In the deepest corner of everyone’s mind was memory so painful that we wished we could keep forever locked, never to resurface again.

Everyone had dreams, however, especially nightmares. Those painful memories would frequently appear in our nightmares, causing to wake up from shock. As time went by, the nightmares became more terrible, and the memories turned darker, before the dreams became vivid.

Ye Que suffered from a vivid nightmare like that once. It haunted him for decades, and it became a mental issue when he was ascending, nearing killing him.

It originated from a fragment of his memories.

Then, Ye Que was still an infant.

It was still midwinter in his dreams, and the weather was extremely cold. Huge flakes of snow were falling from the sky, and his surroundings were all white. His eyes were blinded by the dazzling snow, and everything around him was covered by it.

He could feel that his face, hands and body were extremely cold, and his eyelids were as heavy as sheets of steel. A faint warmth came from the front and back of his body, and a soft voice was whispering into his ear, “Don’t sleep, don’t sleep, please don’t fall asleep.”

He could still feel incomparable hunger and coldness, and he was close to breaking. At this time, a warm liquid flowed near the corner of his lips.

Instinctively, Ye Que sucked at the liquid with all the strength that he had left for a long while. Gradually, his hunger was satiated, and he regained some strength. He opened his eyes slowly to see a gentle face.

Ye Que could sense that she was his mother. He lifted his small white arm to scratch an itch away from his lips, and he could see a smatter of bright red liquid on it when he lowered it.

The liquid at the corner of his lips was fresh blood.

Baby Ye Que in the fragment of his memory was surely unaware of this fact, but he felt nauseous every time he saw this scene unfold in his dreams. This was because he had drank his own mother’s blood!

The baby version of Ye Que calmed down gradually as his mother hugged him close to her bosom, and he even seemed to be on the verge of laughing.

Soon, peace was disrupted by the appearance of wild dogs, who were drawn by the scent of blood. Ye Que’s mother had just took out half a bun to eat. It was her food for the entire day, and it was why she had to let Ye Que drink her blood. How could a mother produce milk just by eating a bun for an entire day?

She was slow to react, probably due to the extreme cold, and she had just ate a mouthful of her bun when the wild dogs had surrounded her.

Her muscles tensed instinctively as she raised her head to look at the wild dogs around her. She gazed fiercely at the dogs, quickly understanding that they were starving like her.

The child in her bosom was food in the eyes of the wild dogs.

No matter how fierce her stare was, it was not strong enough to overcome the animals’ instinctive nature when overcome by hunger.

She did not hesitate for much longer and began to act. She kept her eyes and body fixed on the wild dogs, while carefully shifting Ye Que backward into the hole in the tree behind them with one hand.

“Howl!”

Ye Que, who was lying sideways in the hole, witnessed the most unforgettable and darkest scene in his entire life.

A hungry mother.

A pack of hungry wild dogs.

Fighting with each other.

It was a true life and death struggle, and Ye Que did not know where his mother got her strength from, but she used her feet, hands, nails and teeth to inflict maximum damage on the dogs.

Drops of blood splattered onto the white snowy ground.

Shrieks and howls rang out and died down.

It was a cruel and bloody battle.

It was also the source of Ye Que’s nightmares since his childhood.

Ye Que knew what happened later. Villagers who passed by saved them, but his mother’s face had been completely chewed off and her body grew frail. Just her looks alone were more frightening than demons, and Ye Que killed many of their kind later on, but he never felt disgusted by them. This was because from a young age, he had heard others describing his mother as a demon.

The vivid nightmare had not surfaced in Ye Que’s mind for a long while.

Today, however, it was back.

It had resurfaced because of the appearance of someone. Perhaps, in his subconscious, this person was the root cause of his nightmares.

Ye Zhengru!

He was also Ye Que’s father.

He had appeared at the Divine Sect Seminary as the performance winded down and proposed to chat with Ye Que, which brought us to the present scene.

A pot of tea and two cups between two people sitting opposite each other.

Ye Que lifted the teapot and filled a cup of tea. He placed the teapot back in place, leaving only his cup filled.

Steam rose from his teacup like smoke from a chimney. It quickly dispersed, filling the entire room with the fragrant aroma of tea. Ye Que remained silent and looked at Ye Zhengru calmly. He wanted to observe his biological father, the great general whose fame had spread around the entire Tang Dynasty.

The steam was gone, and the tea had turned lukewarm before Ye Zhengru finally spoke.

“Your mother?”

Ye Zhengru did not have to ask Ye Que if he was his son, and neither did Ye Que have to ask the general if he was his biological father. The jade pendant was one thing, but the inseparable bond between father and son was the key to proving their relationship to each other.

“My mother?”

“She’s no longer with us,” Ye Que replied. He did not conceal anything nor scream and vent out at the general at the top of his voice. It was just a simple, plain answer.

