Chapter 138: 18 North Bookstore Street

Bookstore Street is a relatively bustling commercial district in Kaifeng’s old city. I’m not someone who likes going out; in modern terms, I’m a bit of a homebody. I prefer staying in my room tinkering with things. Coming to Kaifeng was purely for school, and I don’t like wandering around aimlessly. So, I’ve never been to this North Bookstore Street on the address and don’t know anything about it.

I had no classes in the afternoon, so I put on my glasses and fiddled with my phone and maps at home, hoping to gather some information about the area mentioned in the address. I discovered that this area should be full of old, immovable buildings, some from the Republican era and some more recent, but they are all classified as dangerous structures and can no longer be inhabited.

Arranging a meeting in a place like this, full of condemned buildings where no one lives anymore, doesn’t seem like someone genuinely wanting to buy a painting. It feels more like someone preparing to kill and rob at any moment. But deep down, I wasn’t really that scared. Liang Zicheng is actually a very timid person; he probably wouldn’t be capable of murder.

But I couldn’t be so sure about the boss he mentioned.

“Is this safe? Do you need me to go with you?” Lu Ayao walked over and asked after seeing me hunched over the coffee table in the living room all afternoon.

So this guy was listening with his ears pricked up at lunch after all. But he hadn’t asked about it on the way back, so I’d assumed he wasn’t particularly concerned and didn’t plan to get involved. Looking at it now, he actually does care whether I, his landlord, live or die.

I took off my glasses, wiped the lenses with a tissue, and shook my head. “You go ahead and sleep. I’ll go by myself after dinner tonight. I can handle something of this level on my own.”

Lu Ayao sat down on the sofa behind me and added, “There aren’t many people around that place.”

I turned around and smiled at him. “I know. I just looked it up. But I still have to go alone. Didn’t you tell me before that I’m already being watched? Liang Zicheng suddenly came to me today with this. My gut feeling is that the boss behind this might be the same crew watching me. So what he told me at noon is very likely fake. Their goal is to lure me to this address.”

“I want to set out some bait, so going alone is the only way not to disturb the snake in the grass. They’re extremely cautious. If you tag along, they might not show up at all. If I’m wrong and the boss genuinely wants to buy the painting, well, making the sale isn’t a bad deal for me either.”

Hearing me say that, Lu Ayao sat on the sofa and actually pondered for a moment before finally saying, “Whether you let me follow or not, I probably won’t be sleeping much tonight anyway. Charge your phone fully, and the moment you feel anything is off, call me immediately.”

“Alright.” I shrugged, turned back around, folded the map on the table to put it away, plugged in my phone to charge, picked up the remote, and started watching TV.

Three hours later, I arrived at North Bookstore Street at the agreed-upon time. By nine o’clock, there were hardly any people on the street in the area I was heading to. With my bag slung over one shoulder, I began looking house by house for the “No. 18” doorplate written on the address.

The further I walked along the street, the sparser the people around me became, until the empty street was left with only a few glowing streetlights. Eventually, I left the bustling area far behind and stepped into a narrow brick alleyway.

This area was basically uninhabited. At night, it became pitch black. Old buildings from the Republican era stood all around, along with a few half-demolished structures that looked unsafe. The buildings were packed tightly together, ancient and dilapidated, with broken glass in the windows and a gloomy, eerie chill in the air.

Using my phone for light, I searched for a long time before finally finding the number 17 doorplate. I quickened my pace, walking until I reached another entryway, but that building had already been half-demolished. I squinted and looked closely; the worn, old doorplate clearly read “19.”

What was going on? Had I walked too fast and passed right by number 18?

So I retraced my steps to look again, only to find that number 19 directly followed number 17. The doorplate was pitch black, barely legible even under my phone’s light. At that moment, I only wished I had brought my glasses.

I stood between the two old doorways, scratching my head. There was clearly a sizable stretch of wall between them, but it really was just a wall, with no door and not even a window. I walked over and knocked on it; it was solid as hell.

By this point, I had pretty much ruled out the possibility of any legitimate painting buyer. Only a ghost would come to a place like this to look at a painting.

The wall looked unstable and didn’t seem to be made of very sturdy stone. Just as I was hesitating, wondering if I should find something to chisel a hole through it and crawl inside, someone came running out from the mouth of the alley, waving at me as he ran.

“Gan Ji! Gan Ji, over here!” Liang Zicheng ran over, grabbed my wrist, and pulled me toward another direction deeper in the alley. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you! What are you doing over here? This building faces a different way than the others. The door’s on this side!”

I felt suspicious, but I followed him anyway, curious to see what this kid was really up to.

