The historical records of the Mid-Dimensional Realm read:
In Year Seven of the New Calendar, the Mid-Dimensional Realm warrior Yang Zengyue led her team, and with the strength of thirty people, slaughtered over ten thousand mutant beasts at Zhaoqi Mountain. In the end, she held Zhaoqi Mountain to the death and perished together with the beasts, sparing six thousand survivors from disaster.
From then on, no more ferocious beasts appeared at Zhaoqi Mountain.
Strangely, with Yang Zengyue’s disappearance, the beasts vanished along with her.
In the seventh year after the apocalypse erupted, the Mid-Dimensional Realm at last found peace and began to recover its vitality.
When the survivors learned the story of Yang Zengyue and her team, they spontaneously held a farewell ceremony for them.
Some even went to Zhaoqi Mountain and raised cenotaphs for them, though they inscribed only their ages upon the tombstones, leaving the rest blank.
Yang Zengyue, twenty-seven.
Yu Huishu, twenty-eight.
Jiang Huiyong, twenty-nine.
Chen Jia’er, twenty-six.
Han Tiankun, twenty-nine.
Qu Fengtong, thirty-two.
Heroes of the nation, rest here.
Erected by Shi Rongchuan.
Having done all this, Shi Rongchuan pinned a man down before the cenotaphs.
“Meng Chuyang, open your eyes and look. These are the warriors who died wrongful deaths at Zhaoqi Mountain because of your greed.”
Meng Chuyang didn’t dare lift his head. He was afraid.
He’d never expected his scheme to be exposed.
He’d thought Shi Rongchuan had died in that ambush, but the man had a stubborn fate, not only survived, but had trained up a whole body of martial skill.
Meng Chuyang gritted his teeth, that blow of Shi Rongchuan’s just now had really hurt. “Shi Rongchuan, getting caught by you is just my bad luck. Killing Yang Zengyue was something I’d wanted to do for ages, always playing the elder in front of me, acting so senior. Who did she think she was?”
Shi Rongchuan sneered. “Truly laughable. From what I know, that ‘elder’ status was something you begged shamelessly to have. Originally she didn’t even know you, and had no wish to bother with you. You were the one who dragged out the Shi family name, claiming your father had married into the family of Shi Baigu, making Yang Zengyue mistake you for a Shi.”
“Tch, so what? Papa taught me: to achieve your ends, any means will do.” Meng Chuyang said disdainfully.
Shi Rongchuan stared at him with contempt. “So this is what you’re really like. With this in you, how could Meng Yunchong’s true nature be any better?”
Meng Chuyang wouldn’t allow anyone to speak of his father that way. “Shi Rongchuan, who talks about his own papa like that?”
Shi Rongchuan laid the blade against Meng Chuyang’s neck and said one last thing. “That man doesn’t deserve to be anyone’s father at all. I’ve already submitted every one of his crimes to the highest governing authority of the Mid-Dimensional Realm. I trust there will be a verdict before long.”
Meng Chuyang was already incoherent. “You… how dare you report your own papa?”
Shi Rongchuan had no wish to answer him further. He felt ashamed that he carried the blood of such a man.
He turned, and his right-hand blade slashed viciously across Meng Chuyang’s throat.
Meng Chuyang’s body toppled before Yang Zengyue’s grave. A voice carried on the air:
Rest in peace, Little Aunt.
May you and Ninth Great-Grandfather reunite in some other way.
……
Yang Zengyue’s account had stopped at the explosion.
Hearing it, Jiuxiao was deeply shaken.
He’d originally thought his granddaughter had received some guidance, waking from a single night’s dream. But her story plainly told of an entire lifetime she’d lived.
The timeline, the things that had happened, the process, causes, and outcomes all extremely clear and ordered.
“Our Zengyue has suffered so much.” Jiuxiao looked at the girl before him, now grown graceful and poised, with tender affection.
