Rebirth: Slice-of-life Cultivation-Chapter 1553 - 853: The Meaning of Life and Death

After Jiang Ning crushed the Ultraman toy, he got on the motorcycle and boldly headed towards South Lake.

Once out of the village, the smooth cement ground turned into a dirt road. It was the dead of winter, with a bone-chilling cold permeating the air, and the ground was frozen hard. As the wheels rolled over, the fine ice cracked with a "crash" sound.

He headed south, parallel to the ditch along the dirt road.

The winter morning wilderness was silent and vast, as if shrouded in a faint morning mist, with wisps of wandering spirits, desolate and lonely.

Jiang Ning was not as fearful as he was in his childhood, of this barren and uninhabited place. He only felt somewhat wistful.

Born in the countryside, during Jiang Ning’s childhood, his parents followed the trend of the times and became two of the numerous rural migrant workers reported in the news. Yet a grain of sand from the era, when it fell on his family, was a huge mountain.

Left-behind children usually lived with their grandparents. The older generation had little education, and the generational affection led them to dote more on their grandchildren. Coupled with the backward education in rural areas, such an environment for left-behind children was akin to a blind box, with most turning out to be ordinary delinquents. To become a university student, one had to be of rare quality.

Jiang Ning was barely considered rare, thanks to the care of his grandparents, his childhood was at least happy.

This foster affection resulted in Jiang Ning having a better relationship with his grandparents than with his parents who worked far away, a thought shared by many left-behind children.

However, when his grandparents passed away, Jiang Ning was not very sad, he didn’t even cry, because he seemed not to realize what it meant, just numbly finishing the funeral with his family.

Yet in the years that followed, whenever he thought of Jiangjiazhuang and the old house he lived in, he realized that he seemed to no longer have a home.

Riding his motorcycle, he suddenly remembered that in his childhood, his grandfather would also ride a motorcycle to take him to South Lake to pay respects at his great-grandfather’s grave, but now, his grandfather had become the one waiting for him to pay respects.

’Is this what life is?’ Jiang Ning reflected silently.

The motorcycle’s speed gradually slowed. After passing a stone bridge, Jiang Ning released the throttle, and the motorcycle stopped beside a ditch. He picked up the yellow paper and prepared to cross the ditch to burn paper for his grandfather.

Suddenly, Jiang Ning’s steps halted. He looked down and saw this ditch was four to five meters wide, surrounded by withered grass, the water surface frozen, and the depth was unknown.

Jiang Ning had a deep impression of this ditch. In rural areas, ditches served to irrigate farmland, while connecting large rivers and various reservoirs and even fish ponds. Every year during floods, fish would leap out of the ponds or swim upstream from the big rivers, resting in the ditches scattered across the countryside.

For rural children, walking barefoot into the ditches to catch fish and shrimp was the happiest of times.

Jiang Ning had entered many ditches, except for this one, because villagers claimed that this one had been dug with an excavator, a full two meters deep, and falling in would mean drowning.

Hearing it more often, it was engraved in Jiang Ning’s mind.

His Divine Sense scanned, penetrating the ice surface, reaching downward: ’The villagers were bluffing, it definitely isn’t two meters.’

’But three meters.’

The ditches beside rural fields were mostly just over a meter deep; a three-meter deep ditch could swallow a person whole, luckily he hadn’t been reckless when he was young.

Jiang Ning placed two bundles of yellow paper in the grass. He stepped forward, his toes touching the fragile ice surface. The ice trembled, emitting "crack" sounds, but miraculously did not shatter.

Jiang Ning continued to walk on the ice until he reached the middle of the ditch. The ice, unable to bear the weight, suddenly cracked, ripples spreading below. Jiang Ning’s body fell with them.

At this moment, a flash of spiritual light surrounded Jiang Ning, a thin membrane of faint glowing light appeared. His entire body slowly sank into the water, disappearing without a trace.

Five seconds later, Jiang Ning broke through the water, emerging completely dry, with two struggling grass carp in his hands.

’Give grandpa and grandma a little offering.’ Jiang Ning thought to himself.

He walked to the wheat field across the dirt road, and the two bundles of yellow paper behind him suddenly rose into the air, following him as he moved.

Reaching the two graves, Jiang Ning fixed his gaze. A few days ago, Jiang Hu and the others had come to visit the graves, with remnants of burnt ash not long left remaining before them.

Jiang Ning placed down the yellow paper. With a twist of his fingers, a flame emerged and ignited it.

He seized a handful of leaves and twigs from afar; Jiang Ning gutted the fish, set up a makeshift grill, and roasted it in front of the graves, sprinkling some spices on top.

Jiang Ning laughed warmly: "Grandpa, Grandma, eat more, don’t worry about the cost, I caught these myself."

When the yellow paper had burned out, and the grass carp were cooked, he solemnly kowtowed three times, before standing up to leave.

Afterwards, he found his great-grandfather and great-grandmother’s grave, burned two bundles of yellow paper, and roasted two fish.

Though he had forgotten their faces.

He remembered one year when Jiang Ning and his grandfather went to the graves, his grandfather had said: "With me bringing you, you know their graves, but when you bring your children over, they probably won’t remember them!"

If Jiang Ning’s children remembered, then what about the grandchildren?

In a hundred years, likely only a barren grave would remain, with no mound.

Back then Jiang Ning was young, didn’t feel much, but now in reflection, he felt somewhat of a sense of the passage of time.

He gazed towards the edge of the eastern field, where a winter sun rose radiantly, its dazzling light piercing through the thin mist, seemingly dispelling the wandering spirits, representing a nascent hope.

"However..." Jiang Ning joked somewhat humorously: "Luckily, I can live longer than my grandchildren."