He shifted his attention to the line marked [Stored Lifespan] and, with deliberate intent, willed the stored three years into his being.
Immediately, the sigils lining the coffin's interior pulsed. Thin threads of dull bronze light slithered from the carvings like living veins, plunging into his chest, arms, and spine.
The sensation was immediate and violent. Nausea surged through him; his vision swam and It felt as if something foreign were being sewn into his flesh and soul, forcing its way into spaces long hollowed by decay. His heart stuttered and his limbs grew cold but he clenched his teeth and endured.
After several slow, ragged breaths, the dizziness receded, and the pain dulled to a lingering ache, like the aftermath of a fever disappearing. Only then did he calm himself and turn his attention back to the panel.
[Lifespan: 82/87]
A long, shaky breath escaped him. The additional years settled in, and he felt clear as if heavy burden lifted from his soul. Three more years, not borrowed or imagined, but truly his.
Yet the relief and brief surge of hope were crushed almost instantly by a more brutal reality. So what if he could steal lifespans? So what if he could live longer?
With this frail shell, a thousand years would be a curse. Like channeling a river into a sieve. All that potential, leaking into the void the moment any pressure was applied.
To live long without the power to secure that life was the cruelest of jests.
"I need strength," he murmured into the silence of the coffin. "Enough to hold what I take." His next words felt foreign and heavy, like stones dropped into still water. "And enough to kill...efficiently."
He fell silent, the taste of those words bitter on his tongue. He had never taken a life deliberately in either lifetime. The mere thought was an acrid poison to his soul.
His fingers curled slowly against the coffin's dimmed sigils. "I won't become a butcher," he murmured, less a declaration of fact than a plea to the universe. "If there is another way, I will find it. I hope."
He slowly lifted the coffin lid and sat up. The candlelight of his workshop greeted him, along with the familiar scents of pine resin and sawdust. The frantic, distant sound of Wang Da screaming his name filled the air.
The shouting stopped the moment the lid hit the floor with a solid thud. A heartbeat later, the workshop door burst open. Wang Da charged inside, then froze on the threshold, his momentum dying instantly.
His eyes widened, and his breath hitched. Before him stood Wuji, but Wuji remade: his skin was pallid and taut over bone; his body was desiccated like a corpse left in the sun. Yet within those sunken, dark eye sockets churned a living, complex turmoil, the gaze of a man who had no business being alive while looking like that.
"What have you done?!" Wang Da rushed forward, his voice torn between anger and raw fear. "Master, you cannot give up because of them! And your body… what happened to your body?!"
Wuji offered no explanation. He allowed himself to be helped out of the coffin. His weight was slight and brittle. He was guided to a wooden chair by the western wall. There, amidst the familiar clutter of tools and half-finished coffins, he sat.
"Hahaha..." Wuji's soft laugh held warmth that seemed impossible given his condition. He held Wang Da's hand with surprising gentleness. "Give up on my life? Son, your imagination runs wild. I am the last soul in this world who would ever surrender without a fight."
He fell silent, then lifted his gaze slowly, not looking at Wang Da's face but just above it.
[Lifespan: 24/90]
The faint bronze glow of the characters twisted something deep within his chest. Ninety years. A full, mortal measure, perhaps a completed circle.
And for the first time, a thought surfaced that had nothing to do with theft or mere survival, a thought that felt dangerously like hope. Could a fate once written be unwritten?
The fragmented memories of the young disciple offered a quiet, daunting answer. Cultivators defied the heavens. They wrestled with fate, delayed its grasp, and tore rents in its fabric. But mortals were bound to their thread from birth, their brief span sealed by an immutable decree.
Unlike him, Wang Da was purely, irrevocably mortal. Wuji's gaze lowered, a new gravity settling upon him. And he himself? He was no cultivator but was a man burdened with a waste wood spirit root.
Wood governs growth, vitality, and healing. It was the root of nurturing herbs and sustaining life.
Through the memories of the disciple, he saw that others with frail or inferior spirit roots were still permitted to tread the path of immortality. They became alchemists' apprentices, tenders of spirit herb fields, and humble servants who spent their entire lives in service for a hope of attaining Qi Refinement Realm. Their spirit roots were weak, but they were not worthless.
"Then why," Wuji's fingers tightened almost imperceptibly around Wang Da's hand, "was mine declared waste without a second glance?"
A quiet certainty shifted within him. "Perhaps," he thought, "there is something about my spirit root that they never saw. Or something they chose not to tell me."
And if that were true, then maybe the cultivation gate that had been slammed in his face was still ajar.
He sighed deeply and wearily, drawing his racing thoughts back into the depths of himself. He released Wang Da's hand.
