An hour and a half later, Shen Le sat dazed in a high-rise office building's conference room. Thick stacks of documents were piled on either side of him.
At the center of the table lay a huge map, with a massive plot of land outlined in red.
"What? My inheritance? Such a huge... house? A mansion?"
"Yes, an old mansion." The lawyer smiled with confidence and warmth.
"It has two wings, east and west, each with three courtyards, covering a total area of 2,000 square meters. Don't worry, it isn't a protected historical building. You can do whatever you like with it."
"Good grief..."
Shen Le's head was spinning. Even the Copper Fragment hanging on his chest was beginning to grow warm. Two thousand square meters! A 2,000-square-meter mansion!
These days, so many people worked themselves to the bone, got into top universities, landed jobs at big companies, and slogged through endless overtime, all just to afford a roof over their heads. And he'd done nothing at all, yet inherited a mansion spanning two thousand square meters!
Even if it was in some remote backwater, a mansion like this in a tiny county town could fetch several million at least, making him financially independent overnight. At the very least, he'd have somewhere to live!
He did his best to steady himself, then steadied himself again. After turning the figures over in his mind, he rubbed his temples.
"Wait... you said my great-granduncle...? How come I've never heard of this relative? Grandpa never mentioned him, and there's nothing about him in the family records..."
"Mr. Shen Le, we wouldn't have come to you unless we'd verified the information." The lawyer nudged his silver-rimmed glasses. A glint flashed off their narrow frames, making Shen Le squint.
"In any case, this ancestral mansion belonged to your great-granduncle, the late Mr. Shen Yinmo. After the reforms and opening up, the property was returned to his father.
"He was an only child. He went abroad when he was young and had no descendants. In accordance with his wishes, he left the property rights to this street to his closest living blood relative whose household registration remained in his hometown—that is, you."
Well, however you looked at it, getting a house for free was a good thing. Shen Le calmed himself, pressed the still-warming Copper Fragment through his clothes, and began signing the documents with sweeping strokes. As he signed, he listened to the lawyer explain:
"According to Mr. Shen's will, ownership of this old mansion can't be transferred again for twenty years. Since you've inherited it, you'll have to develop it yourself."
"I understand." Shen Le was focused entirely on signing. He didn't even look up as he replied casually.
So he couldn't sell it. So what? Renting out a house couldn't be that hard!
There were two wings, each with three courtyards, which meant six courtyards in total. He could live in one—or even just one room—and rent out the other five courtyards.
Even if the location was terrible, he could rent each courtyard for a thousand a month and bring in five thousand. From then on, he'd be living off rent~~~
He signed quickly, then dragged a suitcase full of documents as the lawyer escorted him to the door. As Shen Le left, a chubby middle-aged man with thin eyebrows and narrow eyes darted out of the law firm's reception room.
"Well? Well? Did he accept it?"
"He did." After seeing Shen Le off, the lawyer relaxed his stiff posture and slumped back at ease.
"Old Hu, don't put me through this kind of hassle again. I spent days conjuring up a great-granduncle out of thin air, forging a complete set of documents, then convincing him to accept the inheritance. Do you have any idea how hard that was?"
"Hey, my grandson owes him his life. We had to repay him somehow." Old Hu smiled ruefully.
"Paying him off with money is a good thing. It beats having to sell ourselves to him decades from now and spending decades, maybe even a hundred years, paying it back. Besides, I did pay your legal fees—"
"Your legal fees don't cover it! There's something about that kid. I almost couldn't fool him. And he even ruined this thing of mine—"
The lawyer took off his glasses and tossed them to Old Hu. The narrow silver rims, once gleaming, had somehow gone completely dull, as if they'd oxidized over decades.
"You owe me!"
"Fine, fine, I'll pay!... Good grief, what burned this thing like that?"
The lawyer and the man behind the "inheritance" had their own arrangement. Shen Le took the address on the documents and flew from the Imperial Capital to Shanghai. After completing the property transfer, he traveled sixty kilometers west from Shanghai to Zhuxi Town.
Once in town, he walked from the central commercial street to the outskirts, then circled around a cluster of haphazard private homes. The farther he went, the more remote it got. At last, he stood at the end of the old street marked "Nanhua Street" on the map, his face twisted.
Zhuxi Town—he knew it was his hometown. His grandpa had taken him back there when he was little. But how could he not remember a street like this in town?
And the street was so old!
White walls and gray tiles. A babbling creek ran through it, with a small bridge connecting the streets on either side. It looked quite lovely, but the lanes along the creek and their narrow alleys were lined with houses that were visibly all made of wood.
A few families still lived there, mostly in single-story homes. Their doors were narrow, and the iron bars outside the wooden window frames were coated in thick rust. As Shen Le walked by, he even spotted two small coal-briquette stoves sending up wisps of white smoke.
Apart from the Lamb Noodle Shop at the end of the old street, hardly any of the storefronts were open. Most doors were shut tight, their display windows completely hidden behind wooden shutters a foot wide and six feet long.
Tall weeds swayed on the rooftops of the abandoned homes, and a few small trees even stood upright among them.
