Clumsy Beast, Keep Your Paws Off

Beside him, Su Qinglan sat as she always did. She stared at the cave wall; her face was calm and expressionless. She didn’t fetch water. She didn’t stoke the dying fire. She simply existed in the silence she had created ten years ago.

Han Jue looked at her with hazy, tired eyes.

In his delirium, he imagined a healer walking through the cave entrance...someone who could save him, someone who could take over the burden of protecting this broken woman.

But the entrance remained empty, save for the whistling wind.

He knew his time was up. The darkness was crawling up from his feet, numbing his senses.

"Leader..." Han Jue wheezed, his voice barely a ghost of a sound. "I’m sorry. I can’t... I can’t keep the promise anymore. I’m too tired."

He reached out a trembling, skeletal hand, trying to touch Su Qinglan’s hand one last time. He had spent his entire youth guarding a shadow. He had lost his brothers, his home, and his future just to keep her breathing.

It would be a lie to say that, after spending such a long time with her, he hadn’t grown any affection for her. There were countless days when he would whisper to the Beast God to cure her.

To let her live a meaningful life, to give her an understanding of this world. But nothing changed, and this wish of his was also buried beneath countless layers of burden.

"Beast God," he whispered, his eyes fluttering shut.

"Please... if there is any mercy left... take care of her. I can no longer support her. I have nothing left to give."

With one final, shuddering breath, Han Jue’s chest went still. The last light of his life flickered out, leaving the cave in total, freezing silence.

The man who had sacrificed every drop of his happiness for a promise was gone.

Su Qinglan remained still for a long time.

Then, slowly, her head turned. For the first time in a decade, her eyes seemed to focus.

She looked down at the cold, stiff hand of the man who had been her only companion through the hell of the last ten years.

She reached out and took his hand in hers. It was like ice.

A single, hot tear traced a path down her cheek, followed by another. She didn’t scream. She didn’t wail.

She just sat there in the dark, holding the hand of the only person who hadn’t abandoned her, while the silence of the cave swallowed them both.

She looked blankly at Han Jue’s cold, stiff hand, and for the first time in ten years, the dam inside her soul broke. Tears rolled down her cheeks in thick, hot tracks, and a broken gasp finally escaped her lips.

"Don’t leave... don’t leave me," she whispered. Her voice was hoarse and cracking, sounding like rusted metal scraping against stone.

It was a scattered, weak sound, but the pain behind it was deep. "Father... Father left. Hu Yan also left. Rong Ye left too. Don’t leave..."

She clung to Han Jue’s lifeless hand, weeping through the entire night. Her cries were the only thing filling the hollow cave, a late apology to the man who had given up his entire life for her.

By the time morning light touched the entrance, she was back to her dazed state, looking like a lost lamb that didn’t understand why the world was so quiet.

The wind blew dried leaves into the cave, slowly covering Han Jue’s body as if the heavens themselves were pitying him.

Soon, his face was hidden beneath the golden and brown leaves, and Su Qinglan could no longer see the man who had protected her.

She sat beside his leafy grave for two days, motionless, before she eventually stood up and wandered out into the forest alone.

She traveled for a long time.

Surprisingly, she wasn’t killed. Even the beasts in the forest seemed to sense the deathly stillness around her and ignored her.

No one bothered to eat a female who had no soul left. She wandered as a nomad for another full year, her clothes tattered and her body thin.

Finally, she reached a deep part of the forest and fell into a steep, muddy pit.

The present Su Qinglan’s eyes widened as she watched the memory. A tall, cold figure appeared at the edge of the pit.

It was Xuan Long.

Finally, hope flickered in her eyes. He was the most powerful...maybe he would have a way to save her and this pathetic past of hers.

She was already a sobbing mess after the deaths of Rong Ye and Han Jue. Now, she couldn’t bear to witness any more death.

She wished that if she could become better, she would truly live according to the wishes of those who had died protecting her. Even in their final moments, all they had wished for was for her to live well.

The past Su Qinglan just sat at the bottom of the pit, staring at the mud. She didn’t shout for help or scream. She didn’t even look up.

Xuan Long stood there, completely speechless. He had never met a female so "dumb" that she didn’t even know how to ask for help.

He reached down and pulled her out of the pit, setting her on the grass. He looked at her tattered clothes and her empty eyes.

"Are you mute?" Xuan Long asked, his voice deep and icy.

Su Qinglan didn’t answer. She didn’t even blink.

Xuan Long narrowed his eyes, muttering to himself, "Are you stupid? Were you abandoned by your tribe?"

Again, there was no answer. She just stood there like a statue. Xuan Long felt a strange prickle of pity for this useless, silent female. He couldn’t just leave her to die in the middle of his territory.

"Stay here," he grumbled, gesturing to a sheltered area of the forest.

He soon realized how "dumb" she truly was.

She never hunted for herself. She wouldn’t even look for berries. She would sit with a hungry stomach for countless days, never making a sound even as she grew weaker.

Xuan Long found himself unable to ignore her. Every day, he would hunt extra and leave a piece of fresh meat near her, watching from the shadows as she slowly ate.

He had become her newest guardian, unaware of the tragic history that had brought her to his feet.