The Pathway Of Wisdom-Chapter 53: Trample or Be Trampled. Part-3.

*Pittar-patter~**Pittar-patter~*

Raindrops fell on the muddy street, all people hurried home, and the cold raindrops fell on Paul’s face, jolting him awake.

A frown appeared on his face as he tried to stop the water from falling on his face with his hand unconsciously, but the cold raindrops woke him up as his body started to shiver from cold.

"Ugh!! Huff! Pant! Huff!! Wh-where! wh-what!"

Paul slowly stood up and looked around in confusion and only then remembered that he seemed to have fainted after tripping while running.

Thinking about the reason why he was running in the first place, a look of sadness flashed in Paul’s eyes, but his face remained numb.

Just like how the peak of anger is ’Silence,’ the peak of sadness is ’Numbness.’

At that moment, Paul felt nothing at all; he felt empty from the very bottom of his heart as if someone had ripped out his heart and made him an empty husk with nothing left inside.

His eyes were sunken, and the deep dark circles on his face represented how devastating his situation was.

There was nothing left in Paul’s life that held any meaning; his wife and his kid died from disease, his home was lost, his farming job was lost, and his farming land was lost too.

With torn clothes, empty pockets, and mud covering his entire body, Paul was at the very bottom in that moment; he was now in a situation even worse than a beggar.

An empty living corpse, with no motive or reason to live for, it was a final stage of grief with no hope and no dream to think of.

The words of his friend, ’Poor people have no dreams!’ seemed to have come true, and now he really had nothing left.

"Oi! Don’t stand near my house! F*cking beggar! Go away!"

Paul looked back and noticed that he was standing quite close to a broken wooden hut, and the owner had just returned, and he was unhappy that Paul was standing nearby.

Hearing his shouts, Paul walked away.

Rain kept pouring; it was slow, but it got faster and faster until all of Paul’s body was drenched in rain.

It barely ever rained in the city of Ilma, and even if it did, it would usually only rain lightly, but to Paul’s absolute misfortune, rain had to appear on exactly the same day when he had no roof over his head to hide from it.

And not just any rain—it was a thunderstorm!

*BOOOOM!*

The loud noise of lightning rang out in the entire city of Ilma and its nearby areas, causing Paul’s drenched body to shiver in fright unconsciously.

The cold raindrops made him feel weak and helpless, and the lightning made him fragile and frightened.

Paul walked barefoot, as he seemed to have lost his shoes somewhere while running earlier, and with each step, he seemed to lose a piece of his heart.

Like an undead, he moved with no purpose or goal in mind, just an empty, broken mind and no hope or dream to speak of.

He roamed the streets aimlessly; he wandered and wandered for hours with no particular destination in mind.

He was lost, not only physically, but also mentally.

"Are you lost, old man?"

Just when Paul was drifting from one place to another like a lost boat on an endless dark ocean, a ray of light fell on him, and a voice jolted him awake from his dazed state.

Paul looked around, and he noticed that a young man with a gentle smile on his face was sitting on a bench located under a house’s canopy.

He had two cups of warm tea; one was in hand, and the other was placed on the bench beside him.

"If you are lost, how about take shelter from rain here... I also have tea; you can warm up your body by drinking it..."

Paul had no idea when he had entered the area inside the city walls in his daze; it was raining a lot, so there were no knights patrolling, and there was no one to stop him from entering inside despite looking like a beggar.

The rain had cleared all the mud from his body, but even then, he still looked like a beggar.

Despite looking like that, the unknown young man offered him a place to sit and offered him warm tea on this cold night.

This gesture of kindness seemed to have shone like an intense beam of light piercing right through all the darkness surrounding Paul’s mind and showing him hope!

Paul unconsciously accepted the young man’s offer; he walked over with the face of a broken, sad man, sat down on the bench, and took the tea.

The warmth of the teacup made Paul feel relaxed, and he could feel his tension slip away.

The smell of the tea was so good that Paul felt like it was all a dream and he was hallucinating all this.

But the pain that he was feeling from the wounds he got from falling was telling him that it was all real.

Paul hadn’t eaten anything for two days, and thus he unconsciously took a sip of the tea.

It tasted so good that Paul’s eyes widened in sheer shock, and he felt as if he had been embraced by the warm sunlight of a morning.

Just taking one sip of the tea brought tears to Paul’s eyes, and he started sobbing and crying like a child on the spot.

"I-I have n-never tasted something this good..."

That tea made him remember the cooking of his loving wife, it reminded him of the mischief his little kid liked to play all the time, and it reminded him of the warmth he felt when he was sleeping peacefully in his house with his family.

And it brought tears to his tired eyes.

Despite him crying, the young man didn’t say anything, as he was being considerate of Paul’s feelings.

Paul cried for a long time as he slowly drank the tea one sip at a time.