Chapter 139: Number 434

Liang Zicheng lay on the ground, cowering and begging for mercy. As soon as I moved the stick away, he suddenly scrambled up and tried to slip away. I reached out, grabbed him by the collar, and hauled him right back.

“Look, man, I was really wrong! I’ll definitely pay you back once we get back, okay? Just let me go home!”

I didn’t actually care much about the money he made from reselling my two paintings. Liang Zicheng’s family had always been poor, so to win scholarships, he had thrown himself into campus activities more fiercely than anyone else ever since he enrolled. The hundred thousand yuan offered by that person was a massive sum for him. If I were in his shoes, I would have found it hard to resist the temptation too.

The reason I was holding onto him now was mainly because I didn’t want him leaving alone. The complexity of this situation clearly exceeded his understanding. The person behind the scenes had told him to knock me out, but now that he had failed the task, I was worried about what might happen to him as an outsider.

At least going by my sixth sense, I felt like something bad was bound to happen to him if he went off on his own.

“You can’t leave. Something will happen to you,” I said, holding him fast.

Liang Zicheng looked at me, close to tears. “Man, what could possibly happen? Honestly, I feel like the chances of something happening to me are way higher if I stay here with you!”

I ignored him and flipped open my phone, using the light from the screen to illuminate the entrance to the Xinchang Bank Vault nearby. A pale yellow door plate hung on the wall of the doorway, showing the number “18,” but the plate was somewhat faded. I wanted to see it more clearly, so I reached out to wipe it, causing one corner of the plate to curl up.

To my surprise, I discovered there was another layer beneath it. I gently peeled off the faded top layer and saw that there was indeed another door plate underneath. However, it was very old, and much of the writing on it was no longer legible.

The only thing I could make out were those three digits: “434.”

434? 4341951009?

These three digits immediately brought that bizarre string of numbers to mind.

I didn’t think it was a coincidence. I stuck the top layer of the door plate back on, then ran my fingers all around the doorway walls. I couldn’t explain the situation in detail right now, so I decided to threaten him first, at least enough to make him follow me obediently. “You probably don’t want me telling anyone about you selling my paintings, right?”

“I…” Liang Zicheng instantly choked on his words.

I walked over to the edge of the doorway, slung my bag back on, and gestured to him. “Since that guy wanted you to drag me inside, he must have a clear reason for it. I’m going in to check it out, and you’re coming with me.”

“Huh?” Liang Zicheng stood there, completely at a loss. “Wait, bro, the doors are all locked. How are we going to get in?”

I picked out a piece of wire from the debris, swung my bag behind my back, and ducked into the doorway again. I called out to Liang Zicheng, telling him to hold up his phone to shine some light for me.

Whether he was terrified of me or because I had beaten him too hard earlier, the light from the phone he was holding kept trembling. I tried twice without managing to get the wire into the lock cylinder. Exasperated, I looked up and rolled my eyes at him. “Seriously? Do you have damn Parkinson’s or something?”

I stared at him, grabbed his arm to hold it steady at a fixed height, and glared at him menacingly. “Hold it steady! Shake one more time and I’ll chop your hand off, understand?”

Liang Zicheng was completely rattled by my threat. As it turned out, intimidation really worked sometimes. He held his hands steady, and the beam didn’t flicker once. I successfully inserted the wire into the lock cylinder, gave it a few twists by feel, and the old padlock hanging on the door popped open with a click.

Liang Zicheng stared wide-eyed as I pushed the door open. “Gan Ji, I feel like you’re different from before. Have you been hanging out with a bad crowd lately?”

I didn’t reply. I didn’t know how to answer him. Too much had happened over the past six months, and I had met too many new people. The way I handled myself and the world had undergone a complete transformation.

Taking the phone, I stepped through the door without a second thought. Beneath my feet lay broken bricks and rubble. The interior of the Xinchang Bank Vault wasn’t very large, consisting of a two-story courtyard building centered around a skywell^[1] about five meters across.

Buildings flanked both sides, and a dead old tree leaned precariously against a wall. Moonlight filtered down in scattered patches from the square of sky above. Compared to the tombs I had entered before, this place was bright enough.

The phone’s light alone still wasn’t bright enough. We could only rely on the moonlight to see from a distance that many of the upper-floor windows around the courtyard were now gaping black holes. Neglected for years, bricks from the upper levels had collapsed. Standing here required a lot of courage, as the entire structure looked fragile enough to completely cave in at any second.

I circled the skywell and found a path where the rubble wasn’t too thick, then headed deeper into the corridor. Liang Zicheng, who had initially lagged behind alone, ran up and walked practically glued to my side.

Irritated by him dragging on me, I snapped, “Can you stop squeezing me? The corridor is over three meters wide. Can’t you walk properly?”

Liang Zicheng’s legs were weak, and his voice trembled. “M-maybe we should go back. Th-this is too dark, too creepy. I-if you want to come, I… I don’t have classes tomorrow morning. I-I can come back with you then…”

“No.” I cut him off, refusing to entertain any further conversation.

The corridor wasn’t long, with only a few rooms on the first floor. Many of the door plates in the inner corridor had faded, and most of their contents had been cleared out. I shone my light through the windows; the air inside was thick with dust, and even the cabinets had been overturned.

After taking a look around with nothing to show for it, we returned to the courtyard.

Liang Zicheng sighed. “I told you, this place is just a run-down old building. Everything was cleared out long ago. What exactly are you looking for?”

I looked up at the second floor, estimating where I could climb up with my bare hands. The original door number here was “434,” while “18” was a plate stuck over it later, likely a long time ago. I was convinced that the door number had to be connected to that sequence of digits somehow.

In early Chinese coding systems, numbers usually carried specific meanings. Since 1951 likely referred to a project initiated in 1951, could 434 refer to the location where that project began?

I found a rough, pockmarked section of wall leading up to the brick railing of the second-floor corridor. I estimated the height, clamped my phone between my teeth, and crouched down to pull a small dagger out of my bag. Liang Zicheng, crouching beside me, was practically stuttering.

“W-w-what are you doing? Why are you carrying that around with you?”

I drew the dagger, tucked it into my waistband, and put my phone into my pocket. “Wait down here,” I told him. “I’m going up to take a look.”

Liang Zicheng stood up with me, his mouth agape. “Wait, calm down! That’s way too high! There’s no ladder or anything, how are you going to get up?”

I rolled up my sleeves, took a few steps back for a running start, then jumped and grabbed a protruding stone on the wall. Using the friction between my soles and the wall, I climbed up two steps and reached out to grab the second-floor railing.

This was far easier than climbing a wet, slippery rock face. Combined with the advantage of my height, I quickly pulled myself level with the edge of the corridor. Grasping the railing, I swung a leg over and landed smoothly inside.

“Be careful!” Liang Zicheng shouted up at me from below.

I flashed my phone light down at him twice in response, dusted off my hands, and picked a direction to explore deeper into the second floor, using my phone light to guide the way.

The door signs on the second floor were much less faded than those on the first. Written in Traditional Chinese characters and coated in a layer of dust, the text was still barely legible under the light.

The first three rooms were offices and a washroom. I continued forward until I reached the fourth door. When I shone the light on the sign above it, it read: Vault Archives.