She moved closer, circling the coffin slowly, her eyes examining every detail in search of anything that might help unravel its mystery.
What stood out most was its length, three meters in all. Mortal coffins were made to fit the human body, and even the tallest of humans rarely reached two and a half meters. This was excessive. "Perhaps just someone's strange hobby," she thought, before turning back toward Wuji, who still knelt motionless before the faint light.
"Come here," she called, her voice echoing from beside the oversized coffin.
Wuji approached, guided by the glow of her lifespan numbers, and stopped at her side. His eyes shifted to Mei Xu—her hair faintly disheveled, her robe worn and carelessly revealing. But Wuji felt no desire to linger where he shouldn't; survival was all that occupied his mind, and provoking her now would be foolish.
"You said this coffin did it?" she pressed, her tone laden with doubt.
"Yes, sen—"
"Get in," she cut in, her voice leaving no room for refusal.
Without hesitation, Wuji climbed inside and pulled the lid shut.
The moment it closed, Mei Xu swept the area with her spiritual sense. Her body suddenly stilled, her breath caught and her eyes widened. He was gone. Not a trace, not a scent, not even a faint aura lingered.
What shocked her more was that the coffin itself did not register in her scan; her eyes saw it, plain and solid in front of her, yet to her spiritual perception, there was nothing there at all, only dirt.
She trembled slightly at the sheer absurdity of it. But she was a seasoned cultivator, her mind, at least, was honed enough to control the surge of disbelief.
She approached the coffin and tried to lift the lid.
It did not budge.
Instead of irritation, a bright, sharp excitement flared within her and her breath hitched again.
A treasure she, a mid Core Formation cultivator, could not open, yet a mere mortal could. A treasure that had withstood an attack imbued with artistic concept without a scratch. If she owned it… what could it endure? Perhaps the legendary Rules? Even better the mythical Laws?
The thought alone sent a thrill coursing through her wounded body. Her lips curved slowly into a smile, her gaze turning eager, longing.
"I want it. I must have it."
"Worth it," she murmured, loud enough to carry through the coffin. "Everything that happened… is worth it."
She didn't care if he heard. In her mind, the coffin was already hers. Wuji was just the courier—fate's delivery boy, placing a divine heirloom into her waiting hands.
Wuji obeyed at once. Staying hidden was impossible, not for lack of air, but for hunger. His body, already malnourished, could last perhaps five more days without food. The truth was plain: he was pathetic, powerless, and out of options.
He pushed the lid open, climbed out, and bowed. "Senior, as you can see—"
"Enough," she cut in, her voice bright with eagerness. "No more explanations."
From her spatial pouch, she took out two pills and offered them to Wuji. He hesitated only a moment before taking from her and swallowing them. Refusal was pointless, because if she wished him dead, her bare hands would suffice.
A wave of energy washed through him almost immediately. His hunger vanished, his mind cleared, and strength surged into his limbs as though he were young again. Color returned to his face, and his blood qi stabilized. "What a powerful—"
Before he could finish, heart wrenching pain struck him. It seized his chest like a vice, sharp and heart-deep. He collapsed to his knees, screaming. Veins bulged across his forehead. Blood-flecked saliva spilled from his mouth as his face twisted and swelled with agony.
Mei Xu watched, unmoved. "That is a Heart Gu pill," she said calmly. "It imitates gu worms."
She held up a single blue pill between her fingers. "If you do not take this within a week, you will suffer another week of torment… and then die a slow, agonizing death."
For a full minute, she watched him writhe in the dirt, her expression unmoved.
"What you need to do is simple," she said, her voice cutting through his cries. "Guard the coffin after I enter it, and open it when I tell you to. In short, you are my servant. Be honored, mortal. I have just elevated your status above that of any mortal emperor."
Wuji barely heard her words, his mind screaming at him even louder than his body. "Stupid, stupid! Stupid! I let my guard down." Yet even as the self-reproach echoed, he knew the bitter truth: caution was meaningless without true strength, everything else was an illusion.
Mei Xu reached for the coffin. With one hand, she attempted to lift it, but it didn't budge. She tried again, applying more force, but the coffin remained as still and heavy as a mountain.
"Hm… interesting," she murmured, her smile returning. "So it has weight restrictions as well."
The discovery only deepened her fascination. "If I bond with it… with its help, I might even awaken those legendary innate traits at the peak of the Golden Core Refinement Realm. Perhaps I might rival holy sons and daughters of those holy sects." The thought sent another thrill through her.
Suppressing her excitement, she turned back to Wuji. His writhing had stopped, but he still trembled on the ground, sweat and blood staining his tattered robe. He looked broken.
