Fang Xiu's Treasury

Fang Xiu cleaned the entire secret room. Through the gaps in the wooden boards above, he ran a concealed electrical wire back into the underground chamber, fastening it to the walls with cable clips before installing a fluorescent tube and a lightbulb.

Next, he whitewashed all the walls with plaster powder—the passageway, the main chamber, and the rooms. Fang Xiu even painted the large iron door of the inner room. He threw out the original tables and chairs, carried down a modular cabinet and several sets of furniture from upstairs, and placed a coffee table and a single-seater sofa in the main chamber. At last, the place no longer looked quite so ghostly and gloomy.

Fang Xiu solemnly placed all three of his extraordinary items in the cabinet inside the secret room. Other than the Saint's Ring, which he kept on him, he had already decided to use this underground chamber as the place where he stored his extraordinary items.

As he went in and out, Fang Xiu inadvertently noticed numerous wheelchair tracks in the courtyard. He could almost sense someone without legs laboriously pushing a wheelchair back and forth through this place.

So Wang Hao had been hiding here all along. This place and the East Gate District where Fang Xiu had previously lived happened to lie at opposite ends of Wei Port City. No wonder Fang Xiu had been unable to find him.

"Then... this is my Treasure Vault!"

There were still streaks of paint on Fang Xiu's face, but he was beaming. With a paint bucket in one hand and a brush in the other, he sat perched on the backrest of the single-seater sofa, looking around the transformed underground chamber with a deep sense of accomplishment. How should he put it? It felt like a childhood dream had come true.

When he had been a child, Fang Xiu had often imagined having a Treasure Vault of his own, somewhere he could hide all his treasures. And now, he really did have one. Though it still looked rather crude, the things hidden inside could truly be called treasures—genuine extraordinary items. Every one of them possessed immense power, and if any one of them fell into the outside world, it would cause enormous trouble.

As Fang Xiu sat there, he suddenly remembered what Wang Hao had said: "I am your Guardian of the Divine Treasury. I swore an oath that I would help you guard the Divine Treasury forever."

"Guarding a place like this alone forever?" Fang Xiu felt that the so-called Divine Treasury Wang Hao guarded definitely could not be somewhere as casual and crude as this. A place worthy of being called the Divine Treasury could not possibly be simple. Still, that profession and identity carried a tragic, desolate air just from the sound of it.

"That really would be enough to drive someone to despair." Fang Xiu set down the paint and brush, lit a cigarette, and took a drag. Then he inhaled deeply and blew out a smoke ring.

He took one more look at the three items in the cabinet, turned off the lights, locked the newly installed security door, and left.

Deprived of light, the secret room sank into darkness. Yet the three extraordinary items emitted different glows. The extraordinary aura of the Deceitful Clown was multicolored, hazy and dreamlike, like the beautiful dreams the clown wove for others.

The Giant Force Hand gave off a silvery radiance, while the Deep One's Blood glowed dark red, carrying an innate scent of blood and evil.

The three glows intertwined, and strange motes of fluorescent light could be seen drifting around the room. Gradually, a hazy outline appeared atop the cold brick bed in the side room beyond the iron door and the small barred window.

The outline flickered uncertainly. Only after several hours did it become somewhat more solid, slowly climbing up from the blue-brick bed.

It pressed itself against the window and secretly peered outside, looking toward the three extraordinary items hidden in the cabinet.

Fang Xiu slept poorly that night. He always felt unable to sink into sleep, and when he woke in the morning, it was already ten o'clock. He still yawned nonstop, as if he had not slept at all.

"Maybe I'm just not used to the bed? I only moved in, so I haven't adjusted yet."

The new house was enormous. Fang Xiu had to wander around for a while before reaching the bathroom, then circle around again before finding the walk-in closet to get dressed.

Over the next few days, he planned to thoroughly organize his new home and buy some necessities. After just finishing up the underground secret room, Fang Xiu checked his phone and saw a reminder that he was supposed to tidy the garden and weed it today.

Since his original notebook had become the Dominator of Time and Space Management Log, carrying around two notebooks was too troublesome and inconvenient. Fang Xiu had begun using his phone instead to make notes of important events.

The next day, Fang Xiu still had not rested well. At night, he constantly felt as though he was dreaming, but after waking up, he could not remember what he had dreamed about.

Fang Xiu got out of bed and slipped one foot into a slipper. His other foot searched around twice but failed to find the other one. He looked around, then checked beneath the bed, but still could not find it.

"That's strange. How could one be missing? If both were missing, that would mean I left them somewhere else. But what the hell does it mean for only one to be missing? Did I come in wearing just one?" Fang Xiu found the whole thing extremely odd.

When Fang Xiu got up and washed himself, he saw in the mirror that the dark circles beneath his eyes were rather heavy.

He rubbed his face, then raised his head and looked at the mirror on the wall.

What he saw then made Fang Xiu's heart jolt. Water dripped continuously from his face and hands with a steady patter, but his complexion turned deathly pale.

In the mirror was a young man with short hair, who looked energetic and sunny, though his lack of rest showed in his weary expression.

But something was wrong. At that moment, someone else had appeared in the mirror besides Fang Xiu.

It was a girl wearing a white hollow-lace blouse with mid-length sleeves and a bright red long skirt. Her clothes were retro and gorgeous, filled with the flavor of the last century. She looked about ten years old and stood only as high as Fang Xiu's chest.

Her face bore distinct Asian features, but her eyes were blue. Her thick, silky black hair cascaded like a waterfall and was braided into two plaits. At that moment, she stood prettily beside Fang Xiu, one hand at her side and the other behind her back, her body turned slightly to the side. Though she was still so young, she possessed the gentle, graceful beauty of classical Chinese style.

Fang Xiu immediately lowered his head on reflex and reached for her hand. But his hand grasped at nothing. The moment he looked down and his eyes left the mirror, he discovered there was nothing beside him at all.

Fang Xiu raised his head again and looked into the mirror, only to find nothing there. It was as though the horrifying scene he had just witnessed had been entirely his own hallucination and imagination.

Fang Xiu was badly startled this time—not out of fear, but because of the sudden strangeness. Even with Fang Xiu's nerves of steel, his heart had nearly stopped from the shock.

"Something's wrong! Something's wrong!"

"There has to be something strange going on!"

Fang Xiu immediately took out his Dominator of Time and Space Log to see whether it contained any warning about abnormal circumstances, only to find that nothing had been written in it. It remained exactly as before, with no updates at all.

"Nothing? Did I see it wrong just now?"

After changing clothes, Fang Xiu walked out of the house and immediately saw that the garden, which had not even been fully tidied yesterday, was now completely sorted out. The lawn had been trimmed perfectly neat, and the row of small trees along the wall had all been pruned as well.

Fang Xiu turned back and suddenly noticed something he had overlooked before. The hall and staircase of his home were so clean they seemed to reflect light, while the things that had originally been scattered messily over the sofa and table had all been put away.

And Fang Xiu had neither mopped the floor nor organized those places these past few days.