The Ancestral Legacy Begins in the Wild West

Chapter 140 Five Ancestors, Five Shattered Lives (Comment to select the next chapter)

"Recovering fragments is of medium quality and can unlock a medium amount of ancestor biography. Each segment consumes 200 points of spacetime fragments and has a chance to grant special inheritance."

Zhang Chang'an looked at the words displayed in the family genealogy and did not hesitate for long.

"Repair confirmed, currently checking page information —"

The moment the spacetime fragments began to slowly dissipate, Zhang Chang'an's vision went black again.

When he opened his eyes again, he was no longer in that rented room: "Wow—the paid features are really powerful."

All around was endless darkness, deep and silent, with no up or down, no near or far, and no discernible time or space.

He stood there quietly, and then saw the screen light up around him.

It was a huge, strange image, like a stained glass painting, that appeared out of thin air before him. Its edges were framed in black and gold. It immediately drew his gaze.

But he quickly shifted his gaze away from that, because the surrounding lights weren't just showing that one image: "Buzzing buzzing—"

One picture after another appeared around him.

Some are in a bold, colorful style, some are more realistic portraits, and others are scenes depicted in oil paintings and black-and-white lines.

"Five images—" Zhang Chang'an turned his head left and right, and a total of five images surrounded him.

He pondered for a moment, then turned his gaze back to the first picture from before.

The stained glass, resembling a religious painting in a church, depicts a three-masted sailing ship cutting through the waves in a storm.

The ship was listing, the sails were torn, and a tattered flag hung on the mast.

The waves were towering, almost swallowing the ships, and lightning flashed in the dark clouds, creating a sense of oppression.

But what truly sends chills down your spine is what lies beneath the surface.

The lower half of the image depicts a dark, deep sea. Countless gears, copper pipes, valves, and pistons are slowly sinking, resembling the wreckage of some steel behemoth.

The darkness surrounding the parts, which forms the sea, looks particularly strange here, as if it is moving on its own, even about to break through the screen, making it impossible to tell whether it is the sea or the black body of some giant beast.

In the deepest part of the darkness, a giant eye emerges from the shadows at the bottom of the image.

The eye had no pupil; it was like a large, dark blue lamp, gazing at the ship on the sea and the tiny figures on it.

Soon, at the bottom of the screen, information resembling the text on a nameplate slowly appeared: "Chao Sheng Gong was born in the thirty-fifth year of the Qianlong reign of the Qing Dynasty, 1770 in the Gregorian calendar. He was a native of Panyu County, Guangzhou Prefecture."

He learned carpentry in his youth, and was especially good at shipbuilding. At the age of sixteen, he entered the Chen family shipyard and became the manager in three years. Several years later, he went to Southeast Asia with a merchant ship to purchase timber. He was robbed by pirates in the Strait of Malacca, kidnapped to Batavia, and sold to the Dutch East India Company.

The following year, he escaped by ship, drifted for three months, and learned all the so-called ingenious things in the West. He soon joined the British fleet. The ship's owner was amazed by his skills and kept him on board to manage the machinery.

Ten years later, the ship encountered a storm in the Caribbean Sea and sank. Chao Sheng Gong disappeared without a trace and never returned to his homeland. Only his wife and children remained in the village. His descendants, including Tie Zhou Gong who went to the East, were the descendants of this lineage.

"The 18th century—" Zhang Chang'an roughly calculated the time: "This ancestor went to participate in the late Age of Exploration and spent his whole life at sea. Later, Tie Zhou Gong went to the East. It really is a lineage."

Next to this painting is an oil painting, which looks even darker.

The scene in the picture looks like a stone tower or even a prison.

From the top-down perspective, an Eastern man dressed in an old-fashioned Western-style robe stands out conspicuously inside the prison.

His features weren't clearly defined, but he still looked exceptionally handsome. In his left hand, he held a simple balance scale aloft, while in his right hand he held a beaker filled with a red liquid that looked like it was about to crystallize.

The bird's-eye view not only highlights him, but also his surroundings. He is not the tallest in the picture; the shadows of the buildings press down on him as if they want to devour him alive.

However, at the same time, on the oppressively large buildings, the villagers had narrow iron fences, and outside the windows, firelight and surging crowds could be vaguely seen.

Zhang Chang'an took a closer look and quickly spotted the red, white and blue tricolor flag among them.

"Paris?"

The record below looks particularly strange, because the tone doesn't sound like that of a member of the Zhang family: "When I arrived in Guangzhou Prefecture, it was already 1862. I carried a letter written by Zhang Lan and visited all the Zhang clan members inside and outside the city, but they all said they did not know this person."

An old woman, seeing my weariness, invited me into her thatched hut for a short rest and offered me a cup of tea. She asked me why I had come. I told her. The old woman silently shed tears.

