Cui Hui was far softer-hearted than she had thought.
Years of old grudges turned to sighs before her mother's mourning hall.
She forced herself to endure her weariness and lowered her head to look at him.
In her memory, her father had always been gentle and refined, with the air of a learned man. Yet he had grown old, too. She had already lost one blood relative, and if anything happened to the only one left, she feared she would spend the rest of her life drowning in regret. Cui Hui said, "Before Mother passed, she... left you some final words. She said that about what happened back then, she didn't hate you very much. She only hated that fate had played such cruel tricks on her."
She hated a world where ordinary people could hardly live in peace.
Cui Xiao showed little reaction to her words. Cui Hui couldn't be bothered to wonder whether he had even heard her. "Mother also said that she had wronged you, too. If Grandfather hadn't gone his whole life without a son and become so obsessed with having one, with your temperament, you might never have waded into that muddy water."
Their ancestors had been bandits. What kind of good people could they have been?
By Grandfather's generation, the world had become even more chaotic.
Even sons were hard to raise to adulthood, and Grandfather had only Mother as a daughter. Carrying on the bloodline was too difficult. Perhaps Heaven had taken pity on him: he had unexpectedly adopted a child-bridegroom, who just so happened to possess the kind of cultivation talent reserved for those high and mighty figures. Naturally, Grandfather began to entertain other thoughts. If this son-in-law could make something of himself, wouldn't the Old Cui family's past be wiped clean?