Chapter 81

Chapter 81

We had originally planned to go and stake out Old Zhao Seven’s house.

To our surprise, something happened at the shop last night.

By the time we rushed back, we realized the storefront hadn’t just been trashed-it had been fucking obliterated.

The place was a total wreck. Everything had been smashed to smithereens: the computers were destroyed, the security cameras were broken, and even the paper files had been shredded into tiny pieces.

Ink had been splashed all over the walls. If you didn’t know better, you’d think the place had just been bombed.

“Fuck!”

“I’m going to… motherfucker…”

Meng Yifan was so livid he couldn’t even get the curses out properly. His eyes were bloodshot.

Checking the surveillance footage was out of the question now. Besides, even without the footage, we knew exactly who did this.

We had stolen the ashes from the cemetery the night before last, and the shop gets hit last night. This was definitely Du Ruhai’s doing.

Such an obvious act of retaliation, and carried out so boldly within the city limits-no one but Du Ruhai would have the guts to do this.

“Those animals!”

“Those sons of bitches!”

“I was already closing the shop, and they still did this to me!”

Meng Yifan sat amidst the ruins. I could see him getting so angry that he was on the verge of tears.

Back in school, he was the type who loved to fight and never took a loss lying down.

But now, even with his shop destroyed like this, there was nothing he could do. After all, the opponent was Du Ruhai.

Song Xiaotian and I could only try to comfort him, telling him to look on the bright side.

Since the shop was going to close anyway, we should just consider this an early retirement for the branch…

Song Xiaotian sighed. “Du Ruhai suspected us immediately. This grudge is only getting deeper.”

I thought to myself that it *was* actually us, so the grudge deepening made sense. But the thing was, we hadn’t even dug up his son’s ashes-his son’s ashes had been swapped out long ago.

Damn it, I felt like I’d been forced to swallow a bucket of shit.

With the storefront destroyed, there was no way to keep the business running here. We had no choice but to shut it down ahead of schedule.

We spent the entire morning tidying up the shop, finally managing to piece together some of the important documents.

Meng Yifan didn’t have the heart to deal with the rest of the mess, so he just locked the doors.

The employees from this branch had to be transferred to the other location. Some of them lived too far from the other shop, so they simply handed in their resignations.

As more and more people left, I had a sinking feeling that the other branch wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer either.

After grabbing lunch outside, Song Xiaotian and I prepared to head to Old Zhao Seven’s place. We told Meng Yifan to go back to the other shop to handle business matters.

But Meng Yifan didn’t want to go back; he said his head was spinning and he couldn’t focus.

Once we were in the car, Song Xiaotian and I continued to console him.

Meng Yifan was a resilient guy. He forced a smile and said, “It’s fine. If it’s smashed, it’s smashed. Whoever the fuck trashed my shop will die a miserable death. At least I still have one shop left. If he’s so capable, let’s see him try to take out my other-”

I quickly covered his mouth. “Brother, there’s no need to jinx yourself.”

I had already contacted someone about selling my car.

I’d only been driving it for a little over a year-a BMW 5 Series that cost 410,000 yuan.

If someone wanted to buy it now, I was willing to let it go for 310,000 or 320,000.

It just hadn’t sold yet when this happened to the shop.

But I still had to sell it, because I felt like the other shop was on thin ice too.

–

Meng Yifan and I had been to Old Zhao Seven’s house before.

We found our way back to his neighborhood easily.

We monitored his house from a distance and saw that the front gate was open, which meant he was still home.
We didn’t dare move until he left the house. We were afraid that if we didn’t find Du Mingyang’s ashes, we would only end up alerting the enemy.

The three of us took turns keeping watch, thirty minutes each.

But by five in the afternoon, after nearly four hours of surveillance, Old Zhao Seven still hadn’t stepped foot outside.

“What a shut-in. Is there an Old Woman at home keeping him company or something?”

Song Xiaotian was starting to get impatient.

Meng Yifan chimed in, “Do you think he’s just not going out today? It’ll be dark in two hours.”

If he didn’t leave before nightfall, our trip today would likely be for nothing.

I told them we’d wait a bit longer. If he wasn’t out by seven, we’d call it a day.

We continued our watch until 6:50 PM.

Just as we were about to pack it in, Old Zhao Seven finally emerged.

“Going out this late? Probably off to some brothel.”

Song Xiaotian grumbled, likely out of frustration from the long wait.

Still, at least we hadn’t waited in vain.

We waited another ten minutes or so to make sure Old Zhao Seven was far enough away and wouldn’t suddenly double back.

“Let’s go. We need to hurry. Since we’re here, we have to be thorough.”

We quickly reached Old Zhao Seven’s small building.

The front door was locked, and none of us knew how to pick a lock. Fortunately, the second floor wasn’t very high, making it easy to climb up.

We soon slipped inside through a second-story window into a room filled with miscellaneous junk.

Song Xiaotian suggested we each take a floor. There were three floors in total, and while we needed to be fast, we had to be meticulous – especially when it came to hidden spots.

Meng Yifan headed to the first floor, I took the second, and Song Xiaotian went up to the third.

The second floor was cluttered. It seemed to be where Old Zhao Seven actually lived, consisting of a living room, two bedrooms, and several other rooms packed with storage.

I searched carefully, checking every possible hiding spot.

Ashes would be kept in an urn, a jar, or a box, so they should be easy to recognize.

Just as I finished searching the living room and the two bedrooms, Meng Yifan came up. There wasn’t much on the first floor, and he hadn’t found Du Mingyang’s ashes.

We continued searching the second floor together.

One of the rooms was a study. It contained a bookshelf lined with volumes, almost all of which were related to Chinese traditional studies and ancient texts. Besides the books, there was also a blackboard in the room.

The blackboard was covered in dense writing, which immediately caught my eye.

I couldn’t understand most of it, but one thing stood out.

Lately, I had been reading up on metaphysics online and had picked up some basic knowledge.

It was a hexagram – one of King Wen’s Sixty-Four Hexagrams – though I didn’t recognize which specific one it was.

Old Zhao Seven seemed to have been performing a divination on the board. The rest of the writing detailed his logic for interpreting the hexagram. I couldn’t follow the process, so I skipped straight to the end to see his conclusion.

There, at the very bottom of the blackboard, was a single sentence:

“Tonight during the Xu Hour, guests shall arrive, uninvited.”

I thought about it. Wasn’t the Xu Hour between seven and nine in the evening?

Seven in the evening…

Uninvited…

I froze instantly and glanced toward the doorway.

Old Zhao Seven had appeared at some point. He was standing in the doorway, staring at me with a dark, somber expression.