“She…?” Ye Zhengru started to speak.

The general was interrupted by Ye Que mid-sentence, as if he knew what Ye Zhengru was about to ask.

“Didn’t lead a very good life.”

“Suffered all kinds of afflictions known to man.”

“Experienced all kinds of disappointment and harshness.”

Ye Que kept looking at the eyes of Ye Zhengru. When he finished this sentence, he saw a guilty flash in the eyes of the general.

The corners of Ye Que’s lips formed into a derisive grin as he saw the guilt in the general’s eyes. “How fake, hypocritical and disgusting you are. If you really felt guilty, where were you? Who are you putting on a show for? Do you think that the guilty look can make me acknowledge you?” he very much wanted to ask.

Ye Que felt this way, but he did not voice his thoughts out. He was not scared, but unwilling to do so. He did not want to hurt the feelings of his late mother; she had never mentioned about this man before, much less speak ill about him.

Neither to his face or behind his back.

“Can you tell me how both of you have been all these years?” Ye Zhengru asked. He stopped looking at Ye Que directly and lowered his head, before filling a cup of tea for himself and drinking it down in a single gulp. The tea had long gone cold, but it would not matter to him anyway, for the warmth in his heart had disappeared.

The cup of cool tea caused him to cough violently.

Ye Que watched quietly and did not react.

He spoke only after Ye Zhengru stopped coughing. “Want to hear how we survived all these years?”

“Do you think you have the right to listen to me speak about that?” Ye Que asked. His tone was not inquisitive, and even though his words were sharp, he spoke casually, as if he was not talking about himself.

“I can’t make decisions on my own for many things,” Ye Zhengru said as he looked at Ye Que. “How would you choose between love and country? You cannot understand the turmoil I went through, for you haven’t experienced such matters before. So, even if you hate me, I won’t blame you. Everyone’s fate is determined by Heaven, and we all have our own paths in life.”

“Everyone leads their own path in life?”

Ye Que paused as he heard the last statement from Ye Zhengru before laughing bitterly. “So, it was you that told her that.”

“Laughable.”

“Pathetic.”

“Disgusting.”

Ye Que shouted thrice, and he had even slammed his palm on the table while making the last statement. “Do you want to listen to our story? Fine! Today, I’ll tell you a story, and I want to see if you still feel so at ease after hearing that!” he said while pointing at Ye Zhengru.

“Before speaking, I want to ask you a question first.” Ye Que calmed himself down and said, “Do you think that a woman living to the age of 36 is considered as having had a long life?”

“According to the statistics from households in the Tang Dynasty, it’s a short life span,” Ye Zhengru replied after thinking for a moment.

“For some people, it’s too long. She should have died peacefully when she was 18, but she endured another 18 long years of hell-like torment.”

“Some people would have called her insane or foolish. If she was in so much pain, why didn’t she smash her head in and end everything?”

“Hey, if only it were that simple. I wouldn’t have said that she led a long life, if that was the case.”

The story was about Ye Que’s own life, and he was talking about Tang Wanru, his own mother.

Since he was young, she kept telling him, “Everyone’s fate is determined by Heaven, and we each have a path to follow in life. I was destined to lead a life of suffering and raise you up by myself. I promised him that I’d provide for you until you were 18.”

Ye Que said as he looked directly at Ye Zhengru, “Since I could start remembering things, she repeated this statement a few times every day. I didn’t understand it before. Today, I finally understand that she was encouraging herself. If she couldn’t raise me up, she wouldn’t dare to die.”

Pointing to his face, Ye Que continued, “Have you seen the face of a monster? It’s ugly and terrifying. But do you know how others describe her face in the village?”

“It was uglier and more horrible than a monster’s, and it could stop babies from crying in the night. In order to protect me, she wrestled with wild dogs, and her whole face was bitten off.”

“Do you know how many meals can 10 copper coins buy? You live in a magnificent general’s house, surely you wouldn’t know that,” Ye Que said as he raised his index finger. “One month! For many years, she had ten copper coins to buy food for a month.”

“Because she was afflicted with illness and had no strength in her hands, she couldn’t grow stuff. She could only do some needlework and sell it.”

“With the face of a monster, who would dare buy the shoes that she sewed, even if they were beautiful? Even if they did, how much would they be willing to pay? If someone sells them for five copper coins each, she could only sell hers for two at most. Would she be in a disadvantage? Definitely. But she didn’t care, as long as she could live on, as long as she can continue to bring her son up, she doesn’t care.”

“Her eyesight was extremely bad, and she was pricked so often by the needles that she had to discard so many shoes or handkerchiefs because they were stained with her blood. At first, she could still manage, but as her eyesight continued to deteriorate further and she began to injure herself more often, her earnings became far lesser than her expenditure, and her only source of income was destroyed.”

“But her son was still young, and she still had to survive.”

“She had no skills and no strength, how could she continue to live on?”

