Slightly quivering along the eyes, Winger slowly regains his consciousness after falling down only to be welcomed by the image of a crying girl after looking up.
“Princess, don’t cry… I’m fine.” Reaching up with his hand, the bird man attempts to wipe away some of those tears. Then that’s when he noticed the cut across the girl’s finger. “You… what did you do?”
Finally smiling after confirming the other side was fine, Di Ling Yan immediately got all happy again knowing she’s succeeded. “Back when I was at the Sky Mountain, I accidently cut myself when I tripped over a withered tree’s root. My blood made the old tree grow again. So, I thought if I smeared some of my blood on your wound it might help heal you too Uncle Winger….”
Like the baby girl says, her blood does have the magical property of healing anyone if applied, but only if the patient was still alive and breathing.
A tight pain promptly gripped Winger’s heart due to this news. He’s fully aware of his own lowly status. If not for being saved by the Demon Realm, someone like him wouldn’t even be worthy of being in the princess’s presence, let alone demand the baby to offer up her blood! Such privilege and honor, he should never have received it nor deserve it after all he’s done.
And exactly then, another past memory suddenly surfaced within the bird man’s brain like a stroke of light. It’s the time he spent in that endless darkness and how the tender voice of a strange girl came into his life.
Just like her mother, the princess is kind and beautiful. How could I have been so foolish and misled for all this time? That Yun Ruo Xi could never do good with her vile nature. How could I have been so stupid?
“Princess, I’m sorry… I’m really sorry…”
Guilt, pain, regret… countless emotions blended into one indescribable emotion that continued to rip away at the man’s soul.
“Why are you apologizing Uncle Winger?” Blinking her big baby eyes, Di Ling Yan didn’t understand why the other side would suddenly say that.
Closing his eyes in pain, the man decides to come clean: “In the past, your mother gave me the only hope in life during my darkest moment. I promised to go find her if she couldn’t come find me afterwards, however, by the time I did, she was already gone. Even worse, I misrecognized your mother’s enemy as her and did some very terrible things during that period. I…. I almost did it again and was supposed to kill you and your brother….”
He wanted to speak the truth and spill everything how his heinous past, and now that he’s said it, it both removed a heavy burden from his shoulder and frightened him. The former being the guilt, the latter of not being able to achieve forgiveness.
“I won’t blame you Uncle Winger. Mother said it before, a good child is one that knows when he is wrong. So, Mother won’t blame you either.”
Awash with purity due to that clean voice, Winger never felt so refreshed in his entire life: “But your mother… she doesn’t seem to remember me anymore.”
If she had remembered me, she would’ve gone to find me long ago, probably….
“Isn’t that easy? If Mother doesn’t remember you Uncle Winger then we can remind her.” Tilting her little head, Di Ling Yan’s answer to the problem sounded so simple yet so obvious, “But Uncle Winger, have your body recovered yet?”
