Old Friends Reunited

Chapter 42

The young Yun Song gave her statement and left her contact information.

Only at this moment did her tightly wound nerves truly begin to relax.

She lay on the hotel bed with her grandmother, but for some reason, she found it impossible to fall asleep.

She seemed to have grown accustomed to a state of high mental tension. As night fell, her body acted as if it hadn’t realized she was out yet, remaining in a state of inertia, wanting to get out, wanting to run.

She wanted to run, as if her heart were trying to escape something.

The young Yun Song became busy again the next day. She helped Wang Xia contact a lawyer and went to find Chunhua’s home, the mother who had two children locked in the house and had wanted to escape every waking moment.

“I knew it, I just knew she looked like an honest, decent person. Something must have happened for her to leave her children behind.”

The neighbor lady burst into tears upon hearing the news, telling Yun Song, “The day I came back, I felt something was wrong.”

Only then did Yun Song learn that both children were safe. The neighbor had heard crying that night and, sensing something was amiss, called people over to bring the two children out.

At first, she only intended to help look after them for a couple of days until the mother returned, but as time passed, she grew attached to them and had been raising them ever since.

Looking at the two surviving children, Yun Song left her contact information, telling the woman to reach out if she ever needed anything.

She actually wanted to leave some money, but she had none left.

The scammers had swindled them out of every cent.

She had come back alive, and her grandmother now knew she had been targeted by scammers as well.

Those swindlers had given her grandmother drugs that affected her brain. After the two of them returned to Ping City, her grandmother was initially full of smiles, feeling that as long as Yun Song was alive, everything was fine.

But once that initial surge of relief passed, problems began to surface with her grandmother.

On the sixth night after returning home, Yun Song got up to use the bathroom. She didn’t turn on the light. Perhaps she had grown used to it in the mountains, but as she crouched in her own bathroom, a place she had known for over a decade, she felt a sudden sense of trance, as if everything were strangely foreign.

Because her highly stressed brain could not adapt to the current safe environment, she was constantly in a daze. It felt like someone who had lived in an oxygen-deprived place for so long that they had adapted to it, only to be suddenly thrust into a place with plenty of oxygen, leaving them dizzy and exhausted.

Bang!

As she was washing her hands, a loud noise suddenly erupted from outside the bathroom.

She rushed out to see her grandmother running toward the exit in a panic.

“Grandmother? What’s wrong?”

“My granddaughter is gone! She’s missing!”

“Grandmother, it’s me. It’s me, I’m right here.”

Only when she saw her did the grandmother breathe a sigh of relief. “It’s okay then, it’s okay.”

That night, Yun Song woke up startled several times because her grandmother was opening her bedroom door to confirm she was still in the house.

This elderly woman had experienced the tragic deaths of her daughter and son-in-law in middle age, and then the kidnapping of her granddaughter.

In her eyes, the world no longer held any sense of safety. Her mind was like a spring that had been stretched taut for too long and could no longer return to its normal state.

She constantly needed to confirm her granddaughter was there and hadn’t been kidnapped again.

A person who used to love reading and taking walks now spent every day doing nothing but confirming that Yun Song was home and alive.

Occasionally, she would even suffer from hallucinations, thinking Yun Song was still one of the scammers.

“You aren’t Yun Song, you’re a liar.”

Yun Song took her to see a doctor, and the doctor prescribed medicine, but it didn’t help much. They didn’t have much money, and there was no news of the three scammers.

Watching her grandmother like this, Yun Song found herself unable to sleep night after night, feeling waves of frustration.

She wanted to save the women in the village, she wanted to save Sha Niu and her mother, and she wanted to save Li Qingqing and the others.

But it seemed she could do nothing. Now, she couldn’t even save her own grandmother.

The young Yun Song tightened her resolve once more, doing her best to suppress her negative emotions. She was like a sturdy tree standing in barren soil; the more bitter the conditions, the harder she worked to find a way to survive.

Soon, Yun Song found a way. She decided to “lay her cards on the table” with her grandmother.

“Grandmother, those people didn’t lie to you. I really am a Reincarnated Immortal.”

“On my first day in the village, Sha Niu recognized me.”

“You heard it when you came back, too. Sha Niu’s Mother always called me the Immortal Lady.”

“Even though I have to suffer, since everyone Undergoing Tribulation in the mortal realm must suffer, anyone who truly harms me will die.”

Her grandmother was skeptical at first, so Yun Song began to recount her experiences along the way.

“The first day I arrived there, I remembered that I was an immortal in my past life, and I became the Immortal Lady in Xinghua Village.”

Yun Song began to speak to her grandmother in the Xinghua Village dialect to add credibility.

