The body had no head, ravaged by wild beasts, with only the stomach remaining of the upper half, while both legs of the lower half were gone. Bones and remains were scattered all over the ground, and beside them, a horse lay bitten to death, equally ravaged to nearly just a skeleton.
The corpses of the man and horse had decayed, and with the weather being so hot, it seemed they had been dead for quite some time, exuding an unbearable stench.
The girl’s complexion was deathly pale, like a ghost.
Her face showed numbness, her eyes empty. She shed no tears, but her expression inexplicably saddened others.
"Master," she said...
Su Lang hesitated as he looked toward the Master, feeling a bit... reluctant to ask.
Afterward, he carefully stepped away, making no sound, as if afraid of disturbing something.
After moving a few dozen meters away, Su Lang glanced back.
The Master’s figure, still as straight as a post, silently protected the girl from behind. He stood there motionless, but slightly bowed his head, as if gazing intently at something.
Su Lang knew the Master must be looking at the white bones and rotting flesh.
He pressed his lips together, then hung his head low, "Let’s go, we’ll go down the mountain, to... to buy a coffin."
This was a strange procession.
A young man sat high on his horse at the front, leading the way. Following him were some men on horseback, and in the middle, someone carried a red lacquered wooden coffin. Beside this coffin was an old man with white hair.
This man held a girl, her face filled with numbness, and the man’s face was equally devoid of warmth.
It was as if he stood amidst biting frost; it was only early autumn, yet the man exuded a chill as if it were deep winter, freezing everything around him.
Their group arrived at a town, with Su Lang leading the way to rent out an inn. The spirit coffin was placed in the inn’s backyard. The shopkeeper detested the bad luck brought by the dead, so Su Lang paid extra to shut the shopkeeper up.
Liang Zhichen held Dong Huiying in the inn’s backyard, looking at the lacquered wooden coffin. However, his mind conjured up images of his younger brother, jesting and scolding in laughter.
During their childhood, his younger brother once tugged at the corner of his eye, looking helpless as he asked, "Big brother... am I really a curse? Aunt Wang said... said Shu Yu is sick because of me. Because I’m a monster, because I was born alongside Shu Yu, sucking away her vitality, causing Shu Yu to be sickly all the time. But big brother, what even is vitality? Father also said that when Shu Yu was born, she was frail and small; mother disliked that twins were inauspicious and wanted to drown Shu Yu... Does mother dislike Shu Yu because of me?"
How had he answered at the time?
He told his younger brother that he was not to blame, that he was innocent and shouldn’t care about the idle talk outside. But his brother was a sensitive soul, and since then, a heart as pure as a child’s gradually changed.
The younger brother was considerate. While he was busy earning money outside, his brother would stay at home, either hunting in the mountains or taking care of their younger siblings. As he grew older, he soon shouldered the burden of the family’s livelihood.
He excelled at hiding his inner wounds and pain behind a facade of frivolity, and as the elder brother, there were always times when he could not care for him properly.
And each time he was overwhelmed, it was always his younger brother who silently helped shoulder his burdens.
People say, ’When a tree falls, the monkeys scatter; when a man dies, he is forgotten like cold tea.’ But his brother... his death was so tragic, dying without a whole corpse!