Chapter 24: Intimidation

“That is indeed a good method,” the young man smiled, sighing lightly. “It’s just a pity that I am bound by a trust, and I cannot allow the Young Miss Xie to enter here.”

Qi Ran sighed inwardly. The tone the young man used now was equally familiar to her—it was exactly the same amused, “I want to see what other lies you can cook up” attitude that Li Siwen had shown earlier. She wasn’t angry about it, just felt a sense of absurdity and an urge to laugh. When she said she wasn’t from the Xie Family, Li Siwen had given her that exact expression. Now, when she claimed she was from the Xie Family, this young man of unknown identity wore the same look. These people who moved in small circles were truly all cast from the same mold, speaking in riddles and holding themselves in absurdly high regard.

She couldn’t quite understand why these people were all so certain about her origins. Were they some kind of fortune-tellers? This young man really ought to have a fight with Li Siwen, the man outside who was so adamant that she, Qi Ran, was the Xie Family heir. A meeting between those two would certainly be amusing.

Just then, Qi Ran suddenly heard Jiang Zhique’s voice beside her.

She had lowered her voice, apparently not intending for the young man to hear: “Do you have anything unimportant on you? Throw it at him, see if he can catch it.”

Qi Ran froze, confusion surfacing. She didn’t think Jiang Zhique simply wanted to provoke the young man, but the problem was, she had nothing on her besides her cell phone. Just as she was hesitating over whether a phone counted as unimportant, she suddenly remembered: “Don’t you have a cigarette case?”

Jiang Zhique paused, a slightly reluctant look flashing across her face. Gritting her teeth, she suddenly pulled out the cigarette case, still half-full, and hurled it toward the staircase. The case flew with fierce momentum—it was less a toss and more like she had flung a hidden weapon.

Click-clack.

The cigarette case passed through the young man’s body without any obstruction and landed against the wall behind him. The sound was exceptionally clear in the silence of the shop.

The young man in the suit looked down at the cigarette case, sighed, and his tone became somewhat helpless:

“Kids these days are all so sharp, aren’t they? Truly hard to fool.”

“He’s not the owner of this shop. He’s trapped here, just like us!” Jiang Zhique stated coldly.

Qi Ran seemed to guess something: “The reason he couldn’t catch the cigarette case… is it because he and we aren’t in the same time?”

Jiang Zhique nodded: “The time he exists in should be the year 2004.”

Once exposed, the young man didn’t seem embarrassed. He just smiled.

Before Qi Ran could say anything, Jiang Zhique suddenly shoved her. Caught off guard, Qi Ran was sent flying sideways, landing heavily on top of a coffin. Where she had originally stood, faint traces of crimson had, at some unknown moment, begun to seep out from the originally grayish-green floor, wriggling like mycelium—eerie and bizarre.

“What’s this? Lost your temper out of humiliation?”

Jiang Zhique withdrew her hand and looked toward the young man whose upper body was obscured by the stairs, asking.

The young man stood there, silent for a while, before finally giving a helpless laugh and turning to leave up the stairs.

“…He can’t come down to the first floor?” Qi Ran guessed, lowering her voice. “So his earlier warning wasn’t a threat, but a caution?”

Jiang Zhique nodded: “If we trigger any punishment, he won’t be able to escape it either.”

Qi Ran paused: “In other words… he’s already triggered the penalty for breaking a rule, and that’s why he’s so afraid of us breaking the rules now?”

Jiang Zhique was momentarily stunned, then quickly grasped Qi Ran’s meaning. She raised her voice: “Senior, are you still there?”

Silence from the staircase.

“Senior, is the reason you’re not speaking because something has happened?” Qi Ran caught on seamlessly, adding with a hint of urgency in her voice, as if genuinely worried for the young man’s safety. “Don’t worry, we’re coming to save you right now!”

“Wait!”

The young man upstairs could finally keep silent no longer. He spoke with some exasperation, “I concede. What exactly do you two want?”

“A way to leave this place,” Jiang Zhique said.

“Impossible.” The young man refused without a second thought.

