Chapter 340: Qimen Dunjia
According to the information Xu Youyou received, as Old Master He had said, the passwords for each Junuo trading company’s safe deposit box were all written with perfect tonal balance.
Xu Youyou thought that even if the password wasn’t poetry, it would at least be something like a couplet.
She hadn’t expected that when Old Master Wu looked at the slip of paper, he would nod approvingly.
“You prepared very thoroughly.”
Since she wouldn’t be able to retrieve the safe deposit box today anyway, Xu Youyou was in the mood to get to the bottom of things. She asked, “Is this really the password for the safe deposit box? It’s just a string of numbers and letters, you guys…”
Old Master Wu finished the sentence for her, “It’s very trendy, right?”
Xu Youyou’s expression turned strange.
Old Master Wu said, “Our family rose to prominence in the late Ming Dynasty, survived the Manchu rule, and then witnessed the era when China, after being closed off for hundreds of years, suddenly opened up to the world. New things flooded in. If we hadn’t kept up with the times, how could we have survived?”
Xu Youyou hesitated for a while but still asked, “Do you think your family’s business is still ongoing today?”
Old Master Wu waved his hand and said, “I know what you’re thinking. You think after me, the Junuo trading company ceased to exist, right?”
“Isn’t that the case?” Xu Youyou asked, puzzled.
Old Master Wu said, “Right now, things are very stable domestically, so Junuo has no role to play here. But most of my family is overseas. They just changed the name — it doesn’t mean our business ended.”
Xu Youyou paused at his words. It turned out she had misunderstood; Old Master Wu’s family had their own way of passing down their legacy.
“This password, at first glance, looks like a random string of numbers and letters, but actually, it’s also tonally balanced. See for yourself,” Old Master Wu said.
Xu Youyou tried reading the password aloud. Sure enough, just like he said, the tonal rhythm was neat and balanced.
“Rest assured, our Wu family has never tarnished our reputation. Junuo, Junuo — bearing your promise, keeping it for life.“
Hearing the old man’s guarantee, Xu Youyou grew curious and asked, “How many safe deposit boxes do you have left?”
Old Master Wu chuckled and said, “If you had come ten years ago, I would have told you there was only one safe deposit box.”
Xu Youyou immediately pressed on, “And now?”
Old Master Wu said, “Now, I can still tell you, there’s only one.”
Xu Youyou: “…”
Although he didn’t say it directly, Xu Youyou understood. Over the past decade, Old Master Wu must have handed out the others; hers was the last one.
“Is it stored in the basement?” Xu Youyou asked.
Since she had both the key and the password, Old Master Wu didn’t hide it and said, “You guessed right.”
“If my box is taken out, could you rent out the basement?”
This time, Old Master Wu didn’t object. Instead, he said, “It doesn’t look like there’ll be any more new clients for Junuo domestically. Leaving the basement empty would be a waste. Renting it out for some money wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
Xu Youyou hadn’t expected this double stroke of good luck. Then she found it odd, “Is my box really that big? You need a three-bedroom, one-living-room basement just to store it?”
Old Master Wu laughed and said, “You think just any random place can store someone’s treasure? I’ve guarded this basement for nearly eighty years through countless events. It’s not as simple as just burying something underground.”
Xu Youyou asked, “If it’s not buried underground, then it’s just placed casually in the basement?”
Old Master Wu shot her a disdainful look and said, “You look all pretty, but how come you don’t use your brain when you talk? Qimen Dunjia, Five Elements, Bagua — you think these are just empty words?”
Xu Youyou awkwardly scratched her nose. She had once taken elective courses on these topics in her training space but realized after one class that she wasn’t cut out for it.
The entry threshold for these subjects was extremely high, on par with advanced sciences like quantum mechanics — if you didn’t have the right foundation, you simply couldn’t learn them.
Seeing her like this, Old Master Wu lost interest in chatting and said, “Wait until tomorrow morning. We’ll go get it together.”
Xu Youyou asked, “Do you know what’s inside the safe deposit box?”
Hearing that, Old Master Wu immediately looked offended. “What did your family teach you? Don’t you know our Wu family never pries into clients’ privacy?”
Xu Youyou said, “I’m an orphan.”
But Old Master Wu didn’t react with guilt like others usually did. Instead, he said, “Since you can come to me with both the key and the password, clearly your family taught you something. That’s no excuse for being rude.”
Xu Youyou didn’t know how to explain — the key and password weren’t from her family but from the system. It wasn’t a family legacy at all. Explaining too much would be meaningless, so she simply said, “Sorry.”
Old Master Wu said, “Miss Li, since you apologized, I won’t hold it against you. See you tomorrow.”
Xu Youyou said, “My surname isn’t Li. It’s Xu.”
Hearing this, Old Master Wu furrowed his brows tightly. After a good thirty seconds, he finally relaxed and sighed deeply, saying, “The tides of time… Who would’ve thought that the belongings of the Li family would end up in the hands of an outsider.”
He didn’t suspect Xu Youyou’s background, because in his eyes, an outsider could never possess both the key and the password. He just thought the original client’s possessions had passed down to a daughter’s descendants who took a different surname after marriage.
“You don’t seem like someone who favors sons over daughters,” Xu Youyou said.
Old Master Wu chuckled and said, “If my son-in-law had taken the most precious thing of my family but refused to let their descendants carry my surname, that would only mean my daughter had married the wrong man.”
Hearing this, Xu Youyou grew even more curious about the safe deposit box. Just what kind of treasure would be considered the “most precious” possession of such a powerful family?
After leaving the Wu residence, Xu Youyou returned to her place. As soon as she lay down on the bed, a chilling realization hit her.
The safe deposit box originally belonged to a client surnamed Li. For nearly eighty years, that person had never come back to claim their treasure.
Moreover, the key and password had ended up with different people. What kind of major upheaval could cause such a result?
Xu Youyou had gotten the password from a second-hand car, and the car’s original owner wasn’t even surnamed Li!
As for the key, its story was even more twisted — a jade pendant symbolized the Heishui family’s promise, but even the Heishui family only safeguarded an address.
After so much complicated maneuvering, Xu Youyou felt like it was the result of multiple parties compromising with each other.
