chapter 1
The shop was a tiny storefront in the heart of the old commercial street.
A Mixue ice cream and tea shop stood to its left, and a Juewei duck-neck shop to its right. Wedged between them, the enormous block-letter sign for Lingling Jade Shop looked all the shabbier.
I sat behind the counter, chewing on a duck heart and sipping milk tea as I squinted at the tall, expensively dressed man before me.
Five minutes earlier, he had walked in, introduced himself as Qin Xuan, and said that Chairman Guan, an old client of Boss Zhu, had referred him.
“Mr. Qin, how was your arithmetic in elementary school?” I asked, slurping my milk tea.
Qin Xuan paused. He clearly did not understand why I had suddenly asked, but he was evidently a courteous man.
“I teach advanced mathematics at a university,” he replied mildly. Then, with some puzzlement, he added, “Why does that matter?”
“It doesn’t. Ha.” I tugged at the corner of my mouth. “You said the number of people didn’t add up. Didn’t add up to what?”
“The number of rooms.”
He fell silent for a moment. Confusion spread over his face before he continued in a low voice.
“I realized it out of nowhere. Last week, I was discussing renovations to the mansion with a designer. When I looked at the floor plan, I suddenly remembered that there were seven bedrooms on the second floor.
“But eight people have always lived in the mansion, one to a room, without any problem. I thought it was impossible, so I immediately went upstairs and counted every room. There were indeed only seven. Then I carefully counted the people in the family. There were definitely eight.
“As things stand, eight people live together every day. Each person unquestionably has a bedroom, and the structure of the house has never changed…”
He looked at me, a flicker of horror crossing his refined, handsome face.
“So how did the numbers stop matching?”
He spoke the last sentence very softly.
Outside, cheerful music blared without so much as a pause between songs. It only made this cramped corner seem quieter and more oppressive, as though the shop had been cut off from the rest of the world.
“No one else in the family seems to have noticed,” he continued. “I was afraid of causing panic, so I didn’t dare tell them. I heard Boss Zhu possesses genuine abilities and specializes in strange cases like this. That is why I’ve come to ask for his help.”
I slowly shook my head and sighed.
“You’ve wasted your trip. Boss Zhu isn’t available. Please leave.”
Qin Xuan seemed to have expected that. He nodded.
“Boss Zhu is a master who conceals himself among ordinary people. Naturally, he would not agree to emerge so easily.”
He removed his leather glove, took a bank card from his pocket, and slid it toward me across the glass counter.
“This card holds a two-hundred-thousand-yuan advance. I only ask that Boss Zhu visit my mansion and take a look. Even if he cannot solve the problem, the money is his travel fee. If he does solve it, I will pay another eight hundred thousand.”
I tossed my milk tea into the trash and stood up.
“Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“To your house.”
Qin Xuan stared at me. “Aren’t you the receptionist?”
I grinned at him with exemplary good humor.
“From today onward, I am Boss Zhu.”
My name is Zhu Ling. My father’s name is Zhu Guoqiang.
We are the last descendants of the Zhu bloodline.
According to our genealogy, our ancestor was a shaman under the Yellow Emperor. While carrying out an order to slay a rebellious mirage dragon, our ancestor’s blood fused with the dragon’s mirage essence. From then on, our family possessed the power to manipulate consciousness and construct illusions.
Dynasties rose and fell. Buddhism and Daoism flourished. Because the Zhu bloodline touched both the Daoist art of controlling the Three Realms and the Buddhist cycle of consciousness and rebirth, we became a strategic prize coveted by both sides.
To escape their struggle, our Founding Matriarch, Zhu Tianhua, laid down an ancestral command five hundred years ago: the mirage sense must not be used to pry into heaven’s secrets. Any descendant who practiced the art would lose the family fortune, condemn their children to poverty, and bring endless destitution upon generations to come.
Ha.
I had understood something from a very young age.
The reason my family had fallen into such grinding poverty was that not one of my ancestors had ever obeyed her.
They did not dare do anything too grand, so they practiced in secret.
My father, for instance.
On the surface, he ran a run-down jade shop. In truth, he quietly accepted all manner of strange commissions.
For a time, I wanted to set the family straight and secure a better life for my descendants. I studied hard, entered a prestigious university, joined a major corporation, and became a respectable nine-to-five office worker.
Then my father abruptly disappeared.
I could sense that he was trapped in some unknown predicament, bewildered and treading as carefully as if he were walking on thin ice. Fortunately, his life was not in immediate danger, and his emotions remained relatively stable.
Unreliable as Zhu Guoqiang might be, he was still my father. I could hardly abandon him.
So I resigned, took over Lingling Jade Shop, and began earning enough to live on while searching for clues.
And once it had come to this, I finally saw the truth.
My descendants could worry about their own fortunes.
As for the Founding Matriarch’s command…
If none of them had listened, neither would I.