NR | Chapter 41

As soon as I saw him and tossed the bag straight onto the table, the old man panicked. The lies he had been spinning started to fall apart, his words turning into a jumble. I quickly saw from his attitude that he seemed to fear this box, but was also very curious about it.

After thinking it over, I pushed the bag forward a little. “Didn’t you want to see it? Then take a look now.”

The old man froze. He subconsciously reached for the zipper on the backpack, then pulled his hand back the very next second. He gave me a grin. “Young man, you don’t actually know much about where this thing came from either, do you? What you just said was all to test me, wasn’t it?”

I didn’t know how he had suddenly figured that out, but I immediately realized this old man’s identity was far from simple. What I had just said was pretty misleading. If he only knew a little, he definitely wouldn’t have spotted the flaw so quickly.

Seeing that, I couldn’t be bothered to keep acting anymore. I yanked the backpack over. “Whether you look or not, suit yourself.”

The old man immediately put on that ingratiating smile again. His face changed faster than flipping a book. He grabbed me. “Hey, hey, hey, don’t be mad. I’ll look, I’ll look, all right? Young people, being impatient isn’t a good habit.”

I let go of the backpack. I watched him unzip it and start feeling around inside with trembling hands, carefully lifting out the jade box wrapped in soft cloth. Then he peeled the cloth back layer by layer, muttering under his breath. The soldier came over and sat down beside me, giving me a strange look.

The old man put on his reading glasses and stared at the jade box. He looked and looked, and then all of a sudden he started crying. That completely confused me.

The soldier asked, “You old fraud, you’re making it sound like we’re bullying you. What are you crying for? Is this thing really that good?”

“Ah, you don’t understand.” The old man immediately turned solemn. “The last time I saw this thing, it was in a photograph. At first I even doubted whether it was real. I have an old friend who has been fixated on it for many years. I never thought that in my lifetime I would actually be able to hold it in my hands and see it again so clearly.”

I immediately caught the key point in his words. I leaned forward, and while the old man was wiping his reading glasses, I snatched the box from his hands, set it on the table, and wrapped it back up in the soft cloth under the table.

“Hey! No, wait,” the old man reacted too slowly. He grabbed at empty air and looked frustrated. “Name your price. I’ll buy this box.”

I told him, “This box used to be mine. Since it has now been returned to me, then it’s still mine. It’s something handed down in our family, not for sale.”

The old man exploded at that. I didn’t even know which line had offended him, but he slammed the table hard and stood up from his seat, cursing,

“You’re not that old, from the look of you, so how can you lie through your teeth without even drafting it first! At first I was even thinking that once I confirmed what this box was, I’d find a way to talk proper business with you. But now I see it, and I spit on it! You’ve been cheating and swindling people since you were little, and now you’re saying this box belongs to your family? Aren’t you afraid the heavens are watching and you’ll get what you deserve the moment you step outside?!”

After he yelled at me like that, my thoughts actually became a lot clearer. This old man seemed utterly certain that this box could never be a family heirloom of mine, but I really had taken it out of my maternal grandfather’s cabinet. In my hands, it really did count as half an heirloom. It couldn’t be that my grandfather had taken something that belonged to someone else, could it?

My grandfather definitely wasn’t that kind of person.

“You know where this thing came from?” I asked.

The old man gave a cold snort. “You little brat, I can’t be bothered with you. I don’t care whether the person who put the box in your bag was your accomplice or not. I’m telling you now, this thing is extremely valuable. It concerns the lives of many people! Do you understand?”

I wasn’t planning to keep tangling with him in riddles. I realized that what he knew and what I knew weren’t even on the same level. Since we were going to talk openly anyway, and the little I knew wasn’t worth much, it was better for me to be upfront first.

I placed the box back on the table and changed my way of addressing him. “I don’t know which line I crossed just now to offend you. Let me apologize first. I’m a complete outsider, and I’m really not familiar with some of the things in this line of work. But this box really is a family relic.”

“A relic? I don’t believe your ancestors had that much power. Which line of work are you from? Give me a name and let’s hear it.” Seeing me lower my posture, the old man’s air of seniority immediately swelled up. He smoothed down his changshan, crossed one leg over the other, and wore a look of utter contempt.

In an instant, the soldier beside me got angry too. “Hey! You old fraud, you’re still trying to act big in here!”

I was afraid he’d punch the old man and leave him half-dead. Then we wouldn’t get anything out of him, and I’d also be out the medical bill for nothing, so I hurriedly stopped him and kept bowing my fists at him. “Hero, hero, thank you very much for what you did just now. You don’t need to worry about what happens next, just sit tight.”

I didn’t wait for his reply before turning back to the old man. It seemed my grandfather had been quite famous in the underworld as well. Looking at the old man’s age, when he was young, it should have been during the period when my grandfather was making the biggest name for himself in the Central Plains. If I said the name and he didn’t recognize it, then I really had no one to blame but myself.

“My ancestral home is Queshan, Henan. My surname is Gan. My maternal grandfather used to be called the ‘Eight-Foot Dragon.’ I don’t know whether you’ve heard of him. I also don’t know how people on the road usually introduce themselves. I’m just speaking plainly, so please don’t take offense.” I thought I sounded pretty sincere.

“Who?! What’s your surname?” The old man suddenly straightened up.

I was actually a little afraid of these mysterious, twitchy people, so I shrank my neck back a bit. “My surname is Gan. My maternal grandfather was Gan Rukui. He passed away a few years ago. You should know him, right?”

The old man looked as if he’d suddenly seen the light. All the muscles in his body relaxed at once. One hand braced on the table, his eyes abruptly lost focus. From the look of it, he definitely knew him, and maybe they had been quite close in the past.

So I waited quietly for two minutes before hearing the old man rub the top of his head, as if trying to remember something. Only then did the light return to his eyes. After that he began to examine me carefully, murmuring,

“No wonder, no wonder I always felt you looked familiar. You’re exactly the spitting image of Gan Rukui when he was young, down to that damn mule-like temper!”

I gave an awkward smile. Could he not say something nicer? Like how I looked just as handsome as my grandfather when he was young? Why didn’t he say that?

Then he asked me again, this time in a lower voice: “When did Rukui pass?”

I had drifted off and suddenly didn’t know how to answer.

The old man immediately explained, “I don’t mean anything else. To tell you the truth, I was very close with your grandfather when we were young. I took this train because I was going to make a trip to Henan. I never expected your grandfather to go first. After all these years, I’ve been all alone and cut off from everyone here, and when Rukui died, no one even sent me word.”

The atmosphere in the carriage changed in an instant, from catching a thief to mutual suspicion, then from mutual suspicion to this large-scale, moving annual reunion of old friends. The switch was so fast that I couldn’t quite react. It just felt weird, indescribably weird.

I had casually bought a ticket at the station, got on the train, and someone secretly stuffed the Nine-Ring Jade Box into my bag. I had waited for the rabbit at its burrow, and sure enough someone came to steal it that very night. I had just happened to kick the thief in the head, and this thief just happened to be my grandfather’s old acquaintance?

Wasn’t that a little too much of a coincidence?

The whole thing felt to me like there was a single thread stringing everything together. Each event looked completely unrelated, but if I thought about it carefully, each one had its own doubts. And the only thing connecting all these messy threads was the Nine-Ring Jade Box in my hands.

I had come to Gansu because of this box, and because of this box I had stayed awake tonight. This old man, too, only had this conversation with me because of this box.

Almost everyone had come for the Nine-Ring Jade Box. Tian Yuqing said that once the box appeared, it would stir up turmoil in the underworld. Was the reason my grandfather sealed this box in a drawer back then also because of that?