"I'm planning as if my time is endless," he thought, a bitter irony twisting within him. "When my body is weaker than a sect child's."
He raised a hand before his eyes and studied it. The skin was parchment thin, tracing a web of faint blue veins. The flesh beneath had withered, leaving no resilience or latent strength. His body would fray under a stiff wind, let alone the rigors of cultivation.
"At least Wang Da's situation is not urgent," he reasoned, forcing a cold calm into his veins. "He has decades. My path forward will require more than stolen years. It will demand resources and considerable weight of them."
He turned his head, the movement slow. "Come. Let's eat."
With Wang Da as his crutch, Wuji trudged back to his room. There, he ate. He ate with a focus bordering on violence, especially the meat. He devoured it until the plates shone nearly clean.
Minutes later, the return of strength to his body was a mere trickle, but it was enough for the task ahead. The constant, gnawing fog of hunger receded, and his mind, once more his own, clicked into sharper focus.
"Should I go to the forest or the chickens?" The choice was brief.
The forest was dismissed instantly. In his current state, stumbling over a root or startling a creature could be a death sentence for him. "Simplicity first, when I have more assurances can I go to the forest."
He pushed himself upright and carried his empty dishes to the basin. Then he turned. Wang Da was still eating with loud, contented relish. The sound of his slurping filled the small room, mingling with the lingering scent of broth. Feeling Wuji's gaze on his back, he turned his head, his cheeks bulging.
"One minute..." he said around a mouthful before spinning back around to finish.
He set his chopsticks down with a clack, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and jumped up. "All right! What's the task?"
Wuji said nothing but merely pointed at the abandoned plates. Wang Da stared, then sighed in exasperation. "Ah, right. The master cannot abide a disorderly house. But the workshop can remain messy."
Grumbling, he gathered the dishes. Wuji smiled faintly at the complaints, unbothered. He pushed the door open, stepped into the daylight, and let the sun's feeble warmth fall on his frail body as he waited.
Moments later, Wang Da emerged, wiped his hands on his robe, and fell into step beside him.
"Are we looking for work?" His voice was low, carrying the familiar, ingrained unease of their profession.
As coffin makers, they were a tolerated necessity. Villagers and settlers alike shunned them when they could because Wuji's trade was a walking reminder of the truth that everyone pretended to forget: Death comes for all.
Of course, no one could stop them from looking for customers. Someone had to handle the dead.
"Today, we are not burying people," Wuji said, his voice flat.
His gaze drifted past Wang Da and settled on the distant houses at the edge of the village. Children wove between the buildings, their laughter a thin, bright thread in the air. Chickens scratched in the dirt and ducks waddled in loose formation, it was a picture of heedless life.
Wang Da followed his gaze. His body went rigid. "What?" he blurted, his voice tight. "A child? Whose? How would you know before anyone else?"
Wuji didn't answer. A complex tension settled into his jaw. How could he explain? That his intent was to bury a chicken? That this was an experiment beyond Wang Da's comprehension?
Silence was the only shield. Explanations breed questions, and questions demand lies.
He knew the village would whisper regardless. Secrets withered quickly in a place this small. In a world this small, nothing remained buried for long.
So he turned away from the houses and began to walk. His actions would speak the unspeakable. Indignity and reputation were currencies too petty for his new situation.
Wang Da trailed behind him, a shadow of confusion. Soon, they neared the children playing. Wuji slowed, then stopped at a respectful distance.
Numbers hung in the air above their small, sweaty heads.
[Lifespan: 6/56]
[Lifespan: 8/79]
[Lifespan: 5/20]
[Lifespan: 9/102]
They floated plainly in the sunlight, all bronze, yet their glow was not uniform. Some were dull and tarnished. Others shone with a painful metallic brightness.
Wuji watched them. Their laughter was unburdened; their wars were fought over sticks and stolen fruits. "Life is a brittle thread," he thought. This observation landed with an unexpected, dull weight. "Fate is a weaver who does not look at its hands. Or does it even bother to look?"
He felt their curious stares land on him—the gaunt, pale coffin maker. He felt no impulse to soften his expression. He was about to turn away when a flicker at the edge of his vision froze him in place.
[Lifespan: 10/90?]
His head snapped back toward the source. A boy. Small and thin with a face smeared with dirt and the tracks of dried tears.
He was utterly ordinary to him. Yet, the question mark glowed with a steady, unresolved bronze light. Wuji stared, his focus narrowing to a razor's edge. For a moment, it felt as if his vision drilled past flesh and bone, searching for a hidden truth.
But nothing came, and his thoughts churned. The symbol did not fade or change; it simply remained fixed.