Jack froze when he heard his sister's scream. Her fists kept hitting his head, but he almost didn't feel any pain from the strikes as he looked up at her furious face. She had no fear in her, only indignation.
He gave her a playful smirk and placed her down on the ground. Instead of running away from him when he released her, Song Yuening kept hitting Jack with her fists; she even added a few kicks in for good measure.
Jack caught his sister's arms by her wrists and said "Yuening, stop. It's me, Tanda." through suppressed laughter.
Song Yuening didn't listen as she kept kicking him while she growled "I don't know any Tanda…" When she said the last word, her eyes widened and she looked up into Jack's face.
He could see her eyes peeling away the growth spurt he went through in the last year and a half.
After a couple seconds of studying his face, Song Yuening's voice caught as she tried to call out "Tan…" and tears started running down her face.
Just as Jack opened his mouth to greet his sister, a loud yell of "Let go of her!" came from the fields in front of the small house.
Both Song Yuening and Jack turned their heads in the direction of the yell as one, only to see a stocky young man charging at them with a hand-plow that had a metal head in his hand, raised in threat.
Jack's eyebrows rose in surprise, more at the fact that they had any kind of metal farming equipment than at the threat that the man posed, and then he remembered how he looked and what his sister screamed just a few seconds ago.
He still held Song Yuening by her wrists, while she had tears running down her face and her clothes were all crumpled from his enthusiastic greeting.
Song Yuening opened her mouth and tried to say "Husband, stop!", but all that came out of her choked up throat sounded like "Hus…band…st…"
Jack let go of his sister's wrists at the same time and shouted "Wait, I'm not trying to hurt her." at the charging young man.
The young man in question ignored both of them and raised his hand-plow up into the air to strike at his wife's assailant.
Jack sighed and moved into the young man's charge. He didn't even need to use any spirit energy to stop him right in his tracks as his left hand grabbed the descending plow-head, while his right hand clamped onto the young man's left shoulder.
Song Yuening's husband felt like he just ran into a stone wall, as all of his momentum fell apart in the opposing slim teen's hands. He couldn't move his arms at all, and even if he could, he wouldn't dare. As soon as he looked into the calm eyes of the teen he knew that he had just run into the thing his mother warned him one should never go against.
Before Jack could say anything, the young man lowered his thick neck to gaze at the ground as he begged "Immortal, punish me in any way that you want to for my crimes, but please, let my wife go."
Jack felt taken aback by the drastic change in the young man's tone; it went from aggressive to desperate in just a couple seconds. It surprised him so much that he released his grip on the man, making him fall to his knees while bowing.
Before he could say anything, Song Yuening snapped out of her daze and looked down at her husband in bewilderment. She bent down and pulled him by his shirt as she said "What are you doing, Shixian. This is my little brother, Song Tanda, not some cursed Immortal."
Her husband, Shixian, didn't dare raise his head from the ground as he hissed "Be quiet, woman! Do you not have eyes to see? Bow down and beg for the Immortal's forgiveness, immediately!"
Song Yuening's brows furrowed as she gave an apologetic glance to Jack while saying "Don't be ridiculous, I know my little brother when I see him."
Before Shixian could answer, Jack sighed, and picked the stocky man up from the ground. He didn't use a bit of his spirit energy, but the man still felt as light as a child in his arms.
'Every time I touch a normal person I have to limit my strength in order to not hurt them. I can see how in time cultivators came to see them as nothing more than bugs.' Jack thought as he dusted off the dirty clothes of his new wide-eyed brother-in-law.
When he finished he looked at Song Yuening's questioning gaze and confirmed "Your husband is right, I became a cultivator. We have so much to talk about, sister." He turned back to the stocky man and clasped his hands while he added "I am Song Tanda, nice to meet you, brother-in-law."
Song Yuening covered her mouth in shock as her husband returned the greeting with an awkward bow while saying "I am Hao Shixian, nice to meet you, Immortal."
Jack chuckled as he dismissed the name with a wave of his hand and declared "I don't use titles with family, please, call me Tanda." He let his smile slip for a second as his face turned serious and continued "Unless you're making my sister unhappy, then the time for words has ended."
This snapped Song Yuening out of her shock as she slapped Jack on his arm and chided "Stop it, Tanda. He's not like his cousin."
Jack let his happy smile return to his face and laughed with his sister, while he gave the shaking Hao Shixian a quick warning glare when she had her eyes averted.
A few seconds later, Song Yuening locked arms with Jack and led him to her home for the midday meal and catching up. Hao Shixian followed behind them without daring to say anything if not asked.
Jack wanted to hear Song Yuening's story first, so she told him while making a dish that reminded Jack of their mother's cooking. The sounds and smells of the place almost made him think that he returned back to the old kitchen of his new childhood, but he shook the feelings off with a quick wipe of his eyes and focused on his sister's story.
