Summer, 1923, at the Grand Canal wharf in southern Shandong.
The Qi family was once the biggest name in the jianghu's variety arts, known as the "Ghost-Handed Qi" of the "Colorful Stage." Then, one night ten years ago, in 1913, everything collapsed: his father died suddenly of a "violent illness," his younger brother seized the variety trunk in front of everyone, and fifteen-year-old heir Qi Wujiu became a street-corner "lost one," clutching an old wooden trunk and babbling nonsense, a madman.
Ten years later, Qi Wujiu posts an exorbitant reward to find the trunk, and the whole city laughs at his madness. The reward on the notice reads "Wang Zhang" and "three thousand." No one in the city understands what it means. Because it isn't mad talk. It's jargon.
The variety trunk has three locks: the outer layer holds the tools of his trade, the middle layer contains a black-chain ledger, and the bottom layer has a twin lock that can only be opened when the brothers each hold half of a childhood keepsake and fit them together.
The younger brother's real name is Qi Wuming. After the family was wiped out, he took his mother's surname and became Lu Mingqi, a local kingpin who holds sway over both the underworld and the authorities. Everyone curses him as ruthless, a traitor who stole the family fortune and betrayed his brother. No one knows that his left hand bears an old wound from taking a knife meant for Brigade Commander Ma ten years ago, or that he has clutched half a copper ring in his palm for ten years, so tightly that it has sunk into his flesh.
Old Song Kui, a Qi family retainer and loyal elder, is secretly Brigade Commander Ma's fixer, a minor Green Gang boss, and the man who carried out the murder of Qi Wujiu's father. Qi Shenzhi, the Qi family's second uncle and a refined country gentleman, is secretly a pawn of the chamber of commerce, a comprador for Yamada Trading Company, and the messenger who delivered the order back then.
Qi Wujiu uses sleight of hand to trade for evidence and feigned madness as cover, prying at the entire web of power one move at a time: the Three Immortals Return to the Cave at the wharf, the Sword, Elixir, Bean, and Ring at the temple fair, the earth-escape golden cup at the county treasury, the living fall at the birthday hall, passing money palm to palm at the gambling den, the medicinal trick mechanism at the grain depot, the church's
