The old woman's hair was gray, the skin on the backs of her hands like dried orange peel, with bluish-purple veins bulging beneath it.
He could tell at a glance that her body was on the verge of failing.
The old woman had approached the Chief Strategist herself, hoping to see Xianyu before she died.
Xianyu asked whether she had changed her mind.
She slowly shook her head and said:
"I'm very grateful to you and the Chief Strategist, Marshal, for agreeing to such an unreasonable request... It must have put you in a difficult position, hasn't it?"
Xianyu shook his head.
The old woman continued:
"I was once my husband's wife, and then my son's mother."
"My husband went to war, and my son followed him. I waited and waited, my whole life. But this time, I don't want to be someone's wife or someone's mother. I want to decide for myself. I don't want to wait anymore."
Then she spoke of Lan:
"Lan always talks about you. The way he tells it, you don't seem like a person with feelings, but some deity sitting high on an altar. But you're human... Lan has always wanted to tell you to think of yourself once in a while, instead of always thinking about the Xianzhou."
The old woman suddenly laughed, deepening the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. She joked as though she had become that teenage girl again, the one neither Lan nor Xianyu had ever known:
"This time, I'm not waiting. Let Lan cry. Marshal, you must give him a beating for me. That unfilial brat deserves it."
Xianyu watched her quietly and agreed.
After speaking for so long, the old woman was breathless. In a voice as faint as a thread, she asked:
"Marshal, has my