The Right Guardian Just Wants to Retire - Chapter 2

By the time we emerged, the last ray of the setting sun had sunk away.

The old farmer had hidden behind a tree. When he saw us, he ran over in relief.

He looked from one disciple to the other and hurriedly asked why he couldn’t see his granddaughter.

Neither had the heart to tell him. Their lips moved, but not a single word came out.

In the space of a thought, the old farmer let out a long “Oh.”

Then he saw the child whose hand I was holding and asked blankly, “Whose boy is this?”

“No one’s,” I said. “He’s an orphan.”

He said “Oh” again and nodded, as if digesting something that was not difficult to understand.

He raised his head and looked at the sky.

It was completely dark.

“My granddaughter… is dead?”

His voice trembled.

“Was it quick when she went? That child was terribly afraid of pain.”

I said nothing. From my sleeve, I took out a silk flower.

I had found it beside the blood pool. His granddaughter had always loved wearing it, though earlier it had been so stained with blood that its shape was impossible to make out.

I had cleansed it with magic. It was spotless now.

“It was quick,” I said.

He took the flower and stared down at it for a long time. Then he pressed it to his chest and covered it with his palm, as if pressing the final shred of something to live for deep into his bones.

“Thank heaven.” His voice was hoarse, almost relieved. “That’s good. That’s good.”

The two disciples said that now the Demon Cult had resurfaced, they needed to hurry back and report it.

I went home and began raising the child.

Raising a child was no simple matter.

I had to teach him to water my crops, fertilize them, and harvest my vegetables.

But I hadn’t put him to work for even two days when the child collapsed and became bedridden.

I was shocked. How could someone so pretty be so useless?

He curled into a ball on the bed. His body had been depleted to its very limits, held together by a single breath. The strange thing was that he had not died already.

I knew no medicine, and in his condition, even Hua Tuo himself would have shaken his head.

With no other choice, I cut myself and fed him my blood.

My blood could cure any illness and neutralize any poison.

Back then, Ji Xian had taken me away from Gu City precisely because he valued that ability.

Every time his poison flared, he would bite my neck. Afterward, he would even ask if it really hurt that much.

I rolled my eyes. What, was it supposed to feel good?

After half a month, I finally nursed the child back to life.

And so the glorious burden of supporting the household at last fell upon his shoulders.

After all, great power came in small packages.

Three meals a day, chopping firewood, cooking—he picked it all up quickly.

I sprawled like a puddle of mud in the rocking chair in the courtyard and basked in the sun. I closed my eyes, opened them again, and the whole day was gone.

In his free time, the child would carry out a stool and gaze up at the sky.

I asked what he was looking at. He said he was watching the clouds.

Clouds changed endlessly. They were free to go wherever they pleased.

It occurred to me that I was always calling him “child” and still didn’t know his name.

The child shook his head.

I said, “Since you like watching the clouds so much, why don’t I call you Mu Yun from now on?”

The child sounded it out. “Mu… Yun…”

What I didn’t know was that he did have a name. He simply could no longer speak it.

The days passed without weight or measure.

Sometimes I went down the mountain to chat with the old farmer, taking along some freshly picked fruit and vegetables.

Without his granddaughter, he visibly aged by the day.

He spoke less too.

He used to mutter endlessly about “God strike them dead” and “a young girl like you.” Now he would sit by the door for half a day without saying a word.

I would chatter through ten sentences; he would answer with a single “Mm.”

Later, I began visiting more often.

He couldn’t eat much, but whenever he saw me arrive carrying vegetables, he would still nod and reach toward the stove for the teapot.

When I went to see him again in winter, I pushed open the broken wooden door to find the house as cold as an ice cellar.

The charcoal fire had long since gone out. He lay on the bed, his body cold through and through.

The silk flower was clutched in his hand. He was quiet, as if asleep.

He had left with nothing tying him to this world, without disturbing anyone.

Half a pot of cold tea still sat on the stove. It was what he had poured for me the last time I visited, and I had not finished it.

I chose a place amid green hills and clear waters and buried him together with his granddaughter’s silk flower.

One grave rested beside the other, with the flower buried between them.