Chapter One: Intoxicated Memories

It took me nearly a week to recover from the continuous traveling. While taking a shower, I noticed that my skin had darkened, my hair had grown longer, and my body had become much sturdier.

In the past, I certainly would have excitedly taken a picture of myself and uploaded it to my blog, just to make my pot-bellied college classmates green with envy. But now, I felt absolutely nothing.

Apart from eating, drinking, and sleeping, the only thing I did over those few days was read. During that single week, I probably read more books than I had in the previous twenty-five years of my life. I had always believed that if people needed to communicate, they could just talk to each other; why did so many people enjoy reading books? It was such a hassle. Yet, after reading a few books, I discovered that reading was actually more about a feeling.

To be honest, after putting down those historical books, I didn't retain any of the actual content. However, the incomparable sense of ease I felt while flipping through the pages was deeply etched into my heart. While reading, I could set aside all my troubles, follow the words on the page, and let the author take me aimlessly to experience all kinds of sensations.

Days passed so slowly that I almost forgot I would be heading to Xinjiang with my father and the others in just a few days. Once a person relaxed, they lost all desire to ponder complex matters, and I even felt a slight reluctance to visit that "Illusion Snow Forbidden City." But that was simply the kind of person I was: full of thoughts yet incapable of making decisions, constantly hesitating. After many things swirled around in my head, they inevitably morphed into a "broken is broken, let it rot" attitude.

With autumn fast approaching, the weather had cooled down considerably. Around noon that day, I wandered aimlessly into a shopping mall, intending to buy a couple of sets of autumn clothes. I had originally gone just to kill time, but to my surprise, in less than fifteen minutes, I had already gathered everything I needed.

At the entrance of the mall, I caught sight of a familiar back. I was startled for a moment and blurted out, "Peanut."

When the person turned around, I realized I had mistaken him for someone else.

After mumbling a brief apology, I suddenly found it rather bizarre that a part of me actually felt a lingering sense of nostalgia for those harrowing, unfathomable, and utterly unbelievable brushes with life and death.

On the way back, I smiled bitterly at myself, thinking that I truly had no peace in my bones; I had barely lived a few days of comfort before my skin started itching for trouble again.

When I reached the front door of my home, I saw a tall guy wearing a black jacket standing right outside. I had no idea what he was doing there, but he was twisting and turning, keeping his legs tightly squeezed together.

Could he be here to paste small advertisements? I thought to myself, then coughed twice to see how he would react.

The man in the black jacket turned his head, and my eyes widened. I suddenly blundered out, "Fatty Cao! How the hell did you find my place?"

It was the first time I had ever encountered a fat man dressed in such a dashing and striking manner. However, whether he had a stomachache or something else, the moment he saw me, his face lit up with a brief trace of excitement, but immediately afterward, he doubled over at the waist.

"What's wrong with you?"

The fat man's face turned beet red. "Damn it, why are you wasting so much breath? Open the door! I'm about to piss right here in the hallway."

I forced a bitter smile, thinking that even after ten days apart, his signature style of wanting to drop his pants the moment we met hadn't changed at all.

As soon as we got inside and closed the door, the fat man's face turned green.

"Damn it, how do you manage to live in such a huge place all by yourself? Holy crap, where is the bathroom?"

After finally finishing his business, the fat man emerged from the bathroom with an expression of sheer bliss. Plopping down on the sofa, he kicked off his shoes and propped his legs right up on the table in front of him.

I grabbed some beer and snacks from the fridge, tossed them onto the table, gave him a kick, and asked, "How did you know I lived here?"

"Didn't your old man tell me to come find you here? You didn't know?" the fat man said as he popped open a can of beer.

I shook my head and continued, "So did he tell you everything?"

The fat man grinned. "Bulls***, why else would I haul my ass over here..."

As it turned out, the fat man had been hired by my father, who had instructed him to stay with me for a couple of days. Once everything was ready on their end, we would depart directly from Beijing.

The fat man was quite a prominent figure in the underworld, so going into hiding for a few days would also prevent him from being targeted by others.

Sipping his beer, the fat man surveyed his surroundings. "Your place is pretty nice, though there's nothing good to eat or drink around here. Who knows how long we'll have to hole up in this joint."

"If you're not happy, you can go back. Damn it, you came over here without even bringing a change of clothes—don't go stealing my underwear to wear later," I retorted casually.

