NR | Chapter 46

After the police finished asking their questions and took their statements, they left. I sat in the chair and watched Xiao Wu direct people to clean up the ledgers scattered all over the floor, my mind still a little dazed.

“Young Master, stop thinking about it. It had to be that bastard Hou Jinshan! Didn’t you say he was already trying to steal our cashbox on the train? The second that young master of the Lu family left, our shop got robbed. If it wasn’t him, who else could it be?!” Xiao Wu crouched on the floor and gathered the papers together.

My gaze drifted involuntarily toward the back room. From where I was sitting, the wall blocked the view, so I actually couldn’t see the table. The police had checked the whole room and said there was a small window, four meters off the ground, opened in the second entrance hall. It had been pried open, and a long scratch had been left on the window by some blade.

The police said the thief probably climbed up from outside along the pipe to the window, pried it open, landed on the porcelain rack below, then climbed down using the rosewood chair. The window he had pried open happened to be directly opposite my current seat. After stealing the stuff, he climbed back out the same way. Last night’s snow had been heavy, and all the footprints had been buried.

I hadn’t closed the back room door before I went to sleep yesterday, so by normal logic, the moment that thief jumped down, he would have been able to see the jade casket sitting on the table in the back room.

People in this line of work are all very particular. If they can achieve their goal directly, they absolutely won’t do anything extra. Looking at the mess all over the floor, I couldn’t help wondering, was this thief some temporary worker Hou Jinshan had found, someone who didn’t know the rules, who not only took the casket but also had to turn the whole shop upside down from top to bottom?

That was far too sloppy, but if I really had to say, it wasn’t impossible. After all, so many years had passed. Finding some temporary petty thieves, people who did their work dirty and left things half-done, was hardly unusual.

Thinking of that, I started regretting it. The shop downstairs had been turned over like this, and I hadn’t heard a single sound, sleeping like a dead pig. If the thief Hou Jinshan sent had even a little bit of revenge in mind, I’d definitely be missing something now.

“Young Master, if you didn’t sleep well, go upstairs and sleep a bit more. You look tired. Don’t worry about the shop, I’m keeping an eye on it,” Xiao Wu said to me.

I sighed and stood up from the chair. Yesterday had already been a mess, and then this happened this morning, so now my head was pounding. But as I went upstairs, I was still thinking that, if I looked at it from another angle, losing the jade casket might not necessarily be a bad thing for me.

I had already seen through it. All these troubles and messes followed the casket. Wherever the casket appeared, trouble followed. Now that the casket had fallen into Hou Jinshan’s hands, news of it definitely wouldn’t stay hidden. Not to mention the people of Wushu, and maybe even everyone in the outside eight trades would go “hunt him down.”

Still, I couldn’t help finding it strange. The thief last night should have started prying the window open around midnight. I usually sleep very soundly, but it shouldn’t have been possible for me to hear absolutely nothing. Somehow I’d slept too dead.

I returned to my room, closed the door, and after taking off my coat and sitting on the bed, I suddenly saw a metal dish in the corner behind the bedside table. It was very small and very crude, and covered in incense ash. I walked over, crouched down, and touched it. It was still warm, so it must have burned out not long ago.

Only Fourth Brother and the front hall burned incense here. I didn’t like scenting the room with incense. I preferred the natural smell of wood in the house, so every time I came to stay, the assistants would open the windows in my room to air it out. That was something basically everyone under Fourth Brother knew.

So who lit this incense?

I picked up the dish and held it under my nose. It carried a very unfamiliar smell. I had always trusted the shop assistants, and partly because I didn’t really keep anything especially valuable here, I usually didn’t even lock my bedroom door. That also made it convenient for the assistants to come in and open the windows for me.

Thinking of that, I put down the iron dish, stood up, turned around, opened the door, and called Xiao Wu upstairs while he was working. He moved very quickly, dropped the rag, and ran up.

I grabbed him and pulled him into the room. “Who came into my room yesterday? Do you remember?”

