Though Death Comes, No Regrets

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

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

Biao did not answer immediately.

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 strips of cloth, out of the stone house and sent him to his mother's dwelling.

Lin Yi did not follow.

He stood at the entrance of the stone house, watching those figures fade 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 sheet of silvery white across the ground.

Still dressed, Lin Yi lay on the stone bed with his hands beneath his head, staring blankly for a long time at the beam overhead, blackened by smoke and fire.

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

Falcon was still alive.

But before Falcon, how many people had died soundlessly upon this land?

Falcon's father, the past Mang had spoken of with the words "you'll get used to it," and the village chief's calm statement 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 flashed alternately through his mind. Only after a long while did they finally settle into silence.

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

"Kid Lin, are you asleep?"

It was Biao.

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

"I discussed it with the village chief just now." Biao's voice was a little hoarse. "The Rock Python meat we brought back is enough for the tribe to eat for, at most, two days.

That's only if every household eats sparingly. Tomorrow... tomorrow, we still have to go out."

As he spoke, his gaze did not fall on Lin Yi, but on a small patch of dirt at his feet. It sounded both like a request and something that had to be done.

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

Biao looked up 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 need to notify the others. Get some rest early." Then his figure melted into the night, leaving only the fading sound of footsteps behind.

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

He could tell that Falcon's grave injuries had snapped some cord in Biao's heart that had been taut all along.

He closed the door and lay back down.

His sleep that night was far from peaceful.

Early the next morning, before the clouds on the horizon had been fully illuminated, Lin Yi had already arrived at the tribe's entrance.

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

Biao sat cross-legged atop a low stone. His broad-backed saber lay across the ground before him, while he gripped a whetstone and sharpened its blade stroke by stroke.

The rasping sound of stone against metal was especially clear in the stillness of dawn.

The sound of Lin Yi's approaching footsteps made Biao raise his head. The two exchanged a glance. Lin Yi said nothing and simply walked over to sit on another stone beside him.

He turned his head to watch Biao focus on sharpening the saber. The blade was already polished bright, its edge gleaming coldly in the morning light, yet Biao's hand continued pushing the whetstone back and forth mechanically.

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

The two sat shoulder to shoulder in silence for quite some time.

Then Biao suddenly spoke.

He did not turn his head. His gaze remained on the blade, but his voice slipped 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 tell 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 heart with the courage not to fear death." The whetstone in Biao's hand paused. "Then one day, we encountered a Ferocious Beast that suddenly lunged out.

"I was young. I charged too far ahead and reacted half a beat too slowly. Falcon's father was the one who pushed me away."

His voice broke for a moment.

"He himself was struck in the chest by that beast's claw. 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 blood vessels, not from anger, 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 under my nose. Kid Lin, tell me, how can I ever feel at peace?"

Lin Yi met his eyes without flinching.

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

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

Biao's Adam's apple bobbed twice, and he said nothing further.

At that moment, steady footsteps came from behind them. Mang approached with a stone axe slung over his shoulder and stopped before the two.

He glanced at Biao's complexion, 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 the stone axe, his tone far more solemn than usual. "Every single one of us in the hunting team, from the first day we shoulder our weapons and step out of the tribe, has already prepared ourselves to die. You have, I have, all of us have."

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

"To live is a profit. To die is the fate a person of the Great Wilderness must fulfill."

"Yes! Though death comes, no regrets!"

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

"Though death comes, no regrets!"

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

Lin Yi stood at the edge of the crowd, watching those rugged faces take on the color of bronze and iron beneath the morning light, listening to those hoarse yet unwavering voices rise and overlap.

He said nothing, but something in his chest slowly churned, settled, and hardened.

In his heart, he was different from these people.

He did not believe in fate.

He never had. He did not believe 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 ordained by heaven. If one lived, one lived. If one died, one died.

But he was different. He would grow stronger. Step by step, he would uncover the mysteries of the land beneath his feet, and he would trample through the barriers of Ferocious Beasts, Divine Markings, and cultivation realms layer by layer.

He would leave the Great Wilderness and see sights 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 again across the familiar faces before him.

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

"Good." His voice regained the confidence of the tribe's strongest warrior. "Move out."

He swept out a large hand, and the leather cord around the saber's hilt swayed in the morning breeze.

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

Lin Yi stepped forward at Biao's side.