Li Qing lay quietly on the narrow single folding bed, and in such a quiet night, the sound of rain outside became clearer and clearer.

Tick tock!

Turning his head, Li Qing stared in the direction where the voice came from in the haze of the night. Droplets of water dripped down the roof and soon pooled into small puddles of water on the ground.

"It's in disrepair, even you can't bear the rainy season like a natural disaster in Longxi. ”

Li Qing sighed softly in his heart and turned over on the bed. He suddenly regretted a little that he shouldn't have left Xie Yuyan just now. Even though this woman is intelligent and resourceful, she is born with a cold fear, and how miserable it will be to survive this long night alone and shivering?

Thinking about it like this, Li Qing felt so distressed. No matter what, he still can't get rid of the problems in his bones, and his heart is too soft to see others suffering.

"Forget it, I'd better take advantage of the calm before the storm and get a good night's sleep. ”

Li Qing closed his eyes again, but he always seemed to have something unfinished and had no intention of sleeping. As a last resort, he had no choice but to silently calculate the next things in his heart.

Li Qing was involved in the matter of the Immortal Ancient Mansion this time, in addition to avenging the dead Li Yuanwen and his wife, there was also an important purpose, that is, to repay the debt. is not only to repay Gu Zhou's debts, but also to repay the debts of the Li family's ancestors.

More than 150 years ago, there was a wealthy merchant named Wan Jianru who started as a shipping and silver village in the coastal area. When Wan Jianru was fifty-three years old, he was suffering from an incurable disease, and he sought medical treatment in many ways without success, and he saw that the deadline was approaching. At this time, he suddenly heard that there was a fairy building in the forest of Longxi's Mangmang Mountain, and the sky and rain appeared, and mortals could ask the immortals to solve the art of immortality, so as to become immortals. Wan gradually Confucianism was moved, so he gathered a group of people, and Xu went to Longxi with nearly half of his family property to find the traces of the fairy building. This group of people is composed of three parts, the first part is dozens of sailors on the merchant ships of Wanjia, the second part is Ah Fei, who collects debts in Yinzhuang, that is, the local unscrupulous gangsters, and the third part is the stragglers of the military and political yamen, which are not pure regular troops, and are somewhat similar to Xiangyong.

The sailors of the Wanjia family acted steadily and worked hard; the ruffians who collected debts were lively and capable of playing scoundrels; and the group of soldiers in the military and government yamen were experienced and could wield knives and guns. Bringing the three parties together, supervising each other, and complementing each other, this is the wishful thinking of Wan Graucian. A total of more than 400 people from the three parties set off in the hope of Wan Graucian.

But Wan Jianru was already terminally ill, and he couldn't wait for this group of people to return, and after half a year, he died.

And the journey of this group of people was not smooth, more than 400 of them went deep into the hinterland of Longxi, and before they could find the clue of the immortal ancient building, they were intercepted and killed several times, and suffered heavy losses.

The force that made the move was naturally the lineage of the Gu family who was struggling to protect the Immortal Ancient Building. In the face of this kind of secluded ancient family, the group of people carefully formed by Wan Jianru was like a local chicken and a dog, and it didn't take long for only a few dozen people to remain.

And these dozens of people panicked in the depths of the mountain, and they crossed the big front slope without knowing it, ran directly into the base camp of the Gu family, and took the initiative to send their heads to the door.

At this point, these dozens of people had no way to live, but in the end, unexpectedly, more than a dozen people survived and left Longxi safely. The reason for this was that they reached an agreement with the head of the Gu family at that time.

At that time, the Gu family had already begun to decline after Tang Huaijin. In the face of more and more explorers and the huge power that is gradually rising, the Gu family has been unable to cope.

Gu Yue's explanation to Li Qing was that the Gu family had been closed for nearly a thousand years, that the intermarriage between close relatives was too serious, and that the descendants were scarce.

Tang Huaijin's mother is a member of the ancient family, but her father's surname is Tang, and he is the first Jinshi born in Longxi. Of course, this style of study in Longxi also has a great relationship with the teaching and educating people of the ancient family.

After gaining fame, the scholar surnamed Tang stayed in the capital, abandoned his wife and children, and never returned. Among them, I am afraid that only Tang Huaijin and her mother can know about it, and others cannot understand it.

And the head of the Gu family more than 150 years ago, when the Gu family was gradually declining, he found a little inspiration from Tang Huaijin. That is, if the ancient gate wants to regain prosperity, it must bring in people from the outside and create a primitive community dedicated to guarding the ancient buildings of the town.

After some consideration, the head of the Gu family at that time selected more than a dozen young people from the group of people formed by Wan Wanru and placed high hopes on them. Among them, there is a young man surnamed Li, who acts decisively, affectionately and righteously, and even wins his heart, and even has plans to marry his daughter to him.

And these dozen or so people were originally facing a mortal situation, but at this moment, in order to survive, they had to make a heavy oath and were willing to assist the ancient gate to protect the ancient building of the town and the domain.