We rounded that cluster of buildings, which led to a half-demolished, abandoned construction site with stone debris scattered everywhere. I followed him over the rubble, cutting through the ruins until I spotted a very low, arched entryway hidden among the debris. A black plaque hung on the building wall, reading: “Kaifeng Immovable Cultural Relic^[1], Serial Number 001, Xinchang Bank Vault.”

I glanced at the locked entryway and asked him, “Where’s the boss you mentioned?”

Hearing the cold edge in my voice, Liang Zicheng was taken aback for a second, then started stammering, “Uh, well… I’m not really sure either. He definitely told me to bring you here. I don’t know why nobody’s around. That guy is pretty weird. Hey, do you think… could he be inside?”

He pointed his hand toward the dark entryway. I glanced at the opening while catching Liang Zicheng out of the corner of my eye. He wasn’t looking at the entryway at all, but was watching me intently instead. I immediately realized he was deliberately steering my attention toward the opening, forcing me to focus on what he was pointing at.

Keeping my composure, I swung my bag onto my back and actually bent down to look into the entryway. I reached out and touched the door; it was covered in dust, with a large padlock hanging from it.

Right then, I felt a sharp rush of wind behind me. My body reacted instantly, sidestepping into a quick step backward. With a dull clang, Liang Zicheng swung a wooden club, missed completely, and slammed headfirst into the big lock on the door, hissing in pain.

I stood to the side, shrugged off my backpack, and casually picked up a club of similar size from the rubble. I hefted it a couple of times, then grabbed him by the back of his collar and dragged him out to an open area in the ruins. He was hauled along the ground for over ten meters, yelping and moaning the whole way.

“Goddamn it, you tricked me, didn’t you?” I seized Liang Zicheng by the front of his shirt, slammed him onto the ground, and threw a punch straight at his face.

The blow instantly bloodied his nose. He was so stunned he forgot to fight back, just frantically covering his face with his hands. We weren’t in a tomb anymore, and I was afraid of actually injuring him and getting extorted for medical bills, so I held back my strength. Still, I ended up beating him black and blue.

My own knuckles were scraped raw. I hauled him up from the ground again and threatened him with the club:

“Talk. Who sent you? Ambushed me from behind, huh? What, I fucking didn’t realize a little shit like you actually wanted to kill me?”

He dodged the tip of the club, snot and tears streaming down his face, apologizing profusely. “No, no, big brother, I was wrong! I just… I just wanted to knock you out. I didn’t expect you to react so fast!”

I moved the club a little closer to him.

“I-I-I… I was wrong, I lied to you! I’ll tell you everything, just stop hitting me! It was me… I stole a few of your finished paintings from the studio a while back and sold them. I posted them online and someone bought them for a high price.”

I had noticed a few of my paintings missing, but I hadn’t paid it much mind. The studio could get pretty crowded sometimes, and easels and drawers were often shared. I figured a classmate might have taken them by mistake; it wasn’t unheard of.

So it was this bastard who stole and sold them?!

Suppressing my anger, I jabbed the club right in his face. “Keep talking.”

Liang Zicheng’s words tumbled out faster. “Then… then that person said he had a bigger deal he could do with me, that he wanted my help. He said he knew you, knew I stole things and sold your paintings. He said as long as I helped him, he wouldn’t expose me. Those paintings sold for way too much… if I got sued, I’d have a criminal record! I… I didn’t want that!”

“And then? What did he tell you to do?” I asked.

Liang Zicheng wailed, “He told me to call you out here at this specific time! Then… then I was supposed to knock you out and drag you into No. 18 North Bookstore Street. He said he’d give me a hundred thousand yuan after it was done. I thought… I thought you two had some grudge! You’re always acting pretty cocky anyway, so I figured he just wanted to teach you a lesson! That’s why I agreed! How was I supposed to know you’d react so fast?!”

Frustration completely consumed me at that moment. I let him go. Liang Zicheng’s legs gave way, and he crumpled to the ground right in front of me.

I stood there, pointing the club at him and cursing furiously. “Are you fucking insane?! Are you sick in the head?! Do you have no brains? Didn’t you stop to think for a second? The door inside that archway is locked! There’s one and only one door! Even if you had knocked me out, the door’s still locked! How the hell were you going to drag me inside?!”

“He was using you! Look at how useless you are, you can’t even hold a weapon steady. He never thought you could actually knock me out. His whole purpose in using you was to lure me here, and maybe he even wanted me to go inside that damn archway!”

I was practically going insane from the sheer stupidity of how this guy’s brain worked.