The Lost Tomb Vol. 8

Chapter 50: Zhang Family Tree

The body in this black wooden coffin should be a member of the Zhang family's 34th generation, and judging from some of the information on the epitaph, he should've been born in the middle of the Qing Dynasty. His name was Zhang Shengqing.

I won't go into details about his life, just that the core information is his life span. According to the epitaph, he lived more than 170 years.

Longevity seemed to be another feature of the family.

This man died in a firefight when the border conflict was said to be at its fiercest. He died in North Korea and was brought back by his clansmen to Zhang Jialou for burial.

His contribution to the whole family was written after his life and apart from all kinds of strange words, two points were mentioned frequently: first, his parents seemed to be quite meritorious so he had innate advantages; second, "he raided numerous burial sites and had lots of gains, so as to continue the family business and make a lot of profits".

With these two achievements, he was buried in the tomb of the building.

It can be inferred from this that the Zhang family had relations with the royal family at that time and even did a lot of things for them. This could also explain why the Zhang family could survive in troubled times and continue their family for such a long time.

This was a bit like the mysterious families you read about in many novels. They live in seclusion in the mountains all year round and closely guard their secrets, whether they're martial arts, military, or even magic secrets. Then, when those people who watch the night sky every day find that the world is falling into chaos, they send a few people to join the WTO and make some gains.

Fortunately, there were a lot of people surnamed Zhang and each dynasty had some very powerful people with that surname; otherwise, I would definitely find more associations.

"What of Zhang Tianshi, is he also a member of this Zhang family?" Fatty asked.

"I can't say for sure, they're all prominent people." I said. In fact, I cared more about obtaining a lot of information from the numerous details of their lives.

First off, I was sure that the Zhang family had always been active in northern China. Almost all of their birthplaces and activities were there, mainly near North Korea and the Changbai Mountain.

In ancient China, that place didn't belong to the Central Plains, but was more controlled by ethnic minorities. The Zhang family was obviously a large Han family mixed with other nationalities and if they wanted to live in a place like that, it was clear how powerful they were.

Second, I was sure that there were many branches of the Zhang family. Take for example the branch where this person belonged, it was called "Qipan Zhang" [1]. Although all these families belonged to the Zhang family, they formed branches because of their large number, just like the Manchu Eight Banners. In this case, the Zhang family had five branches.

This person was probably buried after the completion of the ancient building. At this time, I thought of the mass grave downstairs and realized that the hands might not be what I originally thought. Could it be that during the relocation of the ancient building, there were too many coffins to transport from the old one, so some of the unimportant people's hands were buried instead of their bodies?

Moreover, I could see from the text that "Qipan Zhang" was a very important branch of the Zhang family, because they carried the Qilin. I still didn't know what the metaphor meant, but I could vaguely guess the key.

After reading the epitaph, Fatty turned his eyes on me and pointed to the big black coffin on the side, meaning, do you want to open it?

I looked at the coffin sitting off to the side. It was made of the same wood as that of the ancient building, covered with three layers of black paint and looking solemn. Fatty wiped the dust with his hand, and due to the passage of time, the black paint had cracked in many places revealing the old wood color.