The grief of a tree in the wind!

A child wishes to be dutiful, but the parents cannot wait. The wanderer returns — and does not find his father and mother. Life and death stand between them. Where can one speak of such desolation?

Ye Fan’s tears fell unchecked. All his efforts had come to nothing. He had cast aside everything to return, crossed the boundless star fields — yet he could not cross the river of time. He had arrived one step too late.

He trembled gently, chanting the Scripture of Salvation — what a pain this was, to murmur a Taoist scripture for his parents through tears, praying for their passage to a better place.

Ye Fan bit through his own lip. Blood dripped down. Again and again he called out softly, each word stained with blood, the entire room filling with sigils, seared into the void.

For over twenty years, the one goal of his life had been to return — to see his parents, to reunite with them — to bring smiles back to those aged, grieving faces. For this he had walked through fire and water, again and again facing death, all for the sake of coming home. But his parents were gone. In a single moment, his life’s purpose had vanished, and his entire world collapsed.

“Papa… Mama…” Ye Fan murmured, tears falling in an unbroken stream, trembling, silently reciting the Scripture of Salvation — he had never imagined he would send them off this way.

The greatest pain in the world was surely no more than this.

He had so much he wanted to say — to speak of the longing he had carried through more than twenty years. But the people were gone. What could he do now? There was only the choking grief, the tears that would not stop.

Ye Fan was in agony. Every effort he had made had dissolved into nothing before the march of time. None of it could be undone, none of it could be called back.

How pale life was. How merciless the years. He was so filled with sorrow and helplessness. He reached into the void and grasped at — nothing.

He felt so laughable to himself, having once believed that becoming the world’s strongest would let him shatter all obstacles and change everything. But now the heavens had struck him a crushing blow. He was reduced to a man on his knees, unable to rise.

“Papa, Mama, I’m home. I’ve come to see you.” Ye Fan knelt there, calling out to them again and again.

“I missed you so much. But the road was too far — so far I had to fight with everything I had to make it through and come back… and still I was too late. Why did it have to be like this… I would rather have died myself!” Ye Fan cried out low.

It was too late for any of it now. He dug his fingers into his own hair, breathing in the lingering traces of the two old people. Why couldn’t he even see them one last time? He was filled with helpless, bitter regret.

In the end, Ye Fan went limp, able only to weep in silence. He sat on the floor, leaning against the bedframe. He suddenly felt that life had lost all meaning.

What cultivation? What severing the Dao? What sacred body, what invincibility — all of it was empty. If he couldn’t even hold onto his parents, what good was any of it?

He found himself pitiful. All his effort had come to nothing. He had given up everything, and in the end had still been too late. Grief for nothing. He could do nothing.

He wept, and then he laughed — and then broke into coughing, blood appearing at the corners of his mouth. He suddenly felt like nothing at all. Pathetic and ridiculous.

“I changed nothing. I didn’t even get to see my parents one last time. I am useless.”

Ye Fan wept and laughed by turns, all will extinguished. He had not a single attachment left to this world. Life felt meaningless — more bitter than sweet.

He cried and laughed, then lay weakly down on the floor, making no more sound. Only tears slid down his face without a sound. He couldn’t bring himself to move. He wanted to sleep forever and never wake.

Images of his parents’ aged faces floated before him again and again. Ye Fan drifted in a daze, slowly losing consciousness, utterly drained — body and spirit both broken. He passed out.

“Xiao Fan… you’ve come back.” A soft calling, close to his ear.

“Don’t be sad. Don’t cry. We don’t blame you — we only missed you so much. Knowing you’re safe, we are happier than we could ever say.” A gentle murmur, full of boundless love.

“Your mother and I always believed you were still alive, that one day you would come back to us. We waited a long time — but we were truly tired. We simply couldn’t hold on any longer. Knowing now that you’re safe — we can let everything go.” The voice was old and worn, but carried both relief and contentment, and yet — it broke the heart.

…

As if in a dream, in his unconscious state, tears kept sliding from the corners of Ye Fan’s eyes. He seemed to see two masses of light, and reached out desperately to take hold of their hands — but no matter how he tried, he couldn’t.

“We’re going now. You must live well. Take good care of yourself…” The voices faded. The two masses of light slowly dispersed — the aged faces growing faint, dissolving into a rain of light, vanishing completely.

Ye Fan cried out. He thrashed and struggled, straining with everything he had to follow them, to keep them here — but there was nothing to grasp.

Bang.

He jolted awake. There was nothing before him. The warmth of a moment ago was gone. No trace of his parents’ presence remained. Everything was hollow and still.

“You’re awake.”

Xu Qiong sat nearby and handed him a cup of water. “Grieve, but in measure. ‘People have their partings and reunions; the moon has its dark phases and its full.'”

“What did you just see? Did you hear it?” Ye Fan seized her hand and shook it with force — water splashed out of the cup and fell across the floor.

Xu Qiong frowned. The strength in Ye Fan’s grip, even with the greatest care, was enough to hurt. She said softly, “You miss them too much. Your mind and spirit are too exhausted. Don’t think too much about it — rest a while.”

“You really didn’t see anything? Didn’t hear anything?” Ye Fan rose to his feet, releasing his divine sense, searching for that familiar warmth — that presence that had moved him so deeply.

What had just happened felt almost too real. As if it had been right before him. He wasn’t entirely certain whether it had been a dream or something real.

He drew back the curtain. The night was deep. A meteor shower was fading in the distance, vanishing beyond the horizon.

Ye Fan went very still. It looked so much like the rain of light that had dissolved in his dream. His body trembled involuntarily. Tears traced his face as he stared into the dark sky.

