She studied Wuji, now curled and trembling in a fetal position, his arms locked tightly around himself. His robe was torn and stained with blood, sweat, and dirt; his beard, matted with tears and snot.
An undisturbed smile crept onto her lips. "Good," she murmured, and tossed him another pill, this one a high-tier grade one. He swallowed it without hesitation.
As the medicinal energy surged through him, the daze in his eyes faded. But no clarity replaced it; only a hollow, haunting emptiness, as though his very soul had been scooped out, leaving behind nothing but an obedient vessel.
"Get up," she ordered, and he sprang to his feet at once, ignoring the flare of his injuries.
"Good," she said. "Now, I have questions. If I feel you answer incorrectly…" Her gaze hardened, the threat hanging in the silence between them. "You know what will happen."
Wuji's head bobbed in frantic agreement.
"Now," she continued, her voice as smooth and cold as polished stone. "The first question. Does the coffin possess any secrets I do not know?"
"Yes, seni—" He froze, the old habit of respect warring with his new reality. He corrected himself with frantic haste, the words tumbling out. "Yes, Master."
She flicked her wrist and the response was immediate, an explosion of pain sent him crashing to the stone floor. Veins bulged like blue worms across his forehead as he screamed into the ground.
Just as his heart reached its breaking point, the pressure vanished. He scrambled back, staggering upright on legs that felt like liquid.
Without a word, she waved her hand again. He collapsed a second time, his face slamming into the jagged floor. The pain flared for a moment, then receded into a dull, throbbing ache.
This time, Wuji did not move. He remained where he had fallen, facedown on the cold stone; a shivering heap of broken dignity. He did not dare to draw a full breath lest he give her an excuse to harm him again.
"Good," she murmured, her voice slick with mock approval. "You learn quickly. A slave does not stand while his master speaks." Her eyes narrowed into lethal slits. "But how dare you withhold the secrets of my Divine Coffin? Did you truly believe I would beg you for knowledge?"
A slight gesture commanded him to rise. He complied with agonizing slowness, his legs trembling beneath him as he stood, trapped in a paralyzing silence. To speak was to risk another torture and to remain silent was to invite her wrath.
Mei Xu watched him, her frown deepening. She was acutely aware of the limits of her tools; push a man's mind too far, and it would shatter into useless fragments. More pressingly, the clock was ticking. Every second spent in this wounded state was a second her enemies gained on her.
She exhaled softly. "Now," she said, her voice dangerously calm, "tell me everything you know about the coffin. Should I sense even a hint of deceit…" She let the unspoken threat linger in the air.
"I dare not lie, Master," Wuji replied instantly, bowing at a sharp, rigid angle. Even now, through the haze of agony, he refused to let his knees touch the stone.
A thin, cold smile touched her lips. "Good. Begin."
He did, describing the coffin's discovery plainly, offering the simple truth without flourish. But as he reached the subject of bonding, he made a calculated choice—to weave lies into truth.
It was a desperate gamble, but if it succeeded, he might not only survive this torment but turn it into an opportunity that could change everything.
After all, his recent suffering had taught him one brutal lesson: danger and opportunity were two edges of the same blade.
He told her how, over weeks, he had poured liters of his own blood onto the coffin's surface—how it drained him ceaselessly, carving years from his lifespan.
He described the final day: the exhaustion, the overwhelming compulsion that forced him to lift the once-immovable lid, to climb inside and fall into a deep, unnatural sleep.
"When I woke the next day," he said hoarsely, "I was completely hollowed of vitality. As you saw in the pit, my body was malnourished—until your pills replenished my blood qi."
Her eyes narrowed. "So it consumed most of your blood qi… and a decade of your lifespan," she repeated slowly. "How could a mere mortal know the exact toll?"
Though doubtful of that precise claim, the story aligned disturbingly with what she knew of such forbidden artifacts. Given the breaking he had already endured, she found it hard to believe he would invent such a specific, costly detail now.
"A taboo treasure," she concluded inwardly. "No wonder it bonded with a mortal—it only wanted to devour him."
Unaware of her thoughts, Wuji continued. His voice carried a practiced reverence, tinged with awe, and his body trembled just enough to seem convincing.
"Master, I don't know if you'll believe me," he said, lowering his gaze, "but the coffin granted me three abilities. One… lets me see the lifespans of others and obviously I can also see mine."
Her eyes glinted with controlled hunger. "Three abilities… for a mortal?" A calculating silence stretched between them. "Tell me then. How old am I?"
"Two hundred—" Before he could finish, she struck. He crumpled to the ground, agony tearing through him, only to vanish instantly as she withdrew her qi from his body. "Even if you can see," she said, her voice like polished ice, "you do not speak a maiden's age aloud. Now stand up."
Wuji staggered upright and bowed. "Understood, Master." Inside, he seethed. "This vain old hag. Just you wait."
Steadying his mind, he began explaining the three abilities, starting with the first: Husk.
"Master, this coffin art lets me raise the corpses from those I kill and bury," he explained, outlining its limits and usage while deliberately hiding nothing.
She listened, her expression growing unimpressed by the second. "So it's akin to the necromancy of the demonic path," she said coldly, "but fueled by lifespan. Inefficient. Who in their right mind would burn years when established techniques already exist?"
Unaware—or perhaps feigning ignorance—of her dismissal, Wuji moved to the second coffin art: the Eye of the End. He explained how it revealed not only the lifespan of any living thing, but also concealed beings and illusions layered over reality.
