Chapter 126: The Last Family Head

“…No wonder his style of dress was like that,” Jiang Zhique murmured. With a rudimentary understanding of modern history, she had smoothly guessed the origin of that ship. “The passengers loaded onto that ship—were they the students going to study in America at the time?”

Qi Ran nodded. “I recall a previous rumor saying there were supposed to be twenty Tsinghua Government-funded Study Abroad Students, but in the photo, there were twenty-one, which became an unsolved mystery. Now, it seems that extra person must have been Xie Liang, who snuck in.”

Jiang Zhique was speechless. She no longer knew what to make of it. Hearing familiar names from history mentioned alongside Xie Liusheng, combined with Xie Liusheng’s three appearances, inevitably shattered the mystique she had held for that history.

“On this ship were Sun Liren, Gu Yuxiu, Li Xianwen, Xie Wanying, Chen Lifu… and Qian Xuesen?” Jiang Zhique looked at the names pulled up on her phone, reading them out slowly, her tone somewhat astonished. “He was incredibly good at picking ships. If this ship had sunk because of him, wouldn’t that make him the greatest national sinner of the century?”

“In fact, he chose this ship deliberately,” Qi Ran said. “He wrote in the original text that the people sent by the Xie Family to chase him personally watched him jump onto this ship, but no one dared to forcefully board it to seize him—because there was another person on board meeting him. That student going to study in America was one of the candidates for future head of the Tao Family, Tao Huanyu. As for those ‘future pillars’ you mentioned, in his view at the time, if getting off the ship meant being dragged back to that family, he would rather drag the entire ship and the future of this land down to the bottom of the sea to die.” Qi Ran added.

“Whoa,” was all Jiang Zhique could comment. Although she knew it might not be the most moral sentiment, after hearing those stories, she could fully understand Xie Liang’s actions at that time. She would have preferred to jump into the sea too. “What happened after?”

“After boarding the ship, he met a restrained young man who looked to be around his age. They hit it off at first meeting and quickly became friends. That friend exerted a great influence on him, which is also why he later chose to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”

As Qi Ran spoke, her tone gradually became a bit strange. “However, that young man with a restrained expression was also deeply influenced by him. At least, he sincerely believed what Xie Liang said—that Xie Liang came from a deeply hidden Qigong Master family… Actually, Xie Liang had merely cured his old ailment using Xie Family methods and casually brushed it off with some excuse.”

Qigong, MIT. Linking these two terms together, Jiang Zhique suddenly caught on, her voice faltering slightly. “That was Qian Xuesen?”

“Not just Qian Xuesen. After that, he made many friends, most of whom are names you can find in modern history books,” Qi Ran nodded. “Starting from August 1935, he experienced the happiest time in his life. During that period, he flaunted his brilliance and talent wantonly—as I said, he was like a peacock displaying its feathers. He used sixteen pages to describe those four years, but actually, the content of those sixteen pages can be summed up in one sentence: he made all kinds of friends, achieved all kinds of accomplishments, and found an ideal worth fighting a lifetime for.”

“All of this ended four years later, which was 1939… World War II?” Jiang Zhique frowned. “I recall the place he was at wasn’t touched by the fires of war, was it?”

“I told you, during that time, he found an ideal worth fighting for his entire life. He read Political Justice, understood William Godwin’s Three Principles—’all mankind are born equal,’ ‘maximization of benefit,’ and ‘postnatal perfectibility.’ After connecting it with his own experiences, he eventually became an Anarchist.”

“Xie Liusheng? Anarchist?” Jiang Zhique sighed. “Could he have bought a pirated book? No matter how I look at it, his behavior seemed more like an Anarcho-capitalist?”

“That, I don’t know,” Qi Ran spread her hands. “That’s just what his Diary says. No one can prove whether it’s true or not.”

“Fine, he became an Anarchist, then what? He joined the Allied Forces to fight the Nazis?” Jiang Zhique asked.

“No, he just participated intensely in various political movements, marches and demonstrations, and propaganda speeches, just like other Left-wing Student Groups,” Qi Ran said concisely. “At the same time, he discovered among the students studying in America that there were others like him who were Patients. Among them, four names were most frequently mentioned: besides Tao Huanyu from the Tao Family of North China, there was Chen Cheng from the Northwest Chen Family, Li Yue from the Northwest Li Family, and a young man from an unremarkable background named Sun Xiang. He called these people his confidants and firmly believed they could usher in a brand new era.”

“Sun Xiang?” Jiang Zhique repeated the name quietly, her eyebrows furrowing deeply. “As in the ‘Xiang’ for oak?”

Qi Ran nodded. “What’s up? You’ve heard this name?”

“You can search for this name on the Forum. Remember the Southwest Tang Family I mentioned before?” Jiang Zhique said in a low voice. “There was a very serious case in the Southwest, the Nanyun Serial Bombing Case. The culprit behind that case was named Sun Xiang. He was a Lake Cutter—but not the ordinary kind. He was a true genius. The methods of other Lake Cutters were like child’s play compared to his. In the end, no one could figure out how his techniques actually worked.”

Qi Ran abruptly froze. She remembered Miss Ah Qiao telling her about this case. It was precisely because of this incident that the Executor system in the Southwest detested Lake Cutters to the extreme, to the point where only pulverizing their bones and scattering their ashes could quell the hatred. As a result, co-opted Lake Cutters from other regions didn’t dare set foot in the Southwest at all, because the Tang Family would certainly kill them, even if they were held accountable later.

Thinking of this, Qi Ran suddenly felt uneasy.

No, not just somewhat uneasy, but very uneasy. It felt as if countless icy snakes were slithering across her heart, constantly tightening their coils.

It was like walking down a long, narrow corridor shrouded in mist, being pushed forward relentlessly. Visibility was less than five meters, but she could clearly see the mottled bloodstains on the ground, smell the metallic stench in the air, and feel the faint breeze blowing from straight ahead. Countless clues told her that something terrible was waiting at the end of this path, yet she couldn’t choose to stop.

No, not ahead. She was walking not into the future, but into the past, she thought.

She was walking step by step into that buried, secret history.

“I looked it up. Those other three names aren’t as famous as Sun Xiang on the Forum, but they aren’t nobodies either,” Jiang Zhique’s voice pulled her back to reality as she looked at her phone screen and spoke. “Tao Huanyu returned to China in 1948. He prepared for five years, and finally, in 1953, with an overwhelming advantage, he became the Head of the Tao Family. He remained Family Head until 1974, only ending when he was assassinated in November of that year.”

As she spoke, Jiang Zhique’s tone grew somewhat surprised. “This Head of the Tao Family’s reputation is unexpectedly quite good… Many people with IPs from Northern China on the Forum call him Tao the Merciful Father. In the rating threads, he’s ranked first among all past Tao Family Heads with a score of 9.7. Even the First Generation Family Head of the Tao Family isn’t as popular. The eleven Family Heads after him average between two and three.”

“Hang on?” Qi Ran paused, her tone astonished. “He died in 1974, and then the Tao Family fell in 1982, a gap of at most eight years. In eight years, they went through eleven Family Heads?”

“Yes, precisely. The Tao Family in the three years after Tao Huanyu’s death was insane. In 1975 alone, the Tao Family replaced four Family Heads, all while constantly fracturing and infighting. The Zuo Family and Jiang Family had long picked their sides. All the powers in the Northern China region were desperately exploiting the chaos, seeking to profit from the crumbling Tao Family,” Jiang Zhique sighed. “Like a pack of Hyenas feasting on a fallen elephant. Much of the Tao Family Members’ xenophobic mentality was born during that time.”