Baili Weibu's heart skipped a beat.

  "Before she died, with a hatred deeper than the sea, she cursed the Baili family.” Her father's face flickered in the candlelight, pale and somber. “Many years ter, that younger brother, on his deathbed, said there were very few things in life that could haunt him. The only thing he could never forget, until his st breath, was the look in the eyes of that female lion after she was struck by the arrow.”

  "She... what kind of curse did she pce on the Baili family?” Baili Weibu stepped forward, grabbing her father’s hand.

  "From now on, whenever a daughter is born into the Baili family, she will inevitably fall in love with a Golden Lion, will never meet a good end, and will bring disaster to her loved ones.” Each word her father spoke felt like a knife piercing through flesh.

  "This…” Baili Weibu's head buzzed, and she felt a ringing in her ears. “What happened next?”

  "The younger brother's pregnant wife gave birth to twins—a boy who became your great-grandfather and a girl...” Her father spoke with regret. “As she grew up, she indeed fell in love with a Golden Lion, a love that would lead to her undoing.”

  "Is that all the curse was?” Baili Weibu felt a slight relief in her heart. If that was all, it didn′t seem so bad.

  "If that was all, it wouldn’t even be called a curse,” her father saw through her thoughts and said. “Not long after they fell in love, everyone in the Baili family came down with a strange illness. High fever, everything they ate tasted bitter—it was pure agony. This continued for three months before it finally ended. But the youngest child in the entire Baili family, her youngest brother, wasn′t so lucky. He died. When he died, his body became semi-transparent, like a piece of gss that wasn′t quite clear, light as a feather. They tried to lift his body, but the moment they touched him, he shattered like gss, breaking into countless pieces.”

  Baili Weibu's breath hitched.

  "After that child died, misfortune fell upon another child in the Baili family. His eyes began to turn gray, everything he ate tasted bnd, and he was always too weak to get up. He could only lie in bed, with symptoms exactly like the previous child’s.” Her father gazed at the flickering candlelight. “That curse not only brought suffering to the Baili family but also killed the youngest child in the family. If it isn’t broken, the family members will die one by one, in order of their age.” He shook his head sadly. “The curse of the Golden Lions... it’s our own fault.”

  "Then... what's the way to break it?” Baili Weibu asked urgently.

  “The women of the Baili family, using the rare Fme Crystal Arrow that appears once every ten years, killed their lover. She saved another child who was on the brink of death. As for herself, she took her own life in front of her lover's corpse.” The candle tears fell drop by drop, collecting into a pool on the ptform. Her father spoke in a low voice, “This was the way to break the curse. From then on, the Baili family was forbidden to have female children. So, when it came to your great-grandfather's generation, they used the excuse of hunting the st remaining Golden Lions to leave China and retreat into seclusion here. The purpose was to protect their daughters, to prevent them from being secretly killed by the Baili family due to the curse.”

  Baili Weibu felt a chill run down her spine. She had never known that behind her seemingly simple family, there was such a bloody and cruel secret buried.

  "We only set up the barrier here, without hunting the st Golden Lion,” her father lowered his eyes, giving a self-mocking smile. “It’s because we’ve always felt guilty.”

  "Dad…” Baili Weibu tightly gripped her father′s hand, a sudden tightness in her chest.

  "Did something happen to our family ten years ago? My sister... she disappeared that year!”

  Her father gently patted her hand, a look of helplessness on his face. "What good is guilt? The power of the curse still remains. Your great-grandfather chose to be 'neighbors' with the Golden Lions. On the surface, it was to keep watch, but in reality, it was to protect them from being harmed by the Baili family and also to warn his children, especially his daughters, not to approach them. For a long time, there was a fragile peace between our family and the Golden Lions. We even thought that the curse might have faded away."

  Baili Weibu quickly repyed the events from ten years ago, both the clear and the blurry parts, in her mind. Then a terrifying thought suddenly crossed her mind: "Could it be... that my sister fell in love with a Lion?"

  “That curse has never disappeared. It′s like a ghost, lingering over the people of the Baili family. We never knew when it would explode,” her father lowered his head in pain.

  “None of us expected that Wei Qing would fall in love at first sight with that young Golden Lion. By the time we realized what was happening, it was already too te.” He looked up at his daughter. “Your memory of that winter ten years ago must be very blurry, because you had a high fever for a long time. And your brother, Wei Yu, has been bedridden ever since.”

  “What about my sister…” Baili Weibu couldn’t believe that her sister, who always had a gentle smile, could have killed her lover. But if she hadn′t done that, according to the pattern of the curse, Wei Yu wouldn′t have lived to this day.

  “She didn’t kill him. That year happened to be the day the Nine-Color Sunflower bloomed, which blooms from a special seed cultivated with the blood of the Centaur family. When we coat the arrowheads with the juice from the flower′s stamen, our arrows aren′t just ordinary Centaur Gold Arrows anymore but Fme Crystal Arrows that can kill a Golden Lion with a single touch. Only these arrows can truly kill the Golden Lions. The effect of the Fme Crystal Arrow sts for twenty-four hours. That winter, the same cn members who were called from China started another hunt, ciming it was to save your brother. But your sister used her blood to create barriers in the forest, buying time for us. By the time we found the Lion, it was already the next evening, and the effect of the Fme Crystal Arrows was almost gone. At the critical moment, several arrows aimed at the target were blocked by another Golden Lion that suddenly jumped out… It was his mother. We ultimately lost the chance to kill him, and we lost Wei Qing. She disappeared.”

  Her father gazed at the ancestral tablets standing in the shadows. “They took the blood of the female lion, cut her flesh, and mixed it with various herbs to brew a medicinal soup, which they made Wei Yu drink. Though the medicine didn′t cure the root cause, it could at least keep Wei Yu alive. In ten years, when the Nine-Color Sunflower bloomed again, the Fme Crystal Arrows would appear once more, and we could finally kill the mastermind, completely breaking the curse.” His eyes flickered with a complex light. “This Christmas Eve is the day the Nine-Color Sunflower blooms again.”

  Baili Weibu colpsed to the ground, murmuring, “Why did you never tell me any of this…?”

  "This isn’t something good.” Her father’s voice was filled with deep guilt as he sat down beside her. “Your mother and I only hoped you could live like ordinary people. But… the fate of hunters, the curse of the Lions, left us with no choice but to face it.”

  "That person… No, that Lion, is he still in the forest?” Baili Weibu suddenly asked.`

  Her father gave a wry smile. “Silly girl. The one who brought your bracelet to you… that′s him!” He paused for a moment. “The Nine-Color Sunflower is about to bloom, and our cn has arrived as expected. The day after they arrived, while they were ‘wandering’ in the Biluo Forest, they encountered a young female Golden Lion. She was probably his sister or his older sibling. They used arrows to seriously wound her. Though ordinary arrows couldn’t kill her, our centaur arrows naturally possess extraordinary power. Once she was struck, her whole body would be wracked with unbearable pain, and unless treated with our family′s special arrow injury medicine, the pain would be so excruciating she′d wish for death.”

  “You mean he used my safety to trade for the arrow injury medicine?” Baili Weibu suddenly understood. That “cssmate” who appeared out of nowhere, their “coincidental encounter,” turned out to be part of a well-pnned scheme.

  “If I′m not mistaken, he led you into the forest, using the Golden Lion′s spiritual power to create an invisible barrier, making you both wander in circles, unable to find your way out, while we couldn′t locate you. Then, while you were unconscious, he took your personal belongings to find me and demand the arrow injury medicine.”