Su Muchen received the call while he was organizing his employment documents.
—Yunjing City Third District People’s Hospital.
Although it was not a famous major hospital, and many basic medical positions had been severely reduced in recent years due to the widespread adoption of AI medical systems, for a medical student who had just graduated, having a stable job was already considered lucky.
Besides, Su Muchen did not exactly have the qualifications to be picky.
He was twenty-four years old, had just graduated, had no background and no connections, and was still carrying the student loans he had taken out while studying.
His life plan was very simple.
First, get a job and pay off his debts. Rent a small house that did not leak. Save some money. Then stay alive.
If he was lucky, perhaps he could even raise a potted green plant that did not need much care.
When his phone vibrated, he had just finished uploading the last electronic document.
A string of unfamiliar numbers appeared on the screen.
Su Muchen stared at it for two seconds before answering.
“Hello, may I ask if this is Mr. Su Muchen?”
“It is.”
“This is the Yunjing City Joint Traffic and Entry-Exit Accident Response Team. We regret to inform you that your father, Mr. Su Jiancheng, was confirmed dead in an overseas flight accident in the early hours of this morning…”
The voice on the other end suddenly seemed very distant, as though separated by a thick pane of glass.
Su Muchen held the phone and listened as the other person spoke, word by word.
—His father was dead.
—His stepmother was dead.
—His younger half-brother was dead.
The entire family of three had died together on a plane fleeing overseas.
His expression was numb, yet the corner of his mouth unconsciously curled into a mocking smile.
How ironic… How ridiculous.
When they were alive, they had never regarded him as family and had simply let him fend for himself.
Yet when they died, they finally remembered that he was also surnamed Su.
“Mr. Su, please accept our condolences.”
The person’s tone over the phone was extremely official. He had probably said similar words too many times that day, to the point that even his sorrow sounded professionally trained.
Su Muchen was silent for several seconds before asking coldly, “So, do you need me to identify the bodies?”
He thought coldly to himself: It was a plane crash. If they had burned, that would save him the trouble of having them cremated directly. Or perhaps the bodies were already impossible to distinguish from one another.
Thinking about all the trouble he would have to deal with afterward, he could not help feeling irritated. He felt none of the grief one should have after losing family.
After all, they had never regarded him as family either.
The other person seemed not to have expected him to be so calm.
“Yes. There are also some subsequent procedures that require your cooperation. In addition, according to the information currently available, Mr. Su Jiancheng had several outstanding debts and there are also issues concerning asset inheritance. Relevant departments will contact you shortly.”
Su Muchen lowered his eyes and looked at the employment commitment letter on the desk that had not yet been printed. His grip on the phone tightened.
He had not expected that besides dealing with the funeral arrangements, an even bigger problem was waiting for him.
Debt.
Assets.
Inheritance.
When these three words were put together, they usually did not mean anything good.
He said flatly, “Understood.”
After hanging up, he sat there for a long time.
Outside the window was Yunjing at the end of June. The sky was gloomy, and the glass of the high-rises reflected a gray-white light. In the distance, traffic flowed endlessly. Everyone was busy rushing toward their own lives. No one knew that a young man who had just graduated, and who was about to begin his own life, had at this very moment been kicked into an abyss by fate.
Half an hour later, the second call came.
This time, it was a lawyer.
The other party’s tone was more tactful than that of the police, and also more cruel.
“Mr. Su, according to the current circumstances, you are Mr. Su Jiancheng’s only direct blood relative who falls within the legal order of inheritance. During his lifetime, Mr. Su owned an ancestral shop located in Changning Alley in the old city district of Yunjing City. The shop is called Returning Dust Studio.”
Su Muchen’s brows moved slightly.
—Returning Dust Studio.
He had heard that name before.
When he was little and his grandfather was still alive, his grandfather had taken him there.
It was an old-fashioned shop.
Wooden doors, green roof tiles, gray walls. It was hidden in one of the most remote old alleys in Yunjing City, like a piece of old glass forgotten by the modern city, without the slightest luster.
Back then, his grandfather had held his hand and stood in front of a locked door inside the shop. He had bent down and said something to him.
