A white-haired old man called a young man “Ancestor.”
The scene was too bizarre. The village chief’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly.
Elder Xiao had only taken a few steps when his frame suddenly lowered. Without warning, he knelt.
“Elder Xiao…” The village chief’s voice came out strangled.
Yun Yi wanted to help him up, but the old man insistently performed the grand ceremony.
“I have seen… Ancestor.”
Yun Yi wiped her sweat. The wind of feudal remnants had blown all the way to the modern era.
“Get up quickly.” Xiao Zhi caught the village chief’s ghost-seeing expression from the corner of his eye. He thought: This is the modern era. People will criticize him for not respecting the elderly, for having no regard for seniority, for actually letting a centenarian kneel.
The village chief pushed the wheelchair over.
“Grandpa Xiao, please sit.” Yun Yi helped Elder Xiao back into the wheelchair.
“Grandpa Xiao.” Since Yun Yi called him that, Xiao Zhi followed suit.
“Ancestor, you’ll be the death of me.”
Elder Xiao tried to rise but was pressed back into the wheelchair by Xiao Zhi.
“Just call me Xiao Zhi.”
Elder Xiao wouldn’t dare call him that. His gaze landed below Yun Yi’s neck. Seeing the key, the old man’s expression turned solemn: “Ancestor, please follow me.”
Dropping the “elder” was acceptable, right?
Never mind. Xiao Zhi said no more.
The inner chamber’s door used dual iris and fingerprint protection. Those qualified to enter were only Elder Xiao and the village chief.
Elder Xiao pressed a button. A painting descended from the center.
The man in the painting rode a warhorse, draped in armor, majestic in all directions.
The scroll spanned a thousand years, bringing the person Yun Yi had seen before her eyes.
She tilted her head to look at Xiao Zhi and whispered: “This look—it was painted during your personal campaign, right.”
Xiao Zhi nodded.
“You even brought a painter to war. So vain.” Yun Yi pursed her lips.
“That painter was Cui…”
Yun Yi of course knew Cui Xiao—General Cui’s youngest son, whose hobby and specialty was painting.
But she deliberately teased him: “Explaining is just covering up.”
“You!” Xiao Zhi choked. If not for outsiders present, he really would have made a scene.
Elder Xiao quickly signaled the village chief with his eyes.
The village chief didn’t dare meddle in young people’s affairs. Knowing Xiao Zhi was triggered, he didn’t even dare let his gaze collide with Xiao Zhi’s.
One look from him felt like a shortened lifespan.
The wheelchair stopped before the painting. Elder Xiao felt for a spot beneath the glass case and tapped lightly three times.
Click click… Deep in the inner chamber, mechanisms linked. The sound of gears engaging came through.
In an instant, a stone slab in the floor quietly slid aside. An object rose slowly from below.
It was a massive bronze chest.
Of great age—clearly an antique.
The village chief thought to himself: The inner chamber only opened once every few years. Only core personnel could enter to clean. He hadn’t expected such mysteries hidden within.
A large lock was on the chest.
The key hanging at Yun Yi’s chest probably opened it.
“Ancestor, Lai Fu and I will withdraw now.”
Elder Xiao’s mission was complete.
The village chief’s eyes went wide. He still wanted to see the chest!
Yun Yi pushed the chest. It didn’t budge.
Xiao Zhi: “Find some strong men and carry the chest to the car.”
The chest was truly too heavy.
Elder Xiao called Xiao Qiang, Xiao Li, and others to carry the chest to the ancestral hall entrance, then arranged a forklift and a hydraulic tailgate truck. Finally, the chest was loaded.
Xiao Zhi sat in the truck’s passenger seat under everyone’s earnest gazes.
In the rearview mirror, Elder Xiao, who had knelt to see him off, was helped up by Xiao Qiang and Xiao Li.
Light music drifted from the car. Yun Yi hummed softly. Xiao Family Village receded further and further behind.
They hit a red light.
