“Okay. Then where’s my dad right now?”

“Uh... well, about that.”

“Where’s my mom right now?”

“Mm.”

“How much longer do I have to live?”

“Tch.”

Yan Heiming hurriedly cut me off. Looking a little awkward, she smoothed the hair by her ear.

“If you really want to know, I can try calculating it for you.”

As she spoke, she got up and ran into the inner room. Then she came back carrying a pitch-black compass.

That was when I noticed her hair was actually pretty long. It fell past her shoulders, down her back.

...

“I’ve been specializing in Qimen Dunjia these past few years. I can roughly do a reading for you. But I can’t guarantee it’ll be accurate. This stuff falls under the mystical side of things.”

As Yan Heiming spoke, she adjusted the compass in her hands.

“This is called a shi pan. I’m just showing it to you for now. Leave me your parents’ birth dates, and I’ll contact you once I get a result.”

I frowned. I’d at least heard of Qimen Dunjia before. It was said to be the art of emperors, the king of esoteric arts. A massive system built on symbols and texts I couldn’t understand at all, used for prediction, decision-making, and strategy.

My deskmate had been obsessed with this stuff for a while. She kept saying that if she mastered it, she could marry into a rich family and rise straight to the top.

Back then, I teased her. I said this kind of thing was for people with profound virtue and cultivation. Someone as crooked as her would end up going off the rails sooner or later.

A few days later, she realized it was even harder to understand than the law of gravity in our physics textbook. So she gave up her “cultivation journey” on the grounds that “a few ominous pimples had appeared on her face.”

...

That thought made me pause.

I had no idea whether Yan Heiming really knew her stuff or was just bluffing. If she was only half-trained, and she calculated something unlucky about my parents, was I supposed to believe her or not?

So I quickly waved my hands.

“No need. I don’t even know when my parents’ birthdays are...”

I hid it on purpose. But the moment the words left my mouth, I realized something.

In my memory, they never seemed to have the habit of celebrating birthdays.

“Some daughter you are.”

Yan Heiming curled her lip and set the shi pan on the table.

“Your mom already told me. They never taught you anything about tomb raiding. They even deliberately hid the fact that they were tomb raiders.”

“But the situation’s obvious now. Your parents can’t keep you hidden anymore. Don’t you want to hear about the things they went through before, and the things you might face in the future?”

As she spoke, Yan Heiming crossed her legs and looked at me with unusual seriousness.

My parents’ past, huh...

Now that she mentioned it, I really did want to know what kind of people they used to be.

So I nodded.

...

“Let’s start with Sister Yanzi. As far as I know, she was the eldest daughter of the Yan Clan. She was originally supposed to inherit the Yan Clan’s business and legacy.”

“Do you know the Yan Clan?”

Yan Heiming glanced at me and asked.

I shook my head to show I knew absolutely nothing.

“What the Yan Clan ran was a very old antique company called Yan Clan Hall. Supposedly, their family had been dealing in famous artifacts from all over since the Ming Dynasty. Most of the treasures in their collection were rare, one-of-a-kind pieces, so all the way up to the Republican era, the Yan Clan was a truly prominent household.”

As Yan Heiming spoke, she let out a slightly regretful sigh.

“But now the Yan Clan is already running on its last legs. Sister Yanzi insisted on marrying your dad, Wei Chuanyi. Old Master Yan is already in his sixties or seventies, and he’s still personally managing the family business out of sheer stubbornness.”

“So of course your second uncle, Yan An, wouldn’t be happy about that. Since he couldn’t inherit the family property, he just started hanging around shady people and got into tomb raiding.”

Yan Heiming was really ruthless with her wording. I mean, wasn’t she a tomb raider too? Still, I didn’t interrupt her.

“I think the Yan Clan also had a third child, named Yan Zidi. But I heard she died of illness a few years ago.”

The third child?

I frowned.

“My mom had another sibling besides Yan An? A younger sister?”

Yan Heiming nodded.

“Yep. An older sister, a younger brother, and a younger sister. Three siblings.”

“The Yan Clan probably hates you too. After all, nobody knows what trick your dad used back then to steal Sister Yanzi away. That left the Yan Clan with no one to take over. I heard that right after they got married, Old Master Yan was still trying to figure out who to send to take your dad’s head.”

As she spoke, Yan Heiming looked at me with obvious interest.

“I’m curious too. What exactly did your mom see in your dad?”

I shot her an annoyed glare.

“What, do you just not know how to talk, or are you just that blunt? Then you tell me—what did your mom marry your dad for?”

I snapped back viciously.

Yan Heiming chuckled and shook her head.

“Your dad, Wei Chuanyi, was a very famous tomb raider. And most of that fame came from the fact that he liked raiding tombs alone.”

As she spoke, Yan Heiming stood up, grabbed my arm, and dragged me into her room. She switched on the light, and only then did I get a full look at it.

The room had a pink, girly theme, but it was filled with crystal skull decorations. Between the anime posters on the walls were diagrams of the Five Elements and the Eight Trigrams. The whole thing looked bizarrely mismatched.

“This notebook belonged to my grandpa. It records a lot of what he experienced and heard while working with your dad.”

Yan Heiming shook the thin stack of A4 papers in her hand.

“This is the compiled version from later on. I’ve already put the original away like some treasured family heirloom.”

I took the stack of A4 papers and skimmed through it. Most of it was in Chinese, with a few places marked in Russian.

I scratched my head.

“Comrade Yan Heiming... are you a Russian girl?”

I asked, confused.

Yan Heiming glanced at me and rolled her eyes a little.

“Not exactly. My great-great-grandfather was East Slavic, so, Russian. But I grew up in China. I’m Chinese through and through. I don’t speak Russian.”

Yan Heiming scratched her head with a red face.

I immediately looked enlightened.

So that was why Yan Heiming was so pretty.

...

“You’d better not casually show this notebook to other people. There’s a lot of information in it that others couldn’t buy even if they wanted to.”

As Yan Heiming spoke, she motioned for me to sit on the bed. She leaned back against her chair and continued,

“I told you before, your dad and my grandpa were friends despite the age gap. Back then, my grandpa gave your dad a lot of funding, and your dad took my grandpa into many tombs. There really weren’t many people in this world who could go down into tombs with your dad.”

As she spoke, Yan Heiming mysteriously held up five fingers.

“Definitely no more than five.”

I narrowed my eyes and pressed my lips together. Seeing that smug look on her face, I seriously suspected she was exaggerating.

“So now you understand how valuable this notebook is, right? The few tombs my grandpa and your dad entered were all peerless death traps. No one before them had done it, and no one after them could.”

“In a sense, this notebook is priceless.”

...

...