Chapter Thirty-Five: Returning Home

Leocheng stood by the pond before the cave dwelling and watched Yunhua storm out of the Liu Manor in a fury, then with a light laugh he shut down the Circle of Radiance Technique.

So this is how worldly fate works—strange and miraculous. Little Fatty Liu Hong was destined, it seemed, to climb the mountain someday, yet mortal entanglements always conjured up a tangle of fresh hardships. Between gain and loss, every sip, every crumb is decided by Heaven. Who can say this path is not a test in disguise?

Yunhua had been badly provoked at the Liu household. She decided that if Little Fatty Liu Hong ever managed to reach the mountain, then as his senior sister in the sect she would have to receive him properly. She would not let herself become a fake divine maiden.

The narrow-minded Yunhua hurried homeward in anger, saying nothing. Liu Hong, however, was suddenly shaken by a few violent tremors, stirred by resentful intent from afar, as if malicious force had thickened around him. He wondered to himself whom he might have offended this time. At last the house page arrived and, moving like a shadow, came close enough to whisper at his ear. Liu Hong was jolted so hard he could think of nothing else. In a dazed state he drifted through the lesson until dismissal, then ran home in a flash.

Liu Hong's youthful zeal was dealt a cruel blow. His grandmother’s tears, his mother’s tears, and his father’s ashen face forced him to set aside the idea of following after his senior sister. So long as he was still a son, how could he break free of mortal ties? He became sullen and restless. Images of immortals drifting free through cloud and mist kept returning to his mind, impossible to wipe away. The seed that had once been set on the path of renouncing everything and seeking the Way on the mountain did not fade before family opposition; instead, it took root deeper and deeper in the chubby boy’s heart, quietly growing day by day, waiting to become a sky-piercing tree.

As for Yunhua, once she left the Liu Manor she went straight to her birthplace. When she had left it that time, Yunhua was still a naive little girl. She had only one thought: to escape the inferno of the human world, then live each day with a full stomach and do nothing at all. Thinking of it now, she almost laughed at how childish and absurd she had been.

Li Family Village, unseen for six years, had not changed in the least. The villagers still rose and labored with the sunrise and rested at sundown. Outwardly it seemed peaceful, yet there was a deep, dim dusk in its air. At dawn, Yunhua appeared in Dao robes. The boys at the gate who had bullied her in childhood now seemed to have become young men, with none of their old rawness left. Yunhua recognized them; they could no longer recognize the tousled-haired girl who had once tormented them. They only dared to steal furtive glances, trembling, at her as if she were a maiden from the Ninth Heaven, and not one of them dared to speak. Yunhua gave a faint smile. What had been her life once had thinned into smoke of a bygone day. Li Family Village had no claim on her now. If not for her master’s instructions—and besides, she still held her parents’ graves in her thoughts—she would not have returned to this place she could never bear to revisit.

Yunhua entered the Li family cemetery and began searching for her birthfather’s grave. From afar, villagers spotted that a stranger had entered the Li family burial grounds and flew back at once to report it. By custom, women were forbidden to climb the burial mounds, and besides, here was an unknown woman.

After circling for a while, she could not find her father’s gravestone. Only by biting her fingertip and following her bloodline’s instinct did she discover, in a secluded corner, a lonely mound nearly collapsed. The weeds were ragged and mournful; not even a gravestone remained. Long neglected, the mound had been smoothed by wind and rain into a wretchedly low rise.

Her father’s grave stood without her mother’s. Clearly, after Yunhua had gone, Li Jiren had no intention of moving her mother’s grave to be reunited with him. Though she held no expectations toward her ancestral household, she could not help but be disappointed by their chill hearts. In the end, it was still the blood of that house in her father’s veins.

Yunhua brought out a censer, lit incense and candles for her true father, then offered fruit to honor his spirit. She had no real memories of him, but she knew her poor mother had always yearned for him. All her image of him came from her mother’s words and dreams, and later had come to resemble Leocheng. As Yunhua knelt to bow before her father, a crowd swept into the cemetery. At their head was the clan chief she would never forget—the very one who had once prevented her master from taking her away. It was he who had ordered her mother to be drowned in the river. No matter how desperately she had pleaded, not an ounce of pity ever touched that chief.

Yunhua turned, her face like a sheet of ice, and fixed a cold gaze on the rushing wave of clanspeople, especially on that chief.

“Isn’t that Li Chunsan’s grave?” someone among them finally said, suddenly remembering whose tomb this stranger girl honored. The cry burst out at once and awakened everyone’s memory. Looking again at the little girl before the mound—so like a celestial daughter of the Ninth Heaven—one could guess even a pig was no outsider to her identity. For a moment their faces turned dark with shame, fear, and grievance, each unsure whether to step forward or withdraw.

The whole village had seen Li Chunsan’s daughter taken as a disciple by an immortal. Everyone also knew well how the clan had treated that mother and child through the years. To speak of it was no less than blood-deep enmity. After all, these very people had killed her mother. Now, six years later, if the girl returned, might it be for revenge? It was hard to say. Especially among those who had once taken part in sinking her mother in the waters, they now trembled, deeply regretting how they had been led astray then. Fate had, with cruel timing, delivered retribution right to their doorstep.

The old clan chief stood dark-faced and iron-hearted, his mood a knot of complexities. The clan’s grievance against the girl was only by association, but it had been the girl’s mother whom he had himself ordered into the river. For five taels of silver offered as a widow’s respectful gift, he had forced this act, though he knew it was merely a pretext for swindling away a bride’s dowry and turning a human life into property. Thereafter he dared not face the little girl who had begged him again and again, and he ignored all the abuse she suffered, only hoping she would die young and the matter end. He had not expected retribution to arrive so suddenly.

The girl had taken an immortal as master. His clansmen were punished and shamed. The clan chief’s face was disgraced; his standing before his people was gone. Worse, when the matter spread, Li Family Village went from a scholarly household and a respected local clan to a joke and an object of contempt, its reputation sinking in one fall. His son, once bright with promise, was ruined and stripped of office, sent back to the village; any youths of talent there were removed from their posts as well. The magistrates and local gentry entered Li Family Village in the black register, and no one in the clan could hope to rise again for generations. Worse still, rumors spread that the village had forced a daughter-in-law to die and abused a granddaughter, showing no trace of familial affection. For years, not a single bride came to be married in. How could he not know the way the village young men looked at him? He sat in the chief’s seat, paralyzed at heart, fearing only that the clansmen would one day call him to account.