Chapter 140: Special Savings

I suddenly grew excited, the cold blood in my veins seemingly boiling in that instant. I lowered my phone and shone the light up and down the door again, taking a silent, deep breath.

My heart was a mix of trepidation and excitement. Had I really found the right place? The room number was 434. Could this be the official site where that secret project from 1951 began? If so, did this prove that the 1951 project and the current Nine-Ring Project were actually one and the same?

Thinking that the truth was about to surface, I reached out and gripped the handle of the archive room. With a gentle turn, the door opened. I found it strange that it was unlocked, especially since the office doors outside had been secured. It defied logic for a place as important as an archive room to be left open.

I prepared to enter, using my phone as a flashlight. Just as my front foot stepped inside, the light fell upon a torn piece of paper on the floor.

I quickly bent down to pick it up. It was covered in a layer of old dust, which I shook off before examining the writing. It was a piece of lined paper from a typewriter, with several large words printed in bold at the top: Xinchang Bank Official Record Paper.

I was a bit confused. I flipped the paper over but found it was completely blank. Aside from those few large words, it held no meaning. I shifted my gaze back to the archive room itself.

The archive room wasn’t very large. Within this space of less than sixty square meters, the builders had erected a wall in the middle, dividing the original room into two. A small square table stood near the door with a chair in front of it, one of its legs broken.

I swept my phone light around the outer area. The iron shelves once used for storage had collapsed. I knelt to gather the rotting papers scattered on the floor. They were all ordinary record sheets bearing the “Xinchang Bank” header, along with a few lists of depositors whose names were almost illegible.

It seemed these papers weren’t of much use, so I tossed them aside. I stood up and walked to the old square table, beginning to rummage through it in hopes of finding something else.

The desk drawers were unlocked and opened with a light pull. I pulled out all four drawers to check them. They were quite clean. Unwilling to give up, and refusing to believe that person had gone to such lengths to lead me here just to look at empty air, I sat on the floor. I spent a long time dismantling the drawers to check for hidden compartments.

As I pulled out the bottom drawer, I heard a dull thud from within the frame. It sounded like something heavy had dropped from a hidden space to the bottom of the unit. I pulled the entire drawer out and found a thick ledger lying at the base of the cabinet.

I took it out and sat cross-legged on the floor, using my phone light to read. The ledger was roughly A3 size, containing a neatly handwritten table. I was shocked by the sight of it, as pure hand-drawn tables are rare nowadays, and this one was exceptionally tidy with a beautiful layout.

Holding it like a precious treasure, I opened the ledger. The first page had been torn out. On the corner of the second page was a red stamp. I narrowed my eyes to make it out, and could vaguely see the words “Xinchang Bank” carved into the seal.

Unlike the previous lists of depositors, the names in this book were recorded with much more detail. Even the exact moment of the deposit was recorded down to the second. I looked closely at the first line.

“Cui Baiquan. Deposit Time: June 6, 1980, 00:12:32. Deposit Term: 24 years. Deposit Slip: Signed. Account Number: 20. Deposit Amount: 0. Remarks: Special Savings, Encrypted.”

My head began to ache. The year 1980 was far too recent. Anyone would know that the Xinchang Bank Vault in Kaifeng had long since become a historical site by then, and the building was no longer in use.

What did this mean? Was this VIP list actually a fake? It couldn’t possibly be a ledger from the Xinchang Bank of the Republican era. But if it was a fake, why? Why go to the trouble of creating a list of fraudulent bank customers?

I skimmed through a page. It was mostly filled with entries from 1970 to 1990. Not only that, these customers shared another commonality: every single deposit amount was zero, and the remarks always read “Special Savings, Encrypted.”

It was strange, truly strange.

I couldn’t wrap my head around it, so I shook my head and flipped to the next page. However, the second page contained similar content, just with different names. I flipped through over a dozen pages. The handwriting was so small it made my eyes blurry, yet I saw nothing out of the ordinary.