Qi Ran took a step forward. As she approached the foremost coffin, a feeling of extreme unease suddenly arose in her heart, as if that silent coffin might slowly open at any moment and suck her inside. Jiang Zhique did not stop her advance, only placing her right hand on the tattoo of her left finger. It seemed it wasn’t that she couldn’t command the Snake Tattoo, but that doing so might require paying some unbearable price.

Drawing closer, Qi Ran finally saw clearly. The mahogany coffin lying silently on the ground had an exceedingly strange shape. It was different from the rounded contours of ordinary coffins. This deep-red wooden coffin was angular and sharp, with straight, rigid lines. Its surface was smooth as a mirror, the wood grain fine and exquisite. It was carved with large, elaborate openwork. At the center top of the coffin lid, the periphery was inlaid with many fine gold threads and gemstones, making the entire coffin appear even more noble and magnificent. Yet at the very center, the part surrounded like stars around the moon, there sat nothing but an utterly ordinary cobblestone. Qi Ran was no expert on jade, but even by instinct, she could tell this cobblestone could never be any precious gem. It was mottled with impurities in its grain, its light-gray surface rounded and smooth—a mockery from the rushing torrents that had hammered and tempered it over countless ages.

Why would such a stone appear on a coffin so solemn and magnificent? A trace of doubt welled up in Qi Ran’s heart. The only two possibilities she could imagine: one was that while this cobblestone looked ordinary, it held immense significance to the deceased lying within—but in that case, shouldn’t it be placed inside the coffin, in the arms of the dead?

The second possibility was that the presence of this cobblestone was not the wish of the deceased or their family… This looked like an insult. An insult to the one resting inside.

“It’s an ordinary cobblestone,” Miss Ah Qiao confirmed after careful observation, lowering her voice. “I don’t sense any strange scent on it.”

Qi Ran looked at her without speaking, but the meaning in her eyes was clear: If I keep walking forward, what will happen?

Miss Ah Qiao understood her expression and said helplessly, “That young man went through it once and is still alive and well. What are you afraid of? Worst case, I’ll just piece your corpse back together again.”

Her tone was perfectly natural, as if she had completely forgotten her previous record of “planning to cause Qi Ran’s death and then parasitize Jiang Zhique.”

Qi Ran gritted her teeth lightly. She truly didn’t trust the words “don’t be afraid,” but she had no choice but to follow Miss Ah Qiao’s arrangement. She took another step forward. By now, Qi Ran’s position was parallel with the ornate coffin.

The openwork carvings on the mahogany coffin seemed twisted and unsettling in the dim shop. She felt as if wisps of icy cold air were seeping out from the cracks of the coffin.

She took a deep breath and took yet another step forward.

In the dead silence of the shop, every one of her footsteps was exceptionally clear. Jiang Zhique stood motionless, her slender fingers tense. Qi Ran’s nerves were stretched taut as well. The young man standing upstairs seemed to show no movement either; he was likely just as tense, betting that the two women below wouldn’t dare to truly face the unknown fear.

Thinking of this, Qi Ran suddenly relaxed.

Right. Wasn’t this the type of situation she had always feared the least? As the saying goes, the barefoot aren’t afraid of those wearing shoes. When it came to comparing who had less to lose, she had truly never feared anyone. She had already died once. Her body was a tattered mess stitched back together. How much worse could it possibly get? In comparison, Jiang Zhique and that young man of unknown identity had far more psychological capital at stake. She had always held the advantage in this matter. Everyone only gets one life, and hers was a worthless life. It was the other party who needed to carefully weigh whether it was worth it.

So she placed her hand on the coffin beside her and looked at Miss Ah Qiao.

“Very good. Use action to show him that you are not some junior to be casually fooled. You are a ticking time bomb, an emotionally unstable minor, a stubborn, extreme, and uncontrollable lunatic who must be handled with caution,” Miss Ah Qiao sighed heavily, her tone filled with praise. “Open the coffin. Scare the life out of these pretentious bastards. Worst case, we die. I’ll just stitch you back together again.”