The fat man didn't mind and suddenly asked me with a mysterious expression, "I heard from someone a few days ago that your old man's crew stirred up some major trouble in Shanxi. How was it? A lot of people die?"

I didn't want to think about that incident right now, always feeling as though I was the one who caused Yao Hui's death, so I brushed the fat man off with a vague remark. Not discouraged at all, the fat man continued, "After I came back from Wenzhou, I didn't stop asking around about those things for you."

I was taken aback. "What things were you asking around about for me?"

"Hey, what else could it be besides the stuff inside the envelope in your pocket? We might not know what those things are, but the underworld isn't necessarily without traces."

Hearing him say this, my interest was immediately piqued. "Then did you find out anything?"

"I put a lot of feelers out, and most of them haven't come back with anything yet, but I do have a lead on that specific pattern."

"Which one?"

"The pattern we saw in that circular corridor beside the skeletal pit. Isn't one printed on your envelope, too?"

After the fat man finished speaking, I immediately walked back into my bedroom and fetched the envelope.

Placing it on the table, the fat man looked at it and said with certainty, "That's it. Exactly this."

"You know where this pattern comes from?"

"I don't know the specifics, but there's an old man in his nineties who came from the south. He said that when he was young, he saw it on the Shanghai Bund. It's been so many years that I was worried his memory might be failing him, but the old man insisted that he would never forget it even in death. This pattern is the mark of a theatrical troupe from Shanghai."

"A theatrical troupe?" I frowned.

The fat man went on, "When I thought about it later, it actually made a lot of sense. The old man said it was a Yue Opera troupe. When I was half-dead inside that ancient tomb, wasn't it Yue Opera that I heard? Coincidentally, this pattern appeared right there on the ground, so there has to be a reason."

I nodded. "By the way, why hasn't that old man forgotten this mark after all these years?"

"Because back in the day, that theatrical troupe was hugely popular in Shanghai for a period of time. The old man was just a little errand boy back then, hanging around the theater grounds all day selling cigarettes and newspapers. There was a top-tier *dan* actor in that troupe named 'Hua Liuyue' who was drop-dead gorgeous, and plenty of people went specifically to see her performance. Later on, some wealthy second-generation heir took a fancy to her. Right after a performance, he knelt on the spot and proposed to Hua Liuyue. Who would have thought that Hua Liuyue would flat-out reject him? The young master flew into a rage on the spot, stepped forward, and tried to lay hands on Hua Liuyue. Nobody in the surrounding crowd dared to stop him. The kid wanted to force Hua Liuyue to agree to him, but she stubbornly refused. Heh. Feeling like he had lost face, the young master let his anger get the better of him. Right in front of hundreds of people in the theater, he tore off Hua Liuyue's theatrical robe. Everyone inside, including that old man, saw Hua Liuyue's body. Since Hua Liuyue was a woman, she naturally covered her chest with her hands and turned her back to the crowd. That's when everyone saw that her entire back was covered in tattoos, and the design was an exact match for their troupe's emblem..."

It is worth noting that Yue Opera is the most representative opera style of the Jiangnan region, emphasizing elegance and decorum, which makes a woman's expressiveness far more suited to this genre. Men were not particularly favored. In fact, the development of Yue Opera was indeed single-handedly sustained by many women. The *dan* roles in Yue Opera were basically cross-dressed and performed by women, among whom Yin Guifang, the founder of the Yin school, was the most famous.

In the old Shanghai Bund before the Liberation, the country was plagued by internal and external troubles. Back then, whether it was theatrical troupes or other wanderers of the martial world, they all possessed a somewhat gang-like nature to a greater or lesser degree.

As long as a theatrical troupe had even a modicum of fame, they would have their own emblem. Those symbols didn't actually serve much practical purpose; they merely acted as a deterrent against people weaker than themselves.

The old man told the fat man that the theatergoers back then had found the troupe's emblem extremely bizarre. Some people had inquired about it, but turned up completely empty-handed. Seeing it once again on Hua Liuyue's back had given everyone a profound shock.

That wealthy young master was also frightened. In those days, anyone who could sport such a tattoo usually had immense influence backing them up, and the fact that Hua Liuyue, an opera singer, wore such a mark made it all the more eccentric.

