Chapter 1279: 37. Meaning

“......A grave?”

Hamreign thought for a moment, then understood. “I see. You’re going there to pay respects to your wife.”

Humans did have customs like that.

Every so often, the living would visit the graves of the dead and mourn them in various ways.

She could not ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) understand it. After all, she was a dragon who had already lived for a thousand years. If she had to mourn every human she had known whenever they died, she would have neither the time nor the energy to do anything else.

Over the long passage of time, far too many had passed away. They were like flowers by the roadside, all destined to wither before long.

That was precisely why she remained so obsessed with so-called “eternity.”

“Perhaps to you, it may only seem like something insignificant, but to me......I suppose you could call it an obsession.”

Old Mark glanced at the sky and cautiously asked, “It’s getting late. I want to reach my wife’s grave before nightfall. Forgive me for asking, but would it be convenient for you to talk while we walk?”

“That is fine.”

Hamreign could have taken this strange old man to his wife’s grave in an instant, but she did not."

Perhaps it was simply to pass the time, or perhaps......she had suddenly become somewhat curious and wanted to ask him more questions.

Even she did not understand where this sudden curiosity had come from.^

“Thank you.”

Old Mark swung his blade, cutting through the brambles blocking the way ahead. Although the surroundings had long since become overgrown, the faint outline of a small path could still be seen leading deep into the forest..

Since he only traveled it once a year, the path had barely managed to remain visible.

“My wife was very attached to home, but at the same time, she was terribly afraid of being alone. Over these past twenty years, I’ve thought many times about moving her grave away from there. But whenever I do, I end up dreaming about her crying because she was taken away from her hometown. So every year around this time, I can only go there myself to see her. Otherwise, instead of crying in my dreams, she starts scolding me.”/

Old Mark rambled on as he walked, occasionally sighing during his story, yet never losing the smile on his face:

“Sigh, please don’t laugh at me, my lady. That woman was troublesome enough while she was alive, and she’s still just as troublesome even after dying._

“She certainly does sound troublesome.”

As they made their way through the forest, Hamreign followed leisurely behind Old Mark.^

It was a very strange experience. Looking back across her entire life, she had probably never walked this slowly before.

Yet somehow, she truly had the patience for it. Even the irritation in her heart had inexplicably faded considerably.*

“You love your wife?”

“Of course.”_

Old Mark nodded. “I love her deeply.”

“Again because of this......so-called love?” Hamreign murmured.

Such a fragile emotion.

And yet humans always seemed so obsessed with it.

“Did you......say something?”

Old Mark seemed to have heard her and turned around in confusion.

“Nothing. I simply think what you’re doing is hardly worth it,” Hamreign said coldly.

“Hmm?”

Old Mark froze.

He could not quite understand why this great lady, who had still seemed relatively gentle just moments ago, had suddenly turned so cold.

But he merely shrank his neck and asked with simple honesty:

“My lady, what do you......mean by that?”

“It is very simple. So-called love is nothing more than a combination of desire, possessiveness, and dependence. It is an incomparably fragile emotion.”

Hamreign stared into Old Mark’s eyes and asked:

“Take you, for example. You say that you still love your wife. But do you truly still love her? Twenty years is already an extremely long time for a human. You said yourself just now that you can barely even remember her face......can you really love someone whose appearance you can no longer even recall?”

“I......”

Old Mark opened his mouth.

What Hamreign had said was something he had never once considered before, and for a moment, he had no idea how to refute her.

“You continue going to your wife’s grave because you are merely searching for something your heart can rely upon. Human hearts have always been that fragile. I have seen far too many people like you.”

Hamreign gave a cold snort. “As for this love you insist upon......in my eyes, it has no meaning whatsoever.”

Love?

Perhaps it had existed once.

But from the moment his wife was buried beneath the earth, that love had already ended.

Perhaps it had even ended earlier than that. Humans always tended to view those who had died through some sort of beautiful filter. Perhaps the person he loved now was not his dead wife at all, but rather the beautiful image that remained within his own heart.

And merely because of that false beauty, he put himself in danger once every year.

In her eyes......it was foolish.

“No......no meaning at all?”

Old Mark’s lips trembled.

Seeing the bewilderment on his face, Hamreign became even more convinced that she was right. The love this human insisted upon was nothing more than a self-righteous illusion......

“But love......is itself the meaning......”

“......”

Hamreign’s delicate body suddenly trembled.

Those weightless words were like a massive hammer smashing directly into the shell she had always believed to be incomparably hard.

Her golden pupils narrowed.

She immediately wanted to say something, only to discover that, for a moment, no words would come.

Instead, after his brief bewilderment, Old Mark continued:

“It’s true. Perhaps, just as you said, what I love now is only that beautiful image inside my heart. Even those troublesome parts of her make me smile when I remember them. The person in my heart is no longer exactly the same poor wife I had twenty years ago. But......isn’t this kind of ‘bias,’ where I can only see the good in her, also simply another way love manifests itself?”

“Why does loving someone need some other meaning beyond the result itself? Why does seeking something for your heart to rely upon mean that it is not love? Why should something like this be considered not worth doing?”

Old Mark paused.

He looked somewhat slow and awkward, but precisely because of that, his words felt all the more sincere:

“Everything I do is the meaning itself. It is how I show that I love her. All of it is something I genuinely want to do from the bottom of my heart. There is no such thing as whether it is worth it or not......that is all.”

“......”

Hamreign suddenly stopped walking.

Old Mark’s words were like a stone thrown into a lake, inexplicably stirring faint ripples within her heart.

Her slender brows furrowed as though she were deep in thought, and a faint trace of distress appeared on her breathtaking face.

Yet no matter how much she thought about it, she still could not reach an answer.

She still could not understand......

“My lady......you’ve never experienced love before, have you?” Old Mark asked cautiously, as though he had suddenly realized something.

“You......”

Hamreign’s golden pupils abruptly flared.

For an instant, the old man’s face overlapped with another irritating face in her mind.

Those nearly identical words caused her anger to surge like flames, only for her to immediately force it back down once she remembered just how fragile the human standing before her was.

“I-I’m sorry!”

Old Mark was badly frightened.

“I......I-I absolutely didn’t mean to offend you! I’m the sort of person who speaks without thinking. Please forgive me, my lady, please forgive me......”