Chapter 57: A Grandmother

"Wow, that big brother is so amazing..."

"Little sister, did your hair catch fire? Won't she be okay..."

"Is she the Red Boy..."

"Oh, she's a girl. The Red Boy is a boy, or was he a girl..."

"Blue fire, so that's the Blue Boy, haha..."

Zhu Guangfa couldn't remember how long it had been since his daughter was as lively as today.

His daughter circled her mother, chattering nonstop.

Du Xiuzhi had originally wanted to play coy and tease her, but she couldn't withstand her soft, persistent pestering.

Zhu Guangfa stood on a chair and took down two bottles of wine from the top of the cabinet.

Du Xiuzhi stood below and directly reached out to help catch them.

Zhu Guangfa widened his eyes and said in surprise, "Why can you catch things?"

"You just noticed?" Du Xiuzhi rolled her eyes at him.

Then she said, "I'm not entirely clear on the specifics. When Mr. Shen extended his finger and formed a hand seal, I felt a wisp of faint blue light rush toward me. Immediately after, I felt my body grow heavy, a sense of having my feet firmly on the ground, and no longer the feeling of being unable to bear weight, or of floating lightly with the wind..."

"Although everyone still can't see me, I feel there isn't much difference between me and a living person..."

This wasn't strange; after all, the wronged souls bound to the Ten Thousand Souls Banner by the Netherworld Demon Lord could not only wield weapons but also bewitch hearts and absorb people's vital essence. Though not ghost cultivators, bolstered by the 【Ten Thousand Souls Banner】, they already possessed some abilities of ghost cultivators.

Hearing this, Zhu Guangfa's spirits instantly lifted, and he said excitedly, "Then let's go beg Mr. Shen to let you stay by our side forever."

"Do you think the two wisp of Qi I passed to you are good things? Long-term exposure will corrode your bodies and turn you into living dead..."

"That serious?"

"Then, Mom, how long can you stay with us?"

Zhu Tingting, who was nearby, stopped being lively; her small face was full of sadness, and Zhu Guangfa's expression was equally solemn.

"Alright, don't be like this. Being able to reunite with you again is already great fortune; why force for more?" Du Xiuzhi reached out and hugged both of them.

Seeing his daughter sad, Zhu Guangfa quickly changed the subject, saying, "Giving these two bottles of wine to Mr. Shen seems a bit too light."

Du Xiuzhi smiled and said, "For Mr. Shen, whatever you give is too light. Since that's the case, then give him your best thing."

"Alright then. Later we'll go outside and buy some more things. Giving only two bottles of wine doesn't look very presentable."

"But these two bottles of Xifeng, you haven't been willing to drink them yet?"

"Hehe~, I kept them as a memento." Zhu Guangfa scratched his head and smiled foolishly.

His words actually aroused the curiosity of Zhu Tingting beside him.

"What memento?"

Du Xiuzhi explained with a smile, "This is the wine your father brought to your maternal grandfather when he first came to my house, and it was also the wine he bought with his first paycheck."

"But why is it in my house now? Didn't Grandpa drink it?"

"No, because your grandfather also couldn't bear to drink it, and later I brought it back."

Speaking of her grandfather, Zhu Guangfa asked in a low voice, "Did you see them?"

Du Xiuzhi shook her head and said with a smile, "Probably because you took such good care of me, they were very satisfied with you, had no lingering attachments, and so they left."

Hearing this, Zhu Guangfa just looked at her deeply, pressed his lips together, and said softly, "That's not quite it..."

He had always been haunted by Du Xiuzhi's death from illness, feeling he hadn't taken good enough care of her.

Yin Xingyue's hometown was a very small, very remote village.

The village consisted mostly of elderly people and children; Yin Xingyue had once been one of them.

However, she didn't admit to being a left-behind child, because her father was dead, not away working and leaving her in the village; sometimes, she even felt a tiny bit happy about it.

Yin Xingyue's grandmother was called Grandma Yi; everyone called her that. Even Yin Xingyue didn't know her actual name.

Even that surname wasn't her own; it was her grandfather's surname.

Grandma Yi's life was bitter: losing her husband in her youth, losing her son in her old age, and then her only granddaughter...

So Grandma Yi completely collapsed; she couldn't straighten her back and could only walk hunched over with her head down.

She walked very slowly, but also very carefully. She didn't know why she was still alive, but judging by the current situation, she wouldn't die anytime soon.

Sometimes, living is actually a kind of pain.

But for Grandma Yi, it was actually just like that, because in her life, there was too much pain, and people just became numb.

For her, living brought no surprises, and dying brought no sadness.

Living is just living; it has no meaning.

However, the one thing that made her sigh often and feel regretful was taking her granddaughter, Little Yue, away to her mother.

She couldn't understand why Little Yue would commit suicide. Isn't it good to be alive?

She often asked herself this, but she had no answer herself.

But she hoped Little Yue was alive, hoped to see her, and hear her call her Grandma...

So she regretted it, regretted it very much, very much...

So her back became even more hunched...

"I didn't want to either..."

This was the sentence Grandma Yi kept on her lips most often.

But—

Little Yue raised a little dog. The dog was very obedient; as soon as Little Yue called once, it would happily run forward.

But one day, Grandma Yi asked her where the little dog was?

She smiled and said she had divided it: half went to Fourth Uncle, and half went to Wang Dana in the west of the village.

She knew she could not keep Little Yue by her side; she had to be like her father, to study, to go to a better place to study.

But why did it have to be this way? I didn't want this either...

Grandma Yi regretted it.

She struggled to drag the small cart behind her; it was a gift from the shopkeeper at the village entrance, said to be a freebie from a laundry detergent company, something old men and women in the city liked to pull when going to buy groceries, so the shopkeeper had given her one to make it easier for her to scavenge for scrap.

And at this moment, her small cart was piled high with scrap: cardboard boxes, plastic bottles, discarded iron wires, and so on, stuffed to the brim.

Grandma Yi was going to drag them to the town to sell; the town was actually not far, just over ten li; by bicycle, it would take half an hour to arrive.

But for Grandma Yi, whose back was bent, the town was far enough; each time she had to spend half a day just to make the round trip.

Grandma Yi clasped her hands behind her back, pounded her waist, and stopped to rest once more.

But she did not rest for long; she continued dragging the small cart and set off again.

This time it felt much lighter, but she quickly realized that the sensation of not bearing the weight meant someone was pushing from behind.

She turned around and saw a familiar figure standing behind her, looking at her with a face full of smiles.

"Grandma~"

Bathed in the afternoon sun, her smile grew even more brilliant.

Grandma Yi felt no fear, nor any surprise; only an indescribable calmness and joy.

She grinned, revealing a mouth full of broken teeth, and every single wrinkle on her face seemed to brim with laughter.

"It's Little Yue," she said.

"Grandma~" Yin Xingyue called out again.

"Have you come to take Grandma away?"

Death is actually something worth rejoicing over.