He took a slow, steadying breath, willing his racing heart to still. Only when the trembling left his limbs did he rise—a soft groan escaping him, dull pain radiating through his joints and across his scarred, red-stained back. Gritting his teeth, he made his way toward the mouth of the cave.
The moment he stepped outside, he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply and fully, then exhaled as though he had been holding his breath for years instead of hours.
For a long, suspended moment, he simply stood there, letting himself exist, absorbing the scent of damp earth, the fading warmth of the sun, and the deep, unnatural silence that smothered the forest.
Above him, the dark, heavy gray clouds were thinning, frayed apart by the last amber sunlight of evening. That gentle warmth spilled over his face, tracing every wrinkle carved by fear and grief, glinting on his beard, still matted with dried tears and the gray residue of suffering, a testament to what he had endured.
For a fleeting moment, it almost felt peaceful. As though the agony, the razor's edge between life and death, no longer mattered at all.
Then, like a bucket of ice water being poured over his head, the harsh reality returned and the fragile calm shattered.
He lowered his gaze and squinted into the forest, his expression turning solemn. The shadows between the trees were thick and unmoving, and the undergrowth was dense enough to swallow sound.
Yet nothing moved; no wild beasts prowled within the array's reach. Not a single lifespan number revealed itself to the Eye of the End.
Unease crept in, but he calmed himself and trudged toward the nearest tree. One step, two, five, six. Several seconds passed, but by the seventh step, the tree remained exactly where it had been.
No closer and no farther. His steps slowed, then stopped entirely as he realized this disorienting feeling was too familiar. He remembered hours earlier when Mei Xu's illusion had twisted his senses and turned distance into mockery. His jaw tightened; a look of irritation flashed across his face before fading, replaced by cold dread.
He turned back toward the cave, lifted his head, and stared at the space above the entrance—at the invisible point where Mei Xu's array plate had vanished into the folds of space.
"As I feared," he muttered through clenched teeth. "Her array is still active... even after being dragged into the abyss. What a fearful woman."
Slowly, he returned to the cave entrance and stared upward, as though sheer will alone might peel away the illusion, expose the hidden plate, and shatter the false reality enclosing him.
"Don't tell me…" His voice wavered. "Don't tell me I'll be trapped here until the array runs out of qi." Panic churned in his chest, a tide he could no longer hold back.
"No," he muttered, clenching his frail fist. "I have to do something. I can't just wait." He paused, his thoughts slamming repeatedly into the hard wall of reality. "But what can I do? I know nothing about arrays. I have no qi to break a barrier—if that's even possible."
He reached for an idea, then rejected it just as quickly. "Call for help?" he scoffed bitterly. "How? Scream into the forest? Burn wood for smoke?"
Even if he did… who would come? And if they did, what if they were that bitch's companions?
One misfortune stacked upon another, each heavier and more suffocating than the last. Above them all loomed the ticking poison in his chest: the Heart Gu. Only six days remained before it fully awakened.
If not for that, he could have endured. He could have waited until the energy ran dry. But time was the real enemy. He didn't know the array's limit. A week? Two? Mei Xu had intended five days of undisturbed seclusion; the array was surely designed to outlast that.
But the poison granted him only six.
Food, at least, was not the problem. Insects crawled across the cave floor in abundance, their faint bronze lifespans flickering beneath his gaze. He could catch them, eat them, and survive in the most literal sense. Yet survival was never that simple.
Even if the array collapsed, he would be exposed to the forest, a death trap at this depth. Wild beasts prowled here, and worse still were the spirit beasts, any one of them capable of shredding him in seconds.
And even if he avoided them with the Eye of the End, he would have no sense of direction. No path, and no way of knowing where the endless trees ended and human settlements began.
Understanding his place in the forest, Wuji let out a long, weary sigh. Only now did he truly grasp the reality of this world, and its cruelty.
To the weak, the world was not merely indifferent; it was openly hostile. They were not granted the luxury of dreams, the right to explore, or even the certainty of a stable life. They did not stand on equal ground with cultivators. They did not even breathe the same air.
