The old lady looked at the old man in that portrait and murmured, “The old ancestor’s real name was Meng Sheng, the word Changming, a native of Chang’an, born in the first year of Linde of the Great Tang Dynasty, that is, 664 A.D. Later, after he began to cultivate for longevity, he called himself the Everlasting Jushi and changed his name to Meng Changsheng, Meng Laozu is the honorific name we Jiang family members use for him.”
“Meng Changsheng ……” Ye Chen muttered, not having heard of the name, but he wasn’t too surprised.
The painting itself looked very old already, and the old lady’s family had pa*sed down sixteen hundred years, so it was not so surprising that the person in this painting was an ancient person from the Tang Dynasty.
At this point, the old lady added: “When he was young, Meng had been a high school scholar and was an official in the imperial court, but when he was given the chance to practise, he resigned from his official position and brought his wife and children to this place to concentrate on his practice, but soon after his wife and children arrived here, they pa*sed away one after another due to wind and cold, leaving him alone to continue his practice;”
“Elder Meng practiced here for several decades until the 14th year of Tianbao of the Tang Dynasty, that is, 755 AD, when he temporarily left this place and went down to the mountains to wander.”
Hearing this, Ye Chen said with slight surprise, “755 A.D., at that time, Old Ancestor Meng was already over ninety years old ……”
“Yes.” The old lady replied, “But according to my family’s ancestor’s recollection, when he met Old Ancestor Meng in the 15th year of Tianbao of the Great Tang Dynasty, that is, 756 AD, Old Ancestor Meng was what he looked like in the painting, not at all like an old man who was nearly a hundred years old.”
Ye Chen looked at the painting anew and could not help but marvel in his heart.
The old man in this painting was withered but robust in spirit, combined with the fact that in those days, the life expectancy per capita was only in the fifties, and that an old man in his fifties should look older than an old man in his seventies or eighties nowadays.
So the man in this painting, in the context of that era, would have looked to be in his forties, comparable to a spirited old man in his sixties now.
But the fact that the other person still looked like this when he was in his nineties was proof that he had indeed mastered spiritual qi!
Otherwise, even if he had obtained one or two rejuvenation pills by chance, combined with the background of the time and the life expectancy per capita, it would have been difficult for him to live to such an old age.
Ye Chen then recalled the old lady’s previous self-introduction, so he asked her, “Grandma Jiang, when we met in Mexico, you had said that your ancestors had practiced medicine for generations until the An Shi Rebellion when the lineage of medical skills was broken, did that happen when your family’s ancestors met this Old Grandmother Meng?”
“Yes.” The old lady nodded and said, “In 756 AD, at the height of the An Shi Rebellion, An Lushan occupied Chang’an and started the first year of Shengwu, my family’s ancestor, his parents and grandfather were originally living in Chang’an, his grandfather and father were both imperial doctors, they escaped before An Lushan occupied Chang’an and made their way south, but they encountered rebels in the vicinity here, the rebels killed my ancestor At the critical moment, it was Elder Meng who saved my ancestor from the rebels’ sword by killing him with his sword.
Ye Chen suddenly understood: “So your ancestor survived, but your ancestor’s medical skills were lost, right?”
“Yes.” The old lady nodded slightly and added: “At that time, all the medical texts pa*sed down from the ancestors were in the luggage that came with them, and it was said that there were at least three or five boxes, but at the critical moment, when the ancestor’s father saw that Old Ancestor Meng had killed all the way there, he stuffed a family tree and two Phoenix Bone Vine bracelets into the ancestor’s arms, and then the ancestor’s father used kerosene to set all the medical texts on fire, and since then, the Jiang family’s medical skills were lost ……”