Grandpa's voice wavered. "Da'er… take care on the road."
"Don't rush. Don't push yourself."
Wang Da nodded, a warm, quiet smile stretching across his face.
"I will."
"You all matter too much for me to be careless."
He reached out and squeezed Grandpa's hand gently.
Then he ruffled Wang Ci's hair, earning a flustered pout, and bumped shoulders with Wang Er, who pretended not to smile.
Finally, he stepped outside.
The forest ahead looked darker than before—heavy, silent, almost swallowing the moonlight.
Yet when Wang Da walked toward it, he didn't hesitate.
His silhouette felt steady, like someone who understood what he was giving up and still chose it.
He turned back one last time and lifted his hand in an easy, warm wave.
"Take care of each other until I return," he said.
"I'll do my best to come back sooner."
They all stood at the doorway, watching him leave.
When his figure finally disappeared between the trees, Grandpa's smile crumbled.
He lifted a trembling hand and wiped at his eyes.
"That child…" he whispered, voice thick with emotion.
"Wang Da carries too much on those shoulders of his."
Wang Ci leaned into Grandpa's arm, eyes shining.
Wang Er stood beside them, fists balled tightly, jaw tense—trying to look strong for everyone.
Slowly, the three of them walked back into the small house.
The door closed with a soft thud, and the warm light within flickered quietly against the night, holding onto the hope he left behind.
Wang Da walked along the narrow forest path, the night breeze brushing his cheeks. The small cloth bag at his side bumped softly against his leg with every step.
He touched it gently, almost reverently.
He could still hear his sister's stubborn voice.
"Da-ge, you must eat properly," Wang Ci had scolded, her brows knit.
He had laughed at that—soft, warm, the kind of laugh that dissolved worry.
"I eat well enough. But… thank you, Ci. Really."
"Hmph. Just don't come back starving."
"Eat. A lot. Or else I'll be angry." she'd said, stuffing dried meat and steamed buns into the bag until it bulged.
Wang Da had placed a gentle hand on her head.
"Alright, alright… Ci, thank you."
Remembering her expression—half angry, half worried—made his chest warm.
Rustle—
He slowed.
Turning, he saw only the dark swaying of treetops, leaves scattering like shards of jade under the moon.
"Hm." He exhaled faintly.
"The night wind is colder than usual."
He looked up at the stars as he walked, a soft smile tugging at his lips.
"I wish… I could see her grow up strong. I wish—"
Crack.
A branch snapped behind him—sharp, sudden, wrong.
Wang Da's instincts flared. He spun around, voice rising, "Who's—"
A flash of blue light sliced the darkness.
And the world split apart.
He saw—horrifically conscious—his own headless body stand for one heartbeat longer, blood erupting in violent, rhythmic jets.
Hot crimson sprayed across the trees, splattering the roots, dripping from leaves like macabre rain.
His body staggered forward, fingers twitching toward the little cloth bag—toward his sister's cooking.
His head which was separated cleanly from his neck, lurched into a dizzy spin.
The sky turned.
The ground turned as his head flew through the air, vision shaking violently.
He saw his own torso still standing for a heartbeat, arterial blood geysering in hot, pulsing streams from the severed neck, painting the bark of the nearby trees—before collapsing in a heavy, graceless heap.
His head hit the earth with a dull, wet slap.
He could still see.
Still think.
For a few seconds more, cursed with awareness.
His vision tilted sideways, catching the sight of his own body lying in a pool of spreading, steaming blood.
The coppery scent filled his nostrils.
A cloaked figure stepped closer and Wang Da's lips trembled, his final breath thin and fragile.
"…Who…"
It wasn't fear in his eyes.
Just sorrow.
Unfinished promises with his late wife.
His brother's marriage.
Treatment of his grandfather.
And his sister's name flickering in his mind like a dying flame—
And then the world dimmed.
The last warmth left his flesh.
His gaze turned glassy and the night swallowed him whole.
What remained was only a lifeless head, a cooling body, and a blood-soaked forest that would forget everything by dawn.
The cloaked figure moved with a calm, unhurried rhythm, as though strolling through a garden instead of a blood-soaked forest.
He crouched beside Wang Da's headless corpse, the severed neck still pumping its last weak spurts of steaming blood.
Unperturbed, he extended a hand into his aperture.
Wisps of light flickered across his palm as several Gu worms emerged—squirming, chittering, glinting with eerie luster under the moon.
He inspected them briefly, then rose and walked toward the fallen head.
Wang Da's lifeless eyes stared blankly at the dirt, still reflecting the moonlight as if unwilling to accept death.
A boot planted itself firmly on the head, forcing it deeper into the soil with a sickening crunch.
Bits of bone shifted.
Blood oozed in a widening halo.
Slowly, almost ritualistically, the cloaked figure pulled back his hood.
Moonlight revealed Fang Yuan's expression—calm, indifferent, devoid of even a dust mote of pity.
He inhaled deeply, the scent of crushed leaves blending with that of fresh blood.
A faint smile touched his lips.
"Mm… the air tonight is pure," he murmured.
"Life, death, the fragrance of nature… all returning to the same cycle."
His gaze shifted to the decapitated head beneath his boot.
"How fragile humans are," he continued softly.
"How easily choices shatter them… like porcelain."
He lifted his foot and kicked the head.
It rolled across the ground, bouncing against a tree root with a wet thud, one eye cracking open wider from the impact.
Fang Yuan watched the head spin before coming to a stop, then let out a quiet sigh, faint and almost disappointed.
"Wang Da," he said, his voice even, neither mocking nor cruel.
He tilted his head, surveying the corpse. "In another life, perhaps you could have died differently."
His gaze lingered on the body, cold and unchanging.
"What a waste," he whispered.
Silence settled over the forest, broken only by the slow, steady drip of blood from the severed stump—each drop marking the end of a life that never realized who it had walked beside.
And Fang Yuan, untouched by tragedy, stepped away—
leaving behind a head set ablaze, without thoughts,
a body burning, without breath,
and a forest ablaze, remembering only the blood and the shock.