“Strange — there was no forecast of a meteor shower,” Xu Ye murmured at another window, resting her chin in her hand, blinking curiously at the sky.

Ye Fan pushed open the window and launched himself into the air, shooting forward in pursuit, a streak of golden light vanishing into the far heavens.

Inside the room, Xu Qiong stared with wide-open eyes. The teacup slipped from her hand and shattered on the floor, water spreading across the tiles.

She could barely believe any of this. Though she had mentally prepared herself, she still could not accept the reality of it — Ye Fan cutting through the sky like a great golden-winged bird. Was he even human?

The sudden appearance of Ye Fan had led her, in her initial understanding, to think it was something to do with extraterrestrial contact — her first thought had been of UFO abductions and the like. But now she was simply petrified. Was this… a civilization of gods and demons?

In the other room, Xu Ye screamed, then shouted for her mother — yelling that a meteor had nearly crashed into their house.

The girl was afraid of nothing. She came running into the room and said, “Mama, did you see that? A meteor looked like it came right past our house — it was incredible!”

Xu Qiong wrapped her hands around herself, steadied her trembling, and made herself calm in front of her daughter. What had just unfolded was simply too staggering to process openly.

Xu Ye was sixteen or seventeen — bright and restless. She ran straight to the window, leaned out and turned her head back and forth, searching for where the meteor had landed.

“Mama, your face looks a bit pale — were you scared? Don’t be afraid, your precious daughter is here. Whatever monsters or demons come along, I’ll chase them away — hyah!” She struck a playful Tai Chi opening pose.

But when she saw her mother’s expression still wasn’t entirely normal, she immediately dropped the silliness. “Mama, what’s wrong? Let me get you a glass of water. Oh — where did that young man go? I didn’t see him leave.”

Xu Qiong collected herself and finally grew calm. “He had something to attend to and left early.”

Far away at the edge of the sky, Ye Fan stood alone in the night air, staring blankly into space. He had no hope of catching anything — the meteor shower had long since vanished.

“Why — was that you? Where have you gone?”

He felt as though perhaps the world truly held some nameless force. Had his parents been saying goodbye to him just now?

But then he shook his head. He was a cultivator — and one of extraordinary power. He understood the nature of the soul better than most. The dead were dead. They could not return. No one could escape it — not even the great emperors of antiquity.

“Perhaps it was only my own mind trying to mend its wounds,” Ye Fan said softly, reaching into the night sky — and grasping nothing.

He did not believe in fate. He did not believe in reincarnation. There was no transmigration of souls in the world of men. And yet what had just happened had felt so vivid, so real — he remained shaken and uncertain.

He thought of the words spoken by the old monk who had dissolved into the Dao in the Western Desert: In the next life — believe and it exists; disbelieve and it does not. Years flow on without end; eventually the world will produce two flowers that are the same. A thousand, ten thousand glances over lifetimes — one flower withers, one flower blooms.

Whether they are the same flower — that was left for those who come after to imagine and to say. Even that ancient Buddha could not speak of it plainly.

Is it my own mind deceiving itself? Or were they truly saying goodbye to me?

Tears fell from Ye Fan’s eyes without sound.

He chose to believe it was the latter. He had crossed the star fields to return, and had arrived one step too late — hadn’t even been able to see his parents once. Had that, just now, been their way of filling the gap — of giving him what he had been denied?

Ye Fan murmured, his words too faint for anyone to hear. He called out in a low voice, alone in the night sky, wanting to remain there forever.

He didn’t want to pursue the question further with cold reason — because if he did, the ancient sages had already addressed it. Written records spoke of reincarnation, and had concluded it could not exist.

Ye Fan wandered the starlit sky alone, not thinking, not reasoning, his heart hollow and adrift. By the time dawn approached, he descended to the earth. The sun had risen well above the horizon when he returned to the Xishan villa district. Xu Qiong came to the door and welcomed him inside.

“Oh, young man, how did you disappear last night? I don’t remember seeing you go.” Xu Ye had clearly just woken up, still half-asleep, holding a large stuffed bear.

“Be good — go wash your face, brush your teeth, have breakfast first,” Xu Qiong said, giving her a gentle push.

Xu Ye, though barely sixteen or seventeen, was already as slender and tall as her mother, nearly the same height. She nodded obediently. “Okay, fine.”

This was the heaviest blow Ye Fan had ever suffered in his life. He wanted to leave this place, to put distance between himself and all of this — everything he saw brought him grief and pain.

And yet he couldn’t simply go. He needed to know everything about his parents’ final years, to learn all that had passed.

“Eat something first. I’ll tell you everything once I have.” Xu Qiong smoothed her long hair and said softly, consolingly.

“I can’t eat. You go ahead. I’ll wait — then you can take me to see their graves.” Ye Fan felt as though his body was made of lead. He lay back on the sofa, not wanting to move, his eyes dry and raw — yet his tears had already run out.

Xu Qiong sighed quietly. She had no appetite herself. She took Ye Fan out, got into the car, and drove toward the distance. A little over an hour later, they arrived at the cemetery.

The memorial garden was vast, planted with evergreen shrubs throughout and built against a gentle slope — with some stands of pine and cypress among them, lending the whole place a solemn, dignified air.

“It’s just here…” Xu Qiong suddenly paused and changed expression, for before the headstone there was a bouquet of white flowers, trembling in the wind, petals scattering one by one, carrying a faint, clean fragrance.

“Is there anyone else who would come here to pay respects?” Ye Fan asked.

“I wouldn’t think so — no one else would know. It’s rather strange.” Xu Qiong frowned, puzzled and unsettled.