Chapter 54: Opening the Coffin to Appraise the Treasure

Chapter 54: Chapter 54: Opening the Coffin to Appraise the Treasure

Zhang Youcai shined his flashlight inside, faintly illuminating the outline of a coffin.

"Go on in! There’s no corpse in this tomb, so you don’t have to worry about bad luck. I’ll close the door from behind. You’re taller than me, so duck your head. Don’t bump it," Zhang Youcai said.

"Alright." Following his instructions, Zhang Yun agreed, bent down, and slipped inside through the opening left by the shifted tombstone.

The space was extremely narrow. Zhang Yun’s back blocked most of the light, instantly putting him in a very vulnerable position! If Zhang Youcai were to stab him in the back with the shovel... even if he noticed it in time, turning around would be extremely difficult, and there was nowhere to dodge. This was Zhang Yun’s first time encountering such life-threatening danger. However, after his body had been transformed by the Mysterious Petals, his senses had become incredibly acute. At this moment, he maintained a state of high alert.

He soon bumped into the coffin and stopped. Behind him, he heard the sounds of Zhang Youcai entering. Zhang Youcai was panting heavily after running, falling, and taking a beating earlier, but who was to say it wasn’t intentional? Zhang Yun didn’t let his guard down for a second.

CLANG! The sound of a metal shovel scraping against the cement wall rang out. The attack had come!

Already prepared, Zhang Yun swiftly pressed his side flat against the wall. In a space where dodging and turning were nearly impossible, this was the best evasive maneuver he could come up with. Once he turned sideways, both the lighting and his field of vision improved significantly. Without pausing for a second, Zhang Yun grabbed the shovel with one hand and delivered a vicious slap right across Zhang Youcai’s face with the other!

Zhang Youcai let out a miserable shriek but quickly stifled it. The shovel slipped from his grasp as he whimpered, "What are you doing!"

"Heh! Trying to silence me for good in here?" Zhang Yun flipped the shovel around and aimed it at Zhang Youcai. "When the time comes, there won’t be a trace of me left, dead or alive. You can just tell everyone I stole your money and ran away. Even those guys from earlier would believe it. Who would ever suspect that I was buried in your ancestral tomb?"

Trembling all over, Zhang Youcai ignored the pain and indignation of being slapped and hurriedly explained, "Calm down! Zhang Yun, you misunderstood..."

"You told me to walk in front, then shoved a shovel at my back. That’s a misunderstanding?" Zhang Yun pressed the shovel closer to his face.

Zhang Youcai looked like he was about to cry. "I didn’t! I let you come in first because I needed to move the tombstone back into place. If someone saw us, we’d be exposed!"

Zhang Yun sneered. "Excuses! Who would come to Old Tomb Ridge in the middle of the night?"

Zhang Youcai smiled bitterly. "You say that, but didn’t someone come last night? And you all came today! What if those guys loop back around?"

Zhang Yun pondered this for a moment. Over the past twenty years, he had been here countless times. If you walk in the dark enough times, you’re bound to bump into a ghost—just like he ran into Bao Sheng last night. Tonight, their group had come specifically for this. Though those guys had left first, given Jin Lu’s attitude, it was entirely possible he would double back to extort Zhang Youcai privately.

"And what about this?" Zhang Yun tapped the shovel against the wall.

The harsh scraping sound made Zhang Youcai’s heart tremble. "It’s a tool... a tool for opening the coffin..." Zhang Youcai explained with a long face. "I couldn’t bring too many things with me. I considered that from the start, so I only brought this one to pry it open..."

Zhang Yun stared at him, scrutinizing his expression. Zhang Youcai asked softly, "Can I close the entrance first?"

This was the ancestral tomb of the Zhang Clan in Tianxin Village. If this got out, it would cause a massive uproar and make them the laughingstock of all the neighboring villages. Zhang Yun didn’t want that consequence either, so he nodded.

Zhang Youcai’s cheek had swelled up. Hissing in pain, he pulled the tombstone back into place from the inside, blocking the entrance to the tomb. Zhang Yun had already picked up the flashlight. With a light in one hand and a shovel in the other, coupled with the massive disparity in their physical strength, there was no way Zhang Youcai could ambush him now. Unless this place was rigged with hidden traps like in the movies...