If they were fortunate, they died quickly—caught beneath a stray immortal technique. If not, they were torn apart by wild beasts. If not beasts, then evil spirits. If not spirits, then the restless ghosts of failed cultivators, clawing their way back from death in desperate attempts to evade the agents of the underworld.
And if none of those claimed them, fate would—through accidents so mundane they felt almost insulting. Even then, survival only delayed the inevitable. Destined death awaited them all.
In the eighty-two years since being reborn into this world, he had seen only its surface. Only the shallowest edge of its brutality. Perhaps it was because his village, now reduced to ruins, had stood within the territory of the Heaven's Fall Sect.
There had been no rampant evil spirits, no demonic cultivators preying on the helpless, no ghosts wandering the dead of night.
But that illusion of safety had shattered. There was no such thing as eternal protection. Not without true strength. And strength, he now understood, was not a blessing. It was the only permission this world recognized to continue existing.
He sighed again; none of it mattered to an old, frail man cornered in the depths of an abyss, forced to wait for death. And for someone who could no longer reincarnate, death was not an ending. It was annihilation.
That looming erasure ignited fear, but also something harsher—a burning determination born not from hope, but from terror.
"I will survive," he mumbled to himself. "No—I have to survive." His voice hardened. "No matter the cost. I must protect this last life with everything I have. Even if it means clawing my way forward through hell itself. Even if it means forsaking morality. Even if it means crossing my bottom line."
With that resolve anchoring his thoughts, he turned back into the cave, desperation forcing him to approach the problem from another angle.
He sat against the northern wall, his wounded back pressing into cold, rough stone. The hovering artifact cast its pale glow across the cavern, illuminating what remained of the ritual circle etched into the ground.
What had once been complex and layered had faded into nothing more than a dark outline, as if some unseen force had stripped it bare. Or perhaps the coffin itself had done so.
He did not dwell on it. He had no such luxury, and in any case, the simplification worked in his favor.
"Think," he muttered, jaw clenched, the word scraping against the silence of the cave. "Think, Wuji. Think."
For a brief moment, an idea surfaced. "What if I simply wait?" he murmured, his clenched jaw loosening. "The array can't have unlimited qi. Right? Maybe it will collapse on its own."
The thought died almost as soon as it formed. His jaw tightened again. "Stupid," he cursed quietly.
Luck had never been his ally. In eighty-two years, he had learned that with painful clarity. Relying on luck was just another way of surrendering control, and surrendering control was nothing more than a slower, quieter form of death.
And death was not something he was willing to accept. His thoughts circled back to the Heaven Burial Coffin.
The moment the idea took shape, emotion surged through him, not only greed, but fear. He feared that summoning it again would demand blood he could not spare. He feared he might bleed himself dry and die before the poison, or anything else, could claim him.
Then another voice answered, cold and unyielding: "What does blood qi matter in the face of certain death? You still have Mei Xu's blood qi nourishing pills."
They were inferior to the one she had given him earlier, but they could stabilize his body, perhaps enough to regenerate some blood qi, enough to endure one more gamble. Logic collided with instinct and fear wrestled with greed.
In the end, fear won, but only by a narrow margin. He rose abruptly. Still, the greedy voice refused to quiet.
"Think of what you would gain. The memories of a Core Formation cultivator. Centuries of accumulated knowledge—techniques, spells, combat instincts, and high-tier mastery of the array path."
"Would you truly abandon all of that?"
He paced across the faded ritual circle, each step a soft echo against the stone. For long minutes, the argument gnawed at him, relentless.
Then he stopped. "What good," he asked himself quietly, "are her memories, her lifespan, her mastery… when death is already standing at my door?"
After wrestling with himself for several minutes, he finally chose a middle path. He would not resummon the coffin now.
With six days remaining before the Heart Gu awakened, he would recall it on the fifth.
He understood the consequences instinctively. The Heaven Burial Coffin was not a blunt tool, it obeyed its rules. To fully devour a Core Formation cultivator like Mei Xu required fifteen days.
