Qin Yanan and Ye Sijin (3-in-1)

Aside from girls in love, fairies who always think they're goddesses, there are also argumentative people who say things like, "If your opinion is different from mine, you're wrong, you're no good, you're trash." Normal people can accurately grasp the other person's main point in a conversation.

Undoubtedly, Qin Peng's key point was "using their status as husband and wife as a cover."

Anyone with even a slight interest in history and politics knows that Qin Peng and Ye Sijin were husband and wife, and Liu Chang'an was no exception. Liu Chang'an was naturally aware of this relationship, but Qin Peng emphasized that he used this identity as a "cover" to carry out his mission.

If it's something ordinary, there's no need to emphasize it, unless there's something else going on behind the scenes.

"Back then, Sister Mei drugged me and Sister Jin, wanting us to have sex, but who knew that by some twist of fate, it would end up being you and Sister Jin..."

"This isn't something we'd discuss back then," Liu Chang'an interrupted Qin Peng's reminiscence.

Qin Peng laughed. In fact, for the elderly, memories after taking life and death lightly are not particularly painful, but rather quite interesting. Especially seeing his elder brother, whom he regarded as a father and had once given him his advice, looking embarrassed and awkward, can satisfy the mischievous mentality of the elderly.

Many old men enjoy playing pranks on people.

Old men who enjoy playing pranks usually have a good attitude. They are rarely the bad guys who grow old. Old men who were hooligans when they were young will likely adopt the attitude of an elder who takes advantage of their age.

"Back in the day, Mei-jie was renowned for her prowess in the Jinling -Shanghai area. Even the most popular young women in Shanghai considered her the eldest daughter-in-law of the Ye Family. Little did they know that her greatest mistake was sending her fiancé to the bed of her most feared rival." Qin Peng laughed heartily. "Or perhaps that's why she hid? No wonder she pushed Su Xiaocui forward."

"Even if she hides, it has nothing to do with this. Nothing happened between Jin'er and me. Do you think I'm so easily manipulated?"

"Look at you, you're getting angry now."

"No!"

"You look quite young, how come you're so senile? Do you not remember clearly, or do you find it too embarrassing to talk about, so you simply pretend it never happened?"

"If you cause any more trouble, you'll have to stand in the yard and hold a book up your head for two hours!"

Qin Peng laughed again and shook his head. "I'll listen to you, but I really can't last two more hours. You were really ruthless back then. Jin-jie and I were so tiny, and you made us stand in the courtyard as punishment even when it was raining."

Liu Chang'an snapped out of his daze, looked at Qin Peng's aged face, and laughed, "Spare the rod and spoil the child. Kids need a good beating; they won't break easily."

"In short, since that night, Sister Mei felt guilty and generously helped me transport a batch of grain and provisions. From this point of view, what Sister Mei did was meritorious and beneficial to the people and the country." Qin Peng took a sip of tea and said with great relief.

"Let's not talk about her anymore. Su Mei's character, she could be Su Zhao."

"Then can you tell me now where you went back then?" Qin Peng was still bothered by this matter.

"At that time, I felt the war was almost over, and I had no interest in doing anything more to add to the glory." Liu Chang'an paused, thinking of the Pi and Gil Brothers. "That summer, Japan's defeat was inevitable. A woman named Tesla came to me and said that Japan's fierce resistance in Okinawa and other places had caused a lot of Allied casualties. The US military formulated Operation Coronet and Operation Olympic. In order to force Japan to surrender as soon as possible, Truman decided to drop atomic bombs on Japan and asked if I wanted to see what an atomic bomb explosion looked like, so we went."

"Nikola Tesla? No, he died in 1943." Qin Peng thought carefully. Many memories had become blurred into fragments, but some things that seemed to be knowledge or common sense were not easy to forget. Qin Peng naturally knew the famous Tesla. In the early days of the People's Republic of China, when listening to reports from some scholars who had returned from abroad, Qin Peng often heard Tesla's name.

"No, the person who found my Tesla was a woman. We watched the atomic bomb explosion together in Hiroshima. She wanted to go to a closer spot to see it, and she was probably killed in the explosion. Anyway, I haven't seen her since." Liu Chang'an pictured a red-haired woman wearing a black English-style long dress and a striped shirt, with a tall men's top hat.

"Her ability to know about such a confidential operation beforehand suggests she's someone of considerable importance. Truman was only informed of the atomic bomb plan after he took office." Qin Peng's few remaining eyebrows twitched. "For over half a century, Hiroshima has been desperately trying to build itself into a so-called city of peace. I remember back then, Hiroshima was the headquarters of the Japanese Army, the headquarters of the Second General Army of the Japan Home Defense Force, and also the location of a military district. Generation after generation of Japan soldiers, from the Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China, were seen off by the so-called peace-loving, war-opposing citizens of Hiroshima lining the streets. Ha... The saying 'No innocent souls under the atomic bomb' is truly accurate."

