with its silent presence.
He reached for a small knife on the shelf. This time, he did not hesitate or question whether the blood refinement would work. He knew exactly what he had to do, even though it was risky.
Regardless of the risk, he knew exactly what was required. He pressed the blade to his index finger, a thin line of crimson welled up and fell, a single, heavy drop splashing onto the coffin's lid.