No Regrets Even in Death

Lin Yi looked at Biao's bloodshot eyes and said nothing more. He merely reached out and gently patted his broad, sturdy shoulder.

"Don't worry, Brother Biao." His voice was low. "Falcon will get better."

Biao did not answer at once.

He lowered his head, heavy breaths blasting from his nostrils. Only after a long while did he squeeze out a muffled

"Mm."

Then he turned around and called over two tribesmen. Together, they carried Falcon—along with his body tightly wrapped in wooden boards and cloth strips—out of the stone house and sent him to his mother's home.

Lin Yi did not follow.

He stood at the entrance of the stone house, watching those figures recede into the dim dusk.

He slowly let out a breath and returned to his own stone house. The oil lamp inside had not yet been lit. Moonlight leaked through the window, laying a thin layer of silvery white across the floor.

Still dressed, Lin Yi lay on the stone bed with his hands beneath his head. He stared blankly for a long time at the crossbeam blackened by smoke overhead.

For the first time, he had truly experienced the dangers of the Great Wilderness.

Falcon was still alive.

But before Falcon, how many others had died silently on this land?

Falcon's father, the past Mang spoke of with "you'll get used to it," the village chief's calm account that "tribes are wiped out every year"... Only today did he fully understand the weight behind those words.

He turned over and closed his eyes.

The blood-gold patterns and the great python's blue-black scales flickered back and forth in his mind. Only after a long while did they finally settle into silence.

Just as he was drifting off, heavy footsteps sounded outside the door.

"Kid Lin, asleep?"

It was Biao.

Lin Yi sat up and opened the door. Biao stood beneath the moonlight, the stifling gloom from that afternoon still lingering on his rugged face, though he was forcing himself to remain steady.

"I just spoke with the village chief." Biao's voice was somewhat hoarse. "The Rock Python meat we brought back will, at most, be enough for the tribe for two days.

"And that's only if every household tightens its belt. Tomorrow... tomorrow, we'll have to go out again."

As he said this, his gaze did not meet Lin Yi's. Instead, it rested on a small patch of dirt before his feet. It sounded like a request, yet also like something that had to be done.

Lin Yi did not hesitate at all. "No problem, Brother Biao. Same time tomorrow. I'll wait for you at the village entrance."

Biao raised his head and looked at him. His lips moved, but in the end, he said nothing. He only nodded heavily.

He turned and took two steps, then stopped again. With his back to Lin Yi, he tossed out a sentence. "I still have to notify the others. Get some rest early." Then his figure melted into the night, leaving only footsteps fading farther and farther away.

Lin Yi leaned against the doorframe, watching that iron-tower-like back gradually shrink beneath the moonlight.

He could tell that Falcon's grievous injury had snapped some string in Biao's heart that had been stretched taut all this time.

He shut the door and lay back down.

He did not sleep soundly that night.

Early the next morning, while the clouds at the horizon had yet to be fully lit, Lin Yi had already arrived at the tribe entrance.

He thought he had come early enough, only to find a familiar figure already seated between the two massive totem pillars.

Biao sat cross-legged on a low stone, the broad-backed saber laid across before him. He gripped a whetstone in one hand, grinding the blade again and again.

The rasping sound of stone against metal was especially clear amid the morning's silence.

Lin Yi's approaching footsteps made Biao look up. The two exchanged a glance. Lin Yi said nothing, simply walking over to sit on another stone beside him.

He turned his head to watch Biao sharpen his blade with complete focus. The saber had already been polished brightly, its edge gleaming coldly beneath the morning light, yet Biao's hand continued to push the whetstone back and forth mechanically.

It did not look like he was sharpening a blade. It looked more like he needed something to do, so the thoughts churning in his head could quiet down.

The two sat side by side in silence for quite some time.

Biao suddenly spoke.

He did not turn his head. His gaze remained on the blade, but his voice slid from his lowered throat, hoarse and rough. "Ten years ago... when I first joined a hunt, Falcon's father led me."

