"You've recovered!" The pleasure and surprise were visible in the face of Austin's mother as she exclaimed.
"This is unbelievable! And your body seems to be stronger than it was in the past!"
"Yes, that's true. I'm feeling extremely well." Austin's father was examining his body carefully, taking each detail with an astonished delight.
He waved his fist and pounded his chest, then raised a foot to give the ground a mighty heavy kick.
He was indeed full of energy now, and was at a far greater level than his younger self.
"Dad," Austin stepped up, his voice laced with a mixture of complicated emotions.
"Austin? My son, is that really you?" He hadn't really noticed Austin up until then.
He stared at his son with shock, and perhaps a little hint of suspicion.
He rubbed his eyes a few times to make sure that he wasn't hallucinating. Austin waved a hand, and launched a stream of life energy from the spiritual tree into his father's head. His father's soul power dramatically increased in an instant.
Austin motioned for him to settle in a corner, and proceeded to explain things to his father, down to the very last detail.
It took a lot of words, and much time, before his father was finally convinced that his son had really returned to life.
"What an amazing gift! The heavenly god has granted us double blessings!"
Austin's mother could not contain her joy at their immense good fortune.
"You managed to recover wonderfully, and Austin came back alive.
I'm so happy.
I'll go get some food from the market.
Chad will be home soon.
We must have a dinner feast to celebrate the reunion of the family!"
She was grinning from ear to ear as she took a bank card from one of the cabinets sitting at the corner of the room.
She placed it into her pocket with great care, and patted it gently.
She obviously valued it like a precious treasure.
Then she scrambled about, picking up other things that she needed before hurriedly leaving for the market.
It was already eight in the evening at the time.
In the years when Austin was not around, his parents would usually wait for their oldest son to come home from work and have dinner together.
"It seems like life hasn't been easy on you while I was away," Austin said slowly.
He had noticed how his mother treated the bank card earlier.
It tugged at his heart.
"Are the days always so hard for you, dad? You've become so poor."
Secretly though, the gears in Austin were already turning.
'I must earn a large sum of money so my family can live a better life.
They wouldn't have to worry about the finances anymore.'
The truth was that he had yet to come up with a concrete plan with respect to his and his family's future.
He was mostly occupied with the goal of seeing his family again, so he hadn't thought that far ahead.
Well, two choices lay before him.
He could let his family live the rest of their lives here on Earth.
He had intended to expand their life spans anyway, for as long as he could get away with it.
Probably a few hundred years at least.
He wanted to still be able to meet them when he visited Earth every now and then, in the centuries to come.
But then he would need to find means to support them and alleviate their life from poverty.
His other option was to bring his parents and older brother back with him to the Fallen Immortal Cosmos.
He could help them start cultivating martial arts.
They could become a family of cultivators!
Once that happened, they could each choose their own paths, cultivate whichever teachings they wanted, and forge their own destinies.
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