Chapter 408: All Suffer
Chapter 408: All Suffer
Luo Cuilan had reached her life’s end.
Truthfully, she’d died long ago when her husband Li Tiechui passed away. The birth of her grandson had briefly extended her life, giving her new purpose. But now her time had come.
“Mother.”
Li Hao entered the room and saw his mother’s gaunt face on the bed. His nose stung with grief.
After his father’s death, this woman who’d sheltered him through life’s storms had withered like a silkworm at the end of its cycle.
“Tieniu?”
The woman struggled weakly to rise. Li Hao rushed to clasp her papery hand.
“I can’t bear to leave you… still so young… who’ll cook for my boy…”
As if burning her last reserves, Luo Cuilan suddenly grew animated.
She rambled endlessly while Li Hao listened – truly listened – for the first time in years. When had they last spoken like this? Since adulthood, he’d been consumed by ambition and social climbing.
Only now did he realize how aged she’d become.
A son wishes to care for his parents, but time waits for no one.
“Tiechui? You’ve come! Look… our Tieniu’s grown. Married now, with a plump grandson… the Li line continues…”
Her words grew fragmented as consciousness faded, though her grip remained fierce.
“Eat properly, Tieniu… dress warm… stay from the riverbank… when Father returns from smithing, we’ll buy candied hawthorns…”
“Mother.”
Li Hao’s chest constricted.
Guilt flooded him. After his father’s death, he’d pursued status while his mother silently endured loneliness. To her, he’d forever remain little Tieniu – the boy needing her care.
“Rest now. All will be well…”
His trembling heart resonated with the Five Elements and Six Desires in his soul. This desperate longing to keep his mother anchored him like Chains, the fermenting pain unexpectedly advancing his Dream Realm cultivation.
Three days later.
When Luo Cuilan departed, Li Hao sat numb at the threshold. He’d expected to die before his family, yet his mother had gone first. Only his wife Zhao Qianqian remained.
“Hao, you must endure. Mother’s spirit wouldn’t want this.”
Zhao Qianqian swallowed her own grief to comfort him. Having lived longer with Luo Cuilan, her loss cut deeper. But the former gang leader’s daughter now shouldered the household – comforting her husband, tending children, embodying the family’s spine.
Life’s harshness spared none.
After the funeral, Li Hao mourned while Qinghe County observed memorial rites. The magistrate, eyeing political gain through the ex-Chancellor’s fame, ordered public ceremonies. Futile efforts – Li Hao ignored worldly affairs.
He was spent.
The following year found thirty-six-year-old Li Hao haunting the streets, gaunt as a man decades older, his gray-blue robe hanging loose on brittle bones.
“Selling fabric! Finest silk cloth!”
The fabric shop still stood on the street.
Zuo’s Fabric Shop.
Li Hao paused at the entrance, peering inside. The shopkeeper was no longer the Goat-bearded man, and the smiling owner had vanished.
‘After all these years, the owner changed. Did he die?’
Birth, aging, sickness, and death—none escape this fate.
Li Hao lingered by the doorway but never entered.
Inside the shop, the disguised Zuo Meng and Ye Chen watched Li Hao walk away.
This man’s destiny had been fixed long ago.
Doomed to solitude.
Five years later, Li Hao turned forty-one.
His coughing persisted, his tuberculosis worsening. By all rights, he should’ve died years earlier, yet heaven spared him. That year, he took a new identity—donning the faded blue robe of his youth to become a town teacher.
The robe remained unchanged, but his spirit withered.
None guessed the ragged old man teaching their children was Qinghe County’s legendary Li Hao. The disparity between rumor and reality proved too vast.
Day after day.
Teaching by sunlight, writing by candlelight.
Each night, a woman silently brought him meals and draped a coat over his shoulders.
Two more years passed.
At forty-three, Li Hao felt sudden unease while walking—the same dread he’d felt when his mother died. Abandoning his class, he hurried home.
“Master! Disaster!”
The steward stumbled out, face pale.
“What happened?”
Li Hao’s chest tightened.
“Madam, she—”
Qianqian?!
His constant companion through endless nights. Her name alone sent Li Hao reeling. He staggered forward, then crumpled against the doorframe.
“Master!”
Voices clamored as people rushed to him.
Waking half an hour later, Li Hao bolted upright and ran. Servants chased after, but none could stop him.
The house had expanded over years, its warmth fading. He finally reached Zhao Qianqian’s courtyard—a replica of her childhood Sanhe Gang home.
There lay his wife, unconscious.
Forty winters old, yet half her hair shone silver.
Bitter.
Life’s relentless bitterness.
Li Hao clasped her skeletal hand. How had he, her closest companion, missed her wasting away?
Zhao Qianqian stirred weakly.
“Husband?”
Blind now. Only today did Li Hao learn she’d hidden her long illness, deepening his shame.
“I’m here.”
“My time… grows short.”
“Hush! You’ll recover! We’ll stroll beyond the city walls when—”
Tears streaked Li Hao’s face as memories surfaced—the willful Little Girl he’d met decades past, their fate sealed under moonlight.
Her crescent-eyed smile.
Youthful features merging with the frail woman before him.
“Yes… When I’m well… We’ll go… It’s been so long…”