At three-thirty, Gu Xianwang borrowed the nursing home’s meeting room to meet Lawyer Zhou.
Lawyer Zhou appeared to be nearing retirement age, with graying hair and a neat suit, carrying a bulging briefcase. The first impression was one of professionalism.
Gu Xianwang had already voiced her doubts over the phone. Her mother was receiving proper care now, and her condition had stabilized. There was no need for the lawyer to rush these so-called “heirlooms” to her at this moment—it made no sense, either emotionally or legally.
Lawyer Zhou had stated their position as well: the matter was important, the procedure was flawless, but it required an in-person explanation.
So she asked, “Lawyer Zhou, what exactly must be handed over to me right now?”
Lawyer Zhou pushed up their glasses, pulled two folders from the briefcase, and extracted several sheets from the top one, passing them over. “This is the transfer agreement your foster mother, Ms. Chen Yi, signed back then. Take a look at this section.”
A transfer agreement from back then? Gu Xianwang frowned and flipped to the end. The signature date clearly read 1994—she would have been only eight years old. In that era, few people even knew to involve a notary for a will. Why would her mother go out of her way to hire a lawyer for a handover scheduled more than a decade later?
And it wasn’t even her mother’s own heirlooms, but “relatives’ heirlooms.”
“If you confirm the signature on this agreement is authentic, we can proceed. First, I need to verify your identification: your ID card and adoption certificate.”
Gu Xianwang had chosen the nursing home for the meeting because all her documents were in her room there. She and Lawyer Zhou went through them one by one, confirming everything was in order. Soon, she had the stack of so-called heirlooms in hand.
The process was straightforward. Gu Xianwang skimmed the dictionary-thick folder, glanced at the few old books set aside, signed the form, and escorted the lawyer out.
~~~
At five in the evening, Gu Xianwang returned to her empty rental apartment. It felt like ages since she’d last closed her eyes. She’d been rushing from one meeting to the next, talking, absorbing information nonstop—until now, with the sunset flooding the west window, when she suddenly froze in a daze.
The apartment sat in a cluster of old self-built houses originally marked for demolition, surrounded by vast stretches of wasteland. Development should have happened ages ago, but for some reason, the project kept getting delayed. The local farmers who could relocate to the city had done so, abandoning their homes to await compensation.
It had once been a neighborhood brimming with everyday life, but Gu Xianwang prized its current desolate quiet.
She’d picked up a carton of milk and a bag of sliced bread from the downstairs shop, but after two bites, it all tasted cloying. Snapping out of it, she realized the place actually had a kitchen. The stove was ancient but still sparked to life. The faucet over the sink was faulty, though—it wouldn’t tighten, dripping steadily.
The drops hit the stainless steel basin with a rhythmic plink-plink. Gu Xianwang blinked. Why had she never noticed before, on all her previous visits? This faucet had been broken the whole time.
In that instant, an immense, ineffable loneliness seized her, like a swirl of warm water churning through her chest.
Right now… she desperately wanted a bowl of noodles.
On impulse, Gu Xianwang pulled out her phone. Since swapping to her old SIM card, she hadn’t bothered logging into WeChat. A full day had slipped by; when she opened it now, the group chat was dead silent, not a single new message.
Evidently, Ye Chan wasn’t entirely heartless.
Gu Xianwang thought it over, then messaged Long Li privately: You there? Something urgent came up. I got back to Suzhou this morning.
She hit send, locked the screen, tossed and turned for a few minutes, then checked again. No reply.
Fine. She sighed and tossed the phone aside.
Everyone had their own burdens to bear. She pressed her lips together, settled on the edge of the bed, and began leafing through the hefty folder.
The first page was a photo of a man and a woman at what looked like a dock. They wore the style of educated youth uniforms from the 1980s—striking outfits. The woman especially stood out; even in black and white, her aloof air was unmistakable.
Tucked behind it was a smaller photo from the same spot. This time, five people: four men and one woman. The same pair stood side by side, clearly the acknowledged couple.
Besides those two photos, the rest consisted mostly of documents, files, and newspaper clippings. The contents were incredibly miscellaneous, like unorganized archaeological records. They included excerpts from Qin and Han historical materials, snippets from countless Republican-era tabloids, and even ticket stubs from train and boat rides decades old tucked among the pages. What drew Gu Xianwang’s attention most was a series of tracking reports on one particular archaeological team.
Though called tracking reports, there were only three clippings in total, and two of them overlapped in content. The earliest was a news piece from the Xinhua Daily at the end of 1982, announcing that the National Archaeological Institute was forming a brand-new marine archaeology team to fill China’s gap in underwater archaeology.
A similar article appeared a few days later in the Capital City Daily, but with far more detail: which leader was heading the initiative, how the Archaeology Institute’s director described the challenges of marine archaeology, and an introduction to the renowned professor leading the team to Hainan, complete with his impressive titles. At the end, the reporter noted that the members who had volunteered for the archaeology team were all quite young, with the small team’s captain, Gu Jinnian, standing out as a promising young talent.
The next clipping dated to the end of 1983—a full year later—in the Strait Daily. It finally mentioned the team again, and this time it was good news: they had successfully excavated an ancient sunken ship in the Xisha sea area, which they suspected might date back to the end of the Qin Dynasty.
The final report seemed brief by comparison, like a short filler squeezed into some obscure corner of the page. After that, there were no more clippings about the team.