The Porsche and the truck stopped side by side. Both windows rolled down simultaneously, two young heads poking out.
Xiao Zhi rested his arm on the window ledge and tilted his head at her: “Why won’t you let me sit beside you?”
Yun Yi’s eye corner lifted: “You—you’re the armed escort.”
Xiao Zhi laughed. Never mind. Not an emperor—an armed escort instead.
After arriving home, Yun Yi circled the chest three times.
“So heavy—could it be gold!”
Her eyes curved. Thinking of the treasures she had once selected from the national treasury, she hadn’t expected Xiao Zhi to pack them up, pass them down generation after generation, and truly deliver the treasure here.
“Not going to open it and look?” Xiao Zhi stood to the side with his hands behind his back, a smile at the corner of his mouth, waiting to see her open the chest.
Yun Yi took off the key and, imitating Xiao Zhi’s sword practice, cut a small flourish in the air.
“I’m opening it?”
“Mm.”
Click. The lock made a crisp sound.
The moment she pushed open the lid, the smell of bronze rust and mold intertwined and rushed at her face.
Xiao Zhi’s mind conjured the protective image of doctors covering their faces with masks. Without a word, he lifted her up.
The chest lid snapped shut.
He asked: “Not afraid of poison?”
Yun Yi said righteously: “Something you gave me—what do I have to fear?”
“Let it air out. We’ll look later.”
“Ugh—”
Xiao Zhi lifted with both hands, easily raising the chest.
Yun Yi: “?!”
This chest was really heavy!
Xiao Zhi walked straight to the backyard.
“Hero Xiao, your divine power is unmatched! From now on, if you tell me to catch a dog, I won’t shoo a chicken~”
“Less flattery.” Xiao Zhi glanced at her sideways.
The chest lid opened. Daylight poured in.
The contents were tightly covered by a piece of yellow brocade.
On top lay a scroll. Yun Yi recognized it at a glance—it was an imperial decree.
“It’s not money?” She admitted she was money-crazed.
Xiao Zhi leaned close to her, using her hand to read the decree’s contents.
[I toil day and night, holding court daily, dealing with ministers in the temple, laboring and anxious, with no time to attend to the three palaces and six courtyards.]
[The day before yesterday I happened to flip the Consort’s tablet. Unexpectedly, the Empress led a crowd straight into Yongsu Hall. The Consort, caught unprepared and unable to dress, fled naked.]
[The Empress even burned my brows and lashes with candle fire, clawed my imperial countenance, leaving my face unrecognizable.]
[I now gnash my teeth and declare: This is all your fault!]
[…]
Yun Yi understood most of it. Her eye corner swept back: “Is it what I think it means?”
Xiao Zhi’s face was cold: “The dragon throne should have been his. I merely returned it to him. And he—he actually curses me.”
Xiao Qian and Xiao Zhi were twins.
Xiao Qian, as crown prince, had been deposed twice for repeatedly defying their father.
Xiao Zhi had simply returned the throne to his brother.
“Your brother became emperor under your name?”
“It was the simplest method.”
“Your brother disappeared. How did you hide it from the world?”
“Simply proclaim to the realm that the eldest prince of Yan contracted a venereal disease and died.”
Though he said this, Xiao Zhi rubbed Xiao Qian’s written words with his fingertip, reading them again and again.
Perhaps it was a moment’s illusion, but he seemed to miss his brother.
Xiao Zhi rolled up the decree and tucked it diagonally into his pocket.
“Xiao Qian was a regular at Zui Luan Pavilion. The memorials impeaching him piled up like mountains. He became emperor in my place—he should thank me.”
Now who would dare speak ill of him?
“Yue Ying beat him with a candle.” Yun Yi thought of Yue Ying—the delicate, fragile young lady driven to domestic violence against her husband.
“He deserved it.” Xiao Zhi felt no sympathy for Xiao Qian whatsoever. “With me gone, finally someone could keep him in line.”
“How pitiful. Being emperor isn’t easy.”