Xiao Wu froze and scratched his head. “Who could remember that clearly? Yesterday morning Hou Jinshan sent people to make trouble, and with everything this chaotic, I was just afraid they’d smash the shop. How could I have had the time to pay attention to that? What’s wrong, Young Master? Why are you asking about this all of a sudden?”

I thought about it, then smiled and said it was nothing. Then I coaxed and tricked him back out the door.

After locking the door again, I leaned against the bedside table and looked down at the iron dish. After thinking for a moment, I crouched and used my hand to straighten it, putting it back exactly where it had originally been, as if no one had ever touched it.

These recent days of constant fear and tension had taught me a lot. One of those things was that when you run into something strange, don’t reveal your real thoughts too easily. Don’t casually tell others your guesses. It’s best to act like nothing happened, so the other side will be more likely to make their next move.

I slipped under the blanket, closed my eyes to rest, and silently sorted through the chain of events in my head. I wasn’t sure whether my heavy sleep last night had anything to do with that incense. If Lu Ayao were still here, he was broad-minded and well-informed enough that I could still discuss it with him and ask for his opinion. But he wasn’t here now, so I had to learn to solve problems myself.

Assuming this really was a sleep incense, then the iron dish could only have been placed by someone in the shop. That would mean someone in Fourth Brother’s shop had already been bought off by Hou Jinshan. This “inside ghost” took advantage of my inattention, put the incense in my room, and after making sure I was sound asleep, passed word to the thief outside so he could come steal the casket.

Even if I eventually found the incense, it would be useless. This inside-outside cooperation was nearly flawless.

Then there was one strange point.

How could this person be sure that Lu Ayao would definitely return to Nanjing yesterday? If Lu Ayao had not come back to Nanjing, and instead stayed in the guest room downstairs, then even if I were knocked out by the sleep incense, Lu Ayao slept lightly and was suspicious by nature. The thief would absolutely never have been able to enter the shop.

Too many possibilities lined up one after another in my head. In the end, thinking and thinking, I didn’t know when I fell asleep.

When I woke again, it was seven in the evening. The snow outside had already stopped, so I put on my clothes, took some money, and prepared to go buy something to eat from the shops at the street corner. After leaving the shop, I wrapped myself up tight and walked along the roadside.

I went into a beef noodle shop and told the owner my order before sitting down to wait. Bored, I stared blankly at the crowd passing by outside.

Then my gaze was drawn to a person turning out of the alley across the street. They were bundled up very tightly from head to toe, and the way they walked was a little different from an ordinary person’s. They were fast too.

I’d been living here for a few months, so I was fairly familiar with the surrounding area. The alleys around here were usually the back entrances of these shopfront landlords, but most people chose to go through the front door. The ones who came out of the alley were usually either drunkards looking for somewhere to vomit or couples in the heat of passion looking for a thrill.

After I finished thinking that through, the person slipped into the crowd and disappeared completely. They gave me a very strange feeling, but I also subconsciously felt like my nerves had been too sensitive these past few days, so I shook my head and tossed those conspiracy theories out of my mind.

“Customer, your noodles.”

The waiter brought me a bowl of noodles. I hadn’t eaten anything all day, and I was starving. I splashed on some vinegar and devoured more than half the bowl. But just as I was about to stand up and get the spoon to drink the soup, a huge bang suddenly exploded beside my ear.

That muffled thud scared me so badly I sat right back down in the chair. I froze, because just now I’d clearly seen something pitch-black fall from the opposite side of the street in midair. It smashed hard into the ground, shaking my bowl so violently it trembled.

“What happened? What happened?” The staff in the shops along the street all started going over to inspect the black thing one after another.

It was very dark outside, but from my position I could still see the outline of that thing very clearly. Less than fifty meters from me was a person, a person who had jumped from the rooftop and smashed their head to pieces.

The spoon in my hand fell to the ground. My whole body started trembling uncontrollably, and my breathing turned shallow and rapid. I knew the place where this person fell was exactly aligned with the alley entrance the strange man had just left. Maybe the two had nothing to do with each other, or maybe they did.

