A Jiu’s eyes snapped open, her consciousness reluctant to leave the space, as if the lingering sounds were still echoing.
Upon opening her eyes, she saw Zhang Dadan pointing outside and saying, “I thought you weren’t coming back. I came back as soon as it was light to check, and just happened to run into people in the county town asking about you, saying they were your parents.”
A Jiu rolled out of bed in a flash, “Where?”
“Outside,” Zhang Dadan added.
His house was so dilapidated it was practically the county town’s only tourist attraction. It didn’t even have a courtyard; how could it have an inside or an outside?
As expected, A Jiu ran out of the room but saw no one. She headed straight for the main street.
At a glance, she spotted her parents and grandmother, “Grandma, Dad, Mom.”
The three of them turned. Cai Lihua’s tears instantly streamed down her face. She rushed forward and hugged A Jiu tightly:
“You scared your mother to death.”
Meng Shaode suppressed the overwhelming relief of surviving a disaster, managing to hold back his tears. With red-rimmed eyes, he slowly walked over, patted his daughter’s head, and then squeezed his wife’s shoulder:
“It’s alright, you’re safe now. The family is reunited.”
But Cai Lihua was a woman, and in her past life, not being able to have children was her greatest regret. If Jiu’er had met with an accident, she wouldn’t have been able to close her eyes in death.
“Mom, don’t cry, I’m perfectly fine,” A Jiu reassured her mother this time.
“Don’t move, let Mom hold you a little longer,” Cai Lihua hugged her tightly. “You don’t know, when the fire broke out, Mom thought we’d lost our mother-daughter bond forever.”
“Sigh…” Meng Shaode turned his back upon hearing this. He had felt the same way at the time.
Now that they were all reunited, why did someone have to throw out such a tear-jerker?
A Jiu had also watched the great fire engulf Nanming City from afar, and she had thought this family would be torn apart. But then a sudden rain had fallen, and A Jiu knew they wouldn’t be.
At this moment, A Jiu was being held so tightly she looked up in the direction of her grandmother.
The sight made her gasp, “Grandma, you…”
Cai Lihua slowly released A Jiu.
A Jiu’s eyes were fixed on her grandmother, whose hair was puffed up and face smudged with soot. Her clothes, already patched and mended multiple times, were now beyond repair, with her shoulder exposed on the left side and half a sleeve missing on the right.
The whole person looked like… like the big dark-skinned man Qian Shi had seen on the ship to Nanyang when she left home.
A Jiu couldn’t find a more fitting description.
“This old man is unharmed,” Wang Shi casually flicked the sleeve of her burnt, tattered robe and then made a gesture of stroking a non-existent beard.
“Oh right, Jiu’er, you don’t know, your grandma is quite capable.”
Cai Lihua recovered as quickly as she had despaired, immediately switching from tears to a smile. “Maybe he really is an old immortal possessing him, capable of summoning rain. Did you see that rain?”
“Tsk, don’t speak such nonsense, you woman,” Wang Shi immediately stopped her daughter-in-law. This was because Wang Shi saw a stranger standing not far away.
Cai Lihua’s pupils contracted instantly, and she instinctively covered her mouth.
That person was none other than Zhang Dadan.
“Yes, Mom, stop talking nonsense,” A Jiu also looked back at Zhang Dadan.
A Jiu couldn’t tell if he had heard them or not, but her mother’s voice had been so loud that the possibility of him hearing was high.
“Brother Zhang, if you have something to do, please go ahead,”
A Jiu didn’t want to drive away the person they were lodging with, but the fact that her grandmother could summon rain was indeed a major problem if it got out.
“Ah, oh, I do need to go to the post station. You all take care,”
Saying that, Zhang Dadan turned and quickly headed towards the post station. After a few steps, he looked back again.
A Jiu led her family into the only room in Zhang Dadan’s house where they could stay.
“Jiu’er, Mom won’t talk nonsense anymore. I wonder if that person heard?” Cai Lihua looked outside warily.
“I think he probably heard. And yesterday, as soon as I arrived in Nanzhou County, I knew a very important person had arrived at the post station.”
As soon as A Jiu said this.
Wang Shi, who had been facing away from them, suddenly turned around, “What important person?”
He didn’t want to be captured and forced to summon rain. He only wanted to cultivate properly. This life experience had been infuriating beyond reason.
Summoning rain was not a great divine ability in itself, but it just so happened to move a Golden Core cultivator like him to a place with such a severe lack of rain. If he didn’t run, was he just waiting to be swamped with trouble?