"Zhang Yun, I really didn’t have any malicious intentions!" Zhang Youcai smiled bitterly. "Out of your whole group earlier, you were the most reasonable one and the only one willing to stay behind to help me. How could I possibly want to harm you?"

Zhang Yun didn’t say anything. He slowly moved deeper inside, sweeping the flashlight around to illuminate the space.

A single coffin sat in the center of the chamber, leaving only enough room on all sides for one person to squeeze past. The ceiling was sealed with stone slabs, providing just enough height for an average person to stand. It felt like a coffin placed inside a much larger coffin. The environment was cramped and oppressive. With the tombstone shut, the air circulation was extremely poor; it was definitely not a place to linger for long.

"Give me the shovel, and I’ll open it to show you. If I try anything funny, you can beat me to death for all I care!" Zhang Youcai guaranteed.

Zhang Yun handed the shovel over, holding the flashlight steady while stepping back to put a little distance between them.

Zhang Youcai expertly located a few leverage points, pried them loose with the shovel, and then pushed the coffin lid halfway open. Zhang Yun shone the flashlight inside. The coffin was mostly empty, with only a few items left sitting in the corner. Sure enough, there were no skeletal remains whatsoever.

"See? I wasn’t making up stories," Zhang Youcai sighed.

Zhang Yun couldn’t help but imagine what a coffin full of gold, silver, and jewels would look like. "Wasn’t it full before? Did you squander it all?"

Zhang Youcai looked exasperated. "My dear nephew! This belonged to a rural landlord fleeing a disaster, not some imperial royalty. Sure, it was all gold, silver, and jewels, but the purity wasn’t necessarily the best. The gold held its value fairly well, but the silver was terrible, and the jewelry market is full of inflated prices."

He stared at the empty coffin with a nostalgic expression, clearly wishing it were still full.

"Moreover, I started selling these off twenty years ago, and prices fluctuated over time," Zhang Youcai continued. "I only sold them when I was desperate for cash. Selling in large quantities in unfamiliar cities meant I was bound to get lowballed."

Zhang Yun completely believed him now. "Uncle Cai, I’m sorry for misunderstanding you earlier."

"It’s fine..." Zhang Youcai forced a dry laugh. "I would have been suspicious too if I were in your shoes."

"You can casually drop ten thousand yuan on a soft-shell turtle meal now. Are you really that short on money? Do you still need to sell these things?" Zhang Yun couldn’t help but ask out of curiosity.

Zhang Youcai’s expression shifted into a bitter smile. "You don’t run a business, so you don’t understand how tough it is. Business isn’t just about making a profit. When there are no orders, when inventory isn’t moving, or when we’re brutally undercut on prices, I still can’t delay my workers’ wages every month, right? I still have to pay utilities, rent, and taxes in full, don’t I? Ten thousand yuan is just a drop in the bucket!

"But in the eyes of the workers, they think I’m some greedy capitalist pocketing all the money. They think I’m a stingy boss who won’t even give them a hundred-yuan raise. They only see me living in a big house and driving a BMW, but that’s a necessary facade. If I traded my BMW for a cheap Baojun, outsiders would instantly think I lacked capital, and my workers would think the company was going under..."

Zhang Youcai probably had no one else to confide in about these things on a normal day. Since Zhang Yun had already caught him, he ended up rambling about everything.

Zhang Yun reached into the coffin and poked through the remaining items. Aside from a few gold and silver trinkets, there was only a Bronze Pot and a scroll painting left. He wondered if these two items were antiques. Zhang Yun picked up the Bronze Pot, shining his flashlight on it for a closer look. He didn’t actually know anything about such things; he was purely acting out of curiosity.

Right at that moment, Zhang Yun felt an unseen current transfer from the Bronze Pot into his hand, rapidly dissipating throughout his body and bringing him a wave of incredible comfort!

He wondered, "What’s going on? Do antiques contain Spiritual Qi?"