Xu Zhuohua had just said those words, but now his throat felt like a dried-up riverbed, cracked with tiny fissures, and he couldn't make a sound. He could only raise his hand and gently gesture with his throat a couple of times.
Doctor Liu sighed and explained, "The fire damaged my lungs and throat. I've been slowly recuperating for the past two months, but this is all I can recover to."
Xu Shinong abruptly turned to look at his old friend, his eyes brimming with guilt and heartache, his voice tinged with urgency: "It's been over two months, how come you're still not fully recovered? Old Liu, you're a direct descendant of the Liu family of Beiping, this little injury..."
"It's already a blessing that he can speak." Doctor Liu interrupted him, his gaze falling on Xu Zhuohua with pity. "At that time, the young master was almost out of breath. It's already an incredible stroke of luck that he was able to be snatched back from the brink of death."
Xu Shih-nong's gaze returned to Xu Zhuo-hua, her brows furrowing tightly.
After a long time, the child had become extremely thin, with a sallow complexion, slightly protruding cheekbones, and her once bright and sparkling eyes had lost their luster; there was no trace of her former charming and radiant self.
That fire not only burned down the house, but it also burned away her spirit and vitality.
Xu Shinong, now over fifty, has seen young people like this who have lost their spirit, slowly withering away like a dying flower.
His heart felt heavy and suffocating, like a stone was lodged in it. His voice was filled with barely suppressed heartache: "After such a terrible thing happened, why didn't you come home? Xu Zhuohua! Didn't you ever think about what would happen... what if you really died in Nanhu Lake? What would you do...?"
The words stuck in his throat, impossible to utter. —How am I, as his father, supposed to live? And how is Cheng Muyun supposed to live?
However, Xu Shinong did not say these words aloud, because in everyone's eyes, Xu Zhuohua was already dead.
A bittersweet feeling welled up in Xu Zhuohua's heart. She thought that once she was dead, she was dead, and no one would care except Cheng Muyun. She never expected that Xu Shinong would come all the way here.
She silently stood up and bowed deeply to Xu Shi Nong.
Xu Shinong supported Xu Zhuohua's shoulder. He felt sad and remembered Xu Zhuohua's negotiation with him in the study before, saying that she might die and hoped that the Xu family would help Cheng Muyun in that case.
Cheng Muyun is now imprisoned, and in order to avoid implicating the Xu family, he has severed all public ties with them.
He felt guilty for not being able to help Cheng Muyun and felt that he could not bear Xu Zhuohua's bow.
"Alright, it's good that you're alive..." Xu Shi Nong's voice was thick and hoarse, and the last syllable was almost crushed by the sob in her throat.
Two streams of turbid tears slid down his deeply lined cheeks, meandering through the dark brown wrinkles like rainwater washing over a dried-up riverbed, finally crashing heavily onto his faded clothes, leaving a small, dark stain.
Xinghua quickly brought a low stool from the kitchen. The stool surface was worn smooth and shiny, carrying the warmth of years of wear.
She gently placed the stool beside Xu Shinong's feet, her voice extremely soft: "Master, you've had a bumpy journey, please sit down and rest, and have something to eat with us."
Xu Shi Nong had absolutely no appetite.
His heart had been in his throat the whole way. Every night when he closed his eyes, he saw Xu Zhuohua covered in blood. Even if he were presented with the most delicious food, he probably wouldn't be able to swallow it.
He had been used to eating bird's nest porridge with crab roe soup dumplings since childhood, so he had no time to reminisce about the past.
But he still slowly bent down and sat heavily on the low stool.
His gaze passed over the rising steam and landed unblinkingly on Xu Zhuohua across from him.
This child was once his greatest pride. The only daughter in the Xu family who was just as capable as any man, but now... he wanted to see what Xu Zhuohua would become without that spirit.
The noise at the dinner table was very quiet, with only the occasional clinking of bowls and chopsticks.
Xu Zhuohua sat there, her gray, coarse cloth clothes making her neck appear even thinner. Her chin, which used to be slightly raised, was now lowered and pressed against her chest.
The bamboo chopsticks in her hand froze in mid-air, her mouth still stuffed with half a mouthful of unchewed vegetable paste, her cheeks slightly puffed out, yet she stared intently at the cracked wood grain on the corner of the table, as if her soul had been ripped away.
Sunlight streamed in through the cracks in the windowpane, casting dappled patterns of light on her dull eyes, eyes that once held the vastness of the stars and the sea, now only a desolate wasteland remained.
“Miss is lost in thought again.” Xinghua, sitting next to her, sighed softly, her tone calm and familiar. “She’ll be fine in a bit. She’s like this every day.”
Sure enough, in just four or five minutes, Xu Zhuohua seemed to have been suddenly turned on. Her eyes rolled almost imperceptibly, she began to chew mechanically, her throat moved, she swallowed the food in her mouth, and then she picked up her chopsticks, took a bite of pickled vegetables, her movements as stiff as a puppet.
Xu Shinong's hand holding the bowl trembled uncontrollably, the rough rim of the bowl digging painfully into her palm.
It felt like a huge, damp wad of cotton had been stuffed into his heart, making it hard for him to breathe. The bitterness was even more intense than the dry, hard biscuits he had eaten on the way here, burning down his throat and into his internal organs.
How could such a perfectly normal person become like this?
Who turned his once soaring eagle into this now empty-eyed sparrow?
Xu Shih-nong was certain that Xu Zhuohua was ill.
Like Cheng Muyun, she was also ill.
Cheng Muyun chose to go mad, while Xu Zhuohua chose internal strife.
They are like branches and leaves that grow together. A branch without leaves will lose its vitality, and leaves without branches will slowly wither.
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