Chapter Ninety: Cursed

Fatty had cheated death. According to him, from the instant he fell, he knew nothing at all. The current dragged him down so violently that simply surviving was enough to count as a blessing from his ancestors. We stayed in Shanghai for a month, and among those who returned with us was Old Gu, Yuan Xiaobai’s teacher. He took a keen interest in the hairpin in Fatty’s hand.

The old man sent a telegram back to the United States, saying that he had made a major discovery in China. The turmoil between the Northern and Southern Song dynasties was, one could say, among the most brilliant chapters in ancient Chinese history. The Song era’s highly developed economy did not match the decline of its national power. What excited the old man even more was his certainty that the hairpin in Fatty’s hand was not a Central Plains artifact at all, but something from the Kingdom of the Western Uighurs, that is, the Kingdom of Kucha.

For anyone fond of history, the Kingdom of Kucha may not sound unfamiliar. A thousand years ago, much of what is now Xinjiang was its territory. The Flaming Mountains mentioned in Journey to the West refer, in fact, to the tale of Master Xuanzang passing through the Kingdom of Kucha. What made the hairpin even stranger was that it bore a string of sixteen characters. These characters had been engraved in microscopic script, visible only through a magnifying glass.

The hairpin itself was shaped like a phoenix, a classic figure from Central Plains mythology. Yet the inscription was written in the long-vanished Uighur script. In history, only the Kingdom of Kucha ever used it, and it was not mutually intelligible with the scripts of other ethnic groups. That was precisely what fascinated Old Gu most.

Soon, a fax came from the United States. At the time, China and America were in the honeymoon phase of the global Cold War, and Nixon’s visit to China had turned the two former enemies into friends almost overnight. Stanford University, together with a top-tier private museum in the United States, said they wanted to conduct an academic study. In truth, it was only because the photograph of Fatty’s hairpin had been sent back overseas that the other side offered a million dollars to acquire it.

We had never expected to be struck by such an enormous windfall, especially Fatty. Though his head was wrapped in gauze, his grin practically split his face in two. The hairpin had simply been something we picked up along the way, and none of us had imagined it could be worth so much. But trouble soon came knocking. Just as we were preparing to return to Hong Village, a group of uninvited guests arrived at the Yuan family mansion.

Who were they? The man in front seemed to know Cha Wenbin...

“Dragon Lord...” When our little immortal, Cha Wenbin, saw him, he lowered his head as well. His manner was exceedingly respectful. I knew there had never been many people in this world who were worthy of his regard. And from Yuan Xiaobai’s father’s attitude toward this Dragon Lord, the man truly seemed formidable, because among Chinese people, rank and standing are everything. This was the Yuan family mansion, and yet Father Yuan was standing all the way at the very back of the visitors’ line.

Dragon Lord took a sip of tea and said, “Should I call you Nineteen Eighty-Two, or should I call you Cha Wenbin?” Then he smiled and added, “I think you must have earned the right for me to call you by your name. That is your honor.”

What? A person’s name is given by their parents, and yet this fellow spoke like that!

What shocked me even more was that Cha Wenbin replied with utmost deference, “Thank you, Dragon Lord.”

The man had clearly come with a purpose and no intention of wasting time. He held out his hand at once and said, “Where is it? Hand it over.”

“What?”

“The hairpin!” He shook the photograph in his hand. I truly admired our country’s information security; this was the telegram Old Gu had sent to the United States.

Cha Wenbin replied, “It is not mine.”

Dragon Lord stood and scanned the room, giving Fatty and me a slow once-over. “These are your friends, I assume?”

“Yes.”

“Then that settles it. Is there any difference between yours and your friends’?”

When I heard him say that, I truly thought he was utterly shameless, especially with that look in his eyes—greedy and ruthless.

Holding his teacup, he walked to Father Yuan’s side and said, “Mr. Yuan, are you very familiar with these young friends?”

“They are friends of my daughter.”

“Then that’s fine!”

“Don’t make things difficult for them. I can give you the item,” Cha Wenbin said, extending a hand toward Fatty.

“On what grounds?” Before Fatty could speak, Old Gu had already risen. He challenged Dragon Lord, “You trespassed into a private residence first and then threatened people’s safety. I’m going to call the police, and I’m going to file a complaint with the embassy!”

