Chapter 135 - 132: Past Affairs of the Mortal World

Chapter 135: Chapter 132: Past Affairs of the Mortal World

Red Fox Town had hardly changed at all from how it was over a hundred years ago.

Everything looked almost exactly the same as when he had first arrived.

Jiang Zuo walked into Red Fox Town, and a thousand emotions welled up inside him as he gazed at the familiar buildings and layout.

Unfortunately, while the town remained, the people were gone. There was no one left in Red Fox Town whom he knew.

He knew this, of course, but since he was passing by, Jiang Zuo still wanted to come and have a look.

Jiang Zuo ambled along, making his way back to where his log cabin once stood.

More than a hundred years had passed, and his cabin was long gone. In its place, someone else had built another wooden house.

Jiang Zuo wasn’t surprised.

He had known it would likely be this way before he even arrived.

It would have been a small miracle if his cabin, left uninhabited, had survived even a few decades. After more than a hundred years, it was impossible for it to still exist.

However, as Jiang Zuo glanced around, he noticed that the water well he had dug was still there.

’I wonder if Mom and Dad ever came back looking for me?’

Jiang Zuo mused, then silently slipped into the well.

With his current level of Cultivation, he could drop into the several-meter-deep well without making a sound.

After more than a century, the hollow he had carved out was now overgrown with moss and weeds.

But amidst the weeds, Jiang Zuo found a stone box, also sealed with paraffin wax and covered in overgrowth.

It wasn’t the one he had left behind!

Jiang Zuo immediately grabbed it, returned to the surface, found a large rock in the wilderness to sit on, and opened the stone box.

Inside the box was a sealed letter.

"I don’t know if you’ll ever see this, but I probably don’t have many years left. My body is failing me, so while I can still move, I decided I should leave this letter for you."

"Not long after you left, after the incident in Red Fox Town, your parents grew worried and came back here to look for you."

"After the Da Xi Kingdom fell and became the Wu Kingdom, they no longer wished to live in hiding. They settled down in Pingning Village, using their real names."

"With the money you gave them, they and your little sister lived quite well there."

"They returned to Red Fox Town many times after that, hoping to see if you had come back, but sadly, they never saw you again."

"I’ve accomplished nothing in my life, and my son is a good-for-nothing. Sometimes, I truly envy your parents for having a son as good as you."

"Ah, well, it’s useless to say any more. I suppose this is just my fate!"

...

The letter was strangely written; it didn’t say who wrote it or for whom it was intended.

But Jiang Zuo knew at a glance that it was a letter from Blacksmith Li.

He had likely omitted those details intentionally, afraid the letter might be discovered and cause unnecessary trouble.

As Jiang Zuo stared at the letter, a hundred years old, memories of the past flooded his mind, and he was filled with an indescribable feeling.

Carefully tucking the letter away, Jiang Zuo went into town to ask about Blacksmith Li’s family.

He soon learned that Blacksmith Li’s family had moved away from Red Fox Town long ago.

The blacksmith’s son and daughter-in-law, who had taken the money and run off to start a business, had finally returned a few years after Jiang Zuo’s departure.

While Blacksmith Li was alive to keep him in line, his son still worked at the forge. But a few years after the old man’s death, the son could no longer contain himself. The desire to do business, suppressed for so many years, finally erupted.

He sold off their property in Red Fox Town, took his family, and left to start a business somewhere. No one knew where they went.

Jiang Zuo was speechless. No wonder Blacksmith Li had made a point to mention in his letter that his son was a good-for-nothing.

’He lived for decades and ultimately couldn’t change his own son. That must have been a bitter pill for Blacksmith Li to swallow.’

Shaking his head, Jiang Zuo left Red Fox Town without lingering any longer.

...

「Pingning Village.」

It was a very ordinary little village, but one that valued education. On the whole, the people were simple and honest.

Most of the villagers had the surname Liu; the Jiang Family was the only one of their name.

It was said that the Jiang Family’s ancestors had once been wealthy, but they had no sons. The bloodline was only able to continue because a daughter of the family married a man who took her name.

Because of this, the Jiang descendants had always found it hard to hold their heads high in Pingning Village.

Furthermore, the scholar who had married into the family had been in poor health, which led to the Jiang line having few descendants.

Several generations had passed, and the Jiang Family had gradually declined, a shadow of its former self.