This is the contract of the year, and it is also the debt that the Li family owes to the ancient gate. No matter how forced they were to make their oaths, it was Gumen who spared their lives in the end. And the young man surnamed Li, who won the hearts of the head of the ancient family, was the ancestor of the Li family in Lingang.

Later, things were much simpler, the dozen or so people broke their oath and secretly ran away when the Gu family relaxed their vigilance. They didn't get into the Immortal Ancient Building, and they didn't even know where the nine-story quadrangular pavilion was, but in order to be able to go back to the Wan Wan Clan, they smuggled a bunch of bronze boxes that were placed in the ancient family and didn't know what to do.

At the beginning, there were more than 400 Haohao soups, and when they came back a year later, there were only a dozen lonely people left, and Wan Jianru, who sent them to Longxi, had died half a year ago.

The more than a dozen surviving people, led by the sailor surnamed Li, handed over the bronze boxes to Wan Wan's successor, Wan Yuanlin, the eldest son of Wan Jianru, hoping that he would fulfill the promise made by his father.

Wan Yuanlin ordered someone to cut open a bronze box in public, and the liquid flowing from it emitted a foul odor, which was disgusting. The newly succeeded head of the Wan family was immediately furious, thinking that what these people brought back from Longxi were all witch remnants, far from his father's last wish, and directly refused to fulfill his promise, and punished more than ten people with forty rods and drove out of the Wan family.

The trip to Longxi, nine deaths and one life, finally came back alive, not only did not get the due reward, but in exchange for a good fight, more than ten people were resentful. As the so-called evil is born on the side of the guts, these more than ten people gathered together and took advantage of the dark and windy night of a month to loot thousands of homes. They cut off the liver and gallbladder of Wan Yuanlin, the head of the Wan family, and inserted it in front of Wan Jianru's spirit card. Even the infant children of Wan Wan were hacked to death with knives. Overnight, more than 80 people up and down the direct line of the ten thousand families were killed, and the large merchants who had lasted for hundreds of years declined.

More than a dozen people looted a large amount of gold, silver and jewelry from Wanjia and went into exile. The government issued an official document to arrest most of the thieves and execute them at the entrance of the vegetable market. But three of them escaped, and have since disappeared and have not been heard from again.

Of these three people, one is surnamed Chen, one is surnamed Qi, and the last one is surnamed Li. The three of them are also the culprits of the cruel murder case of Wanjia.

After they destroyed the Wanjia Manmen, they went to sea with a boat, and arrived at Lingang, which was a barbarian land at that time, relying on the huge wealth looted from the Wanjia, developed rapidly, and under mutual support, rose to become the three major families of Lingang, and the Xie family mansion that moved to Lingang in the early years stood almost shoulder to shoulder.

The Li family communicated the shipping routes between Lingang and the mainland, which greatly promoted cross-strait economic and cultural exchanges. The Chen family reorganized the underground gangsters, opened casinos, brothels, and engaged in shady trading. From a practical point of view, the merits of the Qi family should be the greatest, starting with military and political affairs, the first self-defense regiment of Lingang was formed, and it was not until Lingang returned to the Chinese Empire that the number of this army was canceled.

These three families have made Lingang look new and have contributed to the prosperity of Lingang today. In addition to the transcendent Xie Family Mansion, the pattern of the four major families in Lingang was formed, and it lasted for a hundred years.

No one thought that the three major families of Li, Chen, and Qi, who could be called the kings of the land in Lingang, would have such an unbearable past.

They have broken their oaths, they have been inhuman, and beneath the surface of power is a great blood debt.

After listening to Gu Yue tell all the ins and outs, Li Qing suddenly realized that Gu Yue had betrayed him so many times, and I am afraid that he was also unwilling to take back some of the things back then, and wanted to recover some interest. After all, the betrayal of those people back then also pushed Gumen into the abyss of despair.

If you take the time of the outbreak of the First Longxi War, twenty-three years ago at this node, in the bleak middle of winter, Gumen gave birth to a baby.

At that time, the ancient gate was like a lonely boat in the wind and rain, so the parents named the child Guzhou, which means "lonely boat" at a deeper level, just because among the younger generation of Gumen at that time, he was the only one left.

Due to the marriage of close relatives, Guzhou's physical condition is very poor. Everyone regarded him as the hope of the ancient gate, carefully adjusted his body, and carefully taught, in such an environment, Xiao Guzhou grew up day by day, married a wife at the age of eighteen, and his first son was born when he was twenty years old.

When Gu Zhou was twenty-three years old, the First Longxi War finally broke out. In any way, this is not good news, but for the ancient gate at that time, it was a great thing.

Because this war broke out too suddenly, the Longxi area was quite chaotic for a while. Such a messy situation made all forces dare not act rashly, and the exploration of the Immortal Ancient Mansion was greatly weakened, and the Gu family finally breathed a sigh of relief.