Fenghe Pawnshop and Ma Family Tofu

Fenghe Pawnshop was considered a rather sizable pawnshop in this part of the eastern city of Yuan Yang Prefecture.

The pawnshop business was not so easy to run. Aside from dealing with troublemaking hooligans, this trade was inherently filled with unscrupulous schemes and hidden tricks, its depths far beyond what ordinary people could fathom.

To keep such a business of swallowing up and squeezing dry through pawning steady, one had to mingle with all sorts from every walk of life before one could truly prosper.

The owner of Fenghe Pawnshop was named Zhou Yushui. He was plain-looking, with a dark, skinny monkey face, but he was quite shrewd and knew how to handle people. Over the past decade or so, Fenghe Pawnshop had grown ever more prosperous in his hands. Yet within that prosperity, no one knew how much flesh and bone had been gnawed away.

Late one night, in the pawnshop's secret storeroom, Zhou Yushui sat alone before a low table. By the dim yellow lamplight, he inventoried several pawn tickets in his hand. Before him lay several items as well: a translucent reddish Agate Bracelet, a Jade Thumb Ring, and a string of Coral Prayer Beads.

Zhou Yushui toyed with the Jade Thumb Ring, greed welling up in his eyes. These fine treasures had already become outright forfeited pledges.

Moreover, such treasures were highly marketable and easy to sell. With a single change of hands, he could earn ten times the profit or more—gleaming silver, all of it.

Zhou Yushui was so absorbed in playing with it that he failed to notice a black shadow suddenly emerge from the darkness in the corner of the secret storeroom. That shadow stood there for a moment, like a ghost.

"Ahem!"

A soft cough suddenly rang out, eerie amid the stillness