Her expression changed subtly. "So when Wudi claimed this mortal could see us… he truly could." Her fingers tightened unnoticeably.
If a mere mortal could pierce her illusion arrays this way, what could she, a Core Formation cultivator, perceive with such a gift? What of the Golden Core Refining Realm? Or… Nascent Soul? What truths would unfold before her then?
She forced her breath to calm. "Not yet. First, the I must drain him of all mysteries of the coffin."
"And the last," Wuji said, pausing deliberately as this was the revelation meant to cut deepest.
"The final ability is Lifespan Plunder," he stated evenly. "It allows me to steal lifespan from those I kill and bury."
The words struck as intended. Her body stilled, her pupils constricted to pinpoints.
"Too perverse," she mumbled, her gaze drifting slowly toward the coffin. "Far too perverse."
Her greed, raw, unmasked, and utterly consuming surged as her eyes fixed upon the coffin.
"Eighty percent," seeing her expression Wuji judged calmly. "The trap will work." The remaining twenty percent depended on variables beyond his control.
Especially with her. She was not only the most dangerous but also the most volatile—her temperament could shift in an instant. From the moment they met, even through the pain, Wuji had studied her closely. He'd watched every reaction, every flicker in her eyes.
One thing had never changed so far: her insatiable greed.
It revealed everything about her as a person. From her questions about surviving the attack, to her fixation on the coffin, her experiments with it, the Heart Gu pill she used to bind him, and her casual plundering of the three elders' corpses—each act revealed the same truth. Mei Xu was ruled by a greed beyond reason.
And Wuji understood that sin intimately. He had bathed in it over the past week, obsessively burying chickens, harvesting lifespans without restraint. He remembered how it had narrowed his world, blinding him to Wang Da until it had nearly consumed him entirely. Now, in the quiet of his mind, he mourned his adopted son.
But at the same time, he also understood: greed could be a tool, even a motivation. Yet when it turned into an obsession, it led only to ruin.
That was exactly why his plan might work.
With a visible effort, she reined in her fervor and turned to Wuji, her expression settling back into solemn coldness.
She knew this lesson well: excessive excitement bred expectation, and expectation bred disappointment. It was always wiser to assume less from the start.
"How true are your words?" she asked. This time, she did not threaten him with the heart gu poison. The need felt distant now. Whatever resistance he'd once possessed had been ground to dust; he was simply a tool.
Wuji straightened slightly, answering without hesitation. "Master, if even one word I've spoken today is false," he vowed, his tone solemn, "may the heavens strike me down and scatter my soul so it never reincarnates."
Each syllable carried the weight of absolute sincerity.
Mei Xu's eyes glinted, not from doubt, but from a deep satisfaction at her tool's obedience. Pride stirred within her. The final obstacle had been removed. The mortal before her was no longer a variable, but an instrument that would soon relinquish what she now saw as a divine gift: the Heaven Burial Coffin.
And as he inwardly cursed her, Wuji felt no fear of the so-called heavens. From the moment he had bonded with the coffin, the heavens had lost track of him. Fate kept no ledger bearing his name. His soul was no longer registered in the cycle of reincarnation, or in any underworld at all.
His soul was now tethered to the coffin, bound at an unimaginable price.
If he died, there would be no rebirth, no return. His soul would be absorbed by the coffin, his existence erased from the grand weave of the universe for all eternity.
Yet Wuji felt neither regret at the loss of reincarnation, nor elation at escaping death's natural hold.
After all, what meaning did another life hold for someone already unshackled from the cycle? He could live freely, unbound by the laws of reincarnation. Only one fear remained: dying in this final life.
Mei Xu nodded, quietly satisfied. No mere mortal would swear such a damning oath, not in a world where common souls clung to reincarnation as their only hope for a better fate, perhaps even a chance at cultivation itself in the next life.
The vow was absolute, and she did not doubt it or perhaps her judgment was clouded by the overwhelming greed, and despite her effort to control herself, the sharp, rising excitement proved difficult to suppress.
It was like the kind of euphoria a weak mortal might feel upon grasping divine authority, illogical, intoxicating, impossible to fully contain.
"To absorb the lifespan of those I kill…" Her breath shallowed at the thought.
Wasn't it the ultimate shortcut to immortality? Unlimited time. Time to forge a flawless Foundation, something every cultivator dreams of. Time to erase every flaw, to refine every facet of her being, whether it be soul, body, or essence, without hurry or compromise.
Her thoughts spiraled higher, clearer now. "Perhaps—no. Not perhaps. I will scatter my cultivation base."
She still had three hundred years. Even after scattering, a century would remain, which is enough to rebuild, to forge a new pillar path, or even three, like the prodigies nurtured by those legendary holy sects in the ancient books.
"Maybe, I will be the only loose cultivator to do it since the great war, with it… I might reach unimaginable heights," she thought her gaze so locked onto the coffin.
And most importantly—what truly ignited her excitement—was that this method seemed to avoid heavenly punishmententirely. Wuji stood before her, unharmed by tribulation.
Unlike other demonic arts, which drew swift and terrible retribution, techniques that demanded the sacrifice of kingdoms for mere scraps of extended life… this was different: clean, efficient, and perfect.
Her gaze lingered on the coffin, her greed now naked, unrestrained by pretense. In her mind, the future was already unfolding.