By the thirteenth page, I forced myself to keep reading despite my fatigue. With just a cursory glance, all my drowsiness vanished instantly.

On that list, I found a name that left me utterly stunned.

Gan Rukui.

The hand holding my phone began to tremble involuntarily. I was too shocked to control my emotions. I continued reading down the list and immediately discovered something even more terrifying.

There were thirty customer names on that page, and fourteen of them were my grandfather, Gan Rukui! The name “Gan Rukui” took up nearly half the page.

I immediately felt dizzy. The dust floating in the air made me feel extremely uncomfortable. I coughed a few times to steady myself, then looked at the specific times listed after my grandfather’s name.

“1960, 1971, 1983, 1984…” I muttered the numbers to myself, my hands not stopping as I flipped to the very last page.

The final page made my vision go dark. That entire page was filled with my grandfather’s name. Seeing the dates sent a cold sweat down my back. The list actually continued from 1988 all the way to 2003!

My eyes quickly moved to the entry for 2003.

October 12, 2003, 02:36:12.

I immediately threw the booklet aside and sprang up from the floor. Sweat broke out across my temples, and I pressed my back flat against the wall. Clutching my knife behind me, I stared into the darkness, still trembling. My heart felt like it was in my throat, and I could hear nothing but its frantic pounding.

I slowly flipped open my phone and glanced at the time.

October 12, 2003, 2:36:30 AM.

If the records in this booklet were true, then just now, at the exact moment I turned to the last page and saw that entry, at that very hour, minute, and second, my grandfather, who had been dead for years, had stored the final item in this long-abandoned vault to complete the ledger.

“Gan Ji! Where are you?”

Liang Zicheng’s voice suddenly came from the doorway. The sound of it immediately pulled my chaotic thoughts back to reality.

I wiped the sweat away with my sleeve, picked up the booklet, and went to open the door. I threw it open abruptly, and Liang Zicheng happened to be walking right outside. He nearly jumped out of his skin from the shock.

“You, you, you… can you not be so terrifying?” He took a few deep breaths to steady himself and looked at the archive room behind me. “What’s wrong? Did you find what you were looking for in there? Your ancestors didn’t store money here, did they? Are you here to collect a debt?”

I relaxed slightly and made way for him to enter. Once inside, Liang Zicheng looked around at the collapsed cabinets and the papers scattered across the floor.

My mind was still occupied with the booklet, so I didn’t want to deal with him for the moment. I let him wander around on his own while I spread the booklet flat on the table to examine it closely.

There was no way my grandfather could have come back to life, so the true owner of these entries was likely using my grandfather’s name to store things. But why use his name as a cover? Did my grandfather have some connection to this after all?

My mind was a mess. Suddenly, a sharp pain struck the back of my head. Caught completely off guard, I was hit by a club. My head slammed into the wall, and a wave of dizziness washed over me. Blood began to trickle down my forehead. I vaguely felt a hand snatch the booklet from the table.

“Sorry, Gan Ji. You should try to offend fewer people in the future. You probably didn’t realize that more than one person came to me for help,” Liang Zicheng said.

I collapsed on the floor, my head throbbing painfully. Through a blur, I saw the flicker of a lighter as Liang Zicheng set the paper on fire. I realized instantly that he was burning the booklet. I fought through the dizziness and reached out to grab him, but a second later, he bolted out of the archive room, clutching the burning ledger.

I pulled myself up from the floor bit by bit by grabbing a table leg. My head was still spinning as I staggered toward the exit. Just as I stepped out, I ran into Lu A’yao. He rushed over to support me, but I pushed him away and told him to chase the man.

He hesitated for only a second before reacting, vaulting over the second-floor railing. I wasn’t as fast as him. I tried to stop the bleeding while climbing down the stonework. Once I reached the bottom, I ignored the blood on my head, left the building, and began sprinting down the road into the night.

After running for a while, the phone in my hand began to ring. It was Lu A’yao. I answered quickly, and he gave me a location.

“I found that classmate of yours, but there’s been a situation. Come to the location I’m giving you. Be quick.”