The sound of donkey-cart wheels crushing dead branches still echoed in his ears. Chen Wuya's fingers rested on the rough wooden carving. He neither let go nor looked up, only watched the man in gray approach step by step.
The crowd parted to make way. The man's face was weathered by wind and frost, yet his steps were steady. When he reached them, he dropped to his knees with a thud, kicking up a small cloud of dust.
"Hero Chen!" His voice was hoarse, yet impossible to ignore. "I'm the head of Willow River Town's hunting party. My surname is Li. My son went into the mountains to gather herbs last night and hasn't returned. This morning, someone saw a shed python skin beneath the Broken Cliff—thick as a water vat! Everyone in town says... says that snake has become a demon. It swallows people and doesn't spit out even their bones."
Chen Wuya did not move. He looked at the man's cracked knuckles, his trouser cuffs stained with mud and dry grass, and the worn strips of cloth at his shoulder—this was no act. He was a man who truly lived off the mountains.
"I no longer belong to the martial world," he said. His voice was quiet, but every word seemed nailed into the earth. "What happened last night was simply a chance encounter. I lent a hand, that was all. I'm no hero."
The man did not rise. Instead, he shuffled forward two steps on his knees. "I know you don't wish to leave the mountains again, but my son is only ten! The authorities say they have to wait for the Patrol Division to deploy troops. The outlaws turned around and left the instant they heard the words 'giant python.' Only you... only you have broken