"I understand..."
Shen Le flipped through the documents one by one.
His junior brothers and sisters had worked with exceptional care. For every name found in those notes, poetry collections, and essays, they had cross-referenced the family genealogy, marked the generation name, and estimated the person's age;
Then, based on the events and eras occasionally mentioned within—thank goodness for the sexagenary cycle calendar—they had roughly identified the corresponding year in the Gregorian calendar and arranged everything chronologically;
Finally, they had made a relationship chart, listing every author and every person mentioned in all the materials.
Which ones belonged to the clan, which were outsiders, which were relatives by marriage, which were friends, which were local officials at the time...
By comparing the timeline and relationship chart, Shen Le could roughly tell what had happened without even looking through the photocopies.
But he still went through the original manuscripts page by page, refusing to give up no matter how exhausting and painful they were to read.
Those photocopies were all vertically written, with almost no punctuation. The handwriting was nothing like the modern printed fonts people were used to; some used ancient movable type, some were handwritten, and some were even warped or blurred.
Yet from those words, he could read the grief and fury flowing through their authors' hearts:
Longing for a wife...
Longing for a beloved daughter...
Regretting that one's aged mother had died on the road while fleeing disaster, unable even to be properly buried...
Grieving for brothers left behind in Citong City, who had lost contact and gone without word for so many years—they had likely perished in the flames of war...
The clan ancestral hall had fallen into the hands of bandits...
Citong City had been reclaimed... The ancestral hall was rebuilt, clan members gathered for