The old woman said: During the Daoguang era, a member of the Zhang family from Panyu went to study in France. Some of his relatives are still living in the village. However, since he left, not a single letter has come back, and we all thought he had met with some misfortune.

Upon hearing this, I knew that the Zhang family also had no idea of ​​his whereabouts.

The old woman replied: "Madam comes from France, so you should know what kind of person she is."

"I had no reply, and could only feel extremely angry."

When Zhang Chang'an saw these records, he naturally found them quite outrageous: "In other words—this ancestor arrived in France at the end of the 18th century and was involved in the French Revolution. Could this picture be of the Bastille?"

What surprised him even more was the caption below: "Judging from this, could it be that this is a woman he met in Paris who followed him all the way to the East?"

"It's 1862! Wouldn't she be over 100 years old? So persistent? Or is this supposed great-grandmother's lifespan due to spiritual practice extraordinary?"

Zhang Chang'an suppressed his doubts and looked at the next picture. When the picture unfolded, a chilling coldness rushed towards him.

The overall style is similar to a Western classical painting, depicting an endless snowfield with a low, leaden sky. The snow is knee-deep.

In close-up shots, there are corpses lying everywhere. They are wearing old-fashioned military overcoats and helmets, some with gas masks on their faces, making for a gruesome scene.

But in the distance, a large number of enemies were still staggering towards them.

Some of them had their heads blown off, some had holes blown in their chests, and some had broken legs, dragging their limbs, yet they were still moving.

Opposite them, standing amidst a pile of corpses, was a figure with his back to the camera.

He stood silently in the white snow, discarding the empty rifle in his hand.

His hands stretched out stiffly forward, hair growing wildly from under his skin. His back arched, his head held high, facing the leaden sky, emitting a silent howl.

Moonlight shone through the gaps in the clouds and fell directly on him.

"Duke Yongye, the eldest son of Duke Yongren. Born in East London, he lost his mother at a young age and was sent back to his hometown by his father."

After the Xinhai Revolution, the nation's affairs deteriorated rapidly, and Yongye Gong felt compelled to abandon his pen and pursue his studies. In 1916, with war raging in Europe, he went to Europe as a Chinese laborer, but in reality, he was a soldier secretly recruited by the Allied Powers.

The letter home stated that although the flames of war had not yet reached the homeland, given the wolfish ambitions of countries like Germany, if the homeland was not defeated and its military and battlefield skills were not learned, the homeland would eventually face trouble.

That winter, at Verdun. Lord Yongye was in battle; after returning home, he never spoke of military affairs again, and every year on the full moon, he would sigh deeply.

Zhang Chang'an had gotten somewhat used to it: "These ancestors were all involved in everything from land to sea, so it's not surprising that they were involved in a major event like World War I."

The fourth painting depicts a scene he is quite familiar with. Although he has never been there, he has bought quite a few things from that place.

The West. Red earth, cracked gullies, and in the distance, ochre-red rock pillars and Gobi Desert.

The setting sun, like blood, dyed everything a dark red. A Native American girl, missing half an arm, was squatting in front of several fallen cowboys, clutching some kind of amulet and praying.

On the other side of the screen, another slightly older Asian man, around thirty or forty years old, wearing a denim shirt, was bending down to pick something up from a corpse. He was gripping an old-fashioned revolver tightly in his hand.

However, on the Gobi Desert behind them, a long shadow was stretching towards them.

It was a huge, bizarre being with withered long arms and curved joints, and at the very front of its shadow, the outline of a huge deer antler could be vaguely seen.

Ten years after leaving San Francisco, Qinghe Gong returned to the heart of the West. It was late spring, and remnants of snow still lingered on the wasteland. As Qinghe Gong traveled to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, he suddenly saw white steam rising from the valley, and the skeleton of a giant beast lay across the road.

That night, a sudden snowstorm struck, the camp caught fire, and something entered the camp—"

"The West." Finally, I saw something that was somewhat familiar.

Zhang Chang'an didn't have many feelings, because before that, his eyes had been drawn to the last picture.

The fifth painting.

That's the closest thing to a modern photograph.

The night sky was pitch black, dotted with countless stars.

In the center of the image, a huge, old-fashioned-looking rocket is slowly rising into the air, its exhaust streaking across the night sky in a blinding white light.

The vast expanse of metal machinery was completely shrouded in white mist, and a figure could be vaguely seen gazing into the distance.

That was a perspective looking up.

What you see in the distance is not only the starry sky, but also a blurry planet.

The caption reads: "Zhang Linghuan, whose life is shrouded in mystery, was skilled in arithmetic from a young age and possessed extraordinary talent. He also frequently encountered ghosts and monsters, leading the villagers to suspect that he had the ability to communicate with spirits."

He went to Soviet Russia in his youth and returned there in his later years; what he experienced during that time remains unknown.