Shortening that process to five would inevitably diminish what he could claim. Memories he might get would arrive fragmented. Knowledge would be incomplete. The lifespan he gained would be reduced to a quarter, perhaps even less.
But necessity left no room for perfection.
"This wouldn't be such a headache if I were at least in the Body Forging realm," he thought bitterly. "Or even Qi Refinement."
If he had qi, he could break the array. If he had cultivation, he could flee the forest. If he were stronger, he would not be cornered like this.
And most importantly, the stronger he was, the shorter the devouring time would be.
He sighed and returned to the northern wall, lowering himself to the ground and leaning his back against the cold stone. His gaze drifted toward the cave entrance as he watched the last traces of sunlight fade and night creep in.
If not for Mei Xu's glowing artifact hovering quietly overhead, darkness would have swallowed the cave whole.
He had no idea how long its light would last. So he sat in silence and let time pass.
Hours later, as the night deepened, his stomach growled, and another, more pressing discomfort made itself known.
Waiting, it seemed, demanded payment in every form.
Without hesitation, he stood and scanned the cave floor. A few venomous insects, scorpions and snake-like crawlers, emerged from their crevices, moving sluggishly along the stone and walls as they searched for prey.
He turned, reached up, and took the glowing artifact by its upper handle. Carrying it outside, he let its light spill across the dark clearing.
Under the combined glow of moonlight, the artifact's pale radiance, and the Eye of the End, faint bronze lifespans numbers of insects flickered into view among the grass.
He released the artifact, allowing it to hover in place, then narrowed his eyes and crouched low. Keeping his gaze locked on the shifting numbers, he crawled forward, muscles straining with every movement.
With a sudden burst of effort, he lunged. Luck favored him this time. He seized a grasshopper, crushed it in his grip, severed its head, and set the body aside.
For several minutes, the hunt continued. Some escaped his grasp, especially the grasshoppers, agile and quick, forcing him to time his movements carefully. Others tried to hide, burrowing or clinging to shadows.
But it made no difference. Before the Eye of the End, there was no escape, only delay.
For several more minutes, his crouched form moved sluggishly from side to side, gathering his harvest. When he was done, he brought the insects together at the center of the clearing. The hovering glow artifact illuminated their chitin and hard exoskeletons, casting pale reflections across their twisted forms.
He picked a grasshopper, and immediately disgust flickered across his face as he examined it slowly. He swallowed, forcing his mind to accept what his body demanded. With deliberate hesitation, he raised his hand to his mouth and pushed the grasshopper inside.
His fist clenched. He chewed, and the sound of chitin cracking echoed sharply through the silent clearing. His face twisted in revulsion as the taste struck him, but the longer he ate, the more bearable it became—almost tolerable.
He didn't know whether it truly tasted better or whether hunger was deceiving his senses. But it didn't matter, beggars couldn't be choosers.
He reminded himself of that with every insect he devoured, and deep down, a faint sense of relief stirred. At least this was an option and atleast he wasn't starving yet.
After a short while, he stopped. Only a handful of insects remained in sight.
He stepped back, resisting the urge to finish them all. He still had five days ahead of him. Rationing was survival. Scanning the ground again, he noticed the lifespan numbers of insects had already grown sparse.
With his hunger somewhat eased—though his thirst remained—he returned to the cave.
After a brief search, he found a section of the wall worn smooth by time and moisture. He released the glowing artifact, letting it drift back toward the ceiling, then retrieved the sword resting near the center of the cave.
Holding it loosely, he lowered himself to the ground and leaned back against the cold stone, the blade resting across his lap, his only defense against the poisonous crawlers that lurked nearby.
For a moment, he watched them carefully, but none approached. For reasons he did not understand, they kept their distance. Relief seeped into his battered body.
And as soon as his eyes closed, exhaustion claimed him instantly. His body was spent and his mind, hollowed by fear and strain.
Sleep came without ceremony, dragging him under as effortlessly as a tide pulling a corpse into deeper water.