Chapter 205 Retrieval
The walls of the Tokyo Imperial Palace were higher than he had expected.
He Yuzhu lay prone on the roof of the building opposite, using night-vision binoculars to observe the brightly lit area. The wall was four meters high, topped with barbed wire and bells hanging from it. Inside the wall, there was a guard post every fifty meters, with figures moving around inside. Patrols took turns every fifteen minutes, five men in a group, each with a dog.
He put down the binoculars and took out the map from his pocket. The paper was yellowed, the edges were rolled up, and the entrance was marked on it in red pen.
2:40 a.m.
He waited.
A breeze blew by, a little chilly. He pulled his collar up, remembering the gloves Qin Huairu had given him, which he hadn't brought.
A few lines of comments scrolled across the live stream chat.
The streamer is about to do something big again.
The Imperial Palace Treasury: This place is even more difficult to deal with than a shrine.
Watch out for dogs, they have a keen sense of smell.
He didn't look at it.
At 2:55, he jumped off the roof.
The vault door was thicker than he had imagined.
The iron gate was painted green, and the lock on it was as big as a fist. He inserted his dagger into the keyhole, pried three times, and with a click, the lock opened.
He pushed open the door and found himself on a downward-facing staircase. It was made of cement and very narrow, allowing only one person to pass at a time. He felt his way down the wall, descending three flights of stairs before reaching the top.
A second door blocked his way. It was thicker than the outer one, with a rotating platform in the middle, like a bank vault. He took out a map and looked at it—the password was written on it: 7362.
He turned the dial three times to the left, two times to the right, and one time to the left.
Click.
The door opened.
The air inside the vault was cold and dry, carrying the smell of metal and dust. Rows of iron shelves stretched as far as the eye could see, their contents piled high with dust.
He walked to a shelf and picked up a blue-and-white porcelain vase. He recognized the inscription on the bottom: "Made in the Xuande period of the Great Ming Dynasty." He had seen similar items in the Forbidden City. Now it was crammed into this cellar, squeezed together with a pile of gold bars.
He put the porcelain bottle down, his fingers lingering on the bottle for a second.
A notification popped up in the system.
[A large number of Chinese cultural relics have been detected. Scan and add them to system storage?]
He clicked "Yes".
An invisible light swept across, and the items on the shelves began to disappear. Gold bars, silver ingots, porcelain, calligraphy and paintings, bronzeware, Buddha statues—one row, two rows, three rows.
Halfway through receiving the message, footsteps could be heard outside.
He turned off the system interface and hid behind the shelf.
The door opened, and two people entered. They were dressed in palace guard uniforms, carrying guns and flashlights. The flashlight beams swept across the shelf, eventually landing on the empty shelf.
The two were stunned.
One of them opened his mouth, about to shout, when He Yuzhu rushed out from behind the shelf and slit his throat with a knife. The other turned to run, but He Yuzhu grabbed him by the collar, pulled him back, and punched him in the back of the head.
Before the man went limp, he let out a muffled thud.
He Yuzhu dragged the two corpses to a corner, leaned against the wall, and caught his breath. His palms were sweaty.
He continued to collect.
After collecting the last row, a notification popped up in the system.
[Scanning complete. A total of 32,181 cultural relics have been collected and brought back to China: 2,345 gold artifacts, 4,567 silver artifacts, 8,901 porcelain pieces, 3,456 paintings and calligraphies, 567 Buddhist statues, and 12,345 other cultural relics.]
He glanced at the number but didn't say anything.
He turned and walked out.
As I left the palace, it was almost dawn.
He squatted in the abandoned warehouse and spread the map of the artifacts' distribution on the floor. Dozens of points were marked on it—Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Nara, Kyoto.
He picked the closest one.
5 a.m., Osaka City Museum.
He climbed over the wall and found the basement warehouse. The door was locked, so he tried to pry it open with a knife, but the lock got stuck halfway through. He changed his angle and pried a few more times, and click! It opened.
Inside were dozens of wooden crates. He opened one; inside were bronze artifacts from the Shang Dynasty, covered in green rust. Another crate contained calligraphy and paintings, yellowed paper rolled up in scrolls.
Scan, income.
