Sheng Wenchang’s study was located deep within the Sheng family’s ancestral residence.
It was the main room of the rear courtyard in a traditional four-sided courtyard compound with three successive courtyards.
The exterior was made of gray bricks and blue-gray roof tiles, but inside, it concealed modern lighting, temperature-control, and security systems.
Several paintings and calligraphy works from the mid-Qing dynasty hung on the walls. On the desk sat an old-fashioned rotary telephone and a silver tea canister.
The lighting was dim, like the final place where someone who had seen too many things in his life had withdrawn into himself.
When Sheng Chengxiu entered the study, Sheng Wenchang was sitting in a grand armchair by the window, a cup of tea in his hand.
He wore a dark-gray Chinese-style jacket with a front opening. His hair was completely white and neatly combed.
He did not look up at Sheng Chengxiu, merely gazing at the courtyard outside, which had been trimmed almost unnaturally neatly.
Sheng Chengxiu stopped by the door. He did not sit.
Light filtered through the carved window lattice outside, casting mottled patches of brightness across the wooden floor.
The study was very quiet. There was only the sound of the pendulum of the old clock, and the faintest vibration from the tea canister whenever the breeze moved it slightly.
“You’re back.”
Sheng Wenchang spoke.
“Yes, Grandfather,” Sheng Chengxiu replied.
“Do you know? The Sheng family has waited for more than four hundred years for this day.”
Sheng Chengxiu remained where he was and said nothing.
Sheng Wenchang slowly set down his teacup. When the bottom of the cup touched the table, it made an extremely soft sound, like the conclusion to a sentence.
“And in six days, you completely awakened the Su family’s Gatekeeper.”
Those words fell into the air of the study, like an invisible layer of dust that had been stirred up and was now slowly settling.
Sheng Chengxiu stood by the door without moving or speaking.
At last, Sheng Wenchang raised his head and looked at him.
His eyes had already grown somewhat cloudy, but they still carried a sharpness that had been tempered over many years.
“Kidnapped someone, drew his blood, locked him up on an island, and then let him escape.” Sheng Wenchang’s tone remained calm, as though he were simply stating several records that had already been verified. “The stock price fell. The board wants an explanation. I blocked them for you for three days.”
Sheng Wenchang said, “You’ve always been decisive in what you do. But this time, you weren’t decisive enough.”
Sheng Chengxiu was silent for a moment before saying, “The Su family reacted faster than I expected.”
Hearing Sheng Chengxiu’s justification, Sheng Wenchang merely said,
“Do you know how old I was when I first saw that ancient book?”
Sheng Chengxiu was silent for a moment.
“…Thirteen.”
“Thirteen years old.” Sheng Wenchang repeated it as though confirming a number he had remembered for a very long time. “My father told me: everything the Sheng family does is for the sake of one door.”
He smiled.
Very faintly, without warmth.
“So I spent more than sixty years learning how to wait.” His gaze fell on Sheng Chengxiu’s face, his tone still steady, but carrying a weight that was difficult to detect. “You only learned how to chase.”
The fingers hanging at Sheng Chengxiu’s side tightened slightly for a moment. He said nothing.
Sheng Wenchang shifted his gaze back outside the window, as though reorganizing a route he had already walked countless times.
“You touched Su Muchen, and the Su family will defend themselves. You locked him up for six days. And what did you get? One tube of blood, and a single ‘Impossible.’”
He paused. His tone remained unchanged, yet there was something deeper beneath it.
“You don’t even know who you lost to.”
Sheng Chengxiu looked at him.
“You think you lost to Chenghui Group?” Sheng Wenchang asked.
Sheng Chengxiu remained silent.
“No. Not the Su family, and not Chenghui Group. What you lost to was the person truly behind the scenes.” Sheng Wenchang’s gaze lowered slightly. “—Su Jinye. The Su family’s Gatekeeper.”
Sheng Chengxiu’s gaze shifted slightly.
Su Jinye.
Could that be Xiao’s real name?
He had sent people to investigate and found nothing. His grandfather knew far more than he was willing to admit.
Sheng Wenchang smiled faintly.
The smile was brief, like a ray of light quickly withdrawn.
“You also lost to time.”
Sheng Chengxiu finally spoke. “Time?”
Sheng Wenchang did not look at him. He simply gazed outside the window, his voice calm.
“Chenghui Group didn’t start setting this game today. And Su Jinye didn’t just start keeping an eye on you recently.”
He paused, as though allowing those words to slowly pass through the air.
“Someone was waiting for this day many years before you were.”
Sheng Chengxiu stood there without moving.
His gaze rested on the side of Sheng Wenchang’s face, as though trying to dissect a sentence he had not yet completely understood.
“You touched Su Muchen, and he will use every means available to return the favor,” Sheng Wenchang said. “This time it was the stock price. What will it be next time? Have you thought about that?”
“He has no evidence,” Sheng Chengxiu said.
