I never expected Grace to be so knowledgeable about these gemstones. As expected, women are just different. She looked at the gems and said, “This stone is extremely rare; it’s an organic gemstone.”

I was taken aback—I had never heard of a metal being considered a gemstone. Grace said, “This is a mixed mineral containing metallic elements. Its name hasn’t been officially determined on the market, but many people call it moonstone.”

My mind exploded when I heard this, and I remembered that a large amount of this stone was used to make mechanisms in the Zhang family’s ancient building.

Grace said, “This stone has many strange properties. One of them is that it’s especially suitable for micro-carving. Many people engrave extremely secret information onto it, because its toughness allows for very clear miniature carvings.”

I took the stone from Grace’s hand, examined it carefully, and said, “There doesn’t seem to be anything on it.”

Grace said, “To hide information, it’s engraved around the edge of the hole. Look, isn’t the area around the hole very rough? When you look at it like this, it just seems worn, but actually, there may be many tiny patterns carved on it.”

As Grace spoke, she took out her phone, opened some app, and placed it over the gemstone. The gem was magnified several times, and sure enough, you could see that this ring was covered in very regular micro-carved patterns. What were they? I took a deep breath and looked closely, asking Grace to zoom in a bit more.

Grace shook her head. “To zoom in further, we’d need professional equipment, but I think you can already see it very clearly—there’s a scorpion carved here, its head and tail connected.”

A scorpion?! I looked closely at Grace’s phone and found it was true—it really was a scorpion!

Why a scorpion? If it were a qilin, I could understand, but a scorpion—could it be that Little Sam is a Scorpio?

Indeed, in traditional Chinese patterns, the scorpion has many hidden meanings. In Tibetan culture, the scorpion has many connotations, and in the highlands, the Tibetan scorpion is a fearsome creature. But this scorpion didn’t look like a Tibetan scorpion; it resembled a Han Chinese motif. It should be the result of a fusion between traditional Han and Tibetan cultures.

This pattern was the entirety of our research on the ornament. Little Grace didn’t seem surprised; I felt he even thought that having such a clue was already a miracle.

I consulted several experts about this pattern and received a pile of ambiguous information. When it came to scorpion motifs, it wasn’t that there was nothing to say, but rather, there was too much to say. I analyzed and pondered it alone at midnight, but found nothing of value.

Little Grace said maybe the pattern was just a coincidence, and even the corpse didn’t know it was there.

In a family like the Zhangs, who have a collector’s habits, such things are quite likely to happen.

But for some reason, I still felt this should be a breakthrough. To support me, Little Grace found a few friends, fully magnified the pattern, and started the first round of newspaper ads, online postings, and asked friends for help.

He offered a high reward, hoping that anyone who knew about this scorpion pattern or could find similar information would come to us.

After all this was done, it was just a matter of waiting. I didn’t expect any results in the short term, so I didn’t hold out much hope and simply returned to Hangzhou to continue handling business.

As days passed, I gradually realized that although life was so busy and my income was steadily increasing, the sense of desolation I’d felt when I first opened the shop still crept up on me from time to time.

Most of the time, I still stayed in my own shop. The shop’s finances were separate from Uncle’s, and still just as bleak. Sometimes I even had to borrow some of Uncle’s funds to cover my own utility bills. If it weren’t for my incompetence… I started to wonder if maybe the feng shui of my dad’s shop was bad.

But for some reason, I still liked staying here—lying on a lounge chair, listening to the radio, fanning myself with an old palm-leaf fan, pondering all sorts of things. I felt that only in this place was I Henry Clark, and when I stepped out of this room, I became someone else—a person with traces of Peter, of Uncle, and of all sorts of other people. He wasn’t me at all. Even though, when carrying their souls, I could avoid missing them or reminiscing about past experiences, I knew clearly that the life these souls brought was not the one I wanted.

But even if it’s not what I want, what’s destined to come will come in the end.

藏海花Ⅰ Chapter Six: The Restart of Fate

On a sunny and breezy afternoon, I was resting in my cool little room.

Was I really resting? I suppose so, though I still occasionally thought of those experiences that gave me headaches. But I knew very well in my heart that these were, after all, just memories.

In other words, thinking about these things didn’t mean I was going to fight anyone, or that it would bring any danger to my future. So I could just think about them in peace.

Although the room was cool, it couldn’t keep out the stuffiness. My whole body felt limp, and I was a bit drowsy. Just then, I heard someone knocking at the door.