Folklore and Strange Tales: At the Start, You Retrieve the Sea-Suppressing Black Iron

"It's nothing, I just suddenly remembered it on my way back today."

"Your grandfather came to see me about a year ago, holding a piece of paper and asking if I knew any descendants of the Liu family. I said I didn't. He left and never mentioned it again."

Cheng Xiaojin kept those words in mind, asked no further questions, and said goodbye to Zhou Banxian.

He spent nearly three hours running around to all the places, distributing the money where it was due and hiding it where it was due.

Tong Kexin's 50,000 yuan was stuffed under the chili noodle bucket at the bottom of the spice cabinet in the back kitchen, wrapped in three layers of oil paper. Tong Kexin squatted down next to him, watching him with her lips tightly pursed, without saying a word.

When I got back to my rented room in Fengtai, it was already past 1 a.m., and I had less than 100,000 yuan in cash on me.

Cheng Xiaojin didn't shower or change his clothes. He draped his shirt over the back of a chair, sat shirtless on the edge of the bed, and dragged his grandfather's camphor wood chest out from under the bed.

He pulled out the handwritten notebook filled with small symbols and turned to the page with the ouroboros pattern.

He had already seen the two words his grandfather had written in red pen next to the picture.

Tail-to-tail.

But today his eyes looked ten times narrower than usual.

He held the notebook up to the lamp, craning his neck at an awkward angle to look down, and discovered that the paper at the end was not blank.

There are extremely small characters, so small that they are mixed in with the fiber texture of the paper and cannot be seen at all without a magnifying glass.

He took out the magnifying glasses that Tieguai Li had given him before he left, put them on his forehead, and flipped them down.

The words on the screen popped out one by one.

He entered the stronghold, but did not return.

Cheng Xiaojin's hands were trembling, and a tingling sensation was spreading from her fingertips to her wrists.

Shouyi is his father's name.

What place did you enter?

Not returned...

Cheng Xiaojin didn't change his clothes, slung his canvas bag over his shoulder, and rode his old bicycle straight to Master Ma's courtyard house.

At two in the morning, there were few people on the streets of Beijing. The streetlights along the moat cast his long shadow, and the bicycle chain rattled loudly, ten times noisier than during the day.

When he arrived at the courtyard house, the door was ajar and the corridor lights were on.

Mr. Ma, wearing a gray cotton-padded coat, sat on a rattan chair under the eaves, holding an enamel tea mug in his hand. He scraped the tea foam off the mug lid with his hand, making a clinking sound.

Cheng Xiaojin pushed open the door and went in. He could tell from Master Ma's posture that the old man was not asleep and was waiting for him.

"Master Ma."

Master Ma paused for a moment, then looked up at him.

"Has the blood on your elbow dried yet? Sit down first."

Cheng Xiaojin didn't sit down. He took out the handwritten notebook from his canvas bag, turned to the page with the ouroboros pattern, and placed it directly on the stone table in front of Master Ma, pointing to the small print below the ouroboros with his finger.

"Master Ma, what does 'guarding one entrance, yet not returning' mean?"

Mr. Ma looked down at it, but didn't reach out to flip it. He squinted and stared down from above his reading glasses.

"What did you enter?" Cheng Xiaojin asked.

Master Ma didn't respond.

The teacup lid started to chip in my hand again, clang, clang, a beat slower than usual.

Cheng Xiaojin stood under the eaves, the night wind blowing in from the courtyard, rustling the leaves of the locust tree.

He waited for a full minute before Master Ma placed the teacup on the stone table, stood up, and walked to the rosewood bookcase.

He reached into the pile of clutter on the second floor and pulled out a brown paper envelope.

The envelope was sealed with wax, but the wax has broken, indicating that it has been opened more than once.

Master Ma handed the envelope to Cheng Xiaojin.

"See for yourself."

Cheng Xiaojin opened the envelope. Inside was an old photograph, three inches in size, with yellowed paper and slightly curled edges.

The photo shows a man, around thirty years old, wearing a dark jacket, standing in front of an iron gate.

Cheng Xiaojin gripped the edge of the photo tightly with her fingers.

