The young man had a secret he never told anyone, not his grandparents, and definitely not his late mother. In truth, he was a transmigrator, a 27-year-old man from the Blue Star who had suddenly found himself in this world at the age of three, with all his past memories rushing back like a dream.
He had no idea how it happened. One night he fell asleep as usual, and the next morning, he woke up in the body of a stranger. The reason behind his transmigration was a mystery, but Su Wen didn't care about it anymore. Life moved on, and so did he.
In his previous life, Su Wen had been known as a genius doctor and physicist, someone who stood at the peak of both science and medicine. But even with fame and respect, he lived a lonely life. No family, no friends, no one was waiting for him at home. All he left or had was his dream of uncovering the secrets of the human body and a childish dream of travelling in outer space.
Then, in this new world, for the first time ever, he was loved. His new mother, Su Qing, was gentle and kind, her smile warm enough to melt away all the loneliness he'd carried from his past life. Unfortunately, fate was cruel. Su Qing suffered from a mysterious spiritual illness that even Su Wen, a once-great doctor, couldn't diagnose or cure. Two years later, she passed away, leaving him truly alone again.
That day, Su Wen cried for the first time in both of his lives.
Despite the cheerful face he showed others, pride ran deep in his bones. He never bowed to anyone, not when he starved, not when he struggled. Every bit of success he had ever achieved came from his own hard work.
His mother's death was quickly followed by an even bigger upheaval: his noble father, who until then had treated Su Wen as if he were invisible, suddenly arrived home accompanied by his new wife and two children. The shock for Su Wen wasn't the betrayal of his late mother, but rather the utter nonchalance with which his father presented this new family
"Su Wen, this is your new mother," was all the man said to him, which was a lot of words compared to what his father has said to him in many years.
Su Wen, being as prideful, only glanced but didn't reply. For years, he'd never really thought of that man as his father, after everything he'd been through, all he felt was indifference. But now, something new was mixing with it, disgust. Disgust for how someone could treat a woman as kind as his mother that way.
What his father didn't know was that his late mother had secretly left him enough money to live comfortably for a long time. The only family he cared about now were his maternal grandparents, though he had met them only a few times. His father had always looked down on them, so they couldn't stay for long before leaving.
Su Wen wanted to go live with them back then, but he was too young to travel alone. So he decided to wait, and when he turned ten, he finally left that house for good.
He didn't say much that day, only one short line before he walked away:
"I'm leaving and won't be coming back."
His grandparents were shocked when he appeared at their doorstep, a small, quiet boy with mature eyes far older than his years. But their surprise quickly turned to joy.
During the two years he stayed with them, his grandfather taught him sword techniques, fist arts, and three forms of immortal cultivation: Qi, Body, and Soul. His grandmother taught him gentler things: how to sew, how to cook, how to care for plants and live peacefully. Although he was curious about the origin of the techniques, he didn't ask as they will tell him by themselves when the time comes.
When he finally left for Sunrise City to attend Sunrise Academy, he had already built a strong foundation. There, he studied advanced medicine, literature, and alchemy, while secretly practicing the cultivation arts that his grandfather has passed down. He also began working at his professor's clinic in the city and sometimes travelled to the Old Yellow Town to treat patients with the assistant professor.
And every three months, without fail, Su Wen would return to his grandparents' village for two weeks. He'd bring back a stack of books borrowed from the academy library, spend his days reading in the quiet of the countryside, and help his grandparents with chores, a small slice of peace in his ever-busy life.
In the academy, he grew close to the Scholarly Headmaster Michael and his wife, Elen, an Alchemy professor, both of whom had mysterious backgrounds that were largely unknown. Within three years after he joined the academy at 12, Su Wen had mastered almost everything they could teach in the Dao of Alchemy and the Dao of Poetry, utterly dumbfounding them. They began to view him as an unpolished jewel that, once fully polished, would shine brightly. They wanted to send him immediately to the Ten Thousand Dao Sect, a Holy Land, in the Central Continent, but he refused, unwilling to leave his only family behind in the village.
Not only were his grandparents aging and living alone in that dilapidated mountain village, but now he also had two more people he wanted to keep close as family: his best friend and his girlfriend. Unaware of the darkness in their hearts, he was already planning a future they would share.
Today, upon realizing their true nature, he wouldn't beg or weep; his pride would never allow him to bow. Instead, he would quietly heal his broken heart and move forward with his life, simply dismissing them as a bad past.
They would be treated by him like dogs ignored with an air of indifference while walking down the street, or like a cockroach that makes him frown in disgust, the creatures he simply wants to avoid lest he catch some kind of disease.
He simply wiped them from the slate of his life!