Her grandmother didn’t entirely believe these words, but it didn’t matter. When she had first arrived at the village, no one except Sha Niu thought she was an Immortal Lady either.

When people are in pain and hopeless, they instinctively choose to believe things that are beneficial to them, no matter how absurd they sound.

If she could make the villagers believe she was an immortal in that environment, she could make her grandmother believe she was truly an immortal down in the mortal world for a tribulation.

A month later, her grandmother’s emotions did indeed begin to stabilize.

One day, her grandmother suddenly said, “Yun Song, you still need to go back to school.”

Yun Song heard her grandmother say, “You still need to study more. Now that you’ve successfully passed your tribulation, you can only protect all living beings once you go back to heaven to be an immortal.”

So, Yun Song took her grandmother back to Yun City to continue her studies.

She had been delayed for nearly a year and needed to study with the grade below hers.

Most people at school knew about her kidnapping, but everyone had their own lives to lead, and not many people asked about it.

Yun Song worked hard to return to her former state, attending classes, eating, studying, and sleeping, occasionally even going to see a movie.

She maintained her old habits, still going for a morning run every day. On the track, she ran lap after lap, preparing for the winter marathon.

This was what she had been doing before she was abducted, though back then, she had been preparing for a summer marathon.

Wang Xia’s sentence was handed down: five years in prison. Wang Xia herself was quite happy about it. She wrote to Yun Song constantly, saying she had been transferred to prison and that the conditions there were very good.

Yun Song also worked hard to ensure that her life remained unaffected, striving to return her existence to its original track.

However, this time, in addition to her morning runs, she added night runs. Every night, she would run ten laps around the school track. She felt like a spring that had been forcibly stretched straight; even though the external force was gone, so much time had passed that she could no longer return to her normal state.

The marathon soon began. In the past, she had always placed fourth. This time, she didn’t think about her ranking; she simply kept running forward.

The voices of the people around her began to fade until she could clearly hear the sound of her own heartbeat, loud and rhythmic.

She ran and ran. Her breath began to taste of blood, but she kept moving forward.

Her grandmother was waiting at the finish line. Yun Song was the first to cross it.

Amidst the metallic scent of blood, the grandmother heard her granddaughter say, “Grandma, I’m going to apply for the police academy.”

Yun Song realized that pretending nothing had happened was pointless. It was better to face what had happened to her head-on.

Deep in her heart, there had always been a little girl, a seven-year-old girl crying and saying her parents were bleeding.

That wound had not yet healed, and now Yun Song felt as if a whole crowd of people had moved into her heart, every one of them whispering about how dangerous the world was.

She had been asking around for news of Sha Niu and her mother, but there was never any word.

Occasionally, Yun Song would have nightmares. She dreamed they were hurt, crying out for the Immortal Lady, yet she was powerless to help.

Yun Song always felt that somewhere in the world, something terrible was happening. Thus, at the police academy, on every street in Xiangjin Town, and in every alley of Ping City…

She ensured the safety of her surroundings.

This continued until she turned fifty. As she aged, her physical strength was no longer what it used to be, and the places where she had been injured in the past began to throb with a dull ache.

A newly assigned case involved a missing female student. She began to have frequent nightmares, dreaming of the time she was abducted and the events in Xinghua Village.

This case was in the North District, so she was transferred there. Her grandmother stayed at their home in the South District with Yun Song’s husband.

She never expected that after all these years, her grandmother’s condition would suddenly flare up, making the old woman believe she had returned to thirty years ago.

The grandmother’s memories scattered and reassembled into a different picture.

Her husband thought the grandmother had accidentally knocked him down, so naturally, he didn’t tell Yun Song about it. He simply hired a caregiver to help.

In the past, Yun Song often went away on business for half a month or a month at a time. She called her grandmother every day, but she hadn’t noticed anything unusual.

Until today, when she received a call. On the other end, her husband was crying with anxiety: “Grandmother doesn’t seem to recognize me! She ran away with the caregiver!”

“She said she’s going to Guangcheng to pick you up!”

Yun Song said, “Don’t worry. I happen to be going to Guangcheng. I know where she is.”

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In 1995, An Wen felt that she and her daughter were truly blessed by the immortals. Sha Niu could speak again.

Since the village was mostly inhabited by the elderly and children, she opened a small grocery store.

She sold snacks for the kids and salt and oil for the elderly. Every month, she would buy a pig to slaughter and sell. Though life was tiring, it began to flourish.

In 1997, when the government brought electricity to the village, she gritted her teeth and bought a television. Consequently, her grocery store became the heart of the entire village.

