I couldn't take it anymore; when I went home for Chinese New Year, the family genealogy book ha

8:30 p.m.

The lights were on in the village committee office.

"Knock knock knock—" There was a knock on the door.

Before Jiang Chen could call him in, the door was pushed open from the outside.

Jiang Baichuan walked in, wrapped in a thick, bulletproof military green cotton overcoat, his neck hunched. He wore a Lei Feng hat on his head, the ear flaps dangling and swaying like two drooping dog ears.

"Brother Chen!"

The eighty-year-old man entered the door shouting, his voice full of energy.

"You dragged this old man out of bed in the middle of the night, don't you have any conscience?"

As he spoke, he walked into the house, carrying his ever-present thread-bound family genealogy book in his left hand and two walnuts in his right—this old man never forgot to bring a plate even when he went out in the middle of the night.

"Uncle Baichuan, please have a seat." Jiang Chen stood up and offered the most comfortable leather chair in front of his desk.

"Don't give me that crap." Jiang Baichuan plopped down on the table and slammed the family tree on it. "Speak, what's the matter that absolutely needs to be done now?"

Jiang Chen didn't waste any words.

He took the oil paper package out of his jacket pocket, untied it, and laid out the four letters and the black-and-white photograph on the table.

"Please take a look at this, sir."

Jiang Baichuan squinted and scanned the desktop.

Walnut stopped when it saw the Republic of China stamp on the envelope.

When I saw the words "Nanyang Malaya" in the mailing address, I dropped the walnut.

"Bang—" The walnut rolled to the ground, bounced twice on the floor tiles, and rolled under the table.

Jiang Baichuan couldn't care less about that now.

He grabbed the top letter and held it up to the lamp. His usual calm and collected demeanor, like an old man suddenly feeling young again, vanished completely in an instant.

"My God!"

Jiang Baichuan's voice rose eight octaves.

"A letter from Second Grandfather! This is a letter from Second Grandfather Jiang Fuhai!"

He flipped the envelope over, looked at the back, then at the handwriting on the front. His fingers were trembling, and his reading glasses slid off his nose, almost falling off.

"Chen-ge'er! Where did you get this thing from?!"

"Under the ancestral hall," Jiang Chen said succinctly. "My great-grandfather led me down there."

"Under the ancestral hall?" Jiang Baichuan's eyes widened, his mouth agape. "The life-saving kiln? The old master actually opened the life-saving kiln?"

"Do you know that place?"

"Nonsense!" Jiang Baichuan slammed his hand on the table. "Who am I? I'm the living genealogy of the Jiang family! Of course I know about this life-saving kiln! It's just that the key has always been in the eldest son's hands, and I've never been able to get my hands on it!"

He stopped dwelling on the issue, quickly opened the family genealogy book, and adjusted the angle of the lamp to make the light more focused.

"Don't you want the walnuts anymore?" Jiang Chen pointed under the table.

"What the hell do you want!" Jiang Baichuan didn't even look up.

He put on his reading glasses. After reading two lines, he felt it wasn't clear enough, so he took out another pair of reading glasses from his cotton coat pocket and placed them directly on top of the first pair. The two pairs of glasses rested on the bridge of his nose, making him look like a human telescope.

"Chen-ge'er, unfold all those letters and arrange them by date. I need to check them against the dates."

Jiang Chen arranged the four letters on the table in chronological order as instructed.

Jiang Baichuan pressed his left hand on the family genealogy book, pointed at the letter with his right hand, and began to mutter incantations.

"Jiang Fuhai... courtesy name Changyuan... second in his family... moved south with his wife in 1928..."

He turned a page.

"No, this record from 1928 is too brief. It only says 'Second wife, Fuhai, crossed the sea to the south,' without even recording where she went."

Another page has been turned.

"It's not enough, there's not enough information. The letter says he opened a rubber plantation in Malacca, but there's absolutely no further record of that in the family genealogy."

Jiang Baichuan's brows furrowed more and more, and he turned the pages of the book faster and faster.

Jiang Chen checked the time; it was almost nine o'clock.

He walked to the door and called out to Wang Dagou, who was dozing against the wall in the corridor.

"Da Gou, go to the cafeteria and get two bowls of beef noodles."

"Is the cafeteria closed now?"

"Tell Hu La Hua to open the door. Just say what I said."

Wang Dagou rubbed his eyes and ran away.

