A man who’d committed too much evil would eventually find himself unable to face his own mother. His miserable appearance contrasted starkly and ironically with that of the weeping Liu Chong.
Old Lady Liu wiped at her tears before looking at Scribe Liu. Her sobs gradually subsided, though her eyes remained like hazy pools. Juxtaposed with her calm expression, they somehow appeared to shine with an even deeper sorrow.
“Why are you trembling?” Old Lady Liu asked, her voice tinged with fathomless grief. “Are you afraid that your own mother has come to take your life?”
Scribe Liu shook his head. His face was ashen, his lips trembling as he stammered, “I-I just…”
He could barely complete his sentence before he choked on his words, unable to continue. He lowered his head and took a couple of deep, gasping breaths, then sank to his knees. Bowing low, he knocked his head against the floor in front of his mother.
“Your son foolishly believed that sorcerer’s nonsense and committed a grave sin in his confusion. Your son was unfilial!”
After saying this, he burst into tears. His forehead, bloodied from hitting the ground, remained pressed there. He didn’t manage another coherent word.
“You’re only saying this now?” Xue Xian stared at Scribe Liu’s curled-up form, utterly repulsed.
As Xue Xian had always been straightforward, what he couldn’t stand the most were people who dodged responsibility with excuses. To be unfilial was to be unfilial. To be selfish and cruel was to be selfish and cruel. Now, this man was trying to push all the blame onto a sorcerer. Unbelievably shameless.
Only your parents would buy this kind of nonsensical garbage, Xue Xian thought.
Old Lady Liu said nothing, but she continued to stare at Scribe Liu. No one would be happy to see the son they raised reduced to such a state. She paused for a long time before sighing.
“A single hand cannot clap on its own,” she said at last. If he hadn’t had the desire, no number of alluring words from the sorcerer would have swayed him into action.
Upon hearing this, Scribe Liu stiffened mid-kneel. He cautiously raised his head to look at Old Lady Liu, hoping to glean some hints from her eyes, and found no trace of a vengeful spirit there.
Old Lady Liu sighed again and waved him over. “Come here.”
She had always been slow to anger. Her tone stayed gentle, but it carried a hint of resignation. There was no animosity within that resignation.
Upon hearing her words, Scribe Liu hesitated for a moment but then shuffled closer to Old Lady Liu. His eyes held a glimmer of hope—after all, if she truly had turned into a vengeful spirit, she wouldn’t use such a tone. There might still be room to turn things around.
“Look at your mother,” she said softly.
“I really haven’t seen you properly in a long time, Mom,” Scribe Liu added, offered an inch and taking a mile.
Old Lady Liu looked back at him, then slapped him hard across the face.
No one had expected her to do this so suddenly. For a moment, they were all stunned.
Scribe Liu clutched at his face, more shocked than anyone else. “Mom, you—” He could barely find the words.
“Ah, I want to hit him too,” Xue Xian sighed.
Scribe Liu was too dismayed to hear Xue Xian’s mumbling. He held his face for a long time before returning to his senses. “I-I had no choice. I really didn’t. I hired the sorcerer for you.”
He hooked onto that idea, seeming to find a way to spin the explanation. “That’s right, I hired that sorcerer for you from the start! Your health was getting worse and worse, and you were always hunched over to one side… The quacks from the Jiang family told me it was the result of multiple illnesses piling up, making things difficult to cure. That’s why I decided to find a sorcerer. Mom, you might not understand, but the northeast house you lived in was a prime location. That sorcerer told me that when laid out properly, it could bring even the dead back to life. I wanted you to get better quickly. But…haaah…”
“Doesn’t the northeast house belong to your second son, Liu Jin?” asked Xue Xian, puzzled.
“H-huh?! Jin-er moved in later!” Scribe Liu rushed to say halfway through his sigh.
After a very long silence, Old Lady Liu spoke. “I know.” She looked at her son, her gaze nostalgic. “Not only did you put me in a wonderful house, but you visited every day, asking after me and serving me tea and water. Even when I was bedridden and paralyzed in the end, you still came to sit by my bed whenever you had the time. Your mother remembers everything.”
Some people were just contradictory. You couldn’t call Scribe Liu unfilial, because he had fulfilled his filial duties, but you also couldn’t call him filial when a few words from a sorcerer had convinced him to trap his mother’s spirit beneath the compound. Clearly, he was the type to squeeze every last drop from whatever he could.
“But…” Old Lady Liu continued, “it was after you trapped me here that I realized how you got me that wonderful house. You bought it using my Chong-er’s life. That slap I gave you was for Chong-er!”
After saying this, Old Lady Liu abruptly raised her hand again.
Slap!
She landed a second strike on the other side of Scribe Liu’s face. “And this one is for the Jiang family clinic! The medicine I took during my last few days, you switched it out, didn’t you? Hazy as my mind was, I could tell it’d changed. You are my child. I knew what you were thinking…”
She shook her head and sighed. “You saw that your mother wasn’t improving and decided there wasn’t any point playing the filial son for someone who was mostly gone. It’s exhausting work with no reward. With your reputation as a good son established, all it took was a few words from that sorcerer, and you chose to send your mother on her way ahead of schedule. Am I right?”
Scribe Liu kneeled there, completely speechless.