When I was eighteen years old, my uncle, who was addicted to gambling, paid off his debts and sold me to a humble antique shop in Tongcheng.
The shop owner is a lame man, and he set three strict rules for me when we met: I will never open the door if someone knocks on the door in the middle of the night, I will not accept anything on the grave, and I will never deal with anyone who pursues the origin of the object. At the time, I just thought it was Lao Jianghu who was just showing off, until I saw him with my own eyes, slowly pulling out a pale finger from a Song Dynasty incense burner.
"This is not a ghost." The lame man wiped the corpse wax on his fingertips without raising his eyelids. "It is the thoughts left in the old objects. The last step in collecting antiques is never the things, but the people who refuse to leave."
Later, the lame man died in an unknown fire, and this shop was left to me. I began to walk alone through villages and alleys, specializing in collecting old objects that had been stained with evil spirits—the wedding dress that had entangled three brides to death, the jade pendant that oozed blood on rainy days, and the bronze mirror that whispered people's names in the middle of the night.
After working in this business for a long time, I realized that what the lame man said back then was not fully understood:
Some things can never be given away once they are taken back.
Some doors, once pushed open, can never be closed again.
And I have long been stared at by those "thoughts" hidden in objects.
