“However, I believe that when the time comes, a person will not lie. Moreover, in that state, you won’t even be able to realize that it’s a trap.” Zhang Haike patted me on the shoulder. “Don’t be angry. Look at these seven heads; we gathered so many people just to find you. Over these three years, in places you don’t know, you’ve been active everywhere.”
“Why is that?” I looked at his face. I didn’t see multiple versions of myself; I only saw this one “me.”
“Because you are the only one,” Zhang Haike said. “Maybe you don’t even realize it, but you are the only person in this world who has the potential to save the Zhang family.”
I thought to myself: What nonsense! You all act so impressive; how could you possibly need me to save you? Why don’t you save my neck first? It’s killing me.
For the next half hour, Zhang Haike recounted things I didn’t know.
I listened in a daze, grasping about eighty to ninety percent of it.
Years ago, the main power of the Zhang family was concentrated in the Northeast, and it had lasted for a considerable amount of time. Such a family actually controlled many historical events, including numerous famous figures with the surname Zhang in Chinese history, who were pawns manipulated by the Zhang family to “interfere” with history. The Zhang family was like an invisible net, permeating all the key nodes in society. They appeared not to be involved in politics, but in reality, they held everything firmly in their grasp.
Such a family, having experienced countless dynasties, could not even understand why they would face disintegration one day.
Starting from the departure of one branch of Zhang Dafoye’s ancestors, the Zhang family began to slowly disintegrate under the erosion of new ideologies (see Note 2 for details). At first, they did not understand why this was happening, why the family was being eroded by an incomplete system. This was a seemingly correct but ultimately unattainable system. Later, they figured it out—it was because they had been powerful for too long, and they had tried almost every approach, leading many of them to seek a completely different state.
It was like a video game: a person had played the easy mode thousands of times and was utterly bored with everything in the game, but they had no new game to play. So, their only option was to challenge the hard mode.
Although the main family structure disintegrated very quickly, many young people in the family longed for what they called true freedom, while another group felt completely different.
This was the branch of the Zhang family that had long been active in the South Seas. They were the outward-facing window and the only branch of the Zhang family that existed outside the confines of the conservative system.
This branch had developed in the extremely free South Seas region and was very adaptable to the global landscape and the collision of various new ideologies. This group remained very stable, and until the complete disintegration of the Zhang family, they continued to thrive overseas, gradually transforming into another form.
For the Zhang family abroad, their feelings towards the mainland family are complex: on one hand, the mainland family is incredibly powerful, filled with experts, and controls a vast closed system. They feel fortunate to be able to remain on the periphery of this system; on the other hand, the mainland family is closely connected to them, with deep emotional ties. They are helpless in the face of the family’s collapse, yet they maintain connections with every fragment of the system. In other words, although the Zhang family has ceased to exist, the fragments still maintain a very tight bond; they have merely fragmented.
This situation persisted for a long time, until the generation of Zhang Haike, when they began to sense something was amiss. After the Zhang family disbanded, over the long years, each fragment gradually disappeared one by one.
It seemed that an invisible force, after dismantling the entire Zhang family, began to erase them from history. This was a rather difficult task; even an entire country could not contend with the vast and intangible web of the Zhang family. However, someone succeeded. Someone not only dismantled this web but also aimed to eliminate all of its fragments.
“Who is this person?” I asked Zhang Haike. He did not answer, signaling for me to continue listening.
Thus, the Zhang family abroad began to investigate the mainland and discovered various strange situations. The Old Nine Gates was just one whirlpool among many, but because it involved politics and the younger brother, it particularly caught their attention. They gradually began to see a vast web, designed entirely to ensnare the Zhang family, coming into play. And this greater weaver of the web had only one identity.
Zhang Haike looked at me and said, “This person’s surname is Wang, and his name is Wang Canghai. He has been dead for nearly a thousand years.”
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