Clumsy Beast, Keep Your Paws Off

For months, the three of them lived like wandering beasts. They did not dare go to any tribe, fearing that Su Qinglan would start causing trouble there.

And in the end, they would only be kicked out. The Fox Tribe was willing to tolerate her, but others... they owed them nothing.

There was also no news of the other tribesmen, and Hu Yan, the golden tiger who had vanished a year ago, never reappeared.

Life became a grueling cycle of hiding and hunting. Through it all, Su Qinglan remained a hollow shell. She never spoke. She never looked at them. She ate when they put food in her hand and walked when they pulled her arm. She was a living corpse.

Rong Ye, usually the most stoic and secretive, began leaving their temporary cave more often.

One evening, he returned stumbling, his chest heaving and his breath rattling.

When Han Jue caught him, he recoiled in horror. Rong Ye was covered in strange marks; they were not from beasts but from the claws of high-level beastmen, and they left a residue of some clan power.

The clan power, which someone like him who was born in an ordinary tribe can never have.

As a fever took hold of Rong Ye, the truth finally spilled out in broken whispers.

"My brother..." Rong Ye coughed, blood flecking his lips. "He found me. He won’t... he won’t stop until the last bloodline is gone."

Han Jue listened in shock as the pieces fell into place.

Rong Ye was not just an abandoned fox like him; he was a prince of a great Fox Beast City.

Years ago, he had fled to their small tribe to escape a bloody coup. His brother, driven by a thirst for the City Lord title, had murdered all their siblings, and Rong Ye was the last threat to his throne.

Someone had leaked his location, and his brother would not rest until he made sure Rong Ye never saw the sun tomorrow.

"You have to leave," Rong Ye wheezed, grabbing Han Jue’s arm. "If they find you with me... they’ll kill you too."

"I am not leaving a brother behind!" Han Jue roared, his eyes flashing with a desperate loyalty. He had already lost Hu Yan and he couldn’t lose Rong Ye too.

But the choice was taken from them.

Two days later, a group of elite beastmen from the Fox City descended upon their cave. Han Jue fought like a demon, but he was outnumbered and already exhausted from months of wandering. He watched, pinned to the ground and bleeding from a dozen wounds, as the beastman cornered Rong Ye.

"Finally," the lead beastman sneered, raising his claws. "The stray prince goes home to the dirt."

With a final, defiant glare, Rong Ye heart was pierced. Han Ju let out a strangled cry of agony.

First Hu Yan was lost to madness, and now Rong Ye was murdered right in front of his eyes. The assassins glanced at the silent Su Qinglan and the battered Han Jue.

"The target is dead," the leader said coldly, wiping his claws. "Leave the trash. They won’t survive the winter anyway."

They vanished into the trees, leaving Han Jue alone with the cooling body of his friend. He crawled toward Rong Ye, his tears mixing with the dirt on his face. "I’m sorry... I’m so sorry..."

He looked at Su Qinglan, who was sitting under a tree, staring at a leaf as if nothing had happened.

A surge of bitter resentment and overwhelming grief nearly broke him.

He wanted to scream at her, to ask her why she was alive while the good men were dead.

At least she could do was shed some tears. But no...she wouldn’t even spare that.

But then, he remembered the dying face of the Tribe Leader. He remembered the promise: Take care of her. At any cost.

Han Jue stood up, his body swaying from blood loss. He buried Rong Ye in a shallow grave, marking it with a single stone. "Let’s go," he croaked, grabbing Su Qinglan’s hand.

Ten years passed.

A decade of wandering. A decade of silence.

Han Jue’s hair turned gray prematurely, and his body was full of scars. They moved from forest to forest, never staying in one place long enough to be recognized.

He became a "wandering beast," a man with no home and no purpose other than the survival of the woman beside him.

Su Qinglan never aged in her mind. She remained eighteen, trapped in the moment she lost her soul in that cave.

One cold evening, sitting by a small fire, Han Jue looked at her. He was tired. His bones ached, and his heart felt like a desert.

"Qinglan," he said, his voice raspy from years of disuse.

"Do you even know who I am? Do you remember Hu Yan? Do you remember the father who died for you?"

Su Qinglan didn’t blink. She just stared into the flames, her face as beautiful and empty as a porcelain doll.

Han Ju let out a hollow laugh that sounded more like a sob. "I’ve protected you for ten years. I’ve watched my brothers die. I’ve lived like an animal... and you haven’t given me a single word. Not one."

He looked at his calloused hands, the hands that had once hoped to hold a child of his own. Instead, they only held the hand of a shadow.

"I’ll keep my promise," he whispered, his head dropping to his chest. "Until my last breath, I’ll keep you alive. But God... I am so lonely."

The years of wandering had stripped Han Jue of everything. Without a tribe, without a witch doctor, and without medicine, his body had become full of untreated wounds and old scars.

The constant dampness of the forests and the lack of food finally took their toll.

A deep, hacking cough settled in his chest, and a fever began to burn through his veins...a disease that had no name and no cure in the wild.

He lay on a bed of dry leaves inside a cold, shallow cave, his breathing rattling like stones in a box.

His muscles, once thick and powerful, had withered away until his ribs jutted sharply through his skin. He had become nothing but a shadow of the once proud warrior he was.