"It was only after a long time that the villagers gradually became familiar with your mother and Granny Qiu. Your mother had us call her Madam Aya, but none of us knew her actual name."
"Your mother was very generous. Whenever Granny Qiu bought supplies from outside, she would send some to every household, and we were all deeply grateful to her. Especially me—because I had saved her before, I always received more than the others."
"In the spring of your mother's second year here, you were born. There were few outsiders in our little mountain village, and even fewer women having children. There was no midwife at all, so I volunteered to deliver you myself! Let me think... you should be eighteen this year, shouldn't you? Eighteen years—gone in the blink of an eye!"
After Ninth Granny finished lamenting, she continued, "After giving birth to you, your mother's health was never good. She was often bedridden. At the time, I found it very strange. After I gave birth, there had not been much change in me, and afterward my body had only grown stronger. Your mother knew martial arts, so she should have been even better off, shouldn't she? Later, I heard your mother say that her previous injuries had been too severe and had never fully healed. Giving birth to you had gravely depleted her vital energy, and she could no longer recover!"
"There is an old saying—what was it again? Misfortunes never come singly. Your mother's body grew weaker and weaker, and then you developed problems too. For the first few years after you were born, you seemed perfectly fine. But for some reason, once you turned five, you would often become muddleheaded. Sometimes you did not even know who you were, nor did you recognize your