Unfortunately, he had been too young at the time.
He only remembered that his grandfather’s hand had been very warm and his voice hoarse. The rest of the memory was blurred.
“Mr. Su?”
The lawyer’s voice pulled him back to reality.
Su Muchen said, “I’m listening.”
“Returning Dust Studio is still operating, but it has suffered losses for many years. Furthermore, because Mr. Su Jiancheng was involved in multiple mortgaged loans, the shop is about to enter judicial auction proceedings.”
Su Muchen gave a light laugh, contempt and disdain appearing in his eyes.
His father had abandoned him when he was young and ignored him for many years. Even so, he had heard some things about this father who only knew how to enjoy himself, as well as his extravagant stepmother and younger half-brother. He had not expected that they had not only squandered the family fortune but had also accumulated debts. Even the ancestral Returning Dust Studio was now about to be auctioned off.
The lawyer paused.
“You…”
“It’s fine,” Su Muchen said. “Go on.”
—He had left his beloved younger son luxury cars, expensive watches, a private villa, and overseas accounts.
—What he had left Su Muchen was a broken shop on the verge of being auctioned, and a mountain of debt.
What magnificent fatherly love.
A mountain undergoing a landslide.
The lawyer probably did not know how to respond either and could only continue in a businesslike manner.
“If you choose to inherit it, you will have to assume the corresponding debts. If you choose to renounce the inheritance, Returning Dust Studio will also be disposed of according to procedure. However, there is one rather unusual point. Mr. Su’s will mentions that the family instructions passed down from the Su family’s ancestors explicitly state that Returning Dust Studio must not be closed, sold, or demolished or altered.”
Su Muchen said coldly, “Can family instructions override the law?”
“No,” the lawyer replied. “So I’m only reminding you.”
“Thank you for the reminder.”
“Additionally, tomorrow afternoon the bank and several creditors will be present to inventory some of the assets. As the heir, it would be best if you went there personally.”
Su Muchen glanced once more at the employment documents on the desk.
A few minutes ago, he had thought that he was finally about to begin a normal person’s life.
A few minutes later, he discovered that the word “normal” might simply be incompatible with his destiny.
“Send me the address.”
“Of course, Mr. Su.”
After hanging up, Su Muchen closed the folder.
He stood up and washed his face.
In the mirror, the man’s black hair was slightly disheveled. His complexion was pale, with a faint bluish shadow beneath his eyes. His features were not sharp, but rather refined and clean-cut. It was only that his eyes were too calm, so calm that he did not look like someone who had just lost his father.
Actually, there was not much to lose.
His mother had died of illness when he was very young.
His father had quickly remarried, bringing his pregnant stepmother into a new home, and then abandoned him with his grandfather.
Later, after his grandfather died, he was sent to a boarding school.
From childhood to adulthood, the thing Su Jiancheng had given him the most was records of tuition transfers.
When Su Muchen wanted to continue studying at medical school, Su Jiancheng refused, thinking it was a waste of money. He could only find a way to apply for student loans himself, working while studying.
Su Muchen had once seriously wondered where exactly he had gone wrong.
Later, he figured it out.
Some people dislike you not because you did anything wrong.
It is simply because your existence itself reminds them of a mistake they once made.
Su Muchen picked up his coat. Before leaving, he looked back at the employment commitment letter on the desk.
The paper had not even been printed yet.
His life, however, had already been torn in half.
He murmured, “Fine.”
“It’s just debt, isn’t it?”
The words sounded quite carefree.
But when he actually stood at the entrance of Returning Dust Studio, he remained silent for a long time.
Yunjing City was an extremely contradictory city.
The new urban district was filled with towering buildings. Driverless vehicles traveled back and forth, AI guidance systems could be found throughout the major hospitals, and even the convenience stores on the streets had been converted to unmanned checkout.
Yet Changning Alley seemed not to belong to this era.
Narrow, damp, quiet.
Thin moss grew between the bluestone paving. The old houses on both sides were low, while tangled electrical wires stretched messily overhead. Deep inside the alley, a two-story Chinese-style building stood quietly.
