Drunkenness and Despair

"Zhanye?" By the lamplight, Vina made out the curled-up figure on the ground and started slightly.

Long Aotian furrowed his brow but said nothing. He quickly stepped forward and bent down to examine him.

"Help him inside." His voice was steady and brief.

The two supported Long Zhanye from either side, carefully lifting him as the reek of alcohol clung to him and his consciousness remained muddled.

Half supporting, half carrying him, they brought him into the warm living room and laid him flat on a cushioned recliner.

"How did he get this drunk?" Vina looked at Long Zhanye's pale, haggard face, flushed with an unhealthy redness, concern and pity in her eyes.

She turned to fetch hot water and a clean towel, then gently placed the warm towel over his forehead, trying to ease some of his discomfort.

"I'll make him something to sober up." Long Aotian spoke as he turned away.

With practiced movements, he made a cup of warm honey water and set it on the low table beside him, waiting for Long Zhanye to regain enough awareness to drink it.

At that moment, Long Zhanye was deeply trapped in the chaotic Abyss created by alcohol.

Vina's gentle wiping, the honey water Long Aotian had placed beside him, even their quiet conversation—all of it seemed to reach him through a thick curtain of water, vague and unreal.

Now and then, he let out meaningless whimpers or indistinct syllables.

His brows were tightly knitted. Even in his drunken dreams, that crushing sorrow and pain seemed never to have left him.

Time passed amid silence and worry.

After roughly four or five hours, the sky beyond the window had begun to brighten faintly.

Long Zhanye's muddled consciousness was finally drawn little by little out of drunken slumber by his body's extreme discomfort and the warmth around him.

With difficulty, he lifted his heavy eyelids, his vision gradually sharpening from a blur.

The first things he saw were Vina's face and Long Aotian sitting quietly beside her, keeping watch with a calm expression.

"Se... Senior Brother? Senior Sister?" His voice was hoarse and dry, carrying the weakness and confusion of a hangover.

"Why are you here... Wh-where is this?"

Seeing that he had awakened, Vina breathed a sigh of relief and explained gently, "You got drunk and collapsed outside our residence."

"We heard the commotion and brought you inside."

Long Aotian stood to one side, looking at the lingering bewilderment in Long Zhanye's eyes.

His lips moved, but in the end, it became only a sigh. He said nothing.

That sigh contained far too many complicated emotions.

Perhaps there was also a trace of lament from one genius to another over the unpredictability of fate.

He silently pushed the cup of warm honey water closer to Long Zhanye's hand.

Long Zhanye did not refuse. Instead, he took the cup of warm honey water.

A pale gold shimmered in the cup, reflecting the dim candlelight in the room. He raised it to his lips, tipped back his head, and drained it in one gulp.

The warm sweetness slid down his throat, yet it could not dissolve the heaviness in his chest.

He gently set the empty cup back on the table, then looked up at the two before him. His voice was low and hoarse. "Thank you, Senior Brother. Thank you, Senior Sister."

"It's getting late. I should head back. If I stay any longer, Elder Xu will start worrying again."

With that, he swayed to his feet.

The alcohol had not yet worn off. His limbs seemed unwilling to obey him, his steps unsteady as he staggered toward the door.

Seeing him stumble, Long Aotian instinctively stepped forward and reached out to support him.

But just as his fingertips were about to touch Long Zhanye's sleeve, Long Zhanye seemed to sense something. He lifted an arm slightly and stubbornly waved him off.

The motion was small, yet it carried an unyielding refusal to be touched.

He refused to admit defeat. Even in such a miserable state, he neither wanted nor could bear to be seen as useless trash who needed someone to hold him up.

Vina looked at his thin yet straight back and said softly, "Zhanye, this is your home too. Come by often... from now on."

As her words fell, Long Zhanye froze in place.

After a moment of silence, he turned around very slowly.

He did not look at them. He merely gazed at the dark night beyond the door. "I... don't have a home anymore."

He said it very softly, yet the words struck Long Aotian and Vina's hearts like a heavy blow.

For a moment, neither could speak, as though something had lodged in their throats.

They could only watch as he turned away once more and slowly disappeared into the darkness outside, moving with a nearly stumbling yet strangely resolute gait.

The candlelight in the room flickered softly. Everything was silent, save for the unspoken words lingering in the air, stirring wave after wave of bitterness.

Outside, the sky stood in that ambiguous hour before dawn.

A faint gray-white light seeped from the eastern horizon, but the surrounding scenery remained shadowy and indistinct.

Relying on the last remnants of his drunkenness, Long Zhanye barely discerned the way and stumbled toward his own room.

He had walked this path for seven years. Every blade of grass, every tree, every brick and stone along the way had long been carved into his bones.

Past the silent training ground and through a small bamboo grove lay the familiar Short Bridge spanning a shallow stream.

Its surface was paved with bluestone slabs. It took only three steps to cross, and on ordinary days, he would not have taken a wrong step even with his eyes closed.

Yet tonight.

Just as he staggered onto the bridgehead, the corner of his eye caught something unusual.

At the edge of the mud beside one side of the bridge, something seemed to be jutting up abruptly.

He stopped, narrowed his drunken eyes, and looked carefully. It was a flat stone with uneven edges, about the size of a pot lid.

One end had been pried high into the air, pointing diagonally toward the faintly brightening sky.

Beneath the stone, a pitch-black opening was clearly exposed, its edges jagged like a narrow fissure.

"Hm?" A flicker of confusion passed through Long Zhanye's muddled mind.

He had passed this bridge countless times, yet he had never seen this stone, much less remembered any pit here.

He shook his heavy head and unconsciously moved closer.

Driven by curiosity and a vague sense of responsibility, perhaps because he feared someone else might trip over it, he crouched down.

He leaned his head toward the pitch-black opening, straining to widen his eyes as he peered inside.

The hole did not seem shallow. A faint current of air appeared to move through the darkness, carrying the smell of earth and age.

There seemed to be another space below...? As that thought crossed his mind, even his drunken haze cleared a little.

"Need to put the stone back..." he muttered, reaching out to grip the raised stone and intending to move it back into place to cover this inexplicable hazard.

But he overestimated the control he had over his body at that moment.

The moment his Five Fingers exerted force, a wave of weightlessness struck him fiercely.

The mud beneath his feet, slick with morning dew, betrayed him without mercy. That grab not only failed to move the stone, but instead...

"Ah—!"

With a short cry, Long Zhanye felt the world spin. He lost his balance completely and pitched forward.

He actually fell straight through that narrow opening, barely fifty centimeters wide!

The expected hard impact did not come at once.

The fall was extremely brief, as though an awkward stumble had merely been stretched out slightly.

The next second, his feet touched solid ground, followed by the dull pain of his buttocks and palms hitting the floor.

The bottom of the hole was only about one and a half meters below the opening. It was not very deep, but it was enough to leave him thoroughly disoriented, his already groggy head buzzing even louder.

Long Zhanye slumped amid the dust at the bottom of the hole, blinking blankly. It took several breaths before he understood his situation.

He looked up. A faint sliver of light filtered through the irregular opening overhead.

What was going on? Supporting himself against the icy ground, he slowly stood up and brushed the dirt from his clothes, his heart full of disbelief.

He had been in the Body Sect for more than seven years. He would not dare claim to know every path, building, and hidden corner within the sect like the back of his hand, but he was certainly familiar with them.

This Short Bridge was even more a place he had to pass every day on his way to and from his residence, day after day, year after year...

When had he ever heard of it, when had he ever discovered that beneath this bridge lay such a hidden cave?