His focus shifted to the line marked [Stored Lifespan], and he willed the three years into his being.
At once, the sigils inside the coffin began to glow. Thin threads of dull bronze light slithered out like living veins, plunging into his chest, arms, and spine before finally piercing his forehead.
A violent, nauseating wave surged through him. His vision blurred as something foreign sewed itself into his flesh and soul, forcing its way into the emptiness within him carved by time and loneliness.
His heart faltered; his limbs went cold. Yet he clenched his teeth and held on.
After several ragged breaths, the dizziness faded and the pain dulled to a feverish ache. Only then did he calm himself, turning his attention back to the panel.
[Lifespan: 82/87]
A long, shaky sigh escaped him, widening into a weak smile. The years settled within him, a tangible weight lifted from his soul. Three more years, not borrowed, not imagined, but truly his.
Yet that relief, that brief surge of hope, shattered against a harder truth. "So what if I can steal lifespans? So what if I live longer?"
In this frail shell, a thousand years would be a curse, like pouring a river into a sieve. All that stolen time would leak away, wasted without a vessel strong enough to hold it. To live long without the power to defend that life was the cruelest jest of all.
"I must acquire strength," he murmured into the coffin's silence. "Enough to keep what I take." The next thought formed, cold and precise. "And enough to kill… efficiently."
He fell silent, the words bitter on his tongue. He had never taken a life, not in either lifetime. The thought was an acrid poison. "Or perhaps I am just a coward, afraid of the consequences."
His fingers curled slowly against the coffin's dimmed sigils.
"No, I won't become a butcher," he whispered, less a declaration than a plea. "If there is another way, I will find it. I hope." He did not finish the thought. Instead, he lifted the lid and sat up.
The candlelight of his workshop greeted him, along with the scents of pine resin and sawdust—and the frantic sound of Wang Da screaming his name.
The shouting cut off the moment the lid hit the floor. A beat later, the workshop door burst open. Wang Da charged inside, then froze on the threshold, his eyes wide, his breath caught in his throat.
Before him sat Wuji, but a Wuji remade. In the candlelight, his skin was pallid and taut, his body desiccated like a corpse left in the sun.
Yet within those sunken sockets burned a living, complex turmoil, the gaze of a man who should not be alive.
"What have you done?" Wang Da rushed forward, his voice torn between anger and fear. "Master, you cannot give up! And your body… why do you look like this?"
Wuji raised a hand to silence him, offering no explanation. He extended his hand, allowing himself to be helped from the coffin, his weight slight and brittle.
Wang Da guided him to the wooden chair by the western wall. Amidst the familiar clutter of tools and half-finished coffins, Wuji sat slowly, then turned to his apprentice's worried face.
A soft, warm laugh escaped him, a sound of impossible hope. He placed his wrinkled hand over Wang Da's with surprising gentleness. "Give up? Son, your imagination runs wild. I am the last soul in this world who would ever surrender. No matter the size of the fight."
He paused. As Wang Da's worried expression softened into a tentative smile, Wuji met it with one of his own, then slowly lifted his gaze just above the young man's head.
[Lifespan: 24/90]
The faint bronze glow of those numbers twisted something deep within his chest. Ninety years. A full, mortal measure, a completed circle of average human, well that is if nothing unexpected happens in this ninety years.
And for the first time in his own long life, a thought surfaced, one extinguished by the world long ago. It had nothing to do with theft or survival. It felt dangerously like hope. Could a fate, once written, be unwritten?
His mind raced toward no clear answer. The fragmented memories of the young disciple offered only a quiet, daunting truth, the one he least wished to face. Cultivators defied the heavens; they wrestled with fate, delayed death, and tore rents in its fabric.
But mortals were bound to their thread from birth, their brief span sealed by an immutable decree of the heavens. Wang Da, unlike him, was purely and irrevocably mortal. He did not even possess a wasted spirit root.
Wuji's gaze lowered from the numbers, a new gravity settling upon him. He was no cultivator, but a man burdened with a waste wood spirit root. He knew that even if Wang Da had possessed a waste spirit root, it would have made little difference.
But the question he kept to himself all these years returned, sharper now: "Why was I rejected?"
Wood governed growth, vitality, and healing—the root of nurturing herbs and sustaining life. "Perhaps the sect simply had too many with wood-aligned roots." he tried to tell himself, perhaps to console himself that his life was not just a waste.