「Inside an ancestral hall.」

"Spirit Tablet of Ancestor Jiang Rulin," "Spirit Tablet of Ancestor Zuo Qing’e," "Spirit Tablet of Ancestor Jiang Qingling," "Spirit Tablet of Ancestor Jiang Zuo"...

Jiang Zuo stared at the spirit tablets arranged before him, silent and still.

His parents, the sister he had never met, and even his own spirit tablet were all lined up there.

"Who are you? What are you doing barging into our Jiang Family ancestral hall?"

"Did Liu Hao send you? Let me tell you something, the Jiang Family always repays its debts! But no matter how poor we get, we will never sell our ancestral hall!"

A young man suddenly walked in. Upon seeing Jiang Zuo, he immediately shouted.

Jiang Zuo looked at the boy and smiled faintly.

The boy was about to say more, but he suddenly felt dazed and disoriented.

By the time he came to his senses, there was no one else in the ancestral hall.

"What the—did I just see a ghost?"

The boy was confused. There had clearly been someone in the hall just now, so how had he suddenly vanished?

Looking closely, the boy saw a Jade Pendant lying on the ground where the man had been standing.

The boy had been frail and sickly since childhood. The moment he saw the Jade Pendant, an incredibly soothing sensation washed over his body.

He couldn’t resist picking it up. He held it in his hands, examining it closely.

Even though he had never seen anything like it, the more he looked at it, the more he felt it was a treasure.

After confirming he was alone in the ancestral hall, the boy took the Jade Pendant and returned home.

He didn’t dare mention such a bizarre incident to his parents.

His parents had recently lost a great deal of money in business and were already stressed about their finances.

Telling them would only make them worry more.

As for the Jade Pendant, he thought, if he could find out if it was valuable, he could sell it to help his parents.

That night, wearing the Jade Pendant, the boy slept more soundly and comfortably than he had in a long time.

The boy had a dream. In it, a person whose face he couldn’t see clearly told him that a sum of money, hidden by an ancestor, was buried under a certain spot in the ancestral hall.

The figure also told him that the Jade Pendant was a precious item that could cure his illness and that he must never lose it.

When the boy woke up in the morning, he still remembered the dream clearly.

He couldn’t help himself. He snuck to the ancestral hall and began digging at the spot he had seen in his dream.

And there, he really did dig up an ancient wooden box.

He opened the box and found a thick stack of silver banknotes inside.

The boy quickly called for his parents.

"One hundred thousand taels in silver banknotes! Could our ancestors have really buried this?"

The boy’s parents were stunned.

"It must be! Who else but our own ancestors would bury so much money in our family’s ancestral hall!"

After discussing it, they were all overjoyed.

They didn’t know why, but they concluded it must be money buried by their Jiang Family ancestors.

"The ancestors have sent a sign! They must have seen the Jiang Family suffering and sent a sign!"

The boy then told them what he had seen the day before, and the entire Jiang Family cried out in excitement.

Before long, news that the Jiang Family ancestors had sent a sign, leading their descendants to dig up a fortune in the clan’s ancestral hall, spread throughout Pingning Village.

At first, many people didn’t believe it. They whispered that the Jiang Family must have used some crooked means to get their hands on so much money.

That is, until the very people who had cheated the Jiang Family in business and those who had been secretly spreading rumors about them all began to suffer from nightmares, one after another.

Only then did the villagers gradually come to believe that the Jiang Family’s ancestors had truly sent a sign.

This was especially true after those same people went to the Jiang Family’s ancestral hall to pay their respects to the ancestors, and their nightmares immediately stopped. After that, no one in the village dared to speak ill of the Jiang ancestors again.

The Jiang Family’s standing in Pingning Village changed dramatically in an instant.

...

"Qingling, little sister... I suppose your big brother hasn’t failed you, has he?"

Before departing, Jiang Zuo returned one last time to the Jiang Family ancestral hall and gazed at Jiang Qingling’s spirit tablet.

It was said that before Jiang Qingling passed away, she constantly told her descendants that she had a very powerful older brother, one who was traveling the world and simply hadn’t returned yet.

She would always say how different things would be for the Jiang Family if he were there.

Jiang Zuo sighed. This was all he could do for the Jiang Family.

With a flicker of movement, Jiang Zuo was gone, leaving nothing behind as he headed west.