The fiftieth wolf fell on a gray, overcast morning, in a clearing barely a stone's throw from where Xu Yuan had fought his very first three. He didn't plan it that way. It simply worked out that the wolves in this stretch of forest had thinned enough over the past weeks that he'd been pushed steadily back toward ground he'd already covered, circling the edges of territory that had once seemed enormous and now felt, disturbingly, almost familiar.
The screen unfolded before he'd even caught his breath.
Mission
Gray Wolves 50 / 100
Basic Sword Understanding: 22%
Authority Increased
Current Authority: 3
He stood over the fallen animal a moment and read the number twice. Halfway. It hadn't felt like a milestone worth marking a week ago, when the count was just another chore. Now, standing at the exact center of it, it felt like something worth pausing over.
A new line appeared beneath the mission window, pale and unclaimed the way Basic Observation had once looked before he'd reached toward it.
Available
Refined Perception
He reached for it the way he'd reached for the first one, and the world sharpened again — not dramatically, just a notch further than Basic Observation had already given him. He noticed, immediately, a set of claw marks on a nearby tree that he was certain hadn't been visible a moment before, and beneath them, fainter still, a second set, older, half-grown-over by bark that had healed around the wound years ago.
Two different sets of marks. Two different times. He filed it away, the same instinct that had once made him notice a frayed rope before it snapped.
He checked the Interface one more time before heading back, curious whether the mission itself had anything new to say now that he'd crossed its middle point.
Mission
Gray Wolves 50 / 100
No change to the objective. Still fifty more. But something about crossing the exact halfway point felt different than any of the numbers before it, the way a hill feels different once you can finally see the descent on the other side of it, even if the walking itself hasn't gotten any easier yet.
He found Liang waiting near the fence gap when he circled back into the village, arms crossed, looking unusually serious for a man who usually greeted Xu Yuan with some joke about rabbits or donkeys.
"You've got blood on your sleeve again."
"Wolf blood. Not mine."
"That's not really better, from where I'm standing." Liang fell into step beside him. "My father's been asking about you. Wants to know why you keep going out there alone, day after day, when the rest of us only go out in groups."
"The wolves respond to me differently than they do to a group. I've noticed that. A group draws more of them at once, and they coordinate better against numbers. Alone, I can pick them off one or two at a time before the rest even notice."
"That's a good reason for you. It's not a good reason for my father to stop worrying."
Xu Yuan considered that. "Tell him I appreciate it. The worrying, I mean."
Liang huffed something between a laugh and a sigh. "You're a strange one, you know that? Most people would rather I just left them alone about it."
"Most people don't have your father checking on them because he actually cares whether they come back."
That got Liang to go quiet for a moment, some of the tension easing out of his shoulders. "Fair point." He glanced sideways. "You reach some kind of milestone out there today? You've got a look on your face like you did."
"Halfway. Fifty wolves."
"Fifty." Liang whistled low. "That's more than I've killed in five years of hunting, and you've done it in a few weeks."
"It doesn't feel like an accomplishment the way you're saying it. It feels more like paying down a debt I don't fully understand the terms of yet."
Liang didn't have an answer for that, and Xu Yuan didn't expect one. They walked the rest of the way into the village together, the quiet between them comfortable in the way it had become over the past weeks, the kind of quiet that didn't need filling just because two people happened to be walking the same direction.
That night, Xu Yuan sat outside his house with the wrapped disc from the ruined village resting in his lap, turning it over slowly without unwrapping it. He hadn't shown it to anyone but Mei Lin yet. He wasn't sure why he was hesitant to take it further than that — the Chief had earned his trust a dozen times over, and Old Han's own secrecy hadn't stopped Xu Yuan from respecting the reasons behind it.
Maybe it was simpler than any of that. Maybe some things just needed to sit a while before they were ready to be shared, the same way Old Han's stone had needed five generations before anyone in his family felt ready to speak plainly about it.
He thought about the registrar's numbers, the missing century, the word erased sitting quietly underneath every conversation he'd had in the past few weeks without anyone quite willing to say it outright. He thought about the corrupted clearing, the hollow-eyed wolves, the eye that had opened once and found him unworthy of more than a passing glance.
Fifty wolves down. Fifty to go. A disc he didn't understand, an artifact detected but not yet recognized, sitting in his lap like a question with no one around who could answer it.
He wrapped it back up carefully and set it aside, and let himself, just for a few minutes, think about nothing more complicated than the sound of the river and the fact that tomorrow, if nothing went wrong, Mei Lin would probably ask him to help carry wool again, and he'd probably say yes, and for that hour at least, none of the rest of it would matter.