Gu Xianwang paused to think, then flipped back and pulled out the earliest group photo. The old paper felt rough under her fingers. On the back were two signatures: Gu Jinnian and Yang Liu, Xisha, 1985.12.03.
Gu Jinnian. Yang Liu.
She murmured the names to herself, then turned the photo over and studied the image closely. Still, they felt like strangers.
These two were her biological parents—or so the adoption papers plainly stated. Chen Yi, Yang Liu’s cousin, had been unable to have children of her own and had taken in her relative’s orphan, Gu Xianwang, as a foster daughter.
A foster daughter… It wasn’t so bad. She had never been mistreated. If anything, she had brought calamity to her family. Before this, Gu Xianwang had avoided thinking about her birth parents altogether, refusing to ask or listen. She hadn’t wanted to know why Gu Jinnian had abandoned her, nor had she dared find out if Yang Liu’s death had anything to do with her.
All she had wanted was to live out the rest of her days in peace.
Gu Xianwang turned to another stack of ancient books—six volumes in all: Qilin Eight Tones, Qing Nang Five Yin Compendium, Records of the Strange, Boshan Water Viewing Chart, Heaven and Earth Treasure Record, and Snow Heart Thirteen Methods.
As ancient editions, they were all handwritten in vertical script, read from right to left. Gu Xianwang skimmed a few pages before her head began to throb. On the whole, they seemed like textbooks from the treasure spotting tradition: texts on language and phonetics, feng shui, strange beasts and phenomena, landscape diagrams, and identification techniques. The last book eluded her entirely; it was written in dense classical Chinese, utterly obscure.
These must have been left behind by her birth mother, Yang Liu.
Gu Xianwang wondered why her mother had set the handover for this exact time. Was she afraid that if Gu Xianwang received them too early, her immature mindset might drive a wedge between them?
The evening breeze turned cool. Gu Xianwang lay back flat, her thoughts a hopeless tangle—now her foster mother’s illness, now the grim-faced man who had sent the floppy disk, now the photo from the Xisha dock. Her mind drifted far afield before sleep claimed her all at once.
In her dream, she was back aboard that dragon ship amid the Black Sea. She descended the wooden ladder once more, heading straight for the final cabin this time. She pushed open the narrow door.
She had questions. She wanted to see what lay in that coffin, the source of the fragrance. Was it the seawater? The coffin itself? Or the person inside?
But this time, the figure rising from beneath the lid wore a face utterly unlike any from before. It was vaguely familiar, yet she couldn’t place it. The figure hovered, deathly pale like the Forbidden Witch, its black hair grown so long it threatened to spill from the coffin—no, everything was different. Gu Xianwang watched in horrified fascination as the hair’s ends slithered like living serpents down the coffin’s side, dipping into the pooled seawater on the cabin floor. It was like ink blossoming into flowers; at once, a crimson stain spread through the water.
Blood. The fragrance emanated from that black hair, soaked through with blood.
Her heart pounded wildly, forcing her to take an involuntary step back. She had plenty of experience with these nightmares by now. Each time, she simply stood in the doorway, gripping the cabin door tight. Even if that figure lunged at her, she could slam the door shut and lock it in time—
That was what she told herself. Yet the woman inside the Black Coffin didn’t rise. She showed no sign of attacking, either. She simply turned her head at the sound of the retreating footsteps, revealing… a look of sorrow.
The woman couldn’t speak, but her lips kept moving silently. Curiosity stirred in Gu Xianwang. Frowning, she strained to make out the words. Then, all at once, it felt like a towering wall of water crashed over her. She staggered, lost her balance, and pitched forward. A jolt shuddered through her body, and she snapped awake.
The room was shrouded in darkness, the night deep and still. Dazed, she stared at the photo pinned beneath the folder. Now she remembered—it was her birth mother, Yang Liu.
Gu Xianwang sat up and scrubbed a hand over her face. A glance at her phone showed it was already five in the morning. She’d slept through the night.
That dream… She suddenly recalled those words, and a chill ran through her. If it was just her daytime worries manifesting in her sleep, those shouldn’t have been the words on the woman’s lips—
“Your Master is in trouble.”
But she’d been home for a full day now. Master’s temper might run hot—even if he was angry with her, he wouldn’t stay silent in a situation like this. Nanny Chen wouldn’t hide it from him. So why hadn’t she heard from him? No calls at all?
Unease gnawed at her heart. This dream felt anything but ordinary. Her phone held no new notifications, which meant Long Li hadn’t replied to her message yet, either. What was going on? Had they all just vanished into thin air? Gu Xianwang grabbed her phone and lifted her arm. Something felt wrong—where was her bandage?
Nanny Chen had been explicit: for the next few days, sponge baths only. No unwrapping the bandages. She’d planned to get fresh ones at the hospital tomorrow… She touched the tape at her neck; it was still there. The ones on her legs were secure too. Just this section on her arm—gone.
Goosebumps prickled across her skin. She slipped soundlessly from the bed, tiptoeing in the dark. The room looked exactly as she’d left it. Gu Xianwang crept to the door. No sounds from upstairs or down. Of course—even in the deepest sleep, she wouldn’t have missed… Wait! No, no—this door chain. The apartment’s old lock was finicky, hard to secure from the inside, so she always hooked the chain the moment she came in. Why was it unlatched now?
The iron chain dangled loosely, as if… someone had only just left.