The crowd chattered endlessly, and the gathering eventually broke up in discord. However, the old man said that on the second night after the incident, that wealthy young master, along with everyone in his household, completely vanished from the Shanghai Bund. They were a prominent family in Shanghai at the time, and the commotion was massive, but the police station investigated thoroughly and found no connection between the matter and the theatrical troupe. Consequently, the people from the troupe continued to perform as usual, except that from that day onward, no one ever laid eyes on Hua Liuyue again.

"What happened to the theatrical troupe afterward?" I asked hurriedly.

The fat man curled his lip. "Not long after, that old man went to Shandong with his family and never returned to Shanghai, so he didn't know either."

I secretly lamented this missed opportunity; this was definitely a crucial clue.

Yet, when I mulled it over carefully in my mind, a suffocating feeling crept over me. It wasn't strange for that pattern to be the mark of a Yue Opera troupe, and even the fat man stumbling upon the ghost of Hua Liuyue in Zhuge Ke's tomb wasn't all that startling. What I couldn't fathom was how it ended up on the letter that Liu Jinsun wrote to my grandfather.

After hashing it out with the fat man for a while, we arrived at a hypothesis.

This pattern might be the emblem of a major gang, and whether it was the Yue Opera troupe where Hua Liuyue belonged, my grandfather, or Liu Jinsun, all of them had ties to this gang. Furthermore, this emblem likely served as a form of proof of identity for these people, much like the Heaven and Earth Society's secret passwords of stepping with the left foot or the right foot.

This was getting interesting. My grandfather and Liu Jinsun were undoubtedly hereditary tomb raiders. A theatrical troupe—could it be that those people were also tomb raiders? They excelled in all areas of morality, intelligence, physical fitness, aesthetics, and labor; not only were their grave-robbing skills top-notch, but they also possessed glorious singing voices capable of sensationalizing the Shanghai Bund, requiring an elevation of artistic standards even while committing crimes?

"This is just a piece of news. If you really want to know, once we come back loaded with wealth this time, I'll accompany you on a trip to Shanghai, just in time to raise the nation's consumption ceiling," the fat man said.

I sighed. "Dead fat man, how do you have so many connections that you managed to dig up such ancient history?"

The fat man smiled mysteriously. "What's so impressive about that? Let me tell you, the information I have in my hands goes far beyond this."

"What else did you find out?" Watching the fat man's fingers tap against the envelope on the table, I instantly grew excited again.

The fat man lit a cigarette, leisurely pulled the photograph out of the envelope, and pointed at the middle-aged man on the far edge who was wearing bizarre gloves.

"It's this person."

I almost leaped off the sofa. "You found out who this person is?"

My heart hammered wildly against my ribs, and I couldn't help fixing my gaze on that figure in the photograph.

Now, my grandfather was dead, and regardless of Liu Jinsun's current situation, it was highly unlikely I would ever see him again. To unlock the hidden information within the photograph, the only remaining possibility was this man wearing the strange gloves.

His appearance in the photograph seemed much younger than my grandfather had been at the time. In other words, there was a chance he was still alive.

The fat man exhaled a puff of smoke and said, "I only heard some gossip by chance; I don't know who this person is. However, someone told me he had seen that kind of glove inside an antique collector's secret room. I couldn't show him the photograph, and I'm not sure if it was the exact same thing, but based on his description of the glove's appearance, it should be pretty close to the one in this photo."

My enthusiasm deflated somewhat. "Pretty close? Tsk. With a blurry photo like this, 'pretty close' means miles away."

"Let me finish," the fat man shot me a look of disdain. "That person told me the owner of that glove is extremely eccentric, hoarding all sorts of bizarre artifacts, and guards his collection more jealously than his own life. The coincidence is that it was a 'six-fingered glove' made for the right hand."

Hearing this, my scalp practically tingled with shock.

Six fingers... how could this get mixed up with that?

I looked back at the photograph, trying to scrutinize the shape of the glove. But firstly, the photo was too blurry, and secondly, the man's gloved right hand was pressed down against the coffin beneath him, forming a pitch-black mass where it was impossible to distinguish the number of fingers.

Knowing what I was pondering, the fat man said, "No need to look, you can't make it out from this. Now that we have this lead, we can at least formulate a hypothesis. Let's assume this person's glove truly has six fingers—think about it, what kind of problem would that solve?"

I pondered it carefully for a moment, then looked at the fat man and said, "It means he might share a blood relation with my old man and the Yuan family."

