Chen Mo had been delivering food in the county town for three years when he suddenly received news that his grandfather had died.
He returned to the old house to find his uncle, second uncle, and cousin rummaging through the deceased’s belongings in the mourning hall. His grandfather’s black-and-white portrait had been tossed into a corner.
His cousin swung a slap at him. Chen Mo tilted his head half an inch. His cousin pitched forward into the offering table, smashing his knee and collapsing to his knees on the spot.
A finger split open. Blood dripped into the yellowed book in the offering table’s drawer.
[Ding.]
[Thirty-sixth generation Keeper of the House: Chen Mo. Activated.]
The pipe had recognized him as its owner.
The seal hidden in his uncle’s sleeve slipped free by itself and struck the blue brick floor.
The Wang family offered thirty catties of gold for the book in his hands. Chen Mo folded their gold-embossed business card into a paper plane and flicked it straight into their ashtray.
His grandfather hadn’t died of a heart attack.
His father wasn’t dead. He had merely been “missing for twenty-six years.”
His mother called. Thirty-seven seconds later, she hung up.
Chen Mo touched the copper mouthpiece of the pipe tucked behind his waist.
A character, nearly worn smooth, was engraved on it.
“Yuan.”
Chen Zhiyuan, the father he had never met.
From that night onward, Chen Mo would guard alone the thing three generations of the Chen family had protected for three hundred years.
Come on, come on, come on💪