He was halfway through collecting when he heard footsteps outside. He crouched down and turned off his flashlight. The footsteps passed by the door without stopping. He waited a minute, then continued collecting.
6:00 AM, Todai-ji Temple in Nara.
The temple's storeroom was behind a side hall, with two monks standing at the entrance. He waited in the shadows for fifteen minutes. One of the monks left, leaving the other with his back to the door. He finished him off with a crossbow bolt; the arrow pierced the back of the neck, and the man fell forward without a sound.
The warehouse was full of Buddha statues. Wooden ones, bronze ones, gold ones, all sizes, piled up to the brim. There was a Guanyin statue, about half a person's height, with a kind face, as if looking at him.
He stood in front of the Guanyin statue for two seconds.
Then we started collecting.
7:00 AM, a private residence in Kyoto.
The owner of the house was an old man in his seventies. He Yuzhu climbed over the wall, found him in the master bedroom, and tied him up. On the wall hung a photo of him in military uniform; a younger version of the old man, wearing an old Japanese military uniform, was standing on the Nanjing city wall, smiling.
The old man cursed at him in Japanese, his voice hoarse and incomprehensible, but it probably wasn't anything nice.
He Yuzhu ignored him and collected all the cultural relics in the house. Before leaving, he glanced at the photograph on the wall.
The old man glared at him, his eyes filled with fear and hatred.
He Yuzhu didn't say anything.
At 8:30 a.m., a warehouse in the suburbs of Nagoya.
Several trucks were parked at the entrance, and people were unloading things. He Yuzhu lay prone in the grass not far away and counted through binoculars—a dozen or so people, some in work clothes and some in suits. They were carrying wooden crates out of the warehouse and loading them onto the trucks.
He stood up and walked over.
The men were taken aback when they saw him. The one in the suit shouted something, and several men pulled out guns from their waistbands.
A shot rang out.
The first bullet whizzed past his ear with a bang, making his ears ring. He rolled to the side, taking cover behind a truck tire. The second bullet hit the tire but didn't penetrate.
He peeked out. A dozen or so people had dispersed, some hiding behind wooden crates, others lying on the ground, while the man in the suit was directing them.
He sped off from behind the tire. A bullet grazed his cheek, stinging him, and blood dripped down his chin.
He ignored it.
He charged into the crowd, stabbing the first man in the stomach and throwing the body aside. The second man raised his gun to aim, but he grabbed his wrist, twisted it, and the gun fell to the ground. He then punched the man unconscious.
The remaining few tried to escape, but he took them down one by one with a single strike.
The man in the suit was hiding behind the truck, holding a gun, his hands trembling violently. He Yuzhu went over and pulled him out.
"Where did the things in the box come from?"
The man answered in English, stammering.
"China..."
"Who gave you permission to transport it?"
"The Americans...they want this shipment..."
He Yuzhu glanced at him.
A knife.
He opened the wooden crates on the truck, scanned them, and took them. There were still dozens of crates in the warehouse; he took them all.
After finishing the last item, he leaned against the truck, panting. Blood streamed down his face, dripping onto his collar, warm.
A notification popped up in the system.
[This operation recovered 47,891 cultural relics. The total number of cultural relics recovered is 80,072.]
He glanced at the number.
800,072 items.
Standing in that abandoned warehouse, he took inventory of the system space.
280 million points. 800,000 cultural relics.
He remembered what the last young man had said.
"I've been waiting for this day since I was a child."
He brought up the system interface and flipped to the teleportation section.
[Teleported back to home country. Points consumed: 10,000]
He clicked the teleport button.
A flash of white light.
He opened his eyes and found himself standing at the entrance of the courtyard house.
Those two dark wooden doors, that old locust tree, that familiar alley. It's getting dark, but the lights are on in the courtyard.
He pushed the door open and went in.
Qin Huairu sat on the edge of the kang (a heated brick bed), holding a pair of half-knitted socks in her hand. Hearing the door open, she looked up, paused for a moment, and then smiled.
"You're back?"
He Yuzhu nodded, walked over, and sat down next to her.
He looked at her belly, which had grown even bigger than when he left. He reached out and touched it, and it moved slightly, as if kicking his palm.
He didn't speak.
She didn't say anything.
The moon is very bright outside.
The system popped up a notification, which he closed.