In Qin Peng's view, if China had had an atomic bomb to end the war, it would have dropped it on Hiroshima first.

"Later, I traveled around Japan, saw post-war Japan, lived there for a while, and then returned to the mainland."

"After you returned to the mainland, you heard the news of Sister Jin's sacrifice. You must have been blaming me for not taking good care of her, so you went into hiding under an assumed name."

"That's true, and that's not true either." Liu Chang'an was unwilling to discuss it further.

"When Sister Jin and I were on a mission, the villagers who were hiding sacrificed themselves to cover us. Later, we found their child, who was hiding in the villager's earthen kiln. We decided to adopt this child, who became our eldest son. He was a very promising young man who died for his country. Now his son is in South Hunan, and I didn't let him bother you." Qin Peng put down his teacup, squinted his eyes, and then opened them again.

"Are you trying to tell me now that Qin Yanan is Jin'er?" Liu Chang'an wasn't so slow to react; Qin Peng's words already raised many suspicions.

Qin Peng looked up at the oil painting on the wall, where Ye Sijin's image was frozen in time. "You should ask Ya'er herself this question."

"Ask her?" Liu Chang'an recalled Qin Yanan's "sleepwalking" that night.

"I suppose you've already noticed the unusual nature of that coffin." Qin Peng thought for a moment. "Both Ya'er and Sister Jin have a deep connection with that coffin."

"Yes, that coffin seems to be a time portal, connecting Qin Yanan on one end and Jin'er on the other."

"You're not wrong. This coffin even made me doubt things like ghosts and gods." Having believed in Marxism and materialism his whole life, Qin Peng's doubts at this moment weren't about whether ghosts and gods existed, but rather that they did.

"It depends on how you define ghosts and gods. If something is different from ordinary people, then I'm a ghost or god too."

"You are my elder brother, that's all there is to it, nothing more." Qin Peng's eyes were filled with admiration, but their appearances reversed their actual seniority, giving the impression of an elder feeling gratified for a younger generation.

Liu Chang'an patted Qin Peng's head.

Qin Peng was both amused and exasperated, but then burst into laughter. His elder brother was truly an extraordinary person, free and unrestrained. He didn't care that his girlfriend was only eighteen years old, nor did he care that his younger brother in front of him was already a hundred years old. When Qin Peng and Ye Sijin were still children, he always liked to pat their heads to show affection.

"This coffin is also related to the mission Sister Jin was on. Back then, we received information that the Japan had been searching for that coffin ever since the First Sino-Japanese War. They used to openly rob graves, searching between majestic mountains, rivers, lakes, and seas, wanting to turn the entire Central Plains upside down. Especially when the invasion of China was in full swing, their search became even more urgent and frantic... Although Sister Jin didn't know the exact location of the coffin, she had already found clues about the three Japan she was tracking," Qin Peng continued.

"It seems quite a few people know about this coffin. I guess I'm just ignorant," Liu Chang'an said, not particularly surprised. This world may seem small to modern people, but a hundred years ago, even with many high-speed means of transportation, it wasn't easy to conveniently and instantly learn about what was happening around the world.

The real psychological factor that makes the world seem small comes from the internet; to learn about things, the internet is countless times faster than the fastest mode of transportation.

"After Sister Jin's sacrifice, these three Japan no longer had time to search for the coffin based on the clues. However, they did not return to the army but chose to hide in the local mountains. After liberation, they did not leave the mountains until the 1970s. Due to the international situation at the time, we chose not to conduct a war crimes trial on them, and they were taken back by the Japan." Qin Peng said calmly. Sometimes, the attitude shown by this country is really too friendly. However, there are not many nations and countries in the world that can match this friendliness and magnanimity, so it seems somewhat inappropriate and rigid.

"But in the end, we still managed to get the exact address of Jin'er's sacrifice from them, right?" What Qin Peng said wasn't new; even Liu Chang'an knew it, because these things had already been disclosed.

"Yes, one of those three Japan wrote an autobiography, 'Never Surrender - My Thirty-Year War.' It was from that we learned that it was the three of them who buried Sister Jin alive." Qin Peng's fingers trembled slightly as he pointed to Ye Sijin's portrait on the wall. "Based on various clues, I finally found her true resting place and learned her true whereabouts."

"The coffin is near where she is." Liu Chang'an narrowed his eyes. So many years have passed, and neither Qin Peng nor Liu Chang'an, as Ye Sijin's closest people, could pursue anything anymore. When talking about what happened back then, their anger was still there, but Liu Chang'an grasped the most important thing. Compared to anger, the fact that Ye Sijin's fate had been rewritten was obviously more important.

