Yun Yi stormed into Emperor Ridge Police Station, fuming.
It was her second time here!
With traffic restrictions keeping her from driving and no cabs in sight, the morning rush-hour subway had nearly done her in.
The police hadn’t caught the guy, so they called her in to “verify further details”? Were they treating her like a pushover? Not today—
But strange as it was, the moment she stepped into that solemn atmosphere, her anger inexplicably deflated. Instantly chickening out, she blurted out: “…Actively cooperating with the authorities is every citizen’s duty.”
She still had to go through the motions.
The officer looked up. “Your occupation?”
Yun Yi gave the name of her well-known social media handle. “Content creator.”
The officer wrote plainly: Freelancer.
What do you mean freelancer! She was a methodology influencer, an immersive study YouTuber, and a study product reviewer all in one.
Her follower count had crossed the five-thousand mark.
A big-time creator with over five thousand unseen “family members”—she was now eagerly showing her account to the officer.
Followers: 4,999.
She lost a follower.
Of all the cursed times for this to happen!
Her pride deflated on the spot.
“Um…” Yun Yi pressed her two index fingers together. “I’m a freelancer, but I do pay into social security.” A tiny step above being unemployed, okay.
Yesterday, to celebrate hitting 5,000 followers, she went on a shopping spree at a stationery expo. Arms piled with loot as she walked out, she ran smack into a crazy Taoist priest.
He rambled, “Purple energy approaches—dragon aura surrounds you. You were born to be an emperor.”
Yun Yi: “So I’m the second Wu Zetian? Guess I’ll sleep early tonight.”
Might as well dream big.
When she didn’t buy it, the priest pulled out a talisman-bound notebook. “Just 666 yuan, and your emperor dream comes true.”
“Six-six-six, bro.” Yun Yi grabbed his robe with one hand and pointed at her scattered cultural creative haul with the other. “Pay. Up.”
The two of them ended up at Emperor Ridge Police Station.
Before Yun Yi could demand compensation, the priest beat her to it: “Officer, my robe is an ancient relic from the Yan Dynasty. According to Sotheby’s—”
Except the dynasty he mentioned never existed in history.
“Yan Dynasty? Xia, Shang, Zhou, Qin… Where do you even fit that in?” Yun Yi was furious at his slick talk. “If I believe you, I’m Qin Shi Huang.”
An old scammer picking on a young woman—the officer took pity. “Which items got damaged?”
The happiest moment at a stationery expo is the moment you pay. Then regret sets in. And right now, regret had hit its peak.
Yun Yi stared at her dented, out-of-print treasures, heartbroken. “Washi tape, 60. Mechanical pencil, 200. Notebook, 700…”
The officer’s expression changed: This girl looked more like the scammer.
Yun Yi whipped out her receipt like a rich lady: ¥1863.00.
Laughable. She’d never fought such a well-funded battle before. She lifted her chin and shot a piercing glare straight into the priest’s eyes.
Civil dispute. Mediation result: pay the full price.
The priest’s arrogance dimmed. He reached into his robe sleeve and pulled out the notebook. “No charge. Take it.”
Yun Yi’s face darkened. Who wants your crappy notebook? The M6 journal cover was already scratched by you. Not charging you for emotional damage was already the height of kindness.
“Sigh,” the priest sighed. He bit his finger, drew blood, and added a few strokes to the talisman. Then, like a Taoist immortal ascending in a movie, he chanted an incantation. “There. Like it or not, it’s yours now. This talisman has chosen its master.”
That incantation alone cost far more than the notebook—you couldn’t get it for less than 6,666 yuan.
Everyone in the mediation room stared, stunned.
The priest: “Officer, I need to use the restroom.”
…
In broad daylight, a grown person somehow vanished from the men’s restroom at the police station.
Yun Yi never received her compensation.
According to the police, the man’s surname was Xiao, his given name was the priest, and he lived in Xiao Family Village north of town. The village had a mountain stream that recently became famous for its flecks of gold, drawing quite a few people to pan for it. As a result, Xiao Family Village was now a key patrol area.
