The flute melody played by Bai Lan was far more than a simple arrangement of notes.
What she played was desolation, was loneliness.
It was despair, was grief born of defiance and unwillingness.
It was the barren expanse of a great desert, a land of deathly stillness between mountains and seas.
It was a solitary figure treading alone through heaven and earth.
It was the last of the tribe.
At the very center of the distant pit, the ancient man bearing an axe and clad in coarse hemp clothes stood dazed, looking in the direction from which the flute sounded.
Slowly, he slightly raised his head and closed his eyes.
That solitary figure was just like... just like the last clansman in the flute's song.
"You are in great pain." A cold, clear voice drifted over from ahead.
The axe-bearing woodsman opened his eyes and looked at the woman before him, dressed in a resplendent long gown.
She had come again, with her little shadow, and a temperamental silver wildcat.
