"Creak... creak..."
The rocking chair in the little courtyard had been brought up from the Lower Realm. Si Chen loved listening to the sound it made as it rocked.
He lay on it now with his eyes half closed, just as he always did.
Neither husband nor wife spoke, afraid that even a slightly heavier breath might wake their child.
Ye Fu tucked the blanket around him and gazed deeply at her son, then took her husband's hand and quietly slipped out of the courtyard with him.
The courtyard fell utterly silent.
Lying in the rocking chair, Si Chen finally found a brief moment of release.
Neither the ontological rank of his former self nor the cultivation realm of his mortal body in this life required him to sleep.
But today, he was truly exhausted.
Si Chen had a dream.
It was the first dream he had ever had.
He found himself a seven-year-old child again, dressed in a small, well-fitted brocade robe and sitting on the high threshold of the Si Household Ancestral Residence.
There was no Filth, no Taichu, no teetering Myriad Heavens and Worlds.
The sky was almost unreasonably blue, the sunlight gently warm, the breeze neither hot nor dry.
In the courtyard nearby, Second Uncle Si Che was noisily demonstrating the basic Fireball Technique.
"Watch closely! This is the exquisite art of our Si Household's spell cultivators!"
On the other side, Third Uncle Granduncle was waving his dragon-headed cane, panting as he chased Third Uncle Si Shuo all around the courtyard.
"Stop right there! You disgraceful little bastard! Just how many women have you given Tracking Jade Talismans bearing your aura to?!"
"Early this morning, those chattering, aggrieved voices at the entrance to our Small World nearly shook the ancestral tablets off their stands! You