I was already unable to think. I stood up and walked toward the other side. A lot of people had gathered there, most of them calling 110 and 120. I forced my legs forward with difficulty and took one look, and my stomach turned violently.

This gruesome death was completely different from the feeling those corpses in the grave had given me. This person had still been alive ten minutes ago, and even the blood that had run into the sewer was still giving off heat.

The cold wind cut across my face like a knife. I turned and walked back. I didn’t even have time to brush the snow off my body before Xiao Wu, who was just clearing the thin layer of ice in front of the shop, saw me return and hurried over.

“Young Master, you’re back. What was that noise just now? Somebody set off firecrackers?” Xiao Wu put down his things and followed me into the shop. Very quickly, he noticed something was wrong with me and came over to support me. “Young Master, why is your face so pale? Are you okay?”

He poured me some hot water. After I drank it, I finally felt a little warmth in my body, and my mind was no longer completely blank. It felt like my soul had finally come back.

I steadied my breathing and answered him, “Someone jumped off a building. Right across from where I was eating.”

Xiao Wu sucked in a sharp breath, then turned and filled the teacup again to hand to me. “That really is pretty unlucky, huh. But people are under a lot of pressure these days. Young Master, don’t be too scared, and don’t overthink it. Just sit down and rest a bit, and you’ll be fine.”

I drank tea and asked him, “You’re not afraid of dead people?”

Xiao Wu grinned. “I’ve followed our boss out so many times, moving graves, digging up tombs, all kinds of dead people, we’ve basically seen them all. So I don’t react all that much to this sort of thing.”

I nodded and didn’t ask any further. By the time I’d finished my third cup of hot tea, Xiao Wu suddenly slapped his forehead. “Ah! I just remembered something. I need to tell you, Young Master. The shop assistant who sweeps the floor, the one called Ayun, had some urgent matter at home and had to go back for a while. He asked me to report it to you.”

I seemed to realize something and immediately asked, “Has he left already?”

Xiao Wu looked around. “He should’ve left already, right? He ought to have gone back at noon. His family’s in Guangxi, and this morning he looked pretty anxious. At that hour you were still asleep, so I couldn’t wake you. We’re all friends here, so I just told him to hurry back and take care of his business.”

As soon as he finished speaking, a shop assistant outside came running over, brushing snow off his body. “Young Master, I don’t know who sent this to you, but it was just stuffed in our mailbox.”

He handed me a thin file envelope. On it, only my name as the recipient had been written. The address was accurate down to the shop’s street number, and there was no writing in any of the blank spaces that should have been filled out on the envelope. I took it and felt it. The things inside were very thin, probably only two or three pages.

But I hadn’t asked anyone to send me anything.

My heart started muttering uneasily. I stood up, lifted the beaded curtain of the second entrance hall, and went to the back room to look for a paper knife. But just as I pulled open the drawer, I saw a square object wrapped completely and neatly in soft cloth resting quietly inside.

I had actually encountered something like this before, but this time my whole body still gave a jolt. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, adjusted my state, then calmly picked the object up with one hand and unwrapped it.

As expected, it was the Nine-Ring Jade Casket that had been stolen earlier. Someone had returned it to me exactly as it was.

I wiped my eyes with my hand and supported myself against the edge of the table, calming down for more than ten minutes. Then my gaze moved to the file envelope in my hand, while sweat slowly dripped from my temples.

“Young Master, are you okay? Was the delivery sent to the wrong place? If it was, I can have the post office send it back for him,” Xiao Wu called from outside.

I immediately put down the envelope and the paper knife in my hand, wiped the sweat off, and walked to the back room door. I smiled at him and said, “I’m fine. I remembered, this was sent to me by a classmate. Get back to work. I want to read for a while by myself.”

Xiao Wu took me at my word, answered with an “oh,” and went off to greet customers.

I immediately and quickly closed the windows and doors, and I drew the curtains as well. I moved the chair aside and sat down, picked up the paper knife, and began to slowly cut open the sealed edge of the file envelope bit by bit.