Three characters were written on the wooden signboard:
—Returning Dust Studio.
The handwriting was vigorous and forceful, the strokes sharp as knives, like some kind of warning pressed down by the passage of time.
The door was half open.
There were no customers inside.
When Su Muchen pushed the door open, the copper bell above it rang softly.
Ding-a-ling—
The sound was very clear.
It did not sound like an ordinary copper bell.
It was more like a sound coming from somewhere very far away.
The interior of the shop was dim. Various things were displayed on the shelves.
Scent pouches, old books, porcelain, wood carvings, tea leaves, handmade soap, all kinds of miscellaneous items. There were even several boxes of canned food that were almost expired.
There was a refrigerator to one side, and tables and chairs near the window.
It could be called a general store, but it did not quite resemble one.
It could be called an antique shop, but there were hardly any genuinely valuable items.
The entire shop gave off an extremely strange atmosphere.
It was as if it sold everything.
And yet it also felt as though nothing here should be sold.
A man was sprawled behind the counter.
His long black hair was casually tied behind his head. He wore a pair of thin-rimmed glasses. His profile was refined and clean, and he wore a loose black shirt with a silver ornament necklace around his neck. He looked as though he had just walked out of the set of some artistic film.
If he had not been lazily sprawled over the counter playing a game, the scene would probably have looked even more elegant.
Su Muchen looked at him.
The man also raised his head and looked at him.
The two stared at each other for three seconds.
The man blinked and smiled.
“Young Master Su?”
Su Muchen remained expressionless.
“Who are you?”
He knew that the shop was still operating, but he had not expected anyone to be here at this hour.
He guessed that the other party probably did not yet know about the accident, much less that the shop was about to be auctioned off.
“Shop clerk.” The man put down his phone and slowly stood up. “You can call me Xiao.”
“Which Xiao?”
“The Xiao from owl.”
Su Muchen fell silent for a moment.
“Would a normal person be called that?”
Xiao smiled naturally.
“Normal people don’t inherit an estate and immediately end up with tens of millions in debt on the first day, either.”
Su Muchen: “…”
He had not expected that the other party already knew about these things.
Seeing his confusion, Xiao pointed at his phone and said, “The news that Young Master’s father encountered a plane accident while fleeing overseas to evade his debts has already spread all over the internet. It even includes the story of you, the Su Young Master who has been living away from home, suddenly carrying a huge amount of debt overnight.”
Xiao spoke casually, a smile on his face, as though none of it had anything to do with him.
A wave of irritation rose in Su Muchen’s heart.
Could it be that he was actually the last person to find out about this?
The only employee in this shop not only looked mysterious, but also seemed incredibly irritating.
He angrily placed his bag on the counter and asked coldly, “Where’s the ledger?”
Xiao pointed to the side.
Su Muchen followed his gaze.
A thick stack of paper ledgers was piled beneath the counter, next to an old laptop that looked like a cultural relic.
He frowned.
“No cloud data?”
“There is.”
“Where?”
Xiao smiled and pointed at his own head.
“Here.”
Su Muchen glared fiercely at him.
Xiao continued smiling.
Su Muchen realized that getting angry at him was useless, so he also put on a fake smile.
“So there’s a reason this shop can go bankrupt.”
Xiao gave a low laugh, as though he found it rather interesting.
“Young Master is more energetic than I imagined.”
“What else can I do? Cry and wail?”
Su Muchen pulled out a chair and sat down. He ignored him and lowered his head, beginning to go through the accounts.
Half an hour later, he finally understood what it meant to suffer the hardships of life.
Returning Dust Studio had been operating at a loss for seven consecutive years.
Purchasing was a mess.
Inventory was a mess.
The water and electricity bills were overdue.
There were outstanding payments for building repairs.
Worse still, Su Jiancheng had even used this shop as collateral for a guarantee.
Now that he was dead, all the problems had been dumped onto Su Muchen.
Su Muchen flipped to the final page, and his finger stopped.
A yellowed piece of paper was tucked inside.
The handwriting belonged to his grandfather.
He recognized it.
There was only one sentence written on it.