Moss covered the corners of walls, the steps, and even the lower halves of the wooden shutters.
Standing at the end of the old street, Shen Le felt as though he'd stepped through time and landed a hundred years in the past.
As for the people... the people...
The old street ran three or four hundred meters, with buildings lining both sides of the creek. He walked from one end to the other and back again, and fewer than a third of the houses were inhabited.
Oh, right. At either end of the street stood what looked like a Buddhist temple and a Taoist temple—or perhaps a City God Temple. Neither had anyone in it, either.
Shen Le was on the verge of tears.
With so few people around, how was he supposed to rent out the mansion?
Wouldn't people think it was haunted?!
If he couldn't rent it out, maintaining and repairing a mansion with two wings and three courtyards each would be a gigantic money pit!
"Whatever. At least I've got somewhere to live..."
Shen Le trudged along, rummaged through his bag, and pulled out a document and a ring of keys. Following the address on the paperwork, he searched one house at a time along the street.
"Number 15 Nanhua Street... 16... 17... 18... 18... Number 18! Wow!"
Shen Le couldn't help whistling. Number 18 Nanhua Street, the old mansion he'd inherited, stood out on the street like a crane among chickens.
It didn't hide away in a narrow alley. Instead, it occupied a stretch of Nanhua Street all by itself. Three stone steps led up to the main wall and gate, where a pair of vermilion-lacquered doors stood beneath an exquisitely carved brick archway.
"Pomegranates and magpies..."
"Lotuses and flowering crabapples..."
"Auspicious clouds and cranes..."
Shen Le took two steps back, moved forward, then stepped back and went forward again. His eyes nearly touched the relief carvings on the archway. Even the archway alone had three different brick-carving patterns on its curved wall and upper and lower crossbeams. The four characters "嘉夷攸昌" at the center were written with vigorous strokes, clearly the work of a master.
On either side of the inscribed plaque were square brick carvings, each a foot across, facing each other. The left depicted Three Heroes Fight Lu Bu, with the pheasant feathers on Lu Bu's helmet seeming to flutter in the wind. The right showed Four Fierce Eight Hammers: four hammers of gold, silver, copper, and iron, each detailed down to the patterns on its head.
"Just this gate alone looks like it belongs to a wealthy family..."
Muttering to himself, Shen Le unlocked the gate. Beyond the high threshold lay the first courtyard, with a three-bay entrance hall and seven roof trusses. The lattice windows featured crackled-ice, plum-blossom, swastika, and ruyi patterns, each one different.
The second courtyard held the main hall. Though its carved beams had faded and its painted decorations were dusty, the qilin carved into the stone bases still looked lifelike, and the upside-down lotus petals carved into the pillars were distinct. The hall's twelve doors were each carved with a flower representing a different month.
The third courtyard held the living quarters. He crossed the moss-covered, polished brick paving and looked up to see a quiet, two-story building with three bays. Its gray tiles and white walls framed twelve closed floor-to-ceiling windows on the ground floor, while the second-floor beauty railing stretched gracefully outward. Across the years, he could almost see a lovely woman leaning there, gazing into the distance.
Shen Le passed beneath the dense green shade cast by a vine trellis in front of the building and went inside. Just beyond the entrance, behind two grand armchairs, stood a twelve-panel Floor Screen. Shen Le drew a sharp breath.
"Wow... This thing must be worth a fortune... It looks like Huali Wood... I wonder which dynasty it's from. Judging by the style, maybe the Ming Dynasty? My great-granduncle—or his ancestors—must have been seriously rich..."
According to the inheritance documents, the mansion and everything in it belonged to him, including all the furniture, furnishings, flowers, and trees. He couldn't sell the mansion, but no one had said he couldn't sell what was inside. If the screen really was made of Ming Dynasty Huali Wood, selling it would make him financially independent in an instant!
On the long table in front of the screen sat a purple-bronze incense burner, half full of ash. As he approached, it seemed as if wisps of incense smoke were curling upward. Red wax remained on the candlesticks on either side. Beyond them stood a pair of Yuhuchun Celadon Vases, their flowing lines and graceful forms seeming to shimmer with a jade-like sheen.
"I'd believe anyone who told me this incense burner was a Xuande Incense Burner... Too bad it's full of ash, so I can't turn it over to check the mark..."
Muttering, Shen Le turned left from the main hall. In the bedroom stood a Thousand-Craft Bed made of Huanghuali Wood and carved with the Three Friends of Winter. Curtains hung low, and a faint fragrance lingered in the air.
Beside the bed and against the wall stood a Sandalwood Magpie-on-Plum Double-Pillow Concubine Couch, a black-lacquered five-drawer chest inlaid with mother-of-pearl and decorated with birds and peonies, and an Huanghuali Lingzhi-Pattern Upturned-End Table...
As far as the eye could see, every piece of furniture was an antique.
But for the moment, Shen Le had no urge to sell them and get rich. He felt one over, then another, shook a slightly wobbly flower stand, and went back outside to touch a pillar's base, whose edge had begun to rot. His eyes gleamed.
"If I repair all this stuff and it can charge the Copper Fragment, I'll make a killing!!!"