Qin Peng nodded.

"That coffin saved her. So what you found there wasn't just a coffin, but also Ye Sijin... She lost her memory and became Qin Yanan?" Liu Chang'an tried to make a reasonable deduction, but even this deduction was hard for him to believe. "But Qin Yanan knew Zhu Juntang since childhood, and Qin Yanan is a child who grew up normally..."

Qin Peng neither confirmed nor denied Liu Chang'an's speculation, but simply said to himself, "I went there myself and dug up the whole area, but I only found this coffin. At the time, I thought the Japan devils were lying to me, but it wasn't until I touched the coffin that I was certain that Sister Jin was inside it."

"When you encountered the coffin, you witnessed some scenes, didn't you?" Liu Chang'an didn't mention that the coffin clearly contained Shangguan Dandan, and the various situations caused by this magical coffin couldn't be understood through common sense.

Qin Peng nodded, but didn't say what he had seen.

"So is Ye Sijin still in the coffin?" Liu Chang'an opened the coffin, which contained a young girl who had been reading online novels all night. However, it wouldn't be surprising if there was still room to fit another person.

His question lacked any rigorous logical reasoning; it was just a casual inquiry.

"Of course he's gone." Qin Peng was still looking at Ye Sijin in the oil painting. "I transported the coffin back to my hometown and studied it, but we couldn't figure it out. Nobody could determine the exact age of the coffin. Then we thought that since the Japan had been searching for this, maybe they had some clues... but those three Japan suddenly died."

"If three people died suddenly together, I would have thought you did it if you hadn't told me." Liu Chang'an remained calm. There was no need to be impatient now; Qin Peng would eventually reveal Ye Sijin's situation and whereabouts.

"These three Japan certainly weren't the masterminds behind their scheme since the First Sino-Japanese War. As for why they went to such lengths to search for this coffin back then, the circumstances surrounding the war in Japan made it impossible to investigate. I've had people investigating until now, but there have been no results." Qin Peng didn't seem too concerned. "Until 1992, on Sister Jin's birthday, I wanted to come and pay my respects. When I arrived at the room where the coffin was kept, I saw an infant wrapped in silk lying on top of it."

Sometimes, no matter how long you live, you'll still feel the endless wonder of this world.

For example, the Big Bang, the birth of galaxies, the formation of stars, dark matter and dark energy, antimatter, quantum correlations, etc... and this coffin.

"The baby that appeared out of nowhere on the coffin looks more and more like Jin'er when she was little. You know she's most likely Ye Sijin, but you can't be sure, so you had your eldest the Art of War adopt her. Only when she grew up and looked exactly like Jin'er did you realize she was Ye Sijin, and then you sent her to me and insisted on arranging this marriage for me?"

Liu Chang'an had finally understood. Sure enough, the answers to so many questions lay with Qin Peng. If they were in Junsha, how could he have possibly guessed the truth based solely on his own deductions and the subtle clues on Qin Yanan?

Of course, that autistic little girl probably knew something, but expecting her to tell Liu Chang'an on her own initiative? That would require countless bribes, like using a cell phone.

Qin Peng nodded; that basically it.

"Because Ya'er looks just like Sister Jin, no one would suspect that she's adopted. Even my granddaughter-in-law once suspected that I was covering for my eldest the Art of War, and that he actually had an illegitimate daughter with someone else outside the marriage." Qin Peng smiled.

"Actually, there's no direct evidence, but compared to that, the possibility that Qin Yanan isn't Ye Sijin is probably less than one percent." Liu Chang'an didn't doubt that Qin Peng had painstakingly fabricated an absurd story... Many seemingly absurd things simply subvert common sense. It's extremely difficult for many people to accept new things while disregarding so-called common sense, but Liu Chang'an himself is someone who subverts common sense, so he knows very well that common sense isn't entirely reliable.

"My opinion is that she is Sister Jin, but you can no longer treat her as Ye Sijin. You can only treat her as Qin Yanan, because who we treat her as is not as important as who she sees herself as," Qin Peng said.

Liu Chang'an nodded. "It's a bit convoluted."

"The Ye Sijin of the past lives on in our hearts, frozen in time like this painting. But she chose to live in this world as Qin Yanan, even sealing away the memories of her past as Ye Sijin. We should respect that, instead of trying to awaken her and make her realize she is Ye Sijin." Qin Peng tapped his hand on his armrest. "Let's leave it at that, brother. What do you think? I came to you to reach a consensus on this matter."

Liu Chang'an did not immediately answer Qin Peng, although he tended to agree with Qin Peng's opinion. However, he was willing to think about this matter more carefully, because Ye Sijin was definitely not just an old friend who had faded away in his memory.

