Chapter 50: I Came Back

"Where is their grave?"

Gu Yuan, who had somehow grown calmer after the shock of the man’s last words, asked the question quietly.

"Please follow me. The village chief should know."

Silently, Gu Yuan followed him.

Before long, they came across an old man whom Gu Yuan immediately recognized. He was the son of the village chief Gu Yuan had once known. Now, he was the village chief himself.

Before the man accompanying Gu Yuan could explain the situation, the village chief, Lie Bo, stared at him with uncertainty and bewilderment.

"Gu... Gu Yuan? Is that really you?"

Gu Yuan had been the bright and clever child who could solve almost every problem the villagers encountered. Even though more than ten years had passed since Lie Bo had last seen him, there was no way he could forget him.

"Yes, it’s me, Gu Yuan." Gu Yuan paused for a moment before asking, "Can you take me to my parents’ graves?"

Still shocked by the confirmation, Lie Bo quickly nodded. "Of course. Follow me!"

He immediately led the way.

As they walked, Lie Bo couldn’t help but speak.

"All the villagers grieved when we heard that you had been taken to that immortal sect..."

He glanced at Gu Yuan before continuing in a somewhat awed voice, "To think that you really became one of them."

Gu Yuan remained silent.

Lie Bo kept glancing at his expression as he continued.

"After you left, only a few months passed before your parents caught a disease. We invited physicians to treat them, but they couldn’t cure them. They struggled for some time before eventually passing away."

"Along with the other villagers, we..."

Lie Bo’s voice gradually became quieter.

He seemed unable to stop talking, perhaps because he hadn’t seen Gu Yuan in so many years, or perhaps because he simply didn’t know what else to say.

Gu Yuan never responded.

Before long, they arrived at two graves.

"Chief Lie, please go back. I want to stay here alone for a while."

The village chief was a little nervous, but he nodded immediately and left without another word.

Gu Yuan stood before the two graves, staring at them in silence.

Only now did he finally seem to accept it.

His parents, the people who had given birth to him in this life, were dead.

"If you were going to sell your child, then at least live a long life."

"Live a long life and be happy."

His voice was hoarse, faintly choked.

"...What are you doing, dying like this?"

Gu Yuan didn’t know what emotion he felt toward his parents at this moment.

Grief? Helplessness? Perhaps a little resentment that they had died before he could return?

He didn’t know.

But it was clearly not hatred.

Perhaps that was only natural after the twelve years he had spent with them.

His parents had been warm toward him. He had been their pride, the clever and responsible child who could help them with almost anything. They had bragged about him to the villagers, spoiled him whenever they could, and treated him as something precious.

They had taken care of him. They had been good parents.

At least, that was how it had been in the beginning.

Then his father, once a hunter, was injured and forced into farm work. His mother had to labor beside him just to keep the household going. Even so, they barely managed to make ends meet.

Poverty was difficult.

Going to bed with an empty stomach was even more difficult... and for mortals, there was often no one to help them when life pushed them into a corner.

The knowledge from his previous life couldn’t help him with any of this. No matter how much he knew, he couldn’t use it to make food appear in an empty pot or turn his family into wealthy merchants. He could only silently watch as his parents gradually fell into despair.

The decisive blow came with the famine that year.

Unable to endure any longer, they were finally given a chance to sell their child when someone from the Black Desolation Sect came to the village.

And in the end, his parents succumbed to the temptation.

They had sold him.

Gu Yuan didn’t hate them.

Yes, he didn’t hate them.

They had only been trying to survive.

They had only been trying to fill their empty stomachs.

Perhaps if they had lived in a better place, under better circumstances, they would never have made that choice.

Gu Yuan knelt down and cleared away the weeds growing around the two graves. Then he took out some spirit food and a bottle of spirit wine and placed them before the graves.

The things he brought were worth far more than the price they had received for selling him.

He then lit three sticks of incense.

For a while, he simply watched the smoke rise into the air.

Only after the smoke had drifted away did he finally mutter, "Father, Mother... I came back."

In his previous life, he had died in his thirties. Compared to his own age, his parents in this life had almost felt like a younger brother and sister.

But that didn’t change anything.

They were still his parents.

They were still the two people who had given birth to him in this life, raised him, and once looked at him with pride as though he were the greatest treasure they had ever received.

Gu Yuan bowed three times.

Then he opened the bottle of wine and slowly poured it over the graves.

"In your next life, please reincarnate in better circumstances. Live happily."

He paused for a moment before adding in a quieter voice, "And don’t sell your child again."

With those words, Gu Yuan finally stood up.

He glanced at the two graves again.

They were shabby, little more than mounds of earth with simple markers.

Considering the money his parents had received from selling him, they should have been able to afford better graves. Yet that money had probably never done them much good before they died.

Perhaps they had spent it on food.

Perhaps on medicine.

Or perhaps it had eventually found its way into someone else’s pocket.

Gu Yuan suddenly remembered how Lie Bo had kept talking about how the villagers had helped his parents after he left.

Was that why he had talked for so long?

Gu Yuan couldn’t say.

In the end, he shook his head.

It no longer mattered.

His parents were dead. Whether they were buried beneath a shabby mound of earth or inside a magnificent tomb, the dead could no longer tell the difference.

Gu Yuan stood there for a little longer before turning around and leaving.