The plane arrived in Nanning, and then I took a high-speed train to the county town.

After another forty minutes by taxi, I finally arrived at the Miao village where my father was born.

The whole journey was on smooth asphalt roads, leading directly to the entrance of the village.

Compared to my last visit here five years ago, there have been significant changes.

The country has indeed put a lot of effort into poverty alleviation, and even such a remote place like Landang Miao Village has been covered with basic infrastructure.

You should know that, according to my grandfather's memory, when the Japanese soldiers came, they took a mountain road of over thirty miles.

It was raining that day, and the narrow path on the mountainside was covered in wet mud.

"How could that woman bring the devils here to such a remote and terrible road!"

His furious and hateful tone has been deeply engraved in my mind.

As I entered the village and reached my ancestral house, the wooden stilted house that had been uninhabited for a long time was covered in cobwebs and completely uninhabitable.

I found the village chief and explained my purpose.

He, who is about the same age as my uncle, was very happy and wanted to arrange a place for me to stay.

I waved my hand and said I'll stay at my grandmother's house on the mountain for the convenience of handling things.

He became even happier. It was a relief for someone to handle the troublesome matter of my uncle's death, and he immediately led me up the mountain on a small path.

In my vague recollection, my grandmother and uncle had always lived in a secluded valley behind the village.

However, according to the village chief's recollection, they moved to the mountain long before I was born.

It is said that when my grandmother returned from the Japanese, my grandfather Luo Erhai still wanted to live a good life with her, as if nothing had happened.

But unexpectedly, a few months later, her gradually growing belly revealed the truth of her affair with the Japanese.

Helpless, she raised my uncle until he was eight years old, but my grandfather couldn't bear the ridicule and mockery from others anymore, so he kicked them out of the house.

They ran to the mountain and relied on each other, living there for decades.

After climbing for half an hour, we finally arrived at the front door, which was a small house made of stones.

This was my first time coming to their house.

My grandmother was sitting on the doorstep, looking in our direction, but her eyes seemed empty.

She was short in stature, even though she was wrapped in a thick dark blue cotton jacket, she still looked like an underfilled rice dumpling.

If it weren't for the slightly grayish-white hair, the first glance would mistake her for a primary school student.

According to what my grandfather said, before my grandmother went with the Japanese, she was one of the tallest women in the village.

But when she returned, she had shrunk by quite a bit, probably because of the harsh treatment from the little devils.

Now in her old age, she had shrunk even more.

The village chief waved his hand vigorously in front of my grandmother's eyes and said, "Hey, Wei Auntie, your grandson has come back, and your son has been buried by someone."

But she seemed as if she didn't hear or see anything, her gaze still vacant.

Her eyes were like two dried-up wells, and her face resembled a cracked drought-ridden land.

And her toothless mouth remained tightly closed.