Chapter 1849: When Our Fates Entwined
Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
It started to drizzle in the afternoon. The splashing raindrops covered the entire Federal Square in a haze.
Even in the main hall at the war museum below the square, the sound of rain was still clearly audible from all directions.
It reminded the listeners of the grass that had just burst out of the soil. It might be young, but nothing could stop its growth.
Around the obsidian wall that surrounded the entire war museum, the nas of hundreds of thousands of deceased warriors had been carved with the dark golden ink.
At the end of the high wall, where the fragrance of the ink lingered in the air because the carving was just done, Li Yao found the na as well as the family who were paying tributes and recording files into the information base.
There was a woman in plain clothes, who left the impression that she was rigorously ticulous, and a man who was equally plain and slightly fat but was supporting his wife’s shoulder all the ti.
There was also a vigorous boy whose eyes were beaming with intelligence. He was counting the total number of the dense nas on the wall from top to bottom with his head raised high and his cheeks puffed out.
On the wall in front of the family, a few simple words had been engraved.
“Helian Lie, Major of the Federal Army.”
When Li Yao found them, the woman happened to look back and saw him. There was no change in expression on her face, but her eyes obviously flashed.
Although the two of them had made the appointnt in advance, Li Yao still felt sowhat awkward. He coughed and walked forward.
The man knew his identity, and he was both panicked and sowhat wary of him. The boy did not know who he was and simply looked at him curiously with the big eyes that were similar to Helian Lie’s. The woman, on the other hand, was rather tranquil. She reminded her husband of sothing and patted her son’s head. Then, she gestured for Li Yao to talk in private.
“You must be Mrs. Shen, Shen Wenyin, right?
“Your father,” Li Yao said, “Major Helian Lie’s distinguished contributions in the space battle a month ago have been confird by various sources. His fearless charge made the detonation of the wormhole bomb of the federal army possible, which successfully delayed the enemy for the two most important hours. In the end, we were given a chance to demolish the space gate of the Imperium.
“Your father was the key to the battle and the role model and pride of millions of soldiers of the federal army. Regarding the assessnt of his military credit, the posthumous award, and the compensation for his family, the results will be out very soon.
“Your father and I… were sort of old acquaintances. After knowing that he still has offspring in the world, I felt obliged to tell you the result in person.”
Shen Wenyin listened quietly. She bowed deeply first and then observed Li Yao carefully for a while. Then she said in a hoarse voice, “Thank you, President Li. I thought that you wouldn’t have tracked
down.”
Li Yao smiled. “It was indeed not easy to find you. The military did not have your mother’s information. It seed that your father and your mother were separated soon after they were together. Also, you took your mother’s last na. It took us quite so ti to deliver the notice to you.”
“I… I didn’t intend to co first.”
Looking at the family of the martyrs who were paying homage to their loved ones far away, Shen Wenyin played with a nonexistent cigarette subconsciously with her fingers. After much hesitation, she held her arms and softly said, “Helian Lie was not a good husband, much less a good father. I hated him. My mother and I both hated him. I only wanted to get as far away from him as possible so that I would never see him again, not even in such a form.”
“Well…” Li Yao blinked quickly.
He was slightly surprised, but based on the remarks of ‘Rabid Dog’ Helian Lie in the army he had collected over the past month, her attitude was not too strange.
Shen Wenyin stared at Li Yao with complicated feelings. “President Li, do you want to know more about my family, about Helian Lie? In fact, it’s nothing special. It was just one of the clichés between a wounded, lonely, and crazy man and a silly woman who had read too many romance novels and was na?ve enough to think that she could ‘save’ the man.
“However, in the stories, the silly woman always unties the deepest knot in the wounded man’s heart, and they always live happily ever after. But in reality…”
She smiled and touched her dry lips, as if she had put the nonexistent cigarette to her mouth.
Li Yao was silent for a mont before he said in a low voice, “According to the fellows and the psychologists in the army, Major Helian Lie seed to be gravely troubled by ntal illnesses, partly due to the PTSD and partly because of the strong stimulations he suffered in his early years… I’m sorry.”
Shen Wenyin was slightly dazed. Then, she was amused. “President Li, why do you think you need to apologize to ? It was he who was too narrow-minded to free himself from the burdens of the past. Did it have anything to do with anybody else?”
“That being said, I do have a very strange feeling,” Li Yao observed. “It is not exactly guilt. I—I just feel that it never occurred to
that even soone like Helian Lie would establish a family or that he had his feelings and dreams and would even die valiantly for them.”