That was a familiarity etched into his very bones; the person in the photo was his father, Cheng Shouyi.

She looked twenty years younger than he remembered, and the lines of her brow bone and chin were exactly the same as when he looked in the mirror.

The iron gate was large, with a relief pattern on it, blurry but the outline was still visible.

Ouroboros.

A snake is biting its own tail, coiled into a circle.

Cheng Xiaojin turned the photo over. On the back, there was a line of text written in blue ballpoint pen, with very neat handwriting.

In March 1997, during an investigation in Southeast Asia, we made our third contact.

"What was the third contact with?" Cheng Xiaojin looked up at Master Ma.

Master Ma sat down again in the rattan chair, pulling up the collar of his cotton-padded jacket to cover his neck.

"Your father's pursuit of clues back then was just the official story. He was carrying out a mission."

Cheng Xiaojin held the photo tightly without moving.

Master Ma's voice was a tone lower than usual, as if it came from a deeper part of his throat.

"I only know half of who gave him this task. The other half I know is that he's following a lead."

Master Ma drew an invisible line on the stone table with his finger.

"This route starts from Beijing, passes through Guangzhou, and finally leads to Southeast Asia, taking the sea route. You've already seen the things that are transported along the route today: feng shui items, ironware, bronzeware, all old objects related to the dragon vein of North China are being sent out."

"That line with Boss Lin?"

"Boss Lin is just a transit point in this chain. He has people above him and people below him. Your father wasn't just chasing one person back then; he was chasing the entire chain of interests."

Master Ma picked up his teacup and took a sip. The tea was already cold, but he didn't care.

"He chased them all the way to the doorstep of an organization."

"What organization?"

"The symbol of that organization is this snake your grandfather drew, the ouroboros."

"In the Chinese community in Southeast Asia, this symbol is not something that just anyone can wear. People who wear this snake are either members of this organization or clients of this organization."

Cheng Xiaojin looked down and glanced again at the image of Boss Lin's silver ring in the photo, recalling how it appeared in his memory. Then he looked at the relief on the iron gate in the photo.

"And what about the other half?"

Master Ma shook his head.

"Your dad didn't tell me about your other half."

Cheng Xiaojin stared at him, and Master Ma didn't look away, meeting his eyes.

"He only said one thing to me: if I don't come back, don't let Xiao Jin touch these things."

The corridor was quiet for quite a while.

The locust tree leaves were blown by the wind again, and two of them landed on the stone table, covering the corner of the photo.

Cheng Xiaojin brushed the leaves aside, his voice dry.

"Then why are these things in your cabinet now, and not in my grandfather's hands?"

"Your grandfather entrusted all these things to me before he passed away. He told me not to give them to you, but he also told me not to throw them away. He said that if it really came to a last resort, when Xiao Jin is old enough to know, you should show them to him."

"When should we know?"

The lid of Mr. Ma's enamel mug started chipping again, but this time it chipped very lightly, almost inaudibly.

"When you took the initiative to ask me today."

Cheng Xiaojin flipped the photo over and over again, looking at it three times.

On the fourth time, his eyes fell on the lower left corner of the iron gate.

There is a marker at that location.

The photo had low resolution and blurry markings, so he simply put on the magnifying glass that Tieguai Li had given him and held it up to the corridor lamp to look at it.

The mark under the magnifying glass stood out clearly.

A vertical hook.

It was exactly the same mark he had carved with a sewing needle on the bottom of the fake Zhenhai Iron two days ago.

Same angle, same arc, same finishing stroke.

Cheng Xiaojin's hand froze in mid-air, the photo between two fingers, and trembled slightly.

"Master Ma."

"Um."

"This mark." Cheng Xiaojin's voice sounded unfamiliar even to himself, his throat hoarse and rough.

"My dad used it more than 20 years ago."

Master Ma's teacup lid stopped on the rim of the teacup and he didn't scratch it anymore.

He looked at the photo in Cheng Xiaojin's hand, at the vertical hook in the lower left corner, and didn't say a word.

But Cheng Xiaojin noticed a detail: the hand that Master Ma was holding the teacup with was clenched tighter.