The old woman's health was not very good. She had fallen into the river as a child. Although she was eventually rescued, her internal organs had been damaged.
Although she had drunk what her father said was treasured immortal water, it was only the bottom of a bottle that had been rinsed with clean water countless times, "immortal water" that still had a little bit of medicinal power.
That "immortal water" had indeed prevented her from having a relapse in her youth. But as she grew old and frail and entered her twilight years, a little bit of cold air would cause her to gasp for breath uncontrollably.
The old woman's name was Li Yue. She was the official wife of the current dynasty's Grand Secretary of the Hall of Literary Profundity, Fang Wende, a woman of great prestige.
Looking at the three or four children chasing each other and playing in the garden, Li Yue's eyes were full of kindness. Occasionally, she would squint at the sky, where white clouds floated slowly, in various shapes.
For a moment, the scene in the sky seemed to take her back to her childhood, sitting on a hillside with her two older brothers, a blade of grass held lightly in her mouth, her hands propped on the grass, looking up at the sky.
At that time, they would look at the white clouds drifting near and far on the horizon, imagining them in their minds as mountains and beasts of various shapes...
They always wondered if they could fly up there and see if there were legendary immortals "on the other side of the mountain"...
"I'm old now, I always like to reminisce about the past!"
Li Yue felt her eyes sting a little, so she slowly closed them, smiling self-deprecatingly in her heart.
And just then, unnoticed by everyone here, in front of the door of the dilapidated mud and stone house in the corner of the garden, the space fluctuated slightly, and an illusory figure suddenly appeared.
Li Yan looked back at the old woman in the garden who was resting with her eyes closed, gently rocking in her recliner. He sensed a very familiar connection from this person.
It was a connection between those who shared the same bloodline as him. And in this courtyard now, he also sensed the bloodline power of an old man that was also quite close to his own.
As for the other ten or so people, although he also sensed a bloodline connection with them, the concentration of the bloodline was already much diluted.
Li Yan did not want to disturb these people. He just stood quietly in front of the dilapidated house, gazing at the old, broken double doors that exuded a sense of the vicissitudes of time.
For a moment, he felt it was very familiar, yet extremely strange.
Familiar was the house before him. It was where he and his third brother had lived for fourteen years, the residence of the two male members of the family.
Although the house had been renovated, it still overlapped with his memories.
Strange was that the old houses around it were gone. His parents' main house was gone, the front hall was gone, and the low courtyard wall had also disappeared without a trace.
This was no longer a courtyard that could be crossed in a few steps, a place where one could stand on the platform in front of the courtyard and see the endless Great Green Mountains in the distance.
The courtyard had grown more than ten times in size. Everything before his eyes made this house seem very strange.
Li Yan's face was numb because he had not found his most familiar relatives in this courtyard. He hadn't even found anyone he knew in the entire village.
Li Yan stood motionless in front of the dilapidated house. His original home was already completely changed. Only this house where he had once lived allowed him to find some memories.
A deep sorrow arose in his heart. He didn't need to guess; he already knew the result.
This house was his parents' lingering attachment to him. Otherwise, it would not have been left standing here so forlornly.
After standing for a long time, Li Yan took a deep breath. His figure suddenly became blurry and illusory.
The next moment, the old double doors did not open, but Li Yan had already stepped into the room. Then he stood before a large bed.
The furnishings in the room were just as he remembered them.
The room was not very large. A wooden plank bed, a long table at the head of the bed, and a stool already took up most of the space.
Li Yan seemed to see himself sitting on the edge of the bed, swinging his legs, while his third brother sat on the stool, one hand on his half-bent, half-extended crippled leg, occasionally rubbing it, his face serious as he spoke.
"Fifth Brother, how did you make Mom and Dad angry again? You're not reading your books, and you secretly followed Uncle Guoxin and the others into the mountains again. Are you tired of living..."
"Third Brother, those wild beasts can't hurt me. This time I encountered a..."
The edge of the bed was empty. The figure on the stool had also disappeared again, leaving only the words that were almost forgotten in his mind.
Li Yan's face was expressionless as he moved his gaze to the long table at the head of the bed. Just now, he had been unwilling to use his Divine Sense to see through the house.
He was just unwilling to know everything in advance. He just wanted to see the furnishings in the house with his own eyes. Perhaps that would be the most real.
When Li Yan's eyes saw clearly the things on the table, his body could no longer control its trembling. There were six spirit tablets there, arranged in three tiers: top, middle, and bottom.
The top tier held the tablets of "Honored Deceased Father, Lord Li, personal name Chang" and "Honored Deceased Mother, Madam Li, maiden name Xiulan."
Below these two tablets were "Honored Deceased Father, Lord Li, personal name Wei" and "Honored Deceased Mother, Madam Li, maiden name Yu."
The bottom tier also had two tablets: "Honored Deceased Father, Lord Li, personal name Wenwu" and "Honored Deceased Mother, Madam Li, maiden name Mulan."
From the titles on these six tablets, Li Yan could tell they were all erected by direct descendants. Otherwise, the titles on the tablets should have been different.
Li Yan stared blankly at three of the tablets. Those were the names of his parents and his third brother.
"They're all gone?"
Although Li Yan had long suspected it, seeing these three names with his own eyes, an unbidden pang of anguish twisted in his heart.
He had countless times fantasized that when he returned to the small mountain village, he would be able to see his beloved family members from his dreams. But in the end, it was all just a dream, merciless and bone-chillingly cold.
Although the pills he had left behind had the effect of prolonging life, at that time he had just reached Foundation Establishment, and the pills he took out were not as good as Zhao Min's.