—Returning Dust must not be abandoned. When the door opens, do not be greedy.
Su Muchen frowned.
“The door?”
Xiao leaned against the counter, his voice lazy.
“The room at the very back of the first floor.”
Su Muchen looked up at him.
“You know about it?”
“Who in this shop doesn’t?” Xiao said. “A locksmith can’t open it. If you try to tear the door down, something will happen. If you replace the lock, you’ll have bad luck. After a while, nobody bothered with it anymore.”
“What happened?”
Xiao thought for a moment.
“The last person who tried to tear the door down broke his leg that same day. The one before him had his electric drill explode. The one before that—before he even managed to take the door apart, his wife ran away with another man, and his son turned out not to be his.”
Su Muchen asked suspiciously, “…Are you sure that last one had anything to do with the door?”
“Who knows?” Xiao said with an innocent smile. “Anyway, he never dared come back afterward.”
Su Muchen closed the ledger.
“Take me to see it.”
Xiao narrowed his eyes slightly as he looked at him. This time, he did not say anything more.
He picked up a string of keys and led Su Muchen through the shop toward the back of the first floor.
The farther they went, the dimmer the light became.
The air carried a faint damp scent of wood, mixed with a cold fragrance that was impossible to describe.
At the end of the corridor stood a deep vermilion wooden door.
The door was very old.
Yet it had been preserved exceptionally well.
There was no dust on its surface, nor any trace of decay. The wood grain was dark and deep, almost black. Strangest of all, there was no ordinary handle on the door. There was only a round copper ring embedded in the center.
Complicated patterns were carved into the copper ring.
They looked like clouds.
And also like water.
Su Muchen stood before the door and suddenly felt a tightness in his chest.
Some long-forgotten images surfaced without warning.
—His younger self.
—His grandfather’s warm, dry hand.
—The dim corridor.
—The old man’s whisper echoing in the darkness.
“—Muchen, remember, if one day the door opens…”
The words that followed were blurred.
As though they had sunk to the bottom of the water. The harder he tried to reach out and retrieve them, the deeper they sank into the abyss.
Su Muchen reached out, and his fingertips touched the cold copper ring.
In an instant, he seemed to hear the sound of wind.
Very far away.
Very cold.
Faintly, he could hear the sound of horses’ hooves, the clash of blades, people’s ragged breathing, and shouts.
As though electrocuted, he abruptly pulled his hand back.
Xiao stood behind him, the amusement in his eyes having faded somewhat.
“What happened?”
Su Muchen stared at the door, his heartbeat inexplicably speeding up.
“N-Nothing.”
He suppressed the strange uneasiness, suspecting that he must simply be too tired and had imagined the sounds. Then he turned around and walked back outside.
“Let’s organize the accounts first. I still have to meet the creditors tomorrow.”
He had no time to think about too much. Right now, he needed to determine exactly how much of the debt could be repaid by selling the shop. He had no idea how much it was worth. He could only hope that whatever remained would still be something he could afford.
Otherwise, his life would be completely ruined.
Ruined by those pieces of trash.
Xiao watched his slightly exhausted back. He raised an eyebrow and suddenly spoke.
“Young Master.”
Su Muchen stopped.
“Have you ever heard of a legend passed down through the Su family?”
Confusion appeared in Su Muchen’s eyes. He had never heard of any legend about the Su family. Although he was the eldest son, in his father’s eyes, he was no different from a stranger. The two of them had hardly ever spoken.
“The ancestors of the Su family were originally just an ordinary household,” Xiao said. “But they once received guidance from an extraordinary person and opened a door leading to the Golden Road. From then on, they rose in a single leap and became a wealthy and prestigious family.”
After hearing this, Su Muchen merely snorted.
“What wealthy and prestigious family? That has nothing to do with me.”
He was merely an ordinary person with Su family blood running through his veins. His father had not even wanted to acknowledge him as his son. If not for legal restrictions, he would have removed him from the Su family long ago.
Besides, the ancestral wealth passed down through generations of the Su family had already been squandered by his father, stepmother, and younger half-brother. He had heard that the company had long since been acquired. Now all that remained was a pile of debt and this unwanted shop.
