The Supreme Immortal’s Return To Earth

The Useless Son of the Vale Family(II)

The doctors had called it a mugging. A random attack. But the memories showed clearly that it had not been random. The men had known his name. They had known his family. They had wanted him to deliver a message.

They had not expected him to die.

Adrian opened his eyes. The ceiling was still white. The room was still unfamiliar. The body was still weak.

But the memories were settling now, arranging themselves into something resembling order. He understood the world he had entered—not fully, not even partially, but enough to survive.

Enough to function.

The door opened again.

Adrian turned his head. The woman who entered was not a doctor. She was not a nurse. She wore simple clothes—a cardigan, jeans, a purse that had seen better days. Her hair was dark, her face lined with exhaustion, her eyes red as though she had been crying and had recently stopped.

She stopped in the doorway.

For a moment, neither of them moved.

Then her hand flew to her mouth. “Adrian. Oh—Adrian.”

She crossed the room in a few quick steps and was at his bedside, and then her arms were around him, and Adrian felt something he had not felt in a very long time.

Warmth.

Not physical warmth—the room was not cold—but something else. Something that did not have a name he could remember. It came from her. From the way she held him. From the way her hands shook. From the way her voice cracked around his name.

“Mom,” Adrian said.

The word felt strange in his mouth. He had not used it in ten thousand years. He had not used it at all, in fact—his mother, the real one, had died before he had learned to cultivate, before he had become anyone worth remembering. He did not remember her voice. He did not remember her face.

But the woman holding him now was not his mother. She was Elena Vale, the mother of the body he inhabited. She was a stranger to him—an ordinary woman with an ordinary life and an ordinary love for her son.

And yet.

She pulled back, holding him at arm’s length, her eyes searching his face. “You’re awake. You’re actually awake. The doctors said—they said you might not—they said there was a chance—”

Her voice broke. She did not finish the sentence. She did not need to.

Adrian watched her. The memories of the original Adrian offered context—Elena worked long hours, skipped meals, sold her belongings. She had not slept in days. She had been crying. She was here.

She was here.

“Have you eaten?” Elena asked.

Adrian blinked. Of all the questions she could have asked—what happened, how do you feel, do you remember anything—she had asked if he had eaten.

He did not know how to respond. In his old life, he had been approached by cultivators who wanted his secrets, enemies who wanted his death, subordinates who wanted his favor. No one had ever asked him if he had eaten.

But Elena’s concern was not strategic. She was not trying to manipulate him. She was not trying to gain anything from him. She had simply looked at her son and thought, for the first time in days, he might be hungry.

The realization hit him harder than it should have.

“I don’t know,” he said.

Elena’s face crumpled. She pulled him into another hug, tighter than before, and Adrian let her. He did not return the embrace—he did not know how—but he did not push her away.

She held him for a long time. When she finally released him, she was crying again, but she was smiling too.

“You scared me,” she said. “You scared me so much.”

“I’m sorry,” Adrian said.

He meant it. He did not know why he meant it, but he did.

The memories of the original Adrian were still there, and they told him what he needed to know. This family had sacrificed everything for him. The father had worked himself into exhaustion. The mother had sold her belongings to pay medical bills. The sister had taken jobs she did not need and concealed her own problems because she did not want to burden her parents.

They had done all of this for a young man who had nothing to offer. No wealth. No power. No talent.

They had expected nothing in return.

Adrian looked at Elena. She was wiping her eyes now, trying to compose herself, trying to be strong. She was not succeeding, but she was trying.

For the first time in ten thousand years, Adrian felt something he had almost forgotten.

He felt wanted.

Not feared. Not respected. Not revered.

Wanted.

He did not know what to do with the feeling. He did not understand it. But he did not want it to stop.

“I’ll be okay,” he said.

Elena nodded, her eyes still wet. “You will. You’re strong. You’ve always been stronger than you think.”

Adrian almost laughed. He had been many things in his long life. Strong was one of them. But no one had ever said it while watching him lie in a hospital bed, recovering from injuries that should have been fatal.

Elena pulled up a chair and sat down beside him. She took his hand—the hand of a nineteen-year-old who had never worked a day of hard labor in his life—and held it.

“I’m going to call your father,” she said. “He’s been so worried. And Sophia—” She paused. “Sophia has been… difficult. She doesn’t talk about what happened. She doesn’t talk about anything. But she’s been here every day. Every day, Adrian. She comes after school and she sits in that chair and she doesn’t say a word, but she’s here.”

Adrian looked at the chair. It was simple—wooden, uncomfortable, unremarkable. He could picture it: a seventeen-year-old girl sitting in it, silent, waiting for a brother who might never wake up.

He understood, in that moment, that he had inherited more than a body. He had inherited a family. A family that loved him. A family that had sacrificed for him. A family that expected nothing in return.

He had not asked for this. He had not chosen it. He had been brought here by a Presence he did not understand, to address a threat he could not yet perceive.

But he was here now. He was alive.

And they were his.

For ten thousand years, Adrian had believed that strength was the ultimate freedom. If no one could defeat him, no one could control him. If no one could threaten him, he would never need to fear losing anything.

He had been wrong.

The fear of losing something—the fear of losing them—was not a weakness. It was what made him human. It was what made him alive.

He did not know what the future would bring. He did not know what the fracture was, or how he would stop it, or what cost he would have to pay.

But he knew one thing with absolute certainty.

He would not let these people suffer.

Not while he was still here.

Not while he was still the Eternal Sovereign.

Elena pressed the call button. “I’m going to let them know you’re awake,” she said. “And then I’m going to call your father. He’s going to want to see you.”

Adrian nodded. He did not know what Daniel Vale would be like, or Sophia, or what the future held. He did not know how he was going to explain any of this—how he was going to navigate a world without cultivation, a family that did not know what he was.

But he would figure it out.

He had ten thousand years of practice.