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How many endings does Sifu have?
There are two distinct outcomes to the central choice: finish the pursuit of Yang by killing him, or reach the route built around sparing the bosses. If you have seen a count of three, it usually treats the Wude route's post-credits scene as an ending of its own. It adds to that route's story; it does not create a third branch with a different final decision.
“True ending” is a common name for the spare route. It describes the alternative that asks you to defeat each boss and let them live, including Yang. The name is useful for finding that route, but the story's contrast matters more than a ranking of one cutscene over another.
What happens in the revenge ending?
The revenge route ends with Yang's death. Afterwards, the protagonist stands before two graves, and the idea of Wude enters the story. The pursuit has reached its target, yet that image leaves little sense that the loss driving it has been repaired.
Reading the graves as a challenge to the value of revenge is an interpretation. The events themselves establish the narrower point: Yang is killed, and the route closes on the protagonist facing what remains after that act.
What changes in the Wude ending?
To reach the other route, the protagonist defeats the bosses without killing them and spares Yang as well. The final encounter continues beyond that choice, then gives way to a quiet mountainside sequence. The spare decision therefore does more than change a single final blow: it completes a pattern of restraint across the story's confrontations.
The mountainside can be read as spiritual imagery, but the scene does not by itself prove that it is an afterlife. Its calm tone and placement after the fight are visible; a literal account of where the protagonist has gone is not established by those images.
Does the protagonist die in the true ending?
The post-credits scene shows a student addressing a seated figure as “Sifu,” with a talisman on the desk. It suggests that teaching continues after the confrontation. It does not unambiguously identify the seated figure or spell out the protagonist's fate.
So the direct answer is that the ending leaves the protagonist's death or survival open to interpretation. The mountainside and the later teaching scene offer clues for a reading, not a definitive account of what happened between them.
Vengeance and restraint: a reading of the two routes
The routes ask the player to demonstrate the ability to overcome the same opponents, then differ over what to do with that power. One concludes the pursuit by killing Yang. The other repeatedly chooses to spare defeated enemies. That verified difference supports a reading of Wude as restraint in place of vengeance.
The interpretation does not require an exact answer to the final scene's identity puzzle. Whether the seated teacher is one character or another, the closing image points toward a future shaped by teaching rather than another act of revenge.