"A while ago, Qin Yanan was frequently sleepwalking, and in her sleepwalking, she saw Jin'er's image. I think that even though she had accepted living as Qin Yanan in her subconscious, she still had unfulfilled wishes." Liu Chang'an recalled the scene of staying overnight in the suite on the top of Mount Lu that day, "I told her about the history after 1945, and only then did she fulfill her wish, and Qin Yanan never sleepwalked again."

"Are you sure she only fulfilled her wish after learning about history after 1945? Wasn't it because she saw you again that she finally fulfilled her wish?" Qin Peng looked at Liu Chang'an absurdly.

Qin Peng was certain that if he felt he could communicate with his hidden soul through sleepwalking, he would excitedly and passionately tell Ye Sijin about what had happened over the years. That was because he and Ye Sijin were true cousins, comrades-in-arms in the revolution. But his elder brother and his beloved sister were not merely comrades-in-arms... What was he thinking? Had he spent the whole night recounting history? Was he truly naive or feigning ignorance? Could everything really remain the same after Su Mei's unfortunate scheme?

Qin Peng had become indifferent to everything, and he no longer cared about things he couldn't see clearly, except for his own brother, who often made it impossible for him to remain indifferent.

"Perhaps... perhaps a combination of both." Liu Chang'an and Qin Peng had different ideas, of course. He didn't think that in that situation, it was necessary to be inseparable, do things, and say things that focused on emotions like separation and longing.

Having felt each other's presence, and having talked freely before parting, there must be no regrets... It was precisely because Liu Chang'an sensed that Ye Sijin's obsession had dissipated that he dared to guarantee that Qin Yanan wouldn't sleepwalk.

Is it really necessary to force him to stage a dramatic love triangle, a tender and passionate entanglement, an intense and unbearable separation, and finally a heart-wrenching and helpless parting, to be what a normal person would consider a normal performance?

Liu Chang'an was no ordinary man.

Moreover, Liu Chang'an had his own reasons for behaving this way, and what others thought was not important.

"Mr. Qin, you should rest for a while."

The old secretary's voice rang out from outside the door. He couldn't help but feel a little resentful. Even if this young man was a junior whom Old Master Qin cherished, couldn't he be considerate of the old man's health? It was too tiring for an old man of his age to talk for so long.

"The older people get, the more they live like babies lying in a cradle, unable to do anything and needing someone to take care of them," Qin Peng said to Liu Chang'an with some helplessness.

"Let's have dinner together tonight," Liu Chang'an said, glancing at the sky.

"You're not allowed to leave today." Qin Peng suddenly grabbed Liu Chang'an's arm, his expression solemn.

Liu Chang'an chuckled in surprise and nodded. It reminded him of how Qin Peng sometimes didn't go home after school and could sleep in the same bed with his elder brother at night, which made Ye Sijin quite jealous.

The old secretary pushed open the door, came in to help Qin Peng, and still couldn't help but scrutinize Liu Chang'an with a look full of various meanings.

Liu Chang'an, of course, did not notice the meaning in his eyes. Many people who have followed their leaders for many years inevitably become a little spoiled and think that they can make decisions for their leaders in certain matters, which is only human nature.

Dinner was plentiful, but it was clearly prepared for Liu Chang'an alone. Qin Peng's menu was naturally different from that of the guests; everything was served in small portions, and the quantity and variety of food had to be strictly controlled.

Qin Peng seemed to have gotten used to it. Liu Chang'an asked him how long it had been since he had pork lard noodles and mutton head meat, and was met with a stern warning look from the old secretary.

However, Liu Chang'an still poured some wine for Qin Peng. The old secretary tried to stop him, but Qin Peng shouted at him and drove him out.

"Xiao Zhou is actually not bad either."

"Understand."

After dinner, Liu Chang'an and Qin Peng took a walk in the courtyard. Liu Chang'an stayed overnight, and Qin Peng held his hand all night.

Even as people grow old, the childhood admiration for their elder brother remains. Although his brother's appearance is completely different from what it used to be, it does not prevent Qin Peng from feeling close to and admiring his brother as he did in his childhood.

The next morning, as Liu Chang'an prepared to leave, Qin Peng saw him off to the door under the astonished gaze of his old secretary. Liu Chang'an turned back after walking a distance and saw Qin Peng still standing at the door, looking around without moving. When Qin Peng saw him turn back, he immediately waved his hand high, as if afraid that Liu Chang'an would not see him.

Just like back then, only a century has passed.

Liu Chang'an turned his head away; this absolutely could not be the last time he saw Qin Peng.

I highly recommend the novel "Revolution, Goddess!" by the renowned author Cao Shangfei. Just from the title, you can tell it's amazing. It's perfect for readers who enjoy Xia Hua's works; it's a very interesting book.