To Raise a Soul 31.1

After mocking himself, he watched as the images changed again. What appeared before Yu Zhen this time was a familiar Taoist temple. 

Shocked, he couldn’t help stepping forward. However, an invisible barrier stood between him and the temple, so he couldn’t get close. 

At the sound of footsteps, Yu Zhen turned his head to see the man whose blood he shared. Holding a sleeping baby, the man walked along the dirt path towards the temple. Perhaps he was hesitant after a long time without contact, but he stopped midway up the dirt road. Then he set the child down in the grass and strode away. 

It was late autumn, still early in the day, and a light fog lingered in the forest. The baby wasn’t  wearing much as he lay in the grass still covered with dew. He was as quiet as a dead person. 

Yu Zhen’s gaze bore into the man’s back as he walked away, his fists unconsciously clenched. His expression was tense and his eyes turned slightly red. 

Creak—

The door of the Taoist temple slowly opened outwards, and an old man with grey hair and donned in Taoist robes stepped outside. He also looked upon the man walking away and sighed deeply. He picked up the baby from the grass. 

“There’re only debts…”

The old man sighed, touching the baby’s chilled face. Lifting part of his robe to wrap up the infant, he turned around and quickly walked back into the Taoist temple without sparing another look at the man who’d left. 

“Grandpa,” Yu Zhen couldn’t help but whisper. He wanted to follow the old man back into the temple, but the barrier was still there. He could only watch the old man disappear behind the door. 

The sadness of being abandoned lessened as he stared at the doors of the Taoist temple. His breathing slowly calmed. 

However, the scene changed again, turning into a construction site. 

The white-haired old man used bandages to tie the ever-smiling and silly-looking baby to his back. The old man stood beside a person who seemed like the foreman and earnestly pleaded to be given a job. 

The foreman impatiently drove the old man away, scolding him for wasting his time and mocking him for bringing a child along on a job hunt. Does he think everyone is just doing charity?

The old man left with a sigh and spent the last of his money on a bowl of noodles for the baby. He went back to the Taoist temple hungry. 

Yu Zhen’s heart was heavy and his eyes turned red again. He couldn’t believe that his grandpa had once suffered such a difficult time because of him. 

The scene’s transformations accelerated. 

The old man continued to bring the child with him as he looked for work everywhere, but he was only met with roadblocks wherever he looked. The days became more and more difficult with each one that passed. 

It was already hard enough to live through those days, but because Yu Zhen was not clear-minded or sensible as a child, his rowdy behavior couldn’t be controlled properly. He stupidly ran around everywhere, leaving the old man tired, exhausted, and unable to get a good rest. But even though the man was quite old and did not have as much youthful energy, he still summoned up his strength to take care of the baby. 

When Old Huang, the head of the village, could no longer watch the farce, he brought over food and other useful items and advised, “Send the child to an orphanage. If you raise this child, you might work yourself to death.”

The old man shook his head and sighed, “I can’t. This child isn’t bright. If he’s sent to an orphanage, he’ll be bullied. I can’t do that. I can’t.”

“But how can you live this life with him? You had such relaxed days before you had him. Look at you now, listen to my advice and send him away.”

The old man was very stubborn and shook his head.

“Send him away,” Yu Zhen said from his vantage point of an outsider looking into the scene. He looked at the old man’s thin face and couldn’t help but also try to persuade him, “Send him away, Grandpa. You are too tired, send him away.”

The hard days never seemed to end.

The silly child grew up day by day, and the old man’s hair turned more and more white. Finally, one day, the child who only knew how to giggle foolishly cried out, “Grandpa!” 

Ecstatic, the old man began to ponder about sending the child to school. 

But when he went to school, what was to be done about the tuition? There was no compulsory education in that era. 

The old man went out of the village again, and after pleading until his mouth was dry, he finally got a job at the construction site. Afterward, he stumbled and fell from a platform, leaking a pool of blood on the ground. 

“No!”

Yu Zhen’s fists pounded against the barrier, wanting to get closer to help the old man lying on the ground, but suddenly the whole scene in front of him disappeared. In the dark space, only a child with a dopey smile stood before him. 

The miserable situation of the old man slowly bleeding out was overlapped with the silly smile on the child’s face before him. His chest rose up and down with each harsh breath and his eyes turned red again. 

“What are you laughing at?” He walked over, crouched down, and wrapped the child’s neck with his hands. His eyes slowly lost focus. “Grandpa has suffered so much for you. How can you still laugh!?”

The child looked at him with an innocent smile. 

“Don’t laugh!” Yu Zhen roared.

Faintly, some evil energy leaked from his body and his fingers began to tighten. “It’s all your fault… It’s all your fault! If you weren’t born, everything would be fine. If you weren’t here, none of this would’ve happened. If you weren’t here… Just die!”

Boom!

Thunder echoed through a distant sky. 

As his fingers tightened, the golden seed in his dantian started to shake, and faint cracks began to appear. 

[Yu Zhen, guard your heart!]

A deep sound rang in his mind as Yu Zhen’s entire body shook. The red in his eyes began to fade. His sight gradually cleared and he immediately withdrew his hands as he realized what he’d been doing. 

The figure of the child disappeared. 

“How could I do this? No, this isn’t me, it’s not…” Sitting on the ground, he looked at his hands, his gaze catching upon the ring he wore. All the negative emotions in his heart, his fear and panic, disappeared. His thoughts returned. 

No, something is not right.

“It’s fake.”

Standing up, he carefully recalled details of the scenes. His tone changed from hesitation to affirmation. “It’s fake. Grandpa had never been hurt by a fall or worked at a construction site. It’s all fake.”

He didn’t have memories from before primary school, but he was sure that his grandpa was not short of money.

Although the old man lived a frugal life, he never needed to worry about money. Yu Zhen could even remember a time in the village when a lonely old man was seriously ill and Old Huang organized a fundraiser to pay for the old man’s treatment, his grandpa shocked everyone when he took out 50,000 yuan* in one go.

^{*About 7,000USD}

After he started making money in college, he was worried that the old man had no money at home. So he sent him some, but the old man sent it all back with a note that said ‘Tell me if you’re short on money, Grandpa will give you some’.

After twenty-odd years together, Yu Zhen was certain his grandpa wasn’t the type to make himself suffer in his old age. 

His unstable mood slowly stabilizing, Yu Zhen looked around the dark space and suddenly laughed, “Xu Wu, you are really crafty.”

It could see the most secret negative emotions in his heart and magnify them. 

Ever since he was a child, the last thing he wanted was to be a burden to his grandpa. 

And about his birth and his parents… He touched the ring on his hand and thought about the bottle of rose essential oil he’d made before he went to bed. “I couldn’t choose to be born. It’s fine whether my parents died early or I was abandoned. Grandpa raised me. Now, there are other people who are good to me and who I call my parents, so it doesn’t matter.”

Life only happens once and I’m already here. It doesn’t matter what situation I was born into. The important stuff all came later. 

Crack. 

The sound of the seed cracking open could be heard. 

The darkness around him faded and the wind blew, the breeze bringing forth a burst of flowers. He found that he had once again turned into a seed, surrounded by moist soil and warm sun rays. He cracked and sprouted, slowly breaking the soil, and saw the sun for the first time. 

His consciousness gradually emptied and he sank comfortably into the sun’s light. Absorbing its rays for nutrition, he slowly grew up.