A huge brocade cloth hangs on the wall, with the names of Xu family descendants arranged like tree roots, already up to the eighth generation.

Xu Zhuohua recalled that when she was in high school, she was taken back to her ancestral home in Dongzhou to pay homage to her ancestors. The family tree she paid homage to was this one, only it was older.

The handwriting is exactly the same.

Because the family genealogy had been written down to the last line, it needed to be revised, and many people returned.

My father told me that many members of the Xu family stayed in Shanghai and came here specifically for this trip.

Xu Zhuohua is a girl and did not have the opportunity to be included in the family genealogy. She only paid respects to the genealogy and did not participate in any of the subsequent procedures.

Therefore, she has a deep impression of the family genealogy.

Moreover, he remembered clearly that his grandfather's name 'Ji' was the second name in the main lineage.

“Xu’s eighth-generation descendant, Nong’s second son, Xin.”

As the handwriting in his memory overlapped with the family genealogy in front of him, Xu Zhuohua suddenly felt weak all over and collapsed heavily onto the prayer mat.

It turns out that my great-grandfather was Xu Jixin.

Xu Zhuohua's rebirth was not an accident; she is a member of the Xu family!

She came to this time and space not without a mission; she was the link between the Xu family and Cheng Muyun.

In order to marry her, Cheng Muyun got involved in the East-South route. Because of her words, he became involved in smuggling arms and protecting the organization, and was even willing to bear the infamy.

Everything needed her to push it forward!

Then, when Cheng Muyun's reputation is ruined, she will play her biggest role by being burned alive, driving Cheng Muyun insane.

Finally, Cheng Muyun was made into a true demon king.

In the end, Cheng Muyun met a tragic end.

Everything was already arranged; Xu Zhuohua was nothing more than a puppet controlled by fate.

Perhaps it was all preordained that she saw Cheng Muyun's picture in her history book in her first year of high school and fell hopelessly in love with him.

It turns out that her life, from the very beginning, was designed to destroy Cheng Muyun.

The culprit behind this century-long smear campaign is her, Xu Zhuohua.

Cheng Muyun and Xu Jixin ran into the ancestral hall. Half of the candles on the candlesticks were blown out by the wind, and the light became much dimmer.

Xu Jixin used a tinderbox to relight the candles one by one.

Cheng Muyun's heart tightened. He walked around the incense table and saw Xu Zhuohua slumped on a cold futon in the shadows of the shrine. Her dark skirt was lifted by the night wind, like a butterfly with broken wings.

A few strands of her dark hair clung messily to her pale cheeks, and her once bright eyes were now misty with tears, reflecting the flickering candlelight as if they might shatter into countless stars at any moment.

Cheng Muyun rushed over in three strides, and his heart skipped a beat when his rough hands touched her cold fingertips.

As she pulled him firmly into her arms, Xu Zhuohua's trembling spread like a plague. Her knuckles turned white from the force, and when she looked up at Cheng Muyun, whose face was full of worry, tears suddenly streamed down her face.

In the pulsating halo of light, Xu Zhuohua could only hear the rapid beating of her own heart.

The scalding tears streamed down her cheeks, silently spreading into a vast ocean.

Xu Jixin walked to the back, his hand holding the candlestick frozen in mid-air. "What's going on?"

Cheng Muyun frowned deeply. "I don't know, maybe he was frightened."

Xu Jixin blew out the candle in his hand and squatted down in front of Xu Zhuohua. Xu Zhuohua dared not look at Xu Jixin's face, which was extremely similar to her own, and buried herself in Cheng Muyun's arms like a frightened deer.

"Are you really scared? It's the Lunar New Year, any evil spirits would have been scared away by the firecrackers, right?" Xu Jixin put his hand on Xu Zhuohua's shoulder.

"Don't be afraid. Your second brother has strong yang energy. Don't be scared. Haven't you been to this ancestral hall many times? What's so scary about it? It's just some wooden plaques."

Cheng Muyun glanced at Xu Jixin with displeasure. "How can you comfort someone like that? She's about to be scared to death."

Xu Jixin sighed, "My sister usually seems so energetic and lively, what's wrong with her lately? Should we find a fortune teller to tell her what's wrong?"

Cheng Muyun gently patted Xu Zhuohua's back, "Do you know him? Is it useful?"

Unable to contain his worries, Cheng Muyun also began to waver in his belief in Xu Jixin's words.

Xu Jixin stood up, pacing back and forth with his hands in his pockets. The sandalwood incense swirling in the ancestral hall was scattered by his hurried steps. The candlelight cast his shadow on the offering table, sometimes short, sometimes long, as if it were a personification of his wavering thoughts.

After a while, he said with delight, "The wandering Taoist priest who visited my home when Minghua was born stopped at the Baiyun Temple in Xinhai City."

Xu Jixin clapped his hands, "My father visited three days ago with aged Pu'er tea, and it's recorded in the account book!"

Cheng Muyun asked, "What kind of Taoist priest? Is he powerful?"

Xu Jixin squatted down beside Cheng Muyun, his eyes shining. "When Minghua was born, the Taoist priest said that Minghua would have no worries about food and clothing in his life, but he would be accompanied by disasters and easily entangled by villains. He would need to cultivate himself to exorcise evil. My father couldn't bear to see Minghua suffer, so he adopted Zhuohua, whose birth chart was the same. She went to the nunnery to cultivate herself in place of Minghua when she was twelve years old. You know what happened after that."

Xu Zhuohua suddenly raised her head.

The origin of everything in this spacetime is what that wandering Taoist priest said.

Perhaps the root of the problem lies with that Taoist priest.

Perhaps she could know something about Xu Zhuohua's fate. She wanted to know if she could survive, and whether she was the culprit who pushed Cheng Muyun into the abyss.

Xu Zhuohua grabbed Xu Jixin's sleeve and said in a hoarse voice, "Take me to him!"