NR | Chapter 40

Looking at that box, I stayed frozen in the same motion, my hand still holding the bag open, for well over half an hour. It got the auntie in the lower bunk keeping her head lifted to stare at me the whole time, probably thinking something was wrong with me.

At first, seeing the jade box sitting intact inside my bag was so unbelievable that I instantly remembered all the terrifying details I’d heard the first time Tian Yuqing told me about its origins. But in truth, I had never really taken those things to heart.

In this world, human factors were responsible for at least eighty percent of what happened. I had checked the box myself, and there was definitely nothing wrong with the box itself.

Even if the jade box really was a little weird, after it had passed through my hands so many times, I should have already been dead from some terminal illness. There was no way I could still be alive and kicking like this.

Thinking of that, I swallowed hard and carefully felt through my organs. Mm, no back pain, no waist ache. Aside from the drinks I’d had earlier making me want to run to the bathroom, I was so healthy I could even go play ball all night.

Since the jade box couldn’t grow legs and run off on its own, that left only the human factor. The answer was obvious, either Tian Yuqing hadn’t taken the box away, or someone had secretly returned it to me.

That morning, I had watched Tian Yuqing take it. After that, he checked out and left, and I never saw him again. I could basically rule out the possibility that he had stuffed the jade box back into my bag when I wasn’t looking. And from the moment I got on the bus until now, my backpack had only been out of my sight for those more than ten minutes just now.

Someone in the carriage had secretly opened my bag and put the wrapped jade box back in, exactly as it had been.

I did my best to keep my movements natural, took out a few cookies, then zipped the bag back up again. After that I set it at the foot of the bed and lay back halfway on the bunk to start flipping through a magazine.

Using the magazine as cover, I began observing everyone’s movements in the carriage. Since I’d chosen the upper bunk, I could only make out the three people across from me. I’ll refer to them here as A, B, and C.

A was the person on the upper bunk opposite me, a high school student. Ever since he got on the bus, he’d had headphones on, listening to an MP3 player. He couldn’t even be bothered to take off his clothes, and he’d casually tossed his socks over the guardrail. He ignored everyone. I personally preferred a tidier environment, so my first impression of him really wasn’t good.

B was an old man with white hair. He slept in the middle bunk, and right now he was slurping down an instant noodle cup at the little folding table below, with a braised egg in the noodles. He didn’t seem to give me much of a look, or rather, he didn’t seem to care about me much at all.

At that moment, I glanced at C from the corner of my eye. He was actually the one who had left the deepest impression on me, because he looked like a soldier. The aura of someone who had been in the army was very different from that of ordinary people, so when I first entered this compartment, I’d even felt a little relieved. Having a soldier around probably meant this car was much safer than the others.

But now, I only needed one look, and every hair on my body instantly stood on end. C was also staring straight at me. Unlike me, who was being so careful, he was looking at me openly, with no attempt at all to hide his gaze.

I immediately lost my appetite for the cookies. I turned over, pulled the blanket over my head, and pretended to sleep. But a chill kept creeping up my back, and I felt as if that scalp-prickling stare was still fixed on me. I thought, if this guy wanted to force me into doing something, wouldn’t that be easy as anything?

I knew I definitely couldn’t sleep anymore. I had a feeling something would happen tonight.

If I had something to do, that would still be manageable, but for me, staying awake while pretending to sleep was extremely difficult. At first, I kept pinching my thigh hard. That trick worked a little in the beginning, but gradually it stopped working, because by the second half of the night, my consciousness had grown fuzzy. I couldn’t even remember that I was supposed to be pinching my thigh.

I was half asleep and half awake when I suddenly heard rustling noises under the bed. I snapped fully awake on instinct. Listening carefully, I realized someone was actually crawling up toward my bunk!

The people below were snoring like thunder, but this person was still climbing very slowly.

I was afraid he was after my bag, so I stretched one leg straight out under the blanket to block my backpack, while the other leg curled slightly as I secretly gathered strength. No matter who came up here in a moment, whether it was some masked brute or a mouse-eyed thief, this young master’s kick would at least leave him seeing stars for a while.

I kept my head under the blanket, only lifting a small slit to look outside. Less than two minutes later, a head peeked up from below the ladder. The person immediately reached out, trying to grab the backpack by my feet.