Hao Shixian gave Jack a strange look from time to time, but he didn't dare say anything.
"When you ran away I followed after you. Some people came to call us to the village square to meet the Immortals, but I refused to go and ran into the forest." Song Yuening started talking as she placed a pot of water over the fire and added some meat and vegetables to it.
"After running for who knows how long, I got lost in the darkness. Only the glow from our home helped me find my way back." She stopped talking and turned to look into Jack's eyes as she asked "Did you see them? In the square?"
Jack could only nod his head in confirmation as he saw the flames from his nightmares reflected in his sister's eyes too.
She sighed and turned around to add some noodles to the boiling pot of water while she continued her story "I tried to put the fires out, but nothing helped. I watched them all turn to ash, and then the ash burned away over two days."
Song Yuening kept stirring her pot for a while without saying anything; both Jack and her husband let her have her time.
A few minutes later, she cleared her throat and said "I knew that Fallen Crow was the closest village to ours, so out of hunger and hope that maybe you went there, I started walking towards it."
She turned around and gave a sad smile to Jack as she added "Of course, I found neither you nor the Fallen Crow village so I kept going down the road."
Jack could only accept the hurt in his sister's eyes and let it wash over him as he tried to lend her some of his own strength.
A few seconds later, she turned back to her pot to add some spices, which Jack knew they must have saved for special occasions, and admitted in a soft voice "In my delirium, I started blaming you for everything, Tanda. Only when I reached the next village over and spent a good number of days with them did I remember that the Immortals did it."
Song Yuening straightened her shoulders after a dozen seconds of silence and continued "Around that time, Hao Shixian and his family came down the road to the village while looking for Hao Tiankai. When they found only me, they insisted that I should come back with them due to our family bonds by marriage."
She turned to look at her husband with an apologetic gaze as she said "At first I didn't want to, due to what Hao Tiankai did to Fenlan, but I didn't have anywhere else to go and they didn't seem that bad after getting to know them."
Jack glanced at Hao Shixian with cold eyes and asked "Did you know what Hao Tiankai did to my sister?"
At first, Hao Shixian shrank in his chair, but when he saw the encouraging look in his wife's eyes he sat up straight and looked Jack straight into his eyes as he answered "Everyone could see her, but when we offered our help she refused us. I even wanted to go and call your father over, but she stopped me from going."
He looked down at his broad and callused hands as he said "The Village Chief told me he would banish me from the village if I tried to meddle in their affairs again after I punched Tiankai out once when your sister looked real bad."
Jack glanced at his sister, and she nodded in confirmation. He let out a sigh of relief and declared "That's as much as anyone could ask from a stranger. It's not your fault for the customs that hold us all back."
Both Song Yuening and Hao Shixian gave him strange looks, but Jack just dismissed his statement with a wave of a hand and motioned for his sister to continue her story.
She gave him a small grateful smile and turned back to her pot as she said "On the road to Green Wood village, Shixian managed to draw me out of my foul mood and I started to recover a little. When we reached the village, Shixian's father even asked me if I was interested in marrying him."
Hao Shixian butted in with "She laughed in father's face and refused all of my following advances for many days." as he smiled at his wife.
She glanced over her shoulder and returned his fond smile with one of her own before she turned back and continued "I didn't want what happened to Fenlan to happen to me… but some people have heads harder than rocks and won't take no for an answer."
Hao Shixian chuckled as he knocked on the side of his head with his knuckles hard enough for everyone to hear.
Song Yuening gave him a little wink and went to set the table for them to eat.
While she finished cooking the broth she talked about how their wedding went, how the villagers built them their house, and how they got all of the Kui that Song Fenlan brought with her for her dowry, with Hao Shixian throwing in a few of his own remarks from time to time.
Just as Song Yuening placed the steaming pot on the table, a loud *Waah* cry sounded out from a connecting room.
Jack froze in his grab for the wooden ladle and locked his gaze on the door of the room as he used spirit energy to boost his hearing.
A second later, when he convinced himself that a baby cried in the other room, he turned to look at his sister with shock written all over his face.
"Ah, he's finally awake." Song Yuening said as she wiped her hands on her clothes and looked at Jack with a grin. She didn't say anything else as she entered the side room.
Jack looked over at Hao Shixian for an explanation, but he looked embarrassed as he turned red and looked down at his hands like his father had just caught him doing something he wasn't supposed to.
With a shake of his head, Jack dismissed this unreliable brother-in-law and waited for his sister to return.
A couple of minutes later, Song Yuening returned with a few months old healthy-looking baby and said "Say hello to your nephew, Tanda."
Jack could only grin like a moron and force all of his strength back as his sister gave him the baby to hold.