Do Not Speak Ill of My Mother!-Chapter 706 - 636: Burial (Part 1)
"Xiaoxing, how do you feel about today’s coming-of-age ball?"
The starry blue light quietly flowed in the silent room, casting a cold silver hue on Jiang Yu’s moon-white ceremonial dress of Hua Country, like frost frozen for a millennium.
She dismissed those around her, and the heavy floating door silently closed, isolating the external worldly clamor. The air was left only with the faint hum of simulated cosmic movements and a heart-wrenching stillness.
Yan Yueqing stood with her back straight in front of her mother, her fingertips pressing hard on the intricate silver thread lotus pattern on her skirt, the ancient Hua Country totem pressing coldly against her fingertips, causing a slight sting of pain.
"Feel?" A short, cold laugh escaped her lips, breaking the silence. "Just a carefully dressed merchandise display. The Lowell family’s second son, the useless side branch of the Royal Family, and the Chen’s heir whose eyes are on top of their head... The Elder Council’s old relics went to great lengths, fearful I’d ’sell’ for an undesirable price."
Jiang Yu tiredly raised her hand, her fingertips deeply pressed against her throbbing brow. The sharpness in her daughter’s words pierced through the ornate veneer of the coming-of-age ceremony like a poisoned needle.
"Xiaoxing," her voice carried a hoarseness that transcended time, her gaze cast towards the false yet vast sea of stars outside the window, "Since the Jiang Family fled overseas as a whole, many things... have become unrecognizable. A marriage alliance is nothing more than a speck of dust among them."
She raised her hand, her sight penetrated the holographic barrier of the starry river, sinking into the darkest quagmire of history.
"The Jiang Family has endured for millennia, surviving countless dynastic changes without falling, relying never on flattery and submission or servile pleading. Dynastic change is an inescapable cycle of fate for this land... But the one several hundred years ago was different."
A slight swipe of her fingertips activated the holographic projection.
The cold light and shadow formed a suffocatingly tragic scene, silently exploding under the starlight as Jiang Yu painfully narrated——
The collapse of boundaries roared like doomsday thunder, the sound of iron hooves shattering mountains and rivers was deafening. It wasn’t war; it was a destructive flood sweeping away everything. The cavalry outside the pass swept into the fertile land of the Central Plains with cruel, icy winds like a bloodthirsty swarm of locusts.
The butchery spared none, regardless of age or gender. Cities turned to scorched earth, villages became ghost lands. Corpses piled like mountains, blocking the surging rivers, and the once-clear waters transformed into dense, sticky, foul-smelling crimson.
That was not a river; it was a Styx formed by the tears and blood of countless despairing souls. Everywhere you looked, there was only an endless purgatory of death—nearly a billion vibrant lives crushed into mud amidst wails of despair.
The air was filled with an overwhelming odor of blood and burning, the sky veiled by thick smoke, the sun and moon without light, only the blood-red color reflecting the hellish scene on earth.
At the center of this apocalyptic scene, the remaining Martial Artists and elders of the Jiang Family, in tattered clothes and covered with blood, had eyes that burned with desperate flames, building a blood-and-flesh defense line like moths to a flame.
They were not fighting for empty loyalty or righteousness, but for the last faint thread of their bloodline behind them—dozens of infants in swaddling clothes, unaware and voiceless from fear, and a few children held captive by great terror, having forgotten even how to cry.
In the brutal battle of swords and shadows, limbs flew, lives disappearing at a heartbreaking pace. An elder with hair as white as snow, chest pierced by a spear, still clung fiercely to the enemy’s horse leg, roaring hoarsely toward the direction of the mountains: "Go—!"
The heart-wrenching command "Go" exhausted her last ounce of blood and energy, becoming the unyielding anthem of the Jiang Family spanning a thousand years.
When the last group of women, clutching their children, stumbled into the entrance of the dense mountains, the heavy, ancient mountain gate, inscribed with symbols, fell with a thunderous crash amidst the cries of killing and dying screams, sealing off two worlds.
Outside the mountain gate, half of the Jiang Family remained, using their broken bodies, boiling blood, and indomitable spirits to pave a bloody path to a distant survival for the young lives behind them.
Their bones became the silent foundation of the mountains.
Yan Yueqing felt as if her lungs were gripped tightly by a cold giant hand, each breath coming with ripping pain.
The simple words from the archives, "The Imperial Court changed over a hundred years; yet they endured a thousand," concealed such profound, tragic depths capable of crushing any soul!
The ancestors trod not through the river of time but the thorn-laden path paved by the flesh and blood of their people.
"In the following centuries, it’s not that the Jiang Family didn’t wish to re-emerge." Jiang Yu slowly turned around, the profound depths of her eyes settled with century-spanning, nearly solidified pain. "Every probe, every slight contact, revealed a terrestrial hell! Starving bodies littered the ground, the tragedy of children being eaten spread like a plague, nothing but commonplace... And even more egregious..."
Her voice trembled with extreme sorrow and anger, "The descendants of the power-grabbing butchers, who view our Yanhuang descendants like pigs and dogs! Torture and kill for pleasure, flay and grass-stuff, merely to satisfy their twisted bestial desires! At the founding of Hua Country, when that red flag was raised, the Jiang Family thought... the dawn had finally come." A bitterness as thick as the most bitter Coptis chinensis juice spread on her lips.
"But the newly established dynasty’s foundation was like a boat in a storm; unstable and unsteady. Old era’s phantoms—the executioners hands stained with the blood of our compatriots, the parasites once lofty feeding on the people’s flesh, the mice that crazily plundered this land’s five thousand year accumulation—
They sniffed the scent of doom, fleeing madly with astronomical wealth, boundless hatred, and resentment, like the dirtiest parasites, finding a new haven overseas. They took away far more than gold and jewels. They emptied the secret collections of the deep palace, looted the heirlooms of millennial families, and even excavated the dragon vein heavy artifacts symbolizing national destiny!
The essence of five thousand years of civilization was divided, plundered, falsely possessed by this gang of thieves in the most brutal way! They built palaces of splendor on new land with looted wealth, adorned thresholds with stolen treasures, wove new networks of influence with usurped ancient wisdom and technology, shamelessly self-styled as ’orthodox’."
Jiang Yu’s voice suddenly became extremely heavy, each word striking Yan Yueqing’s heart: "The Jiang Family saw too clearly—even this nascent nation, with internal strife and external threats, swayed like a wounded giant, standing firm was incredibly arduous. Those fleeing overseas, with five thousand years of civilization’s accumulation backing them, like snakes lurking in darkness, were accumulating strength, ready to strike back at any time!"
