Chapter 2747: A Century of Past Events

"Wu Feiyan?"

Ye Chen widened his eyes: "The Lord of the Qing-Breaking Society is a woman?!"

"Yes." Lin Wan'er nodded, gnashing her teeth as she said: "Not only a woman, but the most vicious woman in this world!"

Ye Chen asked in surprise: "She is the younger sister of your father's sworn brother, so doesn't that mean she has also lived for three or four hundred years?!"

Lin Wan'er thought for a moment and said: "Wu Feiyan is one year younger than my late father and twenty-three years older than me; she is now four hundred years old."

Ye Chen said: "Then she must have also taken the Eternal Evergreen Pill, right?"

"Of course." Lin Wan'er sighed with emotion: "The Eternal Evergreen Pill was left to them by the master shared by my late father and Wu Feiyan before his time was up. Originally, there was one pill for each of them, in the hope that they could continue the great cause of opposing the Qing;"

"Besides the Eternal Evergreen Pill for each, the Grandmaster also handed the ring currently on your finger to my late father, telling him to keep it safe. He said that one day, when the opportunity arrived, he would be able to obtain the pill formulas and cultivation techniques left behind, and it is said that among them lies the secret to living for a thousand years;"

"But I never expected that after the Grandmaster passed away, Wu Feiyan acted on a whim, suddenly attacking my late father to severely injure him, wanting to seize the ring and the Eternal Evergreen Pill from him;"

"At the critical moment, the ring sent my late father to me, and that was when he gave his Heart-Saving Blood-Dissolving Pill to me..."

Speaking of this, Lin Wan'er sighed, adjusted her mood, and continued: "I had better start from the founding of the Qing-Breaking Society to explain it to you in detail, otherwise I fear you will be left in the dark."

Ye Chen nodded and hurriedly said: "Please, go ahead!"

Lin Wan'er took a sip of tea and narrated slowly: "My late father, Lin Hong'en, was born in the second year of Tianqi, which is 1622 in the Gregorian calendar;"

"Since the founding of the Ming Dynasty, the Lin family had been loyal and righteous for generations;"

"The Lin ancestors first served as officials in Jin Ling, then moved the whole family to Jingcheng following the Chengzu Emperor;"

"It was just that at the end of the Ming Dynasty, eunuchs held power and the situation was turbulent, so the Lin family's fortunes gradually declined. By the time my late father came of age and married my mother, the Lin family no longer held any official posts;"

"My late father was originally just a scholar, always hoping to pass the imperial examinations and have a chance to revitalize the family business. But after the Qing army entered the pass, my late father traded his pen for a sword, changed his name to Lin Zhulu, and co-founded the Qing-Breaking Society with Wu Feiyang, swearing to drive the Manchus back outside the pass;"

"Wu Feiyang was a native of Liaodong and a distant relative of the great traitor Wu Sangui, but because he despised Wu Sangui for selling out his country for glory, he was determined to oppose the Qing and restore the Ming;"

"Wu Feiyan must have been nineteen that year, and she followed her brother, Wu Feiyang, to join the Qing-Breaking Society;"

"From that time on, my late father always took my mother with him, wandering everywhere to fight against the Qing army;"

"When I was born, because my mother had been following my father in displacement with meager conditions, her health had already suffered many issues. She passed away before I was even a month old. At that time, the war on the front lines was intense, so my father had me sent to my grandmother's home in Diannan, and I grew up in Diannan since I was a child;"

"In the fourth year of Yongli, which is 1650 in the Gregorian calendar, the Qing army marched south and broke through Huguang. The Southern Ming army retreated steadily, and the Qing-Breaking Society, which was fighting alongside the Southern Ming, also suffered heavy losses;"

"My late father's good brother, Wu Feiyang, died in battle in Huguang that year;"

"Before Wu Feiyang died, he entrusted his sister, Wu Feiyan, to my late father. But at that time, they were also surrounded by the Qing army with no way to escape. Driven to a dead end, my father had no choice but to take Wu Feiyan and hide in the Ten Thousand Great Mountains;"

"The two of them nearly lost their lives in the Ten Thousand Great Mountains, but fortunately, they were saved by a cultivator living in seclusion there;"

"That cultivator was also a Han Chinese. Seeing the two of them being hunted by the Tatar soldiers, he felt compassion and took them as his disciples, keeping them in the Ten Thousand Great Mountains to cultivate;"

"In the twelfth year of Yongli, which is 1658 in the Gregorian calendar, the Qing army attacked Yunnan and Guizhou from multiple routes, and the Southern Ming was in imminent danger. My late father and Wu Feiyan left the mountains to go to Diannan to resist the Qing;"

"It was just that their abilities were limited after all. At that time, the Qing army was strong and had a large number of Han people, including Wu Sangui, helping the tyrant. So the following year, they were crushed in Diannan. The tragedy of the Southern Ming that later generations speak of was from that time..."