Lin Yi listened quietly.

"He taught me hand over hand how to track footprints, how to listen to the wind and determine direction, how to judge distance from an animal's droppings.

"He told me that a hunter of the Great Wilderness needed three things: eyes, ears, and a guts that didn't fear death." The whetstone in Biao's hand paused. "Then one day, we ran into a ferocious beast that suddenly sprang out.

"I was young and charged too far ahead. My reaction was half a beat too slow. Falcon's father was the one who shoved me aside."

His voice broke for a moment.

"He took that beast's claw across the chest instead. By the time we carried him back to the tribe... he was already beyond saving."

At last, Biao turned to look at Lin Yi. His eyes were webbed with bloodshot veins, not from fury, but from something heavy that had weighed on him for ten years.

"Falcon nearly died yesterday in the team I led. His father died for me back then, and yesterday, his son nearly died right before my eyes. Kid Lin, tell me, how can I possibly be at peace?"

Lin Yi met his gaze without flinching.

He placed a hand on Biao's shoulder. Once his palm settled, his fingers slowly tightened, steadily pressing that strength into him. "Brother Biao, Falcon has stabilized now. As long as he recuperates for a few months, he'll be able to stand again."

He paused, and his voice deepened. "No one can guarantee absolute safety when it comes to hunting. The guilt in your heart proves you're a man of flesh and blood. Falcon is still alive. That matters more than anything."

Biao's Adam's apple bobbed twice. He said nothing more.

At that moment, steady footsteps approached from behind. Mang walked over carrying a stone axe and stopped before them.

He glanced at Biao's expression, then at Lin Yi, before speaking in a deep, muffled voice. "Biao, there are some things I've wanted to say for a long time."

He set down his stone axe, his tone far more solemn than usual. "Every person in our hunting party, from the day we first hoisted a weapon and stepped out of the tribe, had already prepared to die. You did. I did. Every one of us did."

Mang's gaze swept over the other team members arriving one after another. His voice fell word by word. "The spears and bone blades in our hands aren't for keeping ourselves alive. They're for the tribe, for the wives and children at home, for the little brats behind us who are still learning to walk, so they can have meat to eat.

"Living is a profit. Dying is the fate a person of the Great Wilderness ought to fulfill."

"Right! No regrets even in death!"

Another team member who had just arrived shouted in response. Then a second and a third voice rang out, each heavier and more resolute than the last.

"No regrets even in death!"

"This is the fate of us Great Wilderness people!"

Lin Yi stood at the edge of the crowd, watching those rugged faces gleam like bronze and iron in the morning light, listening to those hoarse yet unwavering voices rise and overlap.

He did not speak, but something in his chest slowly churned, settled, and hardened.

He was different from these people.

He did not believe in fate.

He never had. He had not believed in it before crossing over, and he believed in it even less after.

The hunters of the Great Wilderness regarded life and death as rules decreed by heaven. If they lived, they lived. If they died, they died.

But he was different. He would grow stronger. Step by step, he would dig out the mysteries of this land beneath his feet. He would trample through, layer by layer, those ferocious beasts, Divine Markings, and the barriers of cultivation realms.

He would leave the Great Wilderness and see scenery broader than the tribe, broader than the hunting grounds, broader than this forest.

Biao lifted the broad-backed saber from the stone and sheathed it across his back.

He rose from the low stone, his bloodshot eyes sweeping once more over the familiar faces before him.

Then he took a deep breath. His chest swelled high, then slowly fell.

"Good." His voice regained the confidence that belonged to the tribe's strongest warrior. "Move out."

He swept a large hand through the air, and the leather cord on the saber's hilt swayed in the morning breeze.

At that exact moment, sunlight crossed the eastern ridge. Golden waves of light spilled over the treetops, falling upon the totem pillars, upon every shoulder, upon the dirt road leading into the depths of the Great Wilderness.

Lin Yi walked at Biao's side and set off.