Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

It started to drizzle in the afternoon. The splashing raindrops covered the entire Federal Square in a haze.

Even in the main hall at the war museum below the square, the sound of rain was still clearly audible from all directions.

It reminded the listeners of the grass that had just burst out of the soil. It might be young, but nothing could stop its growth.

Around the obsidian wall that surrounded the entire war museum, the names of hundreds of thousands of deceased warriors had been carved with the dark golden ink.

At the end of the high wall, where the fragrance of the ink lingered in the air because the carving was just done, Li Yao found the name as well as the family who were paying tributes and recording files into the information base.

There was a woman in plain clothes, who left the impression that she was rigorously meticulous, and a man who was equally plain and slightly fat but was supporting his wife’s shoulder all the time.

There was also a vigorous boy whose eyes were beaming with intelligence. He was counting the total number of the dense names on the wall from top to bottom with his head raised high and his cheeks puffed out.

On the wall in front of the family, a few simple words had been engraved.

“Helian Lie, Major of the Federal Army.”

When Li Yao found them, the woman happened to look back and saw him. There was no change in expression on her face, but her eyes obviously flashed.

Although the two of them had made the appointment in advance, Li Yao still felt somewhat awkward. He coughed and walked forward.

The man knew his identity, and he was both panicked and somewhat wary of him. The boy did not know who he was and simply looked at him curiously with the big eyes that were similar to Helian Lie’s. The woman, on the other hand, was rather tranquil. She reminded her husband of something and patted her son’s head. Then, she gestured for Li Yao to talk in private.

“You must be Mrs. Shen, Shen Wenyin, right?

“Your father,” Li Yao said, “Major Helian Lie’s distinguished contributions in the space battle a month ago have been confirmed by various sources. His fearless charge made the detonation of the wormhole bomb of the federal army possible, which successfully delayed the enemy for the two most important hours. In the end, we were given a chance to demolish the space gate of the Imperium.

“Your father was the key to the battle and the role model and pride of millions of soldiers of the federal army. Regarding the assessment of his military credit, the posthumous award, and the compensation for his family, the results will be out very soon.

“Your father and I… were sort of old acquaintances. After knowing that he still has offspring in the world, I felt obliged to tell you the result in person.”

Shen Wenyin listened quietly. She bowed deeply first and then observed Li Yao carefully for a while. Then she said in a hoarse voice, “Thank you, President Li. I thought that you wouldn’t have tracked me down.”

Li Yao smiled. “It was indeed not easy to find you. The military did not have your mother’s information. It seemed that your father and your mother were separated soon after they were together. Also, you took your mother’s last name. It took us quite some time to deliver the notice to you.”

“I… I didn’t intend to come first.”

Looking at the family of the martyrs who were paying homage to their loved ones far away, Shen Wenyin played with a nonexistent cigarette subconsciously with her fingers. After much hesitation, she held her arms and softly said, “Helian Lie was not a good husband, much less a good father. I hated him. My mother and I both hated him. I only wanted to get as far away from him as possible so that I would never see him again, not even in such a form.”

“Well…” Li Yao blinked quickly.

He was slightly surprised, but based on the remarks of ‘Rabid Dog’ Helian Lie in the army he had collected over the past month, her attitude was not too strange.

Shen Wenyin stared at Li Yao with complicated feelings. “President Li, do you want to know more about my family, about Helian Lie? In fact, it’s nothing special. It was just one of the clichés between a wounded, lonely, and crazy man and a silly woman who had read too many romance novels and was naïve enough to think that she could ‘save’ the man.

“However, in the stories, the silly woman always unties the deepest knot in the wounded man’s heart, and they always live happily ever after. But in reality…”

She smiled and touched her dry lips, as if she had put the nonexistent cigarette to her mouth.

Li Yao was silent for a moment before he said in a low voice, “According to the fellows and the psychologists in the army, Major Helian Lie seemed to be gravely troubled by mental illnesses, partly due to the PTSD and partly because of the strong stimulations he suffered in his early years… I’m sorry.”

Shen Wenyin was slightly dazed. Then, she was amused. “President Li, why do you think you need to apologize to me? It was he who was too narrow-minded to free himself from the burdens of the past. Did it have anything to do with anybody else?”

“That being said, I do have a very strange feeling,” Li Yao observed. “It is not exactly guilt. I—I just feel that it never occurred to me that even someone like Helian Lie would establish a family or that he had his feelings and dreams and would even die valiantly for them.”

