Before he turned to leave, he threw a cold remark at Baili Weibu's father: "This time, it must be done. We are hunters, and that fact will never change!"

  Baili Weibu looked at the angry guests in confusion, then at her parents, who stood silently with complicated expressions, like students caught making a mistake.

  What exactly had she done wrong? So she got lost and didn’t come home all night—wasn’t she standing right in front of them now, safe and sound? Did it really need to be blown up to such a level as "nothing but failure"?

  The only odd thing was that when she woke up early in the cave, she was alone, and Cen Kaiwen was nowhere to be found. She had frantically searched for him nearby for half the day, but he was gone. It wasn’t until she retraced her steps, exited the forest, and regained phone signal that she got a message from him, “Something urgent came up at home, so I left first. You were sleeping like a pig.”

  She was taken aback, almost picturing Cen Kaiwen's teasing smile on her phone screen. She stuck her tongue out at the message and quickly made her way home.

  But once she arrived, she sensed something was off. And then came those inexplicable accusations.

  "Mom, Dad, what's going on? I was stuck in the forest all night, and instead of comforting me, you're letting outsiders point fingers at me?” Pouting, Baili Weibu scooted over to her parents, sniffled, and pretended to cry.

  This time, however, her parents didn’t reach out to ruffle her hair or offer gentle reassurance like they usually would.

  Her father took a bracelet out of his pocket and pced it in Baili Weibu's hand.

  "Huh? How did my bracelet end up here?” She touched her wrist in surprise—it was the bracelet her mother had given her on her tenth birthday, with a little gold monkey charm, and her father was holding it. She loved that bracelet so much she never even took it off to sleep.

  “Come with me,” her father sighed, turning toward the hidden door that led to the basement.

  Baili Weibu followed, puzzled.

  Their basement wasn′t anything special—a hallway connected three rooms arranged in a triangur pattern. The room at the end was always locked, while the other two rooms didn’t even have locks. She knew that the locked room contained an altar and ancestral tablets for the Baili family. Every year at Lunar New Year, their family would go there to light incense, but there wasn′t any particurly eborate ceremony. As for the other two rooms, they were even less interesting—one was filled with various books, most of them thick and dusty like bricks. The other held a few unremarkable potted pnts, looking half-dead, likely due to the ck of sunlight.

  Her father unlocked the innermost room. To be honest, in her seventeen years, Baili Weibu had only been to the basement once a year for the annual ancestral rites. She was far more interested in her comics than those heavy books that gave her a headache just to look at, and she had even less interest in pnts. She had no idea why her father was suddenly bringing her here now, especially with New Year′s still months away.

  The room had no lights, only red candles pced around the altar and on the wooden ptform holding the ancestral tablets.

  As he lit the candles, her father spoke in a low voice: “At dawn, a man came to me with your bracelet. He said that if I didn’t hand over the antidote for an arrow wound before sunrise, your life would end when the sun rose.”

  Baili Weibu's heart skipped a beat.

  "Dad, I… I don’t really understand.” Her heart began to tremble, flickering like the candle fmes.

  Her father turned around, extinguishing the nearly burnt-out match. “Who are we?” he asked.

  She paused and answered, “We... we′re descendants of the Centaur Cn. Born hunters.”

  Her father looked at the bck ancestral tablets on the ptform. “Since ancient times, our Centaur Cn ancestors have been relentless hunters. We are the most fearless and battle-hardened of all cns. Every branch of our people is born to hunt, with the world's sharpest arrows as part of our heritage.”

  "I know,” she said cautiously, watching her father's serious face. “One of the most famous figures of the Centaur Cn is Chiron, the inspiration behind Sagittarius in the Zodiac.”

  "Yes, Chiron is a pride of our cn’s ancestors. But beyond him, our kin are spread across the world. Over time, we have come to resemble true humans, both outwardly and inwardly. Yet the courage we′re born with and the responsibilities we carry as Centaurs will never change,” her father replied.

  Here’s the transtion:

  "I know that too...” Baili Weibu thought for a moment. “But what does that have to do with you bringing me here, Dad?”

  "As the Eastern descendants of the Centaur Cn, who has been the Baili family′s greatest enemy for thousands of years?” her father asked, ignoring her question.

  Baili Weibu hesitated, answering uncertainly, “Is it… the Golden Lions?”

  Her father sighed and nodded.

  "But didn’t you all say that the Golden Lions were wiped out by us many years ago?” she asked suspiciously.

  "In the early Han dynasty, our Baili ancestors were commanded by Emperor Wu to hunt down the Golden Lions and secure peace for the empire. For a thousand years, the war between the Centaurs and the Lions never ceased," her father said, each word heavy with the weight of history and hardship. "Then, a century ago, nearly all the golden lions in China had been hunted down by us. The st remaining group escaped to the forests of Romania. Your great-grandfather followed them, relocating the entire family to the Bucegi Mountains, where he cast a barrier over the forest to trap the remaining enemies, ensuring they would never escape."

  This was the first time her father had shared these stories with her. In fact, her parents had rarely spoken of the Baili family's past or the legacy of the Centaur Cn. All these years, she had lived freely, almost like an ordinary person. If not for her father's seriousness today, she might have nearly forgotten her identity as a Centaur hunter.

  "Why just trap them?” Baili Weibu's mind was still clear, and she pressed on. “Why not just kill them directly?”

  Her father gave a wry smile. “I asked your grandfather the same question back then. His expression was just like mine now.” He took a deep breath and continued, “The Baili family has blood on its hands from the Golden Lions. Your grandfather only used the word ‘sughter’ to describe what our ancestors did to the lions. Hundreds of years ago, during the Kangxi era, our ancestors, two brothers, discovered a Golden Lion hiding in the capital. It was a female, disguised as a woman, married to a local official. At that time, she was already pregnant and about to give birth…”

  He paused at this point.

  "They still killed her without hesitation?” Baili Weibu was stunned.

  "She begged them, asking at least for her child to be spared and for them not to disturb her husband. He was just an ordinary man—timid but kind-hearted. He didn′t know the true identity of his wife. As long as her child could be born safely, she was willing to accept whatever fate awaited her.” Her father spoke more slowly than ever before. “The younger brother, moved by compassion, put away his bow and tried to persuade his older brother to leave. But just as the younger brother turned away, the older brother's arrow had already struck the woman′s heart.”