Chapter 394: Qionglong Stone Shadow: The Biggest Grave-Robbing Operation in History (Part One)

Huo Xiuxiu said, "That old man, his name is Jin Wantang — does that ring a bell?"

The image of a gold-tooth old man was deeply etched in my memory, because the person who dragged me into all this was also a gold-tooth old man.

The moment she mentioned it, my heart jolted. There aren't that many coincidences in the world. Clearly she meant that the gold-tooth old man named Jin Wantang she had seen was the same one who had come to my shop looking for rubbings. For the first time, her experience and mine intersected.

So that old devil was called Jin Wantang. I vaguely recalled the shop owner next door mentioning the name too, and something felt odd in my heart.

I had never paid any attention to that old man. Actually, at the very beginning I had thought about investigating him, but those people came and went unpredictably, and back then I had no experience or connections. Later events had nothing to do with him, either. By the time I had the connections and ability, I couldn't even remember what he looked like, and there was no detail to jog my memory. So I always assumed his appearance was a coincidence.

Of course, when he came looking for my grandfather, he only said Old Yang had introduced him, and that the silk manuscript had been dug up by a friend. Considering just those words, and the endless trouble they brought me, it hardly seemed like a coincidence now. But oddly enough, everything that happened afterward had nothing to do with him. If this was a conspiracy, it was too abnormal.

Still, even though I couldn't say whether his appearance was accidental or inevitable, designed or driven by fate, the fact remained that he walked into my shop that day, and I could never turn back the clock.

I nodded to her and asked, "So, did he know something?"

Huo Xiuxiu shook her head. "He's clean — completely clean. He doesn't know a thing. But the letter indeed came back from him. He only had a business relationship with my grandmother. Later, he got greedy and pulled a little trick on one deal, and my grandmother found out immediately, so they stopped working together."

At the time, Huo Xiuxiu found it strange that a mere question could provoke such a reaction from Jin Wantang after he saw the letter. Jin Wantang was an old fox, well aware of the Huo family's power. He had no idea why Huo Xiuxiu had come — whether to settle scores or to pry — so he refused to say anything.

But Huo Xiuxiu was patient. She went to his shop almost every day, nearly driving Jin Wantang crazy.

At the end of that year, Jin Wantang had bad luck. One of his shipments contained an unremarkable Han-dynasty cicada carving, which turned out to be made of jadeite. It got caught by customs. Normally it would have been a minor case, but once the jadeite cicada was appraised, its value was too high, and it became a major case. He risked losing his life's savings and even his head. That was when Huo Xiuxiu seized the opportunity and made a deal with him: using her family's connections, she helped him pull some strings to save his shop. With his weak spot exposed, Jin Wantang had no choice but to talk.

After a long hesitation, he told Huo Xiuxiu everything over the phone one night.

It turned out that the deal on which he had pulled his crooked trick back then was no ordinary deal. From today's perspective, it might have been the largest grave-robbing operation in Chinese history.

Given the methods of the Huo family back then, if anyone dared to take advantage of them, they would have been retaliated against without mercy. The reason Jin Wantang got off scot-free was that after that operation, the Huo family — and even the other parties involved — were severely depleted. They had neither the strength nor the mood to pursue anything.

The memories that deal brought to those people were simply too terrifying.

When Fatty heard this, his eyes lit up. He sat up straight and asked, "Are you bragging? The biggest grave-robbing operation would have to be our trip to the Tarim Basin, right?"

Huo Xiuxiu shook her head. "That's not the kind of tomb-raiding you're thinking of. That deal went beyond the ordinary concept of grave robbery."

Fatty said, "Oh," and shut up. If it went beyond the concept, then by 'biggest' she probably didn't mean in terms of scale.

I asked, "Beyond the concept? So they didn't rob an underground tomb — did they rob one flying in the sky?"

Huo Xiuxiu said, "Of course not."