“He doesn’t need evidence.” Sheng Wenchang leaned back in his chair, as though stating a rule that had already been verified countless times. “A Gatekeeper has never needed evidence to act. He only needs results.”
The study was silent for several seconds.
Sheng Chengxiu did not argue, because he knew it was true.
He really had acted without investigating everything thoroughly.
He did not even understand well enough what kind of existence the Su family’s Gatekeeper was.
He remembered the two men he had previously sent to Guichen House to investigate the Door. They had later been discovered and dumped in an underground parking garage, and now they were like empty shells without souls.
He remembered keeping Su Muchen imprisoned for six days. Not only had the other side taken him away without anyone noticing, they had also retaliated against him.
That was not something that could have been accomplished in a short period of time. Preparations had clearly been made long ago.
The Door was perhaps something far heavier than he had imagined.
The Su family had been able to guard the Door for so long. That meant they truly possessed the strength to do so—and that strength was beyond what he had imagined.
That family was far older than the Sheng family, and they understood the Door far better.
Sheng Chengxiu stood by the door, silent for a long time.
The light outside began to slant. The pendulum of the old clock had already completed several cycles.
“I’ll handle the board of directors. But you need to remember one thing.”
Sheng Wenchang raised his eyes.
“The Sheng family does not lack money. We can withstand losses of tens of billions. But we cannot withstand the loss of trust that follows.”
Sheng Chengxiu spoke, his tone lower than when he had entered.
“You want me to stop?”
Sheng Wenchang did not answer immediately.
His gaze fell upon the pine tree outside, which had been trimmed almost unnaturally flat.
The light from outside fell across his shoulder, outlining the edge of his dark-gray jacket in a pale rim.
“Not stop,” he said. “I want you to be smarter about how you do things.”
He turned and looked at Sheng Chengxiu. In those cloudy eyes was something extremely brief, something sharp as a blade.
“Since Su Muchen was able to escape from the island, that means there is an entire network operating behind him. What you need to do is not lock him up, but sever that network.”
Sheng Chengxiu said nothing.
He was thinking about those words.
Sheng Wenchang said, “Su Muchen was right.”
Sheng Chengxiu’s movements paused slightly.
“You cannot exchange imprisonment for a person’s trust. But you don’t need his trust. You only need his cooperation.”
Sheng Wenchang picked up his teacup again without drinking from it, merely holding it.
“When you lock him up, every day he will think about how to escape.” He raised his eyes. “When you let him out, every day he will wonder what you are going to do next.”
He set down the teacup. This time, the soft sound of its base touching the table seemed slightly heavier than before.
“Fear does not necessarily have to rely on a prison cell,” Sheng Wenchang said. There was no lecturing in his tone. It was more like an experienced man choosing the right words to describe something. “The true cage is making a person walk back into it on his own.”
Sheng Wenchang did not look at him again.
Sheng Chengxiu remained silent for a long time.
Then he said, “You want to open that Door too.”
Sheng Wenchang did not deny it.
“I do. But I have waited one generation longer than you.”
He turned his head toward Sheng Chengxiu, his tone calmer than before.
“If you truly want to open that Door of the Su family, remember this: you must first prepare yourself with enough strength to close it.”
Sheng Chengxiu committed those words to memory.
Then he spoke calmly.
“I understand.”
Sheng Wenchang said nothing more.
He sat back down and picked up the cup of tea that had already gone cold, as if indicating that the conversation was over.
When Sheng Chengxiu turned and walked toward the door, Sheng Wenchang’s voice came from behind him, slightly softer than before.
“Chengxiu.”
He did not turn around, but his footsteps stopped.
Sheng Wenchang did not look at him. His gaze rested on the top of the pine tree in the distance.
“The Door is more dangerous than you imagine.”
The study fell silent for a moment.
His voice was especially clear in the empty room.
“The person who opens the Door must possess a considerable degree of awareness. And you may not be able to stop him.”
Sheng Chengxiu did not answer.
He stood at the doorway for a moment longer.
Then he pushed the door open and walked out.
The door closed behind him.
◆◇◆◇◆
Only one lamp was lit in the study.
It was not a candle, but an oil lamp.
The lamp was made of bronze. It was very old, its edges worn to a layer of dark, muted luster.
The light was not bright. It illuminated only a small area in front of the desk, pushing the rest of the study into shadow.
In those shadows were piles of documents and books. Some had been read countless times, their paper edges worn and frayed.
Sheng Yuanli sat behind the desk, with three things beside him.
The first was a bar of soap.
It was about the size of a thumb, with neat edges and an even color. It gave off an extremely faint scent that did not belong to any soap workshop in Dasheng.
There were no medicinal herbs, no greasy smell of oil. Only a clean fragrance so pure that it was almost artificial.
He picked it up and held it beneath his nose, smelling it once before putting it back in its original place.
The second was a small packet of powder.
It was wrapped in oil paper.
He unfolded the paper. Inside was a fine, light-gray powder. He could not tell what it was made from.
He did not taste it. He merely dipped his finger into a little of it, rubbed it between his fingers, then folded the paper back up.