Yun Yi thought to herself: instead of mining for gold at home, that Priest Xiao had to go out and swindle people.
Having fumed all night, the victim now rubbed her arm, still sore from being jostled on the subway, and cooperated with the police for a second round of questioning.
She forced down her resentment and told herself that being a drifting member of society had its perks—at least she didn’t have to ask a terrible boss for time off.
The officer looked apologetic. “Keep this notebook safe.”
“Officer, I really don’t want it.”
“There’s no way to file a case. Just take it.” As he spoke, he pushed the notebook toward Yun Yi. “Your original notebook got damaged, didn’t it? Use this one for now.”
“!” That’s not the same thing at all.
Yun Yi reluctantly accepted the battered notebook. After spending a night in custody at the station, it had finally served its sentence and was now back in its new owner’s hands.
There were no cameras in the men’s restroom. The hallway footage had mysteriously cut out for ten minutes. As for Priest Xiao’s whereabouts, the rookie officer looked expectantly at Yun Yi.
In that instant, Yun Yi read a great deal in the young officer’s eyes.
Forget it. Stop arguing. Just accept the bad luck.
The rookie: Thanks. That’s a lot fewer words for my daily log.
As a study-focused content creator, she had a natural soft spot for stationery and journals. Yun Yi stuffed the notebook into a cloud-shaped eco-bag she had designed herself. She had barely jumped onto Line 5 when her phone rang.
It was her father, who had been gone for an entire month.
Yun Guoqiang’s hearty laugh boomed through the phone. “Yunbao! Dad missed you!”
“Hmph, finally decided to come home?” Yun Yi feigned annoyance, but the corners of her mouth curled upward. “I just got out of the police station.”
“Who dares to lay a hand on my Yun Guoqiang’s daughter? I’ll take them out with my Luoyang shovel!”
In the subway car, two rows of drowsy heads all turned to look at her.
Yun Yi buried her face in her soft, fluffy bag.
Please, just let me disappear from this train car.
—
“The probe shovel is gone?” Yun Guoqiang had an unlit Liqun cigarette dangling from his mouth, the lines around his mouth deepening.
“Professor Yun, it looks like a villager stole it,” said the graduate student working under Yun Guoqiang, pushing up the glasses on his nose.
“They still haven’t given up? They’re still trying to dig for gold?”
Give the village a few more days, and they’d dig straight through the earth.
The gold rush had briefly gone viral on social media before quickly drawing the attention of the authorities.
The Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources sent people to survey the area. Xiao Family Village, nestled among mountains on three sides, had no gold deposits.
Yesterday, Yun Guoqiang was still on a plane home after finishing an excavation of Tang Dynasty tomb clusters in the northwest. Today, he had been urgently reassigned to Xiao Family Village to investigate the gold rush.
The graduate student added, “The villagers even accused our archaeology team of being grave robbers.”
“…” Noticing that the right frame of his student’s glasses was cracked, Yun Guoqiang turned his concern to the glasses themselves.
“Professor Yun… a villager hit me with a shovel.” The glasses had been damaged during the scuffle. The student sadly pulled up his pant leg, revealing a large, angry bruise on his calf.
While Yun Guoqiang negotiated with the head of Xiao Family Village, his daughter Yunbao walked down a country path, bag slung over her shoulder.
Not far away, under a blue sky dotted with white clouds, a stream burbled peacefully. The lush hills and clear waters painted themselves into Yun Yi’s field of vision.
A camping tent stood by the shallow bank, where a family of four was methodically turning over pebbles.
Yun Guoqiang pocketed the compensation for his student and suddenly remembered that his precious daughter hadn’t arrived yet.
The graduate student, dragging his injured leg, searched all over the village entrance but failed to pick up the teacher’s daughter.
Half an hour later, Yun Guoqiang found his daughter by the stream—she was right in the thick of panning for gold.
“Dad! You came at the perfect time!” Yun Yi stamped her soaked leather shoes, sending droplets of stream water splashing beneath her blackened feet. “Let me borrow your Luoyang shovel.”