Dragon Lord walked over to Old Gu and extended a hand. “So this must be Professor Gu. Professor Gu is an American and may not understand Chinese law. Our country has a rule: all cultural relics unearthed from the ground belong to the state. If anyone insists on claiming this hairpin as their own or tries to buy and sell it, then under our laws they can be sentenced and imprisoned. Trafficking in cultural relics is a serious crime in our country.”

“You...” Old Gu was so angry he could not speak for a moment. He turned to grab the telephone and said, “I’m calling the embassy. My personal safety has been threatened. I’m filing a complaint against you!”

Dragon Lord stepped forward in a flash and pressed Old Gu’s hand down. “I advise Professor Gu not to damage relations between our two countries. This is no ordinary object. You and I both know its value is beyond measure. You want to take it for a paltry million dollars? That’s a joke of international proportions, don’t you know?”

His words left us stunned. In those days, the money in our pockets were still the large denomination notes, the ten-yuan bills. A worker’s monthly wage was only a little over a hundred yuan. If a village produced a household with ten thousand yuan in savings, it was front-page news. Yet in Dragon Lord’s mouth, this hairpin had become merely a matter of a million dollars. What did that even mean? And the red-and-green changes of expression on Old Gu’s face only confirmed Dragon Lord’s words. It seemed this hairpin really was no ordinary thing, or it would not have drawn so many people after it.

“Give it to him!” Cha Wenbin’s voice brooked no argument when he said this to Fatty. Fatty, though unwilling in a hundred different ways, was not stupid. At that rate, if he refused, they might not even let him walk out that door. So he took it from inside his clothes and handed it to Cha Wenbin.

After taking the hairpin, Cha Wenbin stepped back. “I have a few conditions.”

“Say them,” said Dragon Lord.

“First: this object was obtained by my friend with his life. It does not belong to you. You may have it, but only on loan, never as a taking. Second: does the mine in Scholar Village have any of your people in it? Where is that one-eyed man? His hands are stained with several lives. Just now, Dragon Lord said we are a nation governed by law, so surely murder demands repayment with life—that is only proper, isn’t it?”

Dragon Lord smiled. “Setting aside how ridiculous your conditions are, what if I refuse?”

With that, Cha Wenbin raised both hands as if he were about to snap the hairpin in two. “Then I will destroy it!”

“All right, then I’ll answer your second question first. Yes, there is state law, and there are household rules. Even the Son of Heaven must be punished the same as the common people. But do you have proof he did it? Even if you do, so what? I forgot to tell you—we exist beyond the law, because everyone who has ever entered the estate is already dead, including you.”

“What do you mean?”

“All of our household registrations, along with our records, have already been destroyed. In other words, even if you go to the Public Security Bureau right now, there will be no record of you existing. Your file will show you as dead. The law does not pursue responsibility from the dead. So I can now reply to your first condition as well: since we are not bound by the law, I can simply declare that the hairpin belongs to you. If it belongs to you, then of course I can write up a loan slip. But if it belongs to any one of the others, I cannot guarantee their safety.”

“You still won’t say?”

“Likewise, if anyone asks me who the hairpin belongs to, I won’t tell them. In three days, it will be returned intact. What you do after that is your business. But I advise you to keep it on your person. In someone else’s hands, it might just as well be a bomb.”

Cha Wenbin said nothing more and handed the hairpin over. Unexpectedly, Dragon Lord did not take it. Instead he said, “I told you, it’s best if you keep it.”

“Didn’t you ask for three days?”

“Three days, including your own person.” Then Dragon Lord looked around the room and said to everyone present, “For the next three days, I suggest you all do your best not to leave Shanghai. Otherwise, this Cha Wenbin may well be unable to find his way home. In that case, I will have to send him back to this mansion myself.”

Three days—long enough, and not long at all. Cha Wenbin left just like that, just as he had left years ago. We stayed in the Yuan family mansion for a full three days. It was not that people cannot face reality; it is whether they are willing to yield to it. In the face of absolute power, waiting is the only choice...

Father Yuan only told us, “You cannot afford to offend them.” Just those three simple words, and I could faintly grasp what sort of people they were. Even this man, past fifty and weathered by countless storms in Shanghai, had chosen silence. What could we do?

Three days later, he returned. As Dragon Lord had said, the hairpin was returned as well...

What he had gone to do, whether anything had happened to him, what had occurred—Cha Wenbin would not speak of it, just as he had not spoken of his disappearance years before. But he brought back an even worse piece of news:

“We three may have been cursed...”