"Get up," she commanded, her tone brisk. "The pain will subside for now. You will stay close to the coffin and follow my instructions precisely. Disobey, hesitate, or try to flee…" She let the sentence hang, her gaze drifting meaningfully toward the empty space where the blue pill had been. "And you will learn the true meaning of the Heart Gu pill."
She stepped closer to the coffin, her eyes alight with possession. "Now… come, and carry it for me."
Wuji stepped forward, his movements stiff with effort. He glanced down at his own frail body, doubt clear in his eyes. He had never tried to carry the coffin since the day he bonded with it, but to voice uncertainty to her now felt like inviting her wrath.
His right hand still pressed against his aching heart as he reached with his left and grasped the edge of the coffin.
To both their surprise, he lifted it with startling ease.
"Senior," he forced out, each word strained through lingering pain. "I seem to share a bond with it. That's why I can lift it… or perhaps it simply allows me to."
As the last words left his mouth, the mood between them tightened. A cold dread crept into his mind. "Damn… did I just wound her pride?"
Before he could steady his thoughts, she struck a potion of her qi into his body, which surged into his system, tightening the poison coiled around his heart.
Wuji collapsed, screaming, as agony ripped through him once more. "Another mistake. Stupid, careless—"
Just as darkness threatened to take him, the pain receded. He lay sprawled in the dirt, jaw clenched, throat tight as if filled with stone. Regret washed over him. "If I'd known it was this light, I could have escaped with it long ago. But I was too focused on burying… too focused in absorbing years."
"Hahaha! Too interesting! Far too interesting!" Mei Xu's laughter cut through his spiraling thoughts. She grabbed him by the collar and hauled him to his feet. "Hold it again," she commanded, nudging him toward the coffin.
Wuji shuffled forward, one hand still clasping his chest. He grasped the same protruding edge near the coffin's tapered head.
In one swift motion, Mei Xu seized the back of his robe and lifted him into the air. The coffin remained firmly in his grip, light, balanced, as if it were an extension of his own arm.
"Just as expected," she said, her voice bright with triumph. "You are its key… and for now, you will be my handle."
Before leaving, she extended a hand toward the third elder's corpse. With a flick of her wrist, his spatial pouch and natal sword tore free, disappearing into her own storage. "A natal sword of core formation, it would fetch for a lot." Then, despite her little reserve of qi, she rose from the pit, ascending on a weak but steady stream of energy.
Wuji dangled beneath her like a carried pet, the coffin swaying lightly in his grip, his arm not even feeling the slightest strain.
Moments later, they broke into the open air. Sunlight stabbed into Wuji's dark-adjusted eyes, blurring his vision. He blinked until the world sharpened and then he looked down.
The village was gone. His gaze swept across a scarred and shattered land. Craters and scorched earth spread like a blight. Sword gashes deeper than a man was tall cut through the soil in every direction.
The houses he had known—some split cleanly in half, others crushed into dust—lay broken and still. Severed limbs lay where villagers had fallen, the very dirt stained dark with innocent blood.
The sight carved a cold truth into him: in the world of cultivation, no hand was ever clean. The path of immortality was paved with slaughter, and mortals… mortals were just ants to be crushed underfoot.
An old saying surfaced in his mind, as cold and hard as the ground below: "When immortals fight, mortals suffer."
His eyes fixed on the place where his three houses once stood. Decades of memories, bitter memories, happy memories, sad and fleeting ones, now swallowed by a vast, dark pit.
"He's dead." The truth settled inside him, heavy as stone. "Wang Da is dead… and nothing remains of him in this world to give him a proper burial."
The thought alone was enough. Hatred and anger, long suppressed, surged up, hot and wild, threatening to break through his restraint. His grip on the coffin tightened until his knuckles turned bone-white, his gaze burning into Mei Xu's back.
"Oh?" Her voice drifted lightly from above. "Killing intent."
Wuji smothered it at once.
"That's more like it," she said, a thread of approval in her tone.
With another casual gesture, she yanked the spatial pouches and natal swords from the other two dead elders, tucking them away without a second glance.
Then she turned and flew toward the forest's heart, moving with startling speed despite her wounds and depleted qi—the faster she hid, the better her chance to evade any reinforcements.
She glanced back at Wuji, battered by the wind, the coffin swinging beneath him as if it weighed nothing. His dirt-streaked hair whipped across his face as they vanished into the depths of the forest, her destination already chosen, her expression cool and calculating, his fate hanging by a thread, and the coffin between them, light as a secret, and heavy as a world.