Beside them, the graduate student felt a phantom ache in his leg.
“It’s going to rain. You can’t camp here.” Yun Guoqiang flashed his work ID. His tone was reasonable as he quickly directed the family to pack up their tent.
“Dad, I heard that Emperor Ridge sits on a dragon vein.” Yun Yi shook the resealable bag in her hand. The pitifully tiny amount of gold inside looked like a speck of dried eye gunk. “Otherwise, where would this gold come from?”
“Dragon vein? It’s just a mountain ridge shaped like a dragon.” Yun Guoqiang picked up a twig and drew two curved mountain outlines on the muddy sand. “If I said it looked like a four-legged lizard, would you still think it was a dragon vein?”
Everyone looked up at the mountain. The hillside shimmered, bathed in what looked like an emerald-green filter. White clouds hid behind the peak, resembling a milk mustache freshly painted above a lip.
The night air grew cool. Yun Guoqiang’s team booked the entire village homestay.
Over the hearth, rows of small golden tangerines lined up neatly as the charcoal crackled.
A yellow dog rested its chin on a guest’s foot. Spotting the soft, sweet-smelling girl setting her leather shoes by the fire to dry, the dog leaned in with its damp nose for a curious sniff.
The dog: “Ah-choo! Ha-choo, ha-choo!” So pungent!
Yun Yi silently moved her shoes farther away.
A team member reported to Yun Guoqiang: “This is the pattern from a gold leaf. Faintly visible within the design is the character ‘Yan.’”
Yan? Yun Yi’s brain had been flooded with that character for days. Priest Xiao had claimed his tattered robe was from the Yan Dynasty.
Yun Guoqiang zoomed in on the test report on his tablet. Two curious eyes peered over his shoulder.
Yun Yi glanced at the screen: It was a two-headed… four-legged lizard?
Gold itself is an extremely stable metal, making it impossible to accurately determine its age through instruments. This was a double-headed dragon motif gold leaf that had been “rescued” from a villager. If they had been even one step later, this magnificent gold mask piece would have been melted down in a blazing fire.
“To dig deeper, we’ll need to rely on coexisting artifacts to determine the exact date. I’ll submit a detailed report to the higher-ups.”
Yun Yi caught the key phrase and grinned. “Dad, does that mean you’ll be staying in Xiao Family Village for a while?”
Yun Guoqiang carefully peeled the white pith off a tangerine and placed several clean segments into his daughter’s palm. “It means you’ll have to turn over any gold you find to the state.”
Yun Yi chewed the tangerine her father had fed her. No amount of sweetness could win her heart back now.
She pulled out her notebook and wrote on the first page:
[October 16, 2026. Damn you, Yan Dynasty. You cost me my stationery and my gold.]
On the title page, the dried bloodstain on the yellow talisman began to pulse, infusing the spell with a vivid and mysterious power.
—
Yan Dynasty, Tenth Year of the Yan Era, Tenth Month. The emperor was suddenly assassinated.
The assassination succeeded. The assassin took his own life.
The empress dowager took control, presiding over the funeral rites.
When the late emperor’s edict was announced, the choice of the new emperor threw the court into uproar.
The late emperor had many descendants. The crown prince had been deposed for years, and even if he was disqualified, there were still several imperial princes to fill the vacancy.
In the most desolate northwestern corner of the palace stood a prince’s residence. Unlike the cold palaces of disfavored consorts, this place was worse. The second imperial prince, long out of favor, had been confined there under house arrest for years.
The chief eunuch’s plain white robes swept through the courtyard’s decayed air.
“Second Prince Xiao Zhi, filial, friendly, kind, and honorable, capable of carrying on the great legacy… shall inherit the throne…”
After the edict was read, Xiao Zhi remained bowed for a long moment. Then he raised his gaze to the golden lacquered dragon-cloud patterned box that held the decree, his eyes full of both confusion and probing.
This imperial edict… couldn’t be fake, could it?
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