Fifteen minutes later, two steaming bowls of beef noodles were served. The beef was cut into thick slices, and a layer of red oil floated on top of the noodles.

Jiang Chen pushed a bowl in front of Jiang Baichuan.

"Uncle, have some noodles to tide you over."

Jiang Baichuan didn't even glance at the bowl of noodles. His nose was pressed against the pages of the family genealogy book, and he kept muttering to himself.

"Jiang Fuhai...married to a woman surnamed Lin...had three sons...but they aren't here! The family genealogy doesn't record the names of the three sons!"

He suddenly looked up and glared at Jiang Chen.

"What are the names of the three sons mentioned in the letter?"

"Jiang Yaozong, Jiang Yaozu, Jiang Yaohua."

Jiang Baichuan slapped his thigh and then looked down to flip through the pages.

Once you start flipping through it, you can't stop.

Jiang Chen sat on the sofa next to him, watching the eighty-year-old man hunched over the table, two pairs of reading glasses stacked on his nose, turning the pages of the well-worn thread-bound book one by one.

The steam from the beef noodles slowly dissipated, and the noodles clumped together.

When Wang Dagou came to deliver hot water for the second time, he checked the time—11:30.

He whispered in Jiang Chen's ear, "Brother Chen, how about we ask Grandpa to take a look tomorrow?"

Jiang Chen shook his head.

He could tell that Jiang Baichuan was currently impossible to persuade to leave. This old man had spent his whole life obsessed with family genealogies, family history, and bloodline inheritance. Today, he had stumbled upon a clue about his second great-grandfather, and like a mouse smelling oil, he wouldn't let go until he had uncovered the truth.

Time passed by, second by second.

The second hand of the clock went round and round.

It was late at night. The corridor outside the office was silent; not even the chirping of insects could be heard. The chill of the winter night seeped in through the cracks in the windows.

Wang Dagou, unable to bear it any longer on the sofa next to him, tilted his head to the side and started snoring. The snoring rose and fell, like a sawing action.

Jiang Chen rubbed his temples, intending to pour himself a glass of hot water.

"Found it!"

Jiang Baichuan slammed his hand on the table!

The sound made the bowl of beef noodles on the table, which was clumped together, shake violently with a "bang," and the soup splashed out.

Wang Dagou jumped up from the sofa and instinctively shouted, "Who's there? What do you want?"

Jiang Chen rushed to the table in three quick steps.

"where?"

Jiang Baichuan's finger tapped on a page of the family genealogy.

The page was yellowed and brittle, with traces of insect damage along the edges. The main text of the page recorded the population information of a certain generation of the Jiang family, written in dense, tiny characters arranged neatly.

But Jiang Baichuan was not referring to the main text.

It was in the blank space at the very edge of the page—there was a line of extremely small text.

So small that you can't see it unless you get very close.

Jiang Chen bent down, pressing his face almost against the pages of the book.

The characters are written in tiny, fine script, with strokes as thin as a hair.

"Jiang Fuhai, married to a woman surnamed Lin, lived in Malacca, Southeast Asia. They had three sons: Yaozong, Yaozu, and Yaohua. They went missing after 1948, and their whereabouts are unknown."

found it.

The information in the letter matches perfectly.

"This line of text isn't from the official family genealogy." Jiang Baichuan rubbed his sore eyes, his voice filled with barely concealed excitement.

"It was a note added later by someone in the margins of the book. The handwriting is different from the main text; it must have been added by someone from your great-grandfather's generation after receiving the letter."

"but--"

Jiang Baichuan's tone turned somber.

"The trail went cold in 1948."

He turned to the next page, then the next, and so on, for four or five pages in a row.

Blank.

There are no further records about Jiang Fuhai and his three sons.

"The 37th year of the Republic of China...that's 1948." Jiang Baichuan closed the family genealogy book, took off two pairs of reading glasses stacked together, and placed them on the table.

He rubbed his eyes, which were so sore he could barely keep them open, his face full of regret.

"Then came the war in China, and then various political movements. All contact with overseas was completely severed. Nobody knows what happened to the Second Great-Grandfather's lineage afterward. Did they prosper, or did they decline, or…?"

He didn't go on.

The office was silent for a few seconds.

The clock on the wall ticked away.

2:17 a.m.

Jiang Chen looked at the tiny characters on the family tree—Jiang Yaozong, Jiang Yaozu, Jiang Yaohua.

Three names.