My dao to eternity

The first year passed the way years always seemed to pass once a life finally settled into its proper shape — not as a single continuous stretch of memory, but as a collection of fragments, each one unremarkable on its own, accumulating into something Li Fan only recognized as substantial when he finally paused to look back at all of it together.

Mu Qinghe left for the valley in early spring and returned eight days later with a shallow cut along his forearm and a haul good enough that Luo Yulan spent the following week in unusually good spirits. He left again before the month was out, alone this time, and came back leaner than he'd left, saying little about what had gone wrong. Luo Yulan took her own expedition through the height of summer, returning with a pair of rare beast fangs that fetched, by the fragment of conversation Li Fan caught over the shared wall, enough silver to cover the household's needs for the better part of a season. Autumn brought a joint expedition that lasted nineteen days, the longest either of them had attempted since Li Fan's first year in the district, and Mu Wan spent most of those nineteen days at his own gate more often than she spent them at her own, until her parents finally returned, tired but whole, and the household's ordinary rhythm reasserted itself within days.

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