I acted without thinking and kicked straight toward his face. I’d put too much force into that kick, and who knew this thief had no awareness of defense at all. His head slammed with a loud thud into the carriage door, producing a dull sound like bone crashing into iron.

Then I heard him yelp, and he rolled straight off the ladder. The commotion was no small thing. It startled the few people snoring in the lower bunks so badly that their snores cut off abruptly. At that point, I couldn’t keep pretending either. I grabbed my bag and poked my head out from the upper bunk to look.

It was actually that old man who’d been slurping the instant noodles?!

That result was enough to surprise me. The old man was still lying on the floor, crying out in pain. I immediately got down from the bed, and saw the soldier across from me sit up at once. He grabbed the old man by the back collar and hauled him outside.

What the hell was going on? I hopped down from the bunk in a few steps, slung my bag over my shoulder, and followed them out of the compartment. The sleeper cars at night were quiet everywhere, apart from the occasional cries of little kids and the thunderous snoring of adults coming from some of the carriages.

The soldier dragged the old man a long way forward. When they reached the dining car, he pressed the man down onto a seat with one hand. The old man was so scared by him that he kept waving both hands. “Misunderstanding, misunderstanding, don’t hit me, please. It’s all a misunderstanding!”

“A misunderstanding? Then what were you doing crawling into someone else’s bunk in the middle of the night, trying to steal something?” the soldier said.

That scene completely muddled my mind. I stood in the aisle scratching my head, thinking, no, shouldn’t that be my line? How did he steal it all from me?

The old man rubbed the swollen lump on his forehead. Looking sly and seasoned, he gave a chuckle. “No, I wouldn’t dare do such a foolish thing. This afternoon I saw someone stuff something into this young brother’s bag, and the thing looked pretty familiar to me, so I thought I’d come take a closer look, hehe.”

“That’s not stealing? Even now you’re still joking around! Believe it or not, I’ll go get the train police right now!” Seeing his attitude, the soldier got angry.

The old man had plenty of underworld swagger. Narrowing his eyes, he waved a hand and said, “No need to scare me. I’m already this old, what haven’t I seen? Tonight, the only people who saw me were the two of you, and I didn’t get my hands on anything. At most, it’s attempted theft. Look at me, I’m already this old. Who would make things difficult for a poor old man?”

“You’re relying on your age to bully people!”

“You still have a lot to learn, young man. Don’t go around threatening people so casually.”

It looked to me like the soldier had basically been taken in hand by this old man, so I couldn’t help wanting to knock some of that arrogance out of him. I asked, “How much do you know about this?”

The soldier was clearly dumbfounded by my question. He didn’t know what I was asking, but in fact I wasn’t asking him.

This old man had no good intentions when he climbed into my bunk in the dead of night and tried to steal the box. That meant he was one of the insiders, and information about the Nine-Ring Jade Box had almost been monopolized by Wu Shi in this line of work.

If the old man knew this thing, then either his status was on the same level as Wu Yili, or he’d worked with Wu Shi before. From the way he looked, he didn’t seem like an official member of the team.

I concluded decisively that he probably worked in some side path or shady trade, and that Wu Shi had very likely done business with him often before, trusting him enough that he could know a little about the jade box.

The moment I said that, I saw the old man’s face change at once. He immediately started stammering as he asked back, “Young man, are you still not fully awake? I don’t know anything. I was just curious about what that person put in your bag this afternoon, so I wanted to take a look, that’s all.”

I paid no attention to his explanation. Walking around the table, I sat down across from him and tapped my fingers on the tabletop in a steady rhythm. I’d secretly learned this move from Tian Yuqing before. He liked doing this when he negotiated, and I had once experienced how formidable it was. Paired with an inscrutable expression, speaking softly enough, it was extremely intimidating.

I wanted this old man to be led completely by my pace, so I raised my eyes to him, then without warning slammed the bag on my shoulder onto the table, startling him so badly that his whole body jerked.

“You know what was in my bag. You had that person stuff it into my bag,” I said.

The old man went pale. “No! I don’t know him! I really don’t know him! He was wearing a baseball cap, I couldn’t even see his face clearly. How did this become something I ordered? Young master, this has nothing to do with me at all!”

Good, he’d taken the bait.

Listening to his explanation, I laughed inwardly.