"Right. Now think again: among your grandfather's generation, was there anyone like that?"

I frowned. "No. Didn't we only just find out about my old man's six fingers recently? As far back as I can remember, I've never heard of Grandfather having any brothers."

Yet, upon second thought, something still felt amiss.

Our Yuan family's grave-robbing syndicate was familial in nature; whether it was the crew currently working under my father or Liu Jinsun, all of them shared blood ties with me. Since this man was in cahoots with my grandfather and Liu Jinsun, even if I wasn't aware of it, I could be certain he must also be a member of the Yuan family. If he also possessed six fingers, his blood relation to my father could be extremely close.

However, this entire deduction rested on the premise that the man's right hand indeed had six fingers.

I immediately asked, "Fatty, do you have a way to get us a look at that glove through your friend?"

The fat man shook his head. "I thought of that early on, but the guy told me the person who hoards that glove is a bigwig whom ordinary people simply can't meet. Besides, if he leaked the other party's information, he might get bumped off, so that fellow refused to tell me no matter what."

"Then what do we do?" Anxiety welled up in me again.

"Don't get discouraged. Having a lead is better than having no lead at all. Now that we have a clue, we're not afraid of lacking an opportunity. Besides, I think it's best we start with that pattern."

"Why?"

"Tsk, why are you so thick-headed? Think about it: if our guesses are all correct, that means your old man kept this person—who also has six fingers—a hidden secret from you. Such a coincidence could only happen within very close family relationships. If you make too big of a fuss, your old man will definitely find out, and by then, you won't be able to keep the secret of holding onto this letter."

The fat man made a great deal of sense. I suspected that my father's prolonged reluctance to disclose his plan might be linked to some bizarre internal affairs within the Yuan family. At the same time, I realized that I was still a very long way from the complete truth.

That evening, I ordered a bunch of food to go from outside and chatted with the fat man while eating. Half-drunk, the fat man brought up Zhuge Xuan again, asking if she had been in touch with me.

I shook my head, thinking that after the incident with Yao Hui, I truly had no idea how to face her.

It would have been fine if he hadn't brought it up, but with the fat man mentioning it, my drunken brain became entirely filled with Zhuge Xuan. Recalling how we sat together by the lake, the feeling of her leaning against my shoulder had been incomparably wonderful. I wondered what she was doing right now; if we were to meet again, would she look at me with murderous fury or be as gentle as she was that night?

Two grown men cooped up in the same room and getting thoroughly sloshed naturally couldn't avoid talking a lot of drunken nonsense.

I asked the fat man, "You... dammit, you're pretty wealthy yourself, but I take you for no good... good-for-nothing. How come I never see any women around you?"

The fat man had already vomited three times, yet he was still drinking.

"Hell, wealthy? Do you even know what being wealthy means? I still have over seventy mouths back home waiting to be fed. Last time... last time you took three hundred thousand from me, you spent it however the hell you wanted, but the money I earn is all... all supposed to be handed over to the family."

"What... go to hell, stop bullshitting me. You fucking have seventy family members?"

"Don't believe it? Let... let me tell you, my family is a prominent household in the village, just... just a bit damn poor. When I really strike... strike it rich, I'm going to bring my dad, my mom, my uncle, and all those folks to live in Beijing, with an apartment for everyone..."

"You still have parents?" I blinked, stunned. "Damn, I thought... thought you were... you know."

"You've had your family backing you up since you were a kid, while I had to start earning money for the family the moment I could walk. Without money... without money, what do you eat? Damn, you second-generation thief, you... you're not worthy to discuss these grand matters with me."

I was practically sprawled on the floor and slumped my head back against the sofa. "You... you fucking still have a mother. I can't even remember what my own mother looks like anymore..."

Whenever I got drunk, I became quite fragile. Thinking of my mother, I couldn't help but wipe away tears.

The fat man wiped one of his socks across my face. "Miss, don't... don't cry, you're a grown man."

I sniffled. "Yuanran, right now... right now I only remember when my mother held my hand and walked down the mountain to the market to buy me candied hawthorns, wuwu... As she walked, she smiled at me, said I was a good boy, and sang to me. She sang..."

Memory is truly a strange thing.

As the images of the past gradually surfaced in my intoxicated mind, my entire body suddenly began to tremble, and every hair on my body stood on end... (To be continued...)

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