The third was a sheet of oil paper.
There was a torn mark along one edge. The surface of the paper was smooth, coated with an extremely thin layer of wax that gave off a faint sheen beneath the lamplight.
At the crease of the paper, two characters could vaguely be seen, as though they had been carved into a template and then pressed onto the paper. The strokes were neat and orderly, unlike handwriting.
—Guichen.
Sheng Yuanli stared at it for a long time.
At the corner of the desk were several documents, intelligence reports from the Northern Frontier that had arrived one after another recently.
He had already read them. There was no need to read them again.
He had already assembled all that information into a complete picture in his mind.
Xiao Yan had been exiled under the name of being sent to govern the Northern Frontier.
However.
Xiao Yan had not died.
Neither had the Northern Frontier.
Instead, it was slowly recovering.
The rationing system in Linbei City had stabilized, and the epidemic in Hanchuan was gradually subsiding.
Someone was treating those illnesses using a method he did not recognize.
And that method could not be found in any medical text in all of Dasheng.
He lowered his head and glanced at the bar of soap again.
It had been sent back from the Northern Frontier.
Through investigating trade routes, banknotes, taxes, transportation, ports, and account books, they had traced it back to the supplier.
It was Hearing Snow Pavilion.
Behind Hearing Snow Pavilion was Liu Tingxue—a widow, a merchant, and someone through whose hands almost all supplies in the Northern Frontier passed.
He had investigated Liu Tingxue, Hearing Snow Pavilion, and the origins of those goods.
Every line pointed in the same direction.
Overseas.
The Guichen Medical Sect.
A place whose exact location he could not find.
But he did not need to find that place.
He only needed to know that these things truly existed.
—When the Gate Master appears, strange phenomena will follow.
—There will be medicine, but not remedies from this world.
—There will be tools, but not craftsmanship from this world.
—There will be knowledge, but not books from this world.
He had read these lines many times, so many that he could recite them from memory in the dark.
He spread open a roll of old paper at the corner of the desk. It was a fragment left behind by an ancestor of the Sheng family.
The edges of the paper had already been burned black. The handwriting was somewhat blurred, but several crucial lines could still be made out.
—The blood of an emperor, keeper of the Door.
He stared at those words.
Now, all the signs pointed toward one conclusion—
A new Gate Master had appeared.
And all those objects and medical techniques from another world had appeared around the Northern Frontier.
At present, there were only two people in the Northern Frontier who possessed imperial blood.
Prince Su, Xiao Yan.
The seventh prince of Dasheng, a child born by accident.
Although his mother had come from a lowly background, that could not change the fact that imperial blood flowed through his veins.
The other person was Xia Lanshi, Chief Steward of Prince Su’s residence.
He knew that Xia Lanshi also possessed imperial blood, because Xia Lanshi had originally been one of his plans.
It was just that Xia Lanshi had been a failed specimen.
But even as a failed specimen, imperial blood truly flowed through Xia Lanshi’s body.
Back then, he had never expected someone to rescue Xia Lanshi, nor had he expected Grand Tutor Xia to step in and help him.
Even less had he expected Xia Lanshi, despite being so frail and sickly, to somehow survive until today—and even become a blade in Xiao Yan’s hands.
A troublesome existence.
—When the Gate Master falls, the Ancient Door will choose another master.
He put the fragment away, returned it to the wooden box at the corner of the desk, locked it, and placed it inside a hidden compartment.
Xiao Yan, or Xia Lanshi.
At least one of these two people was the Gate Master.
And there could only be one Gate Master. The old Gate Master had to die before a new Gate Master could be born.
He did not need to confirm which one it was, because confirmation required time, and time would only allow the Gate Master to grow stronger.
He only needed to make sure of one thing.
Neither of these two people could live.
He put each of the items on the desk into a wooden box one by one.
The soap, the powder, the oil paper, and those several intelligence reports from the Northern Frontier.
When the wooden box closed, it made an extremely faint sound.
The Gate Master had appeared. Before that person could truly grasp the power of the Door, he had to eliminate them.
What he had always been searching for was never the Gate Master, but who could become the next one after the Gate Master died.
The Sheng family had waited far too long.
So long that this path had been walked over and over again. So long that he could no longer remember where it had originally begun.
But there was one thing he remembered.
—The Door must belong to the Sheng family.
He rose from behind the desk and walked to the window.
Outside, the night was deep. The lights of the capital glimmered sparsely in the distance.
The Door had awakened, and a Door that had awakened would bring power and authority to its Gate Master.
Before this sapling could grow strong, he had to strangle it in its cradle.
He returned to the desk, took up paper and brush, and wrote a secret memorandum and a confidential letter.
Then he summoned the hidden guards.
“Deliver the secret memorandum to the lord in the Eastern Palace. Deliver the confidential letter to Xia Zhongqian, Junior Vice Minister of the Court of Imperial Sacrifices.”
The hidden guard accepted the letters, acknowledged the order, and immediately hurried away.