For a moment, I didn't dare touch it. I lowered my head and took a look.
Song Xian was still standing beside the chair, looking up at me. Her eyes were cloudy, and her face was expressionless.
I couldn't read anything from her face, so I looked back at the cabinet.
There wasn't any yin energy inside it, either.
Maybe I was just overthinking things. Maybe this was where the old lady hid her private savings. She'd just gone to some lengths to conceal them—most ordinary people wouldn't do it this way.
I pressed down on the raised wooden board, felt along its edge, then gently pried at it.
The board creaked as I worked at it. It was pretty sturdy, nothing like the secret doors in movies or TV shows.
I reached up with my other hand and gripped the edge of the cabinet for leverage. Then I tightened my hold on the board and, with one hard pull, snapped it clean off.
A gap opened in the board, revealing a pitch-black space behind it.
I set the board aside and used my phone as a light.
There was indeed something stuffed inside—a bottle made of glass or perhaps ceramic.
It didn't look like anything sinister.
I relaxed a little and pried the board open further.
As I'd realized earlier, the cabinet had no elaborate hidden compartment. Someone had simply added a thin wooden board to divide off a new space inside the existing one. The extra board hadn't been fitted especially well, either, or it wouldn't have cracked and started to come loose.
There was more than one bottle behind the board. There were two bottles and a small wooden box.
Compared with the rough board and the drab, dusty bottles, the wooden box looked much more refined.