Yet the young disciple's memories suggested otherwise. Others with frail or inferior spirit roots were still permitted to tread the path to immortality.
They became alchemists' apprentices, tenders of spirit herb fields, humble servants who spent lifetimes in service for a hope of reaching the Qi Cycle Realm.
Their roots were weak, but not worthless. And the elders, with their old cunning, would know this.
"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 they never saw. Or something they chose not to tell. Or perhaps that examiner was merely in a foul mood and ruined my life with a stroke of his brush."
And if that were true, then perhaps the cultivation gate slammed in his face was not sealed shut, but merely ajar.
He sighed, a deep weariness pulling his racing thoughts back under the surface. He released Wang Da's hand.
"I'm planning as if my time is endless, he thought, the irony bitter, while my body is weaker than a sect child's."
He raised a hand before his eyes. The skin was parchment-thin, tracing a web of faint blue veins. The flesh beneath had withered, leaving no resilience, no latent strength. His body would fray under a stiff wind, let alone the rigors of cultivation.
At least Wang Da's time 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 a considerable amount 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 with a focus bordering on violence, devouring the chicken until the plates shone nearly clean.
Minutes later, strength returned as a mere trickle, but it was enough. The gnawing fog of hunger receded, and his mind clicked into sharp, clear focus once more.
"Should I begin with the forest, or the chickens?"
The choice was brief. He dismissed the forest instantly. In this state, a stumbled root or a startled beast, even the weakest would be a death sentence. "Simplicity first. Assurances can come later."
He pushed himself upright and carried his empty dishes to the basin by the door. When he turned, Wang Da was still eating with loud, contented relish, his slurps filling the small room alongside the scent of broth.
Feeling Wuji's gaze, Wang Da turned, cheeks bulging. "One minute…" he managed before spinning back to finish. He set his chopsticks down with a clack, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and jumped up. "Alright! What's the task?"
Wuji said nothing, merely pointing at the abandoned plates. Wang Da stared, then sighed in exasperation. "Ah, right. The master cannot abide a disorderly house, though the workshop can stay a ruin."
Grumbling, he gathered the dishes. Wuji smiled faintly at the complaints, perhaps even welcoming the simple, familiar noise of life. He pushed the door open, stepped into the daylight, and let the sun's feeble warmth fall on his frail frame as he waited.
Moments later, Wang Da emerged, wiping his hands on his robe as he came to stand before him.
"Are we looking for work?" His voice was low, carrying the ingrained unease of their trade.
As coffin makers, they were a tolerated necessity. Villagers and settlers alike shunned them when they could, for Wuji's craft was a walking reminder of the truth everyone pretended to forget: death comes for all. Still, someone had to handle the dead.
"Today," Wuji said, his voice flat, "we are not burying people."
His gaze drifted past Wang Da and settled on the distant houses at the edge of the village. Children ran between the buildings, their laughter a thin, bright thread in the solemn air.
Chickens scratched in the dirt, ducks waddled in loose formation, a picture of heedless, simple life. "Can I see the lifespans of animals?" he wondered. If so, he wouldn't be shackled to humans. "And anyway, how much does a chicken have?"
Wang Da followed his wondering gaze and went rigid. "What?" he blurted, voice tight. "A child? Whose? How could you possibly 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 his only shield. Explanations bred questions, and questions demanded lies.
He knew the village would gossip regardless. 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 reality.
Wang Da trailed behind, a shadow of confusion. Soon, they neared the playing children. 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 fruit. "Life is a brittle thread," he thought.
The observation landed with a dull weight. "And fate… is a weaver who does not look at its hands. Or perhaps it does not bother to look at all."
He stopped the thought. It didn't matter how fate was. His anger could not touch it.
He felt their curious stares land on him and made no effort to soften his expression, merely staring back. As he was about to turn away, a flicker at the edge of his vision froze him in place.
[Lifespan: 10/90?]
His head snapped toward the source—a boy, small and thin, his face smeared with dirt and the tracks of dried tears.
He looked utterly ordinary, no different from the others. And yet, the question mark glowed with a steady, unsettling light. Wuji stared, his focus narrowing. For a moment, it felt as if his vision drilled past flesh and bone, searching for the truth behind the mark. But nothing came.