"For the next two years, my late father and Wu Feiyan recruited some righteous men determined to oppose the Qing and restore the Ming, and they kept fighting the Qing army, but they were outnumbered and could not change the pace of the Qing army's gradual unification;"

"In the sixteenth year of Yongli, which is 1662 in the Gregorian calendar, the great traitor Wu Sangui killed the Yongli Emperor in Diannan. My late father was heartbroken and, together with Wu Feiyan, led the righteous men of the Qing-Breaking Society to assassinate Wu Sangui, but they failed;"

"He and Wu Feiyan were hunted by tens of thousands of Qing soldiers, and by then the interior had been completely occupied by the Qing court. With no other choice, the two planned to go to Taiwan to join Zheng Chenggong and continue the resistance;"

"But unexpectedly, shortly after they set off, news came of Zheng Chenggong's sudden passing. The two were truly at a dead end, so they had no choice but to return to the Ten Thousand Great Mountains to find their master, hoping to go into seclusion for a few years to avoid the limelight and improve their strength;"

"However, in the second year after returning to the Ten Thousand Great Mountains, which is 1663 in the Gregorian calendar, the Grandmaster felt his time was up. He arranged his affairs and gifted my late father and Wu Feiyan two Eternal Evergreen Pills, hoping that one day they could restore the Han people's land..."

Speaking to this point, Lin Wan'er sighed, her expression both angry and melancholy.

Seeing that she stopped talking, Ye Chen tentatively asked: "That Wu Feiyan followed your father in battle for many years, yet she wanted to kill your father for the sake of a pill?"

Lin Wan'er pursed her lips and shook her head: "That's not exactly it. Wu Feiyan had actually always loved my late father deeply, but my father could not forget my mother in his heart and had no such feelings for her, so he always kept her at a distance;"

"After the two obtained the Eternal Evergreen Pills and the Grandmaster passed away, they settled his affairs. Wu Feiyan took the Eternal Evergreen Pill and then proposed that my father give up the plan to oppose the Qing and restore the Ming, and instead live together with her in the Ten Thousand Great Mountains as a pair of immortal lovers for five hundred years. But my father refused again and scolded her for forgetting the national hatred and family feud, and for failing her deceased brother. The two then had a dispute;"

"My father was unwilling to abandon me to live alone for five hundred years, nor was he willing to give up his patriotic sentiment of opposing the Qing and restoring the Ming, so he made three points clear to Wu Feiyan: First, he would never remarry in this life; second, he would leave the Eternal Evergreen Pill to me; third, he would leave the mountains to fight the Qing court to the death;"

"Wu Feiyan may have felt deeply humiliated. Seeing that my father was unwilling to live with her, she wanted to snatch my father's Eternal Evergreen Pill and the ring the Grandmaster had left him, so she suddenly attacked my father;"

"When my father was severely injured, the ring instantly sent him from the Ten Thousand Great Mountains to Diannan. It was only after he tricked me into eating the Eternal Evergreen Pill that he told me the whole story."

Ye Chen was incomparably shocked. No wonder the man on the spirit tablet was named Lin Zhulu; he turned out to be a true national hero. Moreover, he never forgot his original intention for his country and family throughout his life, and he remained unmoved even when faced with the temptation of five hundred years of longevity. Such character was truly saintly.

Thinking of this, Ye Chen asked her: "Wu Feiyan knew you had already eaten the Eternal Evergreen Pill, yet she kept hunting you down everywhere. Was it just for this ring on my hand?"

"Yes!" Lin Wan'er nodded: "What Wu Feiyan wants most is this ring, because before the Grandmaster's time was up, he told my father that no matter how many Eternal Evergreen Pills one eats, they can only allow a person to live to five hundred years;"

"To live longer, one needs another kind of pill called the Hundred-Turn Thousand-Return Pill. The Hundred-Turn Thousand-Return Pill can extend a person's lifespan to one thousand years! And the formula for this pill is very likely hidden in this ring."

"Interestingly, Eternal Evergreen and Hundred-Turn Thousand-Return are actually two complementary stages. The Eternal Evergreen Pill secures the first five hundred years, and the Hundred-Turn Thousand-Return Pill secures the next five hundred years. Without the Eternal Evergreen Pill, taking only the Hundred-Turn Thousand-Return Pill is useless."

As she spoke, Lin Wan'er added: "I just told you, although taking the Eternal Evergreen Pill grants a five-hundred-year lifespan, the body cannot maintain eternal youth in the final hundred years;"

"Wu Feiyan is already four hundred years old. If she cannot obtain the Hundred-Turn Thousand-Return Pill, she only has one hundred years of life left, and in the final fifty years, she will turn into a decrepit old woman;"

"If she can take the Hundred-Turn Thousand-Return Pill before that, she can live for another five hundred years in her current state;"

"This is why she is so impatient to find me and find this ring."

Ye Chen widened his eyes: "Is there really such a pill in the world that can make a person live to a thousand years?"

"Yes." Lin Wan'er smiled slightly and said seriously: "The Grandmaster himself truly lived for a thousand years. He was born in the first year of Linde of the Great Tang, which is 664 in the Gregorian calendar, and the year his time was up was 1663 in the Gregorian calendar. Exactly a thousand years, not a day more or less!"

"The first year of Linde..." Hearing this, Ye Chen couldn't help but murmur: "Why does this first year of Linde sound so familiar?"

Lin Wan'er smiled slightly: "Perhaps you studied history very well when you were in school?"

"No..." Ye Chen frowned and shook his head slightly: "The first year of Linde, I seem to have just heard someone mention this time point recently."

Immediately, he suddenly thought of something and blurted out excitedly: "Miss Lin, is the Grandmaster you mentioned named Meng Changsheng?!" ===== CHAPTER 2748 =====