Xiao Zhi looked at her directly: “Why are you speaking up for Xiao Qian? Are you that impressed by him? What are you regretting?”
“…”
Yun Yi couldn’t be bothered with him. She yanked off the yellow brocade.
Countless dust motes swirled in the air.
Gold, silver, and jade artifacts all fell into her view!
Yun Yi let out a sharp “Ah!” and with trembling hands grabbed a jade ruyi.
The jade was warm and smooth, full of luster.
“Rich… I’m rich…” She put the ruyi in Xiao Zhi’s hand and buried herself in inspecting the other treasures.
These were all the treasures she had selected from the national treasury.
Yun Yi’s eyes glazed over. She put them on one by one.
Gold hairpins, bracelets, jade pendants… Besides these, the bottom half of the chest was filled with gleaming gold ingots.
She wore the full “getup,” laden with treasures, and lay down on the ground, her arms and legs spread in a star shape.
Above her was the gloomy sky, the withered yellow branches of winter, yet her heart was beautiful.
“Happy just like this?” Xiao Zhi sat on the ground, using the jade ruyi to dig at the dead grass, again and again, quickly hollowing out a small pit.
“Mm! Thirty years of struggle saved!”
“The chest is a bit small,” Xiao Zhi said regretfully. “I still owe you some.”
Yun Yi’s mouth stretched from ear to ear. She kept saying “Enough, enough.”
The things in this chest were worth more than seventy thousand taels of gold.
“Really?”
“Do you know what an auction house is? Any single piece taken to auction would be worth at least eight figures!”
Auction house? Another new term. Xiao Zhi silently filed it away.
He rummaged through the chest again and found an inconspicuous ornament in the corner—a small wooden pig. The carving was crude, the pig’s body long since yellowed and brittle.
“What’s this?” Yun Yi sat beside him.
“My brother carved it.” Xiao Zhi turned it to the pig’s rear—there was indeed a “Zhi” character. “I taught Fifth Brother a lesson for him. He gave me this.”
Xiao Zhi handed the little wooden pig to Yun Yi.
Yun Yi took it, her fingertips carefully avoiding the cracks. “Then it’s very precious! My dad’s a cultural relic restoration expert. Let him help restore it.”
“Alright.”
Yun Guoqiang actually made Xiao Zhi a custom storage container for the little pig—constant temperature and humidity, insect-proof, shock-proof.
Through the glass cover, the little pig gazed quietly at Xiao Zhi.
As if saying: “I carved this badly, it’s ugly as hell, here, for you to play with.”
Xiao Zhi’s gaze lifted from the little pig and saw Yun Yi discussing the pile of heavenly treasures with Yun’s father.
Yun Guoqiang suppressed his excitement and warned: “Absolutely do not take them to auction!”
“Why?” Yun Yi didn’t understand.
Yun Guoqiang’s reason was “lie low.”
Recently, experts from above had come to authenticate and evaluate the Yan dynasty historical materials unearthed from the retreat palace.
If the evaluation passed, it would rewrite the course of history.
Then this entire chest of treasures Xiao Zhi had brought—cultural relics of that magnitude—if sent directly to auction, would be no different from turning oneself in.
“Dad, you mean people would think you stole from your own post?”
“Exactly!” It concerned Yun Guoqiang’s integrity.
“Then what about the gold ingots? I’ll sell them at a gold shop?”
“No!” Yun Guoqiang objected. “This is thousand-year-old gold! Melting it down to sell would be wasting heaven’s gifts!”
“…”
Yun Yi shrugged at Xiao Zhi.
She’d wanted to give him a little pocket money.
Unexpectedly, not a cent could be used—at least not at this stage.
Xiao Zhi had planned everything before transmigrating, making all preparations.
The Xiao descendants had indeed guarded it for him for a thousand years, finally delivering the chest to Yun Yi’s hands, only for Yun’s father to tell him it couldn’t be liquidated.
He pressed his temple and asked despairingly: “So not a single cent can be used?”
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