Gongshu Wu looked at the old woman, her brows white and her hair gray. The flames in his eye sockets shook violently, beyond his control. The elderly woman before him wore coarse hemp clothes and a fur-lined jacket. Faint traces of her former appearance remained, but the ease and elegance of her past were nowhere to be seen.
In his memories, his mother had managed the household and taken great pains to care for the widows of his father's old subordinates. Her hands had grown calluses, but as the matriarch of the Gong Clan, she had still kept them in good condition. But now? Her hands were covered in thick calluses and red chilblains, and the skin was badly cracked.
Gongshu Wu's knees buckled, and he dropped heavily to the ground.
[Your son was unfilial. Your son was unfilial...]
He knocked his head against the ground again and again.
He had long since lost his flesh and blood, yet at that moment, his eye sockets still felt warm, as though some liquid were about to spill from them. He repeated those four words over and over while Old Madam held him and sobbed. The mother and son's reunion after more than ten years moved everyone who saw it.
It took a great deal of coaxing from the others to calm them down.
[This is a happy occasion, a joyous day for a mother and son to be reunited. Old sister, you ought to be happy too. All this sobbing is liable to hurt your eyes... Yili would feel sorry for you too...] A woman about the same age as Old Madam came over and gently tried to comfort her.
Old Madam wiped her tears, the tip of her nose red. [I truly never expected I'd see Yili again before I