Clumsy Beast, Keep Your Paws Off novel Chapter 474

Chapter 474: Chapter 474: The Tragedy of First Life (05)

The days following that horrific night in the mountain cave passed like a slow, suffocating nightmare.

The air in the Fox Tribe grew heavy, thick with a truth that no one dared to speak aloud but everyone felt in their bones. The silence was louder than any scream.

When Han Jue finally returned from the mountain, he didn’t come back with a happy expression of finally finding Su Qinglan.

They carried the broken body of Su Mingxuan, whose body was soaked in a terrifying amount of crimson.

Beside them, Su Qinglan walked like a hollow shell. Her steps were mechanical, her eyes fixed on the dirt, her face a mask of nothingness.

And Hu Yan never returned with them.

The tribespeople stood back, their eyes darting from the blood on the leader to the conspicuous absence of the tiger cub.

In that singular, chilling moment of realization, the tribe understood. Something unholy had happened.

From that day forward, the world turned cold for Su Qinglan. She became a ghost walking among the living, a creature the entire tribe avoided with disgust and like a plague.

"She killed her own flesh and blood," the women would gossip, pulling their own cubs away as she passed.

"How heartless must a female be to murder a cub that hasn’t even seen the sun?" The words spread like a slow-acting poison, and no one...not even her father’s most loyal warriors tried to stop them.

Isolated and reviled, she retreated into her cave. She sat in the darkness for days on end, a broken puppet whose strings had been cut, staring at the stone walls with eyes that saw nothing.

As Su Qinglan withered in her cave, Su Mingxuan withered on his bed.

The physical wound on his chest, carved by Hu Yan’s grief-stricken claws, refused to close, but it wasn’t the injury that was draining his life.

It was the heartbreak.

Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the mud-stained, lifeless body of his grandson.

He heard his daughter’s voice, flat and icy, claiming the deed. He wanted to go to her, to demand an explanation or offer comfort, but the image of that blood-soaked cave acted like a barrier he couldn’t cross.

At night, the proud leader would weep into his furs, his voice a fragile thread in the dark.

"What did I do to deserve this?" he sobbed.

"And Hu Yan... I wronged that boy. I forced this fate upon him, and it has destroyed us all."

A year bled away, and the strong, vibrant leader was gone, replaced by a man who looked like a brittle autumn leaf.

He lay hollow-cheeked and gray, the spark of life nearly extinguished. Sensing the end, he called for Han Jue.

"Leader... I am here," Han Jue whispered, kneeling by the bed.

Su Mingxuan struggled to turn his head, his eyes clouding over. "There is... one thing," he gasped, clutching Han Jue’s hand with a strength born of desperation.

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