Stumbling along, travel-worn and dusty, their hurried footsteps shattered the village's silence. Paying no heed to the dust covering them or their exhaustion, they rushed like mad into the low, dilapidated hut belonging to the boy's sister.
The room was cramped and poorly lit. Even in daylight, it remained dark and gloomy. The air was thick with the bitter smell of medicinal dregs, mingled with a lingering aura of death that tightened their hearts and weighed heavily on everyone. The furnishings were as sparse as could be: a battered plank bed and a wooden table with a corner missing and a stone propping up one leg. There was nothing else.
On the bed lay the woman who had spent years gathering herbs deep within the miasma zones on the outskirts of the Mountain Range of Magical Beasts. The accumulated miasma had ravaged her until she was skeletal, scarcely recognizable as human. Her cheeks were deeply sunken, her cheekbones jutted high, and her once-plain face was now as ashen as dead paper, without a trace of color. Her eyes were closed, and her chest rose and fell so faintly that a gust of wind seemed enough to scatter what remained. Sustained only by one last feeble thread of vitality, she lay at death's door, ready at any moment to breathe her last and descend into the underworld.
Seeing his sister in this state, Xiaoyuan stood as though nailed to the floor. The blood in his body seemed to freeze, and countless long-buried fragments of childhood exploded through his mind. Every memory was as clear as if it had happened yesterday-
When they were young, their family had been penniless, often unable to put food on the table. Going hungry had been commonplace. Whenever that happened, his sister would take his little