“She knew that there was a way out, but she was unwilling to step on that path. It was okay for life to be tough, but she felt that she had to uphold her status and dignity.”

“She resisted for two days, and she gave up after watching her son faint from hunger thrice.”

“From that day on, an ‘old witch’ began to appear in the villages surrounding the outskirts of Wei City, begging for food. She left her house began dawn and returned only after dark. She never begged in her own village, however. She wouldn’t take any food offered by the people of her village, as she felt that she had to hold on to that last shred of dignity. She didn’t want other children to call her child a beggar.”

“In her heart, she has always believed that her son’s was nobler than the whole village, 100, no, 1000 times more noble. She felt that it was a fact that did not have to be said.”

“She never slacked off, no matter the season or weather. Because if she did not go out to beg, her son would starve.”

“One extremely cold winter, she realized her son was missing when she came back from begging. He was four that year and frequently cold or hungry. He was frail and seldom went out. Usually, he would stay at home all day to wait for her return.”

“She searched like crazy for him and shouted till her lungs ached and her voice could be heard throughout the entire village. Finally, she found him in the chicken coop of her neighbor. She was so angry that she flogged him for the first time. When they arrived back home, she asked him why he had to sneak to the neighbor’s chicken coop.”

“Tears streaked down the cheeks of her four year old son, and he was crying so much that he spoke incoherently.”

“I’m cold.”

“It was only a few words, but they made her cry. She cried her heart out.”

“That night, her son developed high fever, and his forehead was as hot as a stove. She was frightened sick. She knew that her son needed a physician’s attention, but where would she get enough money for that? She didn’t even have a single copper coin. She went down on her knees and begged the entire village, finally managing to gather enough money when it was dawn.”

“From then on, the thing that she feared most was her son’s illness, not about her own face.”

“Just like this, she made shoes for two years, and begged for eight, until her son was ten years old.”

“It was another winter. She wanted to go home. When she got to the door of the house, she suddenly collapsed. She became bedridden and never got up again.”

“That year, she was only twenty-eight, but she looked like eighty-two.”

“Her son who lay beside her was already 10, but frail and weak. Even the younger children in the village who were half his age were stronger than him.”

“What would happen to them, now that she was sick? She could not think of a solution throughout the entire night. Before it was daybreak, however, she realized that her son had sneaked out into the heavy snow outside, and he returned only when it was beginning to get dark again. His face was red from the cold, and there were bits of ice all over his hair and body.”

“She was ready to blow up again, but her son explained the truth to her and took out a handful of millet from his shirt. Turns out that he had went into the hills alone to chop firewood, carried them down and bartered with the villagers for the millet.”

“From this day on, the burden of supporting the family fell on the 10 year old boy.”

“Day after day, year after year, he went up into the hills to gather firewood and lugged them down to the village in exchange for food. He never went to school, as did his mother, therefore he could only use whatever little strength he possessed to survive.”

“Fortunately, God was somewhat kind to her son. From that day onward, he never got ill again, and his strength increased as he grew up. He could gather more firewood, and exchange them for more food. As he ate better, his body began to fill out, and naturally he could do more things.”

“He progressed from firewood gathering to working in farms, tending to cattle, working in a blacksmith and even in a small tavern. Basically, he tried his hands in every kind of work available in the village.”

“He was never picky, and he could not choose. Neither did he know how to choose.”

“Their life became better, but her health got worse. Her son could sense that she was forcing herself to live on, and it made his heart ache.”

He had secretly requested for a doctor to take a look at her. The doctor’s reply was, “Her vitality was gone for a long while, and there’s no way to cure her. She’s hanging onto her life by a thread, and as her son, you can try to persuade her to let go of worldly affairs and move on to the next world peacefully.”

“Her son thought about it for many days, before talking to her. He told her about the doctor’s advice truthfully, and she wasn’t too surprised upon hearing it. She had long expected it.”

That day, she grabbed her son’s hands and told him slowly, “Son, your mother was destined to lead a life of suffering. I’ve long given up hope, and I could have died a long time ago. I can’t do that now, for I’ve to see you grow till you’re 18. When that day comes, I’ll give you an object and tell you something, then I’ll move on in peace.”

Just like this, life carried on like usual in her family. She struggled through every day, till her son was 18.

Perhaps miracles did come true. That day, she stood up unexpectedly and pulled her son into their yard. She pointed west toward Luoyang City and told him, “Your father is Ye Zhengru, and he resides in the General’s Manor in Luoyang. Now that you’ve grown up, you have to return back and acknowledge your ancestors!”

After saying this, she stroked her son’s cheek with her hand. “Son, your mother is tired, really tired. Hug me, and let me rest.”

Under the setting Sun.

She rested her head on her son’s shoulder.

She slept.

His shoulders were broad and warm. Suddenly, she felt as though she had returned to a long long time ago…