Shen Wenyin raised her eyebrows. She looked at Li Yao with even more confusion and surprise. She could not help but remark, “President Li, you are nothing like the Vulture Li Yao depicted in the books, the news, the propaganda, or the entertainnt works. If the guys from the Secret Sword Bureau or other intelligence agencies hadn’t chatted with
for a long ti just now and searched my belongings dozens of tis, I would’ve suspected that you are a fraud.”
Li Yao laughed, too. He scratched his nose and said, “Ever since my identity was exposed, everybody who’s t
has said exactly the sa thing. I’ve heard it so many tis that I’m starting to wonder if I’m really a fraud.”
Holding back her smile, Shen Wenyin took a deep breath and said, “In fact, I have a very weird feeling right now, too. The thing that I dread of for decades has beco reality, but it is so unsubstantial that it doesn’t feel real at all.
“Did you know, President Li? There was a ti when I hated you very, very much. It was the period when Helian Lie got ntally deranged because of overtraining. He would cry and vomit, holding his stomach while yelling at
and my mother like an animal.
“At that ti, I was about six years old, and I knew a lot of things already. I also got in touch with the earliest legends of Vulture Li Yao through various sources. I learned what a disreputable role my father played in those legends, too.
“Naturally, I cannot bla you for anything. Everything was simply his own fault. You did nothing wrong. You were a victim yourself.
“However, when Helian Lie tortured himself and both of us to such an extent that almost none of us could live on, I, as a six-year-old girl, couldn’t help but wonder, if there was no you, if Vulture Li Yao had never existed, and if Helian Lie hadn’t been taught the lesson, would our fate have been entirely different? Would my life be easier and more like the other children’s lives?
“At the very least, other kids wouldn’t have acted as my father being beaten by you when they played war gas or chased after
and mimicked my father’s voice!
“The sound of more than ten kids mimicking my father’s voice haunted
for a long ti. I—I—I could even tolerate everything that Helian Lie did to
and my mother, but I couldn’t bear the voice that was intentionally faked. In my worst days, I even thought of suicide, ninety-seven tis.”
Li Yao blushed and said, “I’m sorry. While I don’t think that what I did was wrong, if given another chance, I would probably choose… a more controllable way.”
Shen Wenyin smiled again. Her face was so peaceful as if she were telling soone else’s story. “President Li, you must not change your mind, or it will be too terrible.
“I cursed myself, you, Helian Lie, and even my mother countless tis. I cursed the wretched fate for playing such a cruel joke on .
“But one day, when the most beautiful thing happened to , when I ran into another man and then… had a tinier man, I suddenly felt that everything that happened to
in the past, all the good things and bad things that happened in the world before I was born, had their own significance.
“The whole significance of all those things was for
to slip when I walked down the street on a snowy morning. I fell over so hard that half of my body was numb, and I couldn’t get to my feet for a long ti. Then, all the things of the past surfaced in my heart. I completely collapsed, and I cried and scread like a baby.
“It was exactly because I cried so hard that the silly big man who is peeping at us right now from the side noticed
and staggered to
to help
to my feet.
“To this day, I still rember that I shoved him heavily and said sothing stupid in tears. I said, ‘Go away, my dad is Helian Lie.’
“He fell to the ground, too, because of my shove. Scratching his head for a long ti, he asked in confusion, ‘Who is Helian Lie?’
“Hehe. I imagined ten thousand tis what the world would be like without you, but if Vulture Li Yao hadn’t beaten Helian Lie hard and completely changed his fate, he wouldn’t have t my mother at all. Even if they did, as a man born and raised in a wealthy family, he wouldn’t have had any interaction with my mother, and I wouldn’t have been born at all.
“Even if I were born and raised in another mysterious way, I wouldn’t have walked on the cold street of that particular planet on that morning in that winter. Even if I did and I unfortunately slipped over, I wouldn’t have burst into tears and made a fool of myself.
“Then, I wouldn’t have t him, and I wouldn’t have had him. Every day of the three of us being together would’ve been a soap bubble that was nowhere to be found. When thinking about that, I couldn’t feel more terrified.
“So, President Li, fate is such an amazing thing. Had it not been for your conflict with Helian Lie years ago, I would never have appeared in this world, and the vigorous young guy that is crawling on the ground wouldn’t have been born either!”
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