Lin Yuheng stared at where that light had been. Christ, his hands were shaking like leaves in a storm—not from the cold, but from something that went way deeper than his bones. Fear. Hope. Hell, he wasn't even sure which one scared him more.
"That's..." His voice came out like sandpaper. "That's impossible. Lights don't just... people don't just..."
He stumbled backward, nearly tripping over his own feet. The rational part of his brain—the part that had kept him alive through famines and floods and forty-three years of farming—was screaming bloody murder—had to be a trick. Some kind of flashlight hidden in the boy's palm, or mirrors, or those damn glow-in-the-dark toys the kids were always playing with these days.
But, God help him, he'd seen Zhenwu's face in that light. Really *seen* it. And there'd been something there that made his stomach drop—something ancient and weary and powerful that had no business living behind a twenty-one-year-old's eyes.
"Don't you dare!" The words exploded out of him, raw and desperate and ugly. "Don't you stand there with your magic tricks and—and make promises you can't keep! We've suffered enough! Do you hear me? We've suffered *enough*!"
Zhenwu just stood there. Solid as a mountain, letting Lin Yuheng's rage crash over him like he'd done this dance before.
"It's not a trick, Uncle."
"Stop!" Lin Yuheng's voice cracked. "Stop calling me that!" But even as he said it, something in his chest was loosening. Because what if—no. No, he couldn't think like that. Hope was poison. Hope would kill him deader than winter.
"Where were you?" The question came out quieter now, but sharper. Like a blade between the ribs. "Four years, Zhenwu. Four goddamn years without so much as a letter. Not a phone call, not a word, nothing. Where the hell were you while we were falling apart?"
Something flickered across Zhenwu's face—pain, maybe. Good. Let him hurt.
"I can't tell you that. Not yet."
"Can't or won't?"
"Both."
Lin Yuheng laughed, and it sounded like glass breaking. "Of course. Still keeping your precious secrets. Still running away from questions like a child." He turned toward the rice fields, where the moon was painting everything silver and sad. "Do you have any idea what your disappearance did to us? To your parents? To my Xue?"
"Uncle Weiming told me some of it."
"*Some* of it." Each word dropped like a stone into still water. "Let me fill in the gaps for you, boy. Let me paint you the whole damn picture."
He spun back around, and in the moonlight, his face looked carved from granite and grief.
"Your daughter—Xuanxuan—she's dying." The words hit the air like hammer blows. "Leukemia. Blood cancer, boy. The doctors at the city hospital say without treatment, without the right medicine, she's got maybe six months. Maybe less." He watched Zhenwu flinch and felt a savage satisfaction. "She cries at night, you know. Calls for her daddy. Asks Mama when you're coming home. And Xue... my beautiful girl has to lie to a three-year-old baby, tell her you're just working somewhere far away. Because what else can she say?"
Zhenwu's hands were fists now, but he stayed silent. Good. Let him listen.
"And my Xue..." Lin Yuheng's voice broke like old wood. "My daughter. My brilliant, beautiful daughter who could have married anyone—anyone!—who could have had such a good life. She works three jobs now. Three! Cleans houses at dawn until her knees bleed, helps at the market till her back screams, then sews clothes by candlelight until her fingers are raw and swollen."
He stepped closer, close enough to smell the strange scent that clung to Zhenwu now—like rain and lightning and places that didn't exist.
"Men come asking to marry her, you know," he whispered. "Good men. Decent men with steady jobs who don't care that she has a child. But she turns them all away. Every single one. Says she's still waiting for you. Still believes her precious Zhenwu will come back and make everything right."
Each word was a knife, and Lin Yuheng twisted them deep.
"Your parents..." He wasn't stopping now, couldn't stop. "They sold your grandfather's land. Three generations, boy. Three generations of the Liang family sweat and blood and dreams, and they sold it all. For search parties. For rewards. For anything, *anything* that might bring their baby home."
He was breathing hard now, forty years of anger spilling out like a burst dam.
"Your mother has... episodes. Just starts crying in the middle of cooking dinner, or she'll walk to the river at midnight calling your name until your father has to drag her home before she drowns herself. And your father—Christ, your father walked to every village in the county. Every. Single. Village. Carried your school photo until the corners were worn soft, asking strangers if they'd seen his son."
The silence stretched between them like a held breath.