Whether they were elderly or children, as soon as the clock struck the hour, they would immediately gather there.

Everyone was kind to Sha Niu and spoke with her. In such an atmosphere, An Wen felt that her Niu Niu was able to say more and more.

Days passed like this. She looked after her old home and her daughter.

Later, her daughter still went to the city to work. At first, An Wen didn’t agree and even insisted on following her. Only after going did she realize that the modern city was completely different from the past.

Slowly, she accepted it, but she returned to her hometown alone. She loved her old home.

A while ago, her daughter, An Youzhi, called her: “Mom, I’m going to strike it rich!”

“Really! I’ll have two hundred thousand yuan by then!”

An Wen was terrified by what she heard. “Scams, those are all scams. How can you still believe in that?”

“No, this old lady is wonderful and very smart!”

Listening to her daughter on the phone, An Wen felt that the old lady her daughter was caring for was simply old and muddled.

As long as it wasn’t a scam, she was relieved. Her daughter wasn’t stupid now; she should soon realize the old woman was just talking nonsense.

An Wen didn’t trust anyone now. That man was indeed not the old lady’s relative; An Wen had been the one to pick up the DNA test results herself. This made it impossible for her to trust him.

But the old lady had her own issues, constantly saying she had a telepathic connection with her granddaughter, claiming her granddaughter was a Reincarnated Immortal and such.

With talk like that, it was useless to go to the police. The police might just contact that man directly.

Fortunately, the old lady said with absolute certainty that her granddaughter had called her and that she was going to the Hualu Police Station in Guangcheng to pick her up.

With such a specific location, it was worth a look. If someone was there, it would be a good thing. If no one was there, she had nothing to lose. Anyway, the old lady was paying for the plane tickets. She would treat it as a vacation; she had never been to Guangcheng before.

Throughout the journey, the old lady’s mental state seemed much better. Her joy and her tears of happiness didn’t seem fake.

Sister An thought to herself that perhaps they really could find the old lady’s family there.

After getting off the plane and taking a taxi, the two of them headed straight for the Hualu Police Station.

“Old lady, are you sure it’s here?” Sister An asked as her eyes scanned the several police officers in the lobby. She planned to find someone approachable to ask.

“Your granddaughter’s name is Yun Song, right?”

Just as Sister An was about to ask, a tall, middle-aged woman walked out from the back.

Sister An was certain the woman had locked eyes with her, and the woman seemed to freeze for a moment.

Just as Sister An was about to speak, the woman had already addressed the elderly lady.

“Grandma.”

Sister An stared at the woman. Was this the old lady’s granddaughter?

The old lady was wondering the same thing, but in the next second, she burst into tears. “Grandma came too late, Grandma came too late… you’re already so grown up…”

The old lady still recognized her granddaughter, even though she looked different from what she remembered. She felt as though her granddaughter had been abducted at twenty and only found now that she was middle-aged.

Yun Song checked on her grandmother’s condition, soothing her emotions while looking for her medicine.

“You didn’t come late, Grandma. I was found thirty years ago, don’t you remember? Thirty years ago, you came here to pick me up.”

Sister An stood by with her eyes wide, still not quite understanding what was happening.

Yun Song felt relieved once her grandmother took the medicine, and then she led the old lady and Sister An away.

The elderly woman kept clutching her granddaughter’s arm, as if her memory was returning. “I remember a little now. You were holding a child.”

Back then, Yun Song had arrived at the police station holding Xingyun. When Grandma saw her with a baby, she thought it was Yun Song’s own child and nearly fainted.

Yun Song said, “That was Xingyun. At the time, you brought many of your old university colleagues to rescue me. We had to go back to the village and couldn’t take care of a child, so a couple helped us look after Xingyun. Later, they adopted her.”

Grandma nodded along and said, “They had always wanted a child, and there happened to be one. It truly was lucky.”

That infant was now thirty years old and had even come to visit during this year’s Spring Festival.

“Are you a doctor now?”

“Grandma, I went to the police academy later. I’m a police officer now.”

Sister An felt that the woman was looking at her while she spoke to the old lady.

If it had been a look of blame, Sister An would have found it natural. After all, it was normal for the elderly to get confused, but in this moment, she, the caregiver, truly felt like a bit of a villain.

Yet that look wasn’t one of blame. It was an… indescribable gaze, like old friends reuniting.

Sister An herself felt like crying just from being looked at that way.

The woman also asked about her mother.

Thinking it was a background check, Sister An quickly talked about how wonderful her mother was and how much she loved helping others. She wanted the woman to know that her family came from good stock.

She saw a flicker of joy on the woman’s face, as if she actually knew her mother.