Do Not Speak Ill of My Mother!-Chapter 707 - 637: Burial (Part 2)
"If we stay, the Jiang Family will inevitably be drawn into this massive, invisible vortex, becoming a sacrificial offering torn and devoured by various forces! Even more terrifying is..." Her eyes flashed with a deep terror, "An innocent man gets into trouble because of his wealth! The accumulation of the Jiang Family’s thousand-year legacy and reputation, in this fragile newborn nation, will become the most glaring target, attracting the insane jealousy and siege of those overseas serpents, and may even... repeat the bloody catastrophe of centuries ago, leading to a total annihilation!"
"So," Yan Yueqing’s voice lowered, picking up where her mother left off, carrying a weight and understanding that was almost suffocating, "Great-grandmother Jiang Man, at the most critical moment for the family, recovered the last treasure buried deeply by our ancestors to avoid disaster. The Jiang Family took this last spark of hope, along with those willing to follow, unwilling to become prey or sacrifices in their homeland, and escaped far away, crossing the seas, searching for a glimmer of life in unfamiliar lands."
Jiang Yu smiled and shook her head, "Actually, these are just explanations for outsiders, even for most of the Jiang Family."
"Mother?"
"It’s hard to leave our homeland, and we had to leave; the real reason is revenge!"
"Revenge?"
Jiang Yu nodded, "Those who claimed to be descendants of the Imperial Family scattered everywhere when Hua Country was established. How much did they take away? The culture almost had a break of several hundred years in their hands! The bones piled high are forgotten nameless... The days of agony our ancestors suffered were quietly covered up by a few pages of history books..."
"Yueqing, I said before, dynastic changes are common sense, but invasion and the brutal massacre of the people are worse than beasts! Oppressed like this for a hundred years, causing literary inquisitions that left later generations unable to read, not even recognizing words... and even being forced to be grateful to the Imperial Court..."
"Until that dynasty collapsed, they easily swept up their wealth and fled, do you know how terrifying that scene was? What they took was not only gold and silver but also culture. Things from five thousand years were given to foreign races, and a small monastery produced over a hundred top scholars..."
As Jiang Yu spoke, her hatred grew, "Those were once ours, taken by others, spread out, and now we have to kneel to learn it, yet can’t grasp the essence, and the young generation worships them as the ultimate truth, forgetting... where the true origins are?"
"How can the Jiang Family not hate them? Also, the Imperial Family’s descendants were not running away but changing places to bide their time! Our ancestors knew they weren’t giving up and would return as soon as the opportunity was right. So—"
Yan Yueqing understood, "So... we came overseas to catch hold of their weakness?"
However, the Jiang Family’s condition wasn’t good at that time!
Three-quarters of the wealth was donated, and the remaining quarter was like a stone thrown against an egg compared to them... even survival was very dangerous, let alone resistance?
Jiang Yu spoke calmly, yet her tone was extremely firm, "Someone had to do this, right?"
Yan Yueqing’s hair stood on end.
It was only at this moment that she truly touched the bone-deep weight and heart-wrenching helplessness behind that decision—betting almost everything of the present on a vague, illusory future.
Jiang Yu took a deep breath, looking at the projection in front of her, as if the swirling nebula reflected the first twenty years after the Jiang Family set foot on foreign soil, intertwined with blood and fire, filled with humiliation and struggle.
"Xiaoxing, we brought the last ancestral treasure recovered by our great-grandmother, leading the willing clansmen to this strange land, knowing no one, with no foundation. And those who fled before us, those executioners with blood-stained hands, those parasites who frenziedly plundered five thousand years of our homeland’s accumulation, those remnants of the so-called ’orthodox’ fallen Imperial Family—they had already taken root here!
They carried unimaginable wealth looted from the homeland: mountains of gold and jewels, enough to buy a small nation’s rare curios, but more frightening were those unique manuscripts, heirloom recipes, and even stolen spiritual relics! That is the essence of five thousand years of civilization, the crystallization of wisdom and strength, divided up like spoils."
Her fists unconsciously clenched, her knuckles white from force. "These so-called ’exiled nobles’, ’former dynasty remnants’, built magnificent palaces with blood-stained wealth, decorating their precarious ’dignity’ with stolen treasures. They quickly formed alliances here, weaving a vast and secret power network, proclaiming themselves as ’orthodox’, viewing us newcomers as thorns in their sides! What is the Jiang Family in their eyes? Merely starving dogs that narrowly escaped, ’lowly’ Han blood, a potential threat to their ’restoration cause’!"
"When we first arrived, our strength was pathetically weak, and facing their power built on five thousand years of heritage was like an ant trying to shake a tree, a mantis trying to stop a chariot. They didn’t give us any chance to breathe. In commerce, they used enormous capital and intricate networks to encircle and suppress us fully, maliciously acquiring, cutting off supplies, spreading rumors... using every conceivable method to try to drive us out or annihilate us."
Jiang Yu’s gaze became distant and mournful, as if she were returning to that stormy era...
"The first twenty years, every day was like dancing on a knife’s edge, every step taken on the brink of a cliff. The family business was on the verge of bankruptcy and liquidation several times, core members faced assassination attempts more than a hundred times! I remember the most tragic incident, when a critical material transport line we managed to establish was ambushed, collaborating with local gangs, resulting in the loss of thirty-seven skilled clan members escorting it, including two uncles in their prime... none survived. They... they even hung the bodies for display, intending to intimidate and humiliate!"
Her voice choked for a moment; even after decades, that horrific scene remains an unhealed scar in her heart.
"Xiaoxing, at that time, even getting enough to eat was a problem! To carve out a little room for survival, to keep the last spark alive, clansmen went hungry but had to save every bit of money for bribery, for securing a chance at life. Dignity? Pride? In the face of survival, they became the most luxurious things."
Tears of humiliation welled up in Jiang Yu’s eyes, "We guarded the ancestral classics, guarded the memories of the homeland, guarded the indomitable spirit etched in our bloodlines, but we needed to survive even more!"
She took a deep breath, the heavy sigh seeming to carry the weight of the entire family. "It was after facing such repeated near-extinction, paying such a bitter price over and over, watching the light of hope in the young clansmen’s eyes gradually dimming... that the Elder Council made a painful but unavoidable decision—to embark on the path of alliance through marriage."
Alliance through marriage, that’s where it all originated from.
Yan Yueqing understood...