Su Muchen said coldly, “I don’t have the time or the mood to chat right now.”
With that, he walked away without looking back.
That night, rain fell over Yunjing City.
The rain struck the green roof tiles of Returning Dust Studio, its sound fine and heavy.
Su Muchen sat behind the counter, staring at a pile of debt documents until the early hours of the morning.
Xiao had disappeared sometime earlier.
The entire shop was now empty except for him.
Occasionally, headlights swept past outside, only to be swallowed by the darkness of the alley moments later.
Su Muchen rubbed his aching eyes and muttered self-mockingly, “A road leading to gold? I’d say it’s a road leading straight to the abyss.”
His heart was filled with bitterness. Although he did not have much affection for this shop, possessing only some vague childhood memories of his grandfather, reality left him no choice but to pray that the shop could be sold for a good price.
However, reality chilled his heart.
This shop had never made any profit. Instead, year after year, it required considerable amounts of money for maintenance and labor.
The shop was located in a remote and secluded place. Even if someone demolished it and built a residence there, there probably would not be many people interested in buying it.
…What was he supposed to do?
His own student loans could still be repaid through working.
But the debt his father had left behind was something he might not be able to repay even after working for the rest of his life.
Was he really going to sacrifice his entire life because of those pieces of trash?
Bitterness welled up in his eyes and in his heart.
All this time, he had relied on himself to make his way through life. He had already worked so hard to live on his own, never troubling anyone.
Why did they have to treat him like this?
What exactly had he done wrong?
His heart was filled with hatred, yet there was nowhere for that resentment to go, because the people he hated were already dead.
He thought that if things truly came to the worst, he could simply renounce the inheritance and give up this shop.
After all, he did not have much attachment to it. There were only a few vague memories of his childhood with his grandfather.
Just then, an extremely faint sound suddenly came from deep inside the shop.
—Click!
Like a lock that had been asleep for many years.
Opening on its own in the darkness.
Su Muchen froze.
He raised his head and looked toward the depths of the corridor.
It was pitch-black there.
At the end of the darkness, a thin line of cold white light faintly seeped through the crack of the door that had never been opened.
The next moment.
Something heavy slammed into the door.
Bang—!
Su Muchen sprang to his feet.
A second thunderous impact followed.
The door was knocked open.
The smell of blood surged inside together with the cold wind.
A man covered in blood staggered and fell into the shop.
The man was wearing a black python robe stained with blood. His long hair was disheveled, with several strands of striking white running through it, like the first snow covering ink-black mountains.
He tightly gripped a long sword that gleamed with a chilling light.
The man raised his head.
His sword-shaped brows and phoenix eyes were strikingly handsome and sharp.
Yet there was not the slightest trace of human warmth in those eyes.
Only killing intent.
While Su Muchen was still stunned, the other man noticed his presence.
In the next instant, the tip of the sword was pressed against Su Muchen’s throat.
The man’s voice was hoarse, as though it had been ground out of blood.
“Who are you?”
Su Muchen lowered his head and glanced at the sword pressed against his throat, then at the blood continuously seeping from the man’s abdomen.
After remaining silent for two seconds, he slowly said, “You can kill me if you want.”
Perhaps he had experienced too many things that day. At this moment, his heart was unexpectedly calm.
Instead, he felt that if he simply died here, it would not necessarily be a bad thing.
After all, he had already encountered the worst possible situation. Rather than carrying a mountain of debt and spending his entire life repaying it, it might be more satisfying to die right now.
“I suddenly ended up carrying this much debt for no reason. I don’t really want to live anymore either,” he said.
The man’s gaze turned cold.
Su Muchen expressionlessly finished his sentence.
“But if you don’t stop the bleeding, you’ll be dead in ten minutes.”
Judging from the rate at which the man was bleeding, Su Muchen could tell that if the strange man did not treat his wounds immediately, he would probably lose consciousness from excessive blood loss and then die.
The rain suddenly intensified.
Inside Returning Dust Studio, the copper bell rang despite there being no wind.
Ding-a-ling—
As though the first move in some fateful transaction had finally been made.