Shen Wenyin raised her eyebrows. She looked at Li Yao with even more confusion and surprise. She could not help but remark, “President Li, you are nothing like the Vulture Li Yao depicted in the books, the news, the propaganda, or the entertainment works. If the guys from the Secret Sword Bureau or other intelligence agencies hadn’t chatted with me for a long time just now and searched my belongings dozens of times, I would’ve suspected that you are a fraud.”

Li Yao laughed, too. He scratched his nose and said, “Ever since my identity was exposed, everybody who’s met me has said exactly the same thing. I’ve heard it so many times that I’m starting to wonder if I’m really a fraud.”

Holding back her smile, Shen Wenyin took a deep breath and said, “In fact, I have a very weird feeling right now, too. The thing that I dreamed of for decades has become reality, but it is so unsubstantial that it doesn’t feel real at all.

“Did you know, President Li? There was a time when I hated you very, very much. It was the period when Helian Lie got mentally deranged because of overtraining. He would cry and vomit, holding his stomach while yelling at me and my mother like an animal.

“At that time, I was about six years old, and I knew a lot of things already. I also got in touch with the earliest legends of Vulture Li Yao through various sources. I learned what a disreputable role my father played in those legends, too.

“Naturally, I cannot blame you for anything. Everything was simply his own fault. You did nothing wrong. You were a victim yourself.

“However, when Helian Lie tortured himself and both of us to such an extent that almost none of us could live on, I, as a six-year-old girl, couldn’t help but wonder, if there was no you, if Vulture Li Yao had never existed, and if Helian Lie hadn’t been taught the lesson, would our fate have been entirely different? Would my life be easier and more like the other children’s lives?

“At the very least, other kids wouldn’t have acted as my father being beaten by you when they played war games or chased after me and mimicked my father’s voice!

“The sound of more than ten kids mimicking my father’s voice haunted me for a long time. I—I—I could even tolerate everything that Helian Lie did to me and my mother, but I couldn’t bear the voice that was intentionally faked. In my worst days, I even thought of suicide, ninety-seven times.”

Li Yao blushed and said, “I’m sorry. While I don’t think that what I did was wrong, if given another chance, I would probably choose… a more controllable way.”

Shen Wenyin smiled again. Her face was so peaceful as if she were telling someone else’s story. “President Li, you must not change your mind, or it will be too terrible.

“I cursed myself, you, Helian Lie, and even my mother countless times. I cursed the wretched fate for playing such a cruel joke on me.

“But one day, when the most beautiful thing happened to me, when I ran into another man and then… had a tinier man, I suddenly felt that everything that happened to me in the past, all the good things and bad things that happened in the world before I was born, had their own significance.

“The whole significance of all those things was for me to slip when I walked down the street on a snowy morning. I fell over so hard that half of my body was numb, and I couldn’t get to my feet for a long time. Then, all the things of the past surfaced in my heart. I completely collapsed, and I cried and screamed like a baby.

“It was exactly because I cried so hard that the silly big man who is peeping at us right now from the side noticed me and staggered to me to help me to my feet.

“To this day, I still remember that I shoved him heavily and said something stupid in tears. I said, ‘Go away, my dad is Helian Lie.’

“He fell to the ground, too, because of my shove. Scratching his head for a long time, he asked in confusion, ‘Who is Helian Lie?’

“Hehe. I imagined ten thousand times what the world would be like without you, but if Vulture Li Yao hadn’t beaten Helian Lie hard and completely changed his fate, he wouldn’t have met my mother at all. Even if they did, as a man born and raised in a wealthy family, he wouldn’t have had any interaction with my mother, and I wouldn’t have been born at all.

“Even if I were born and raised in another mysterious way, I wouldn’t have walked on the cold street of that particular planet on that morning in that winter. Even if I did and I unfortunately slipped over, I wouldn’t have burst into tears and made a fool of myself.

“Then, I wouldn’t have met him, and I wouldn’t have had him. Every day of the three of us being together would’ve been a soap bubble that was nowhere to be found. When thinking about that, I couldn’t feel more terrified.

“So, President Li, fate is such an amazing thing. Had it not been for your conflict with Helian Lie years ago, I would never have appeared in this world, and the vigorous young guy that is crawling on the ground wouldn’t have been born either!”