“That’s nothing. The bitterest part was that after I went back, I couldn’t find any trace of you, Master. They said you’d died at Xingyun Temple, but I couldn’t find you, so I left Sikun Mountain again. Zengyue was unfilial… I…”
Yang Zengyue turned her head, sobbing, already weeping too hard to speak. Telling her past life over again still broke her heart.
“There now, don’t cry. To Master, none of that ever happened. Master is perfectly fine now, and our Zengyue is fine too, alive.”
Just as he’d once coaxed her to take her medicine as a child, Jiuxiao only hoped his few words could pull his granddaughter out of the sorrow of a moment ago.
Yang Zengyue calmed a little. “Mm. So we have to build the projects on Sikun Mountain.”
“How exactly should it be done?” Jiuxiao had already begun planning.
“I’ve already sketched a layout at school. Once we’re down the mountain, we’ll start.” Yang Zengyue hadn’t brought the drawings with her.
Jiuxiao asked again, “How long until the great upheaval now?”
Yang Zengyue answered, “Actually, no one ever pinpointed when it truly began. I think the first signs appeared in the winter month, that is, right around the time of the New Year.”
Later, at the start of spring, spring never came, instead it began to snow in thick, goose-feather flakes, for a full month.
People thought it was just extreme weather, once winter passed, spring would come.
And it did come.
The ice and snow melted, the rivers rose.
Chaos and turmoil everywhere.
Later, once the snow stopped, she’d ended her exchange early and returned to school, and even after Tomb-Sweeping Day, none of the signs spring should have brought ever appeared.
Never mind a hundred flowers blooming, the trees didn’t even bud.
Jiuxiao calculated the time in his mind. “In that case, there’s less than seven months. With so many projects, will there be enough time?”
Yang Zengyue laid out her plan. “There isn’t. So I plan to purchase a lot of things in advance and stockpile them, then hire several construction crews to work at the same time. As for the schooling issue, I plan to go back to the school once, then take extended leave, or a leave of absence. If this whole thing doesn’t happen, I’ll go back and finish my studies.”
Hearing that she’d already arranged it all, Jiuxiao stopped worrying. “With our current savings, it may not be enough.”
Yang Zengyue had already thought of this and did some careful figuring. “I plan to sell off all the medicinal herbs that can be harvested this summer, keeping some seeds of each kind for future use.”
Clearing out this whole batch of herbs, together with their earlier savings, would be just enough to cover the project payment to Fan Jinggang.
She knew these projects would cost a fortune.
Yang Zengyue cleared her throat and said, “Master, no need to worry. Jia’er sold everything valuable she had to her dad and got a large sum of funds.”
This money counted as Chen Jia’er’s investment, and she’d find a way to repay it later.
Hearing this, Chen Jia’er, sitting to the side, smiled all the sweeter. “That’s right, that’s right. Zengyue, Grandpa, don’t worry, I brought money over, plenty of it.”
Jiuxiao looked at this girl in surprise. “Your family will have serious questions about it, and then our own troubles will multiply.”
Chen Jia’er explained her family situation, telling Jiuxiao not to worry.
This money was all her own.
It had nothing to do with them.
After hearing her out, Jiuxiao mused that if it were him, he’d definitely make that kind of scum “weep for joy.”
The old man knit his brows. “Jia’er, you should have added a little more spice for them, say, turn the scumbags against each other, set them scheming and exposing each other’s dirt, make their lives worse than death right now.”
But Chen Jia’er shook her head. “Grandpa, once the apocalypse comes they’ll get their retribution.”
Neither Su Baoxia nor Chen Jinming had gained any supernatural power, so leaving them alive to face the apocalypse’s arrival was the greatest punishment of all.
Jiuxiao sighed. “You’re too kindhearted.”
“Maybe. I just get happy thinking about how in a few more months they’ll have nothing left, and even lose the ability to survive.” A smile lingered at the corners of Chen Jia’er’s mouth.
No need to dirty her own hands.
She’d already taken her revenge in the past life.