"Your mother went with him even when her feet swelled up so bad she could barely walk. They put your picture everywhere—the post office, Uncle Liu's stall, village entrance. It's still there, you know. Some seventeen-year-old kid with a big stupid grin and the words 'Missing. Please help us find him.'"
Zhenwu closed his eyes. Just closed them like he was in pain.
"So tell me," Lin Yuheng said, and his voice was hollow now, scraped clean. "Tell me what could be so important that you couldn't send even one word to let us know you were breathing. What was worth putting us through four years of hell?"
The night pressed in around them. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked.
Finally, Zhenwu opened his eyes.
"I can't explain where I was. I can't tell you why I couldn't contact you. Maybe I never will be able to. But I'm here now, Uncle. And I'm going to fix everything. I'm going to heal Xuanxuan. I'm going to take care of Xue. I'm going to make sure my parents never want for anything again."
"With what?" Lin Yuheng's voice was flat. Dead. "What money? What job? What miraculous ability?"
Zhenwu met his stare without blinking. "With what I just showed you. But you have to promise me—swear to me on your granddaughter's life—that you won't tell anyone. Not my parents, not Xue, not a single soul in this village."
Lin Yuheng felt something crack inside his chest. The rational part of his mind was still screaming—lights in hands weren't real, people couldn't just heal cancer with magic powers, this was madness. But the desperate part, the part that had watched his granddaughter waste away day by day, whispered: *What if he's telling the truth?*
"Tonight," Zhenwu said quietly. "I'll do it tonight. I'll heal her."
The old man's breath caught in his throat. "You... you really think you can?"
"I don't think it. I know it."
They stood there in the silver moonlight—grandfather and father, both carrying the unbearable weight of a dying child's future.
Finally, Lin Yuheng nodded. His voice came out as a growl: "If you're lying to me—if you're giving me false hope just to make yourself feel better—I'll kill you with my bare hands. You understand me?"
"I understand."
"And if you run away again after this... if you break them all over again..."
"I won't."
Lin Yuheng studied Zhenwu's face, looking for cracks in the certainty. He found none. Just a terrible confidence that was somehow more frightening than any lie could have been.
"One more thing," he said, his voice dropping to something dangerous. "If it wasn't for that little girl—if she didn't need you—I would have beaten you to death the second I saw your face. You understand that?"
"She's my daughter too," Zhenwu said softly.
Lin Yuheng spat in the dirt. "Four years too late for that." He turned to go, then stopped. "Midnight. Back of the house. If Xue wakes up, I'll tell her you came to see the child. Nothing more."
He walked away without looking back, leaving Zhenwu alone with promises he prayed to every god he could name that he was able to keep.
---
Walking home felt like trudging through mud. Every step brought Zhenwu closer to the reunion he'd dreamed about for four subjective centuries—and dreaded just as long.
*They sold grandfather's land.* The thought circled in his head like a vulture. *Mother walks to the river calling my name.*
He'd saved entire star systems. Prevented wars that could have torn existence apart. Sealed dimensional rifts with his bare hands. But he couldn't undo four years of his parents' grief. Couldn't give back the land they'd sold, the tears they'd cried, the nights they'd lain awake wondering if their son was dead in a ditch somewhere.
The house looked... smaller. Shabbier. The walls needed paint, one of the shutters hung crooked, and the persimmon tree in the courtyard stood bare and skeletal against the sky.
Zhenwu stopped at the gate with his hand on the latch. Behind that door were the two people who'd given him life, who'd raised him with rough hands and endless love, who'd loved him enough to sell everything for the slimmest hope of seeing him again.
His throat felt like it was closing up.
He knocked.
The door opened, and for a second, he didn't recognize the woman standing there. Wu Meifeng had always been small, but now she looked like a strong wind might snap her in half. Her hair was more gray than black, and there were lines carved around her eyes that hadn't been there when he was seventeen.
When she saw his face, she made a sound—half sob, half gasp—and just... collapsed.
"Mom!" Zhenwu caught her before she hit the ground, and suddenly she was clinging to him, her small hands fisting in his shirt like he might disappear if she let go.
"My boy," she whispered against his chest, over and over like a prayer. "My boy, my boy, my boy."
"I'm sorry, Mom. God, I'm so sorry."
His father appeared in the doorway behind her. Liang Jianguo had always seemed solid as bedrock, unchangeable as the mountains. Now he looked weathered, worn thin by four years of grief and worry. His hands were shaking as he reached out to touch Zhenwu's face.
"You're real," he said, wonder in his voice. "You're really here."
"Dad."