That girl upon hearing Yang Zhuri's words seemed already filled with despair.
Amidst her grief, she wept silently, looking toward her older brother with extreme weakness.
The boy still lay upon the stone slab, blood continuing to seep from the wound at his neck.
He stared wide-eyed at the sky, his eyeballs completely motionless.
He likely felt and sensed his younger sister's gaze, his lips twitching slightly as though he wished to say something, but only an extremely faint, soft rattling sound emerged from his throat, and beyond that he could no longer produce any movement.
The girl's tears thus became all the more unstoppable, streaming down her cheeks.
"Brother."
She still curled up on the stone slab, one hand grasping the hem of her brother's garment, the other hand covering her own mouth, pressing her sobs desperately into her palm, allowing only a few fragmented, beast-like whimpers to leak out between her fingers.
Yang Zhuri looked at her tears, his peach-blossom eyes devoid of glee.
He merely tilted his head slightly, the expression within those eyes resembling that of a child squatting beneath a tree watching ants move house; having seen it, he found it uninteresting.
"What are you crying for," he said offhandedly. "People must die eventually, sooner or later anyway.
Your parents are dead, your younger sister will likely die too, and what meaning is there left in you and your older brother staying alive?"
The girl's body trembled all the more violently.
Yang Zhuri no longer looked at her, raising his head to gaze in the direction of the gatehouse.
"Why aren't they here yet," he muttered to himself in a low voice, his brows furrowing slightly as a trace of impatience flashed through those peach-blossom eyes.
Right at that moment.
Footsteps echoed from outside the