That kind of pill could possibly let an ordinary mortal live to be one hundred and thirty or forty years old, which was already a legendary, supreme immortal pill.
When he left, his parents were already in their sixties. And Li Yan had been gone for nearly a hundred years. Everything had succumbed to the long river of time.
If he were to use his current means, he could naturally help them extend their lives a little longer, though it might only be for a few months or years. But there was no longer a chance.
Li Yan's heart ached, but his expression became even more numb. His gaze fell on Li Wei's spirit tablet.
"Third Brother, you're gone too. Counting now, you should be around one hundred and thirty years old. You too, in the end, couldn't wait for my return..."
Of the five Li siblings, he was closest to Li Wei and Li Xiaozhu. His eldest and second sisters had married early, and their husbands' families were far away, so they could only return once every few years.
Li Yan was naturally closest to his third brother and fourth sister, especially Li Wei, who was both a brother and a father to him.
...That night, Li Wei and Li Yan lay back to back.
"Fifth Brother, when you're in the army, be calm when you encounter problems. Endure what you can, and don't try to stand out."
"Mm!"
"If, if there's a battle, and no one is watching, don't rush to the front. Fall back a few steps..."
"Mm!"
"Don't worry about home. With your enlistment pay, I'll take care of Mom and Dad. Use your monthly salary to buy more meat for yourself!"
"Mm... Third Brother, you do more of the farm work. Mom and Dad are getting old."
"Alright. As long as I'm here, Mom and Dad won't go hungry!"
...
"Fourth Sister... I'll come back to see you next New Year. But I don't know if you'll be home then."
"You glib-tongued!"
...
"Fourth Sister, when I'm settled, I'll send you some rouge and powder from the city!"
"Fifth Brother, Sister will be waiting, wuwu..."
Scene after scene flashed before Li Yan's eyes.
"Fourth Sister, you're not here anymore either, are you!"
Another pang of anguish twisted in Li Yan's heart. On his expressionless face, a trail of tears finally flowed, slowly trickling down!
"They left this house and placed all the spirit tablets here. They were waiting for me to return..."
Li Yan's eyes swept over the remaining three tablets. The one next to Li Wei's should be his third sister-in-law's. He remembered his third brother calling her "Xiao Yu."
But the two tablets below made Li Yan pause.
"Li Wenwu, is that that little guy?"
Li Yan remembered a child in a cyan dudou running across the fields. His third brother had told him his name was "Wenwu."
"He passed away too..."
A sense of desolation and bone-chilling cold spread out. The pills he had left were only enough for his parents and third brother. If Li Wenwu had lived to this day, he would be a hundred years old.
But that was not an age ordinary mortals could reach. So, that little guy in the dudou had also passed away!
The grief in Li Yan's eyes deepened. He gently waved his hand. Except for the spirit tablets of his parents and Li Wei, the other three tablets flew up and hovered on either side.
Li Yan's knees bent, and with a thud, he knelt on the ground, his voice low and choked.
"Dad, Mom, Brother, Fifth Brother is back. Fifth Brother is back!"
As he whispered, he had already touched his head to the ground, his prostrate body trembling continuously.
This time, he did not call him "Third Brother" again. In his heart, Li Wei was his eldest brother, worthy of his kneeling.
Although a sister-in-law was like a mother, in his heart, Li Yan was only willing to kneel to these three.
In his mind, it was always the dilapidated small courtyard in the small mountain village. Under the dim yellow oil lamp in the courtyard, the family sat around in a circle!
Li Yan's character was mostly like this. He valued family ties, but he also took them lightly. He didn't really acknowledge people he hadn't spent time with.
After a long while, Li Yan slowly stood up. With a gentle wave of his hand, the three hovering spirit tablets were put back in their proper places.
Li Yan looked at an incense holder placed at the side of the table, then walked over slowly. He reached out and took out a few sticks of long incense, blew on them gently, and in the curling smoke, the incense lit with a spark.
He held the long incense with both hands above his head, bowed three times to the empty air, then gently inserted it into the incense burner in front of the spirit tablets.
Then, he sat down on the stool in front of the long table and once again fell into a long silence...
Just as the sun was about to reach its zenith, the half-asleep Li Yue suddenly felt the surroundings become completely silent. There were no more birds chirping, no more gentle breeze blowing, and even the voices of the children had completely disappeared.
She opened her eyes in confusion. She was shocked to find a short-haired young man standing in front of her. This person's attire was not the same as that of the men of the dynasty.
Especially that head of short, black, shiny hair, like individual black thorns, looked particularly strange.
As long as one was not bald, any person of the dynasty with such a hairstyle would be found guilty of a crime. The lightest punishment would be a beating with a plank and being confined for a year, not allowed to leave the house.
Li Yue was shocked. As the official wife of a first-rank Grand Secretary, she was also listed as an important assassination target by enemy countries.
This time, when she returned to her hometown to visit her relatives, she had brought many expert guards. Not to mention the people scattered outside the mountain village, there were at least five top martial arts experts hiding in this garden alone.
Those were all powerhouses that Grand Secretary Fang had spent a fortune to recruit. But at this time, someone had silently approached her.
Even though her noble status and position had taught her to remain calm in the face of great storms, being stared at from such a close distance still made Li Yue's face change drastically.
Just as she was about to shout a sharp question, her gaze met the other person's eyes.
Li Yue felt as if she were looking into two invisible black holes.
In an instant, her consciousness stopped running. The shout was stuck in her throat, and her entire person fell into an unconscious state.