Chapter 5, Secret Compartment

To my surprise, my uncle placed the luminous pearl directly on the desk. The desk was very flat, and seeing the pearl about to roll off, I quickly grabbed it and said, "Uncle, please be careful, it's worth hundreds of thousands."

"Uncle, uncle." I felt my breathing becoming somewhat unstable, and added, "This pearl... it must be worth quite a lot, right? At least one or two million, I suppose?" I was unaware of the market price of the luminous pearl, but for my small pharmacy, where my monthly income barely exceeded ten thousand, one or two million was already a significant amount.

Against the wall, there is a vertically hung calligraphy piece, on which are inscribed four large characters: "Xuan Hu Ji Shi"

I immediately asked, "What else do you know?"

I hesitated for a moment, but still followed along. Upon seeing me, my uncle couldn't help but sigh and said, "Little brat, I have something to discuss with A Tian, you find a place to play by yourself"

I feel that something is amiss; my uncle obtained the upper half, while my grandfather copied the lower half when he was young. In this world, how can such coincidences exist

After my uncle took it out, his hand trembled, and the object loosened, transforming into a leather scroll about twenty centimeters long. I looked down and found that it was densely covered with tiny characters, which appeared to be an ancient script. However, I am not an archaeologist, and I did not study the humanities in university, so after staring at it for a long time, I still could not grasp its meaning. Finally, my uncle told me, "This is Small Seal Script."

Uncle sneered and directly tugged at my ear, saying: "After two years, you've learned to be so slick with your words. With your talent, it's too late to learn now." He paused, pointing at the leather-bound volume, reminiscing: "This thing was originally just a handwritten manuscript. Your grandfather, during his early years, in a rather chaotic time before he started a family, wandered the world alone. Before he turned twenty-one, he had once traveled to Shanxi and discovered this in an ancient village."

I stared at the hidden compartment for over ten seconds, and finally couldn't help but ask, "Uncle, are you trying to tell me that our Sun family actually has a remarkable lineage?" Typically, this is how it is portrayed in dramas; I truly couldn't imagine that there would be such an ancient thing as a hidden compartment in my uncle's house.

Uncle placed the box on the desk, turned around to draw the curtains, and then gestured for me to come closer. Seeing Uncle's mysterious actions made me feel as if a little cat was scratching inside me, and I couldn't help but want to open the wooden box immediately

Then grandpa took it out, I asked

My uncle glanced at me with a look of disappointment, sighing, "My family has a long and illustrious history, yet how did we end up with such a coward like you." He paused for a moment and directly reached for the luminous pearl.

He paused for a moment, finally sighed again, and said: "The item has long been lost, where can I find it for him"

In my lifetime, I have never seen such magnificent and opulent things; my eyes were transfixed. Wherever my uncle's hand went, my eyes followed. The luminous pearl is something that an ordinary person may never encounter in their lifetime

The little yellow dog shrugged and shook his head, saying, "There’s nothing more; everything that follows is what I overheard and read in books." We talked for a while, and before we knew it, it was approaching afternoon. The little yellow dog then called for us to go home. When we arrived at my uncle's house, I found that the person with the surname Chen had already left. My uncle was sitting alone in the armchair under the grape trellis, staring blankly at the ground, his expression somewhat melancholic

After entering the study, my uncle walked over to one of the bookshelves filled with ancient books. On one of the shelves, there was an incense burner shaped like a lotus, and behind the burner was a brush holder, from which several wolf hair brushes were hanging.

He did not even glance, but reached into the box again. This time, his movements were extremely cautious, as if he were about to take something important. I tried hard to shift my gaze away from the luminous pearl and noticed that beneath the box, there was a thin layer of something resembling cowhide.

Uncle glared at me and uttered something absurd

The little yellow dog choked for a moment, looked at me with eyes that seemed to wish for my thousand cuts, and after hesitating for a while, he forced a smile at my uncle and said: "Master, it was just a few days ago, you and ... ... "

In modern society, which normal family would dig a secret hole in their own room

He led me further inside and into his study. This study is decorated in an antique style, filled with numerous medical books, half of which are ancient texts and the other half modern medical works. My uncle said that we must keep pace with the times. Although Westerners may be unreliable, we should not engage in discrimination. The key to progress lies in learning from each other's strengths and embracing a diversity of ideas.

I nodded slightly. I had heard of the small seal script, but had rarely seen it. So I pointed to the piece of cowhide scroll and asked, "Uncle, is this perhaps the other half?" Uncle nodded and said, "This is not the original. This item has been passed down in our family. If you had been willing to learn traditional Chinese medicine from me back then, this would have originally been passed on to you."

Uncle was startled, almost jumping out of his chair. He then kicked the little yellow dog, scolding, "You can't keep your mouth shut; who told you to talk nonsense!" The little yellow dog yelped and fell to the ground, not daring to resist, covering its rear and howling in pain, looking at me with an expression of deep grievance.

After I voiced my doubts, my uncle thoughtfully patted my head and said, "Indeed, there are no such coincidences in this world. Our Sun family initially obtained the lower half, and it was not until twenty-four years ago that the old beggar, under the pretext of exchanging water to drink, voluntarily presented the upper half."

I swallowed hard, and with a gurgling sound, my uncle lifted his eyelids to glance at me, seemingly mocking my lack of ambition. Then, he slowly opened the wooden box, and immediately, a gentle blue light emanated from within the box.

However, my uncle was in a fit of anger, so I held back and did not ask.

I pointed to my own nose and couldn't help but chuckle, saying: "If you had told me earlier, I wouldn't have been so desperate to study psychiatry back then. This field is too obscure. It was hard enough to find a beautiful woman willing to date me, and when she heard my major, she was so scared that she turned and left. I regret it too. How about I turn over a new leaf, and you accept me again?"

I was astonished; inside the box was a bead the size of a chicken egg, emitting a soft blue-green glow

Uncle shook his head and said, "It cannot be brought out; it is inscribed in small seal script on an entire rock face, and that place does not allow outsiders to enter. Your grandfather only dared to copy it secretly, and what is inscribed there is only the lower half."

Uncle was furious, glaring at me and saying, "You little brat, you know nothing if you don't enter this field!" I thought to myself, even if I am not a fully qualified traditional Chinese medicine practitioner, at least I have the national certification, so how can it be said that I do not belong to this field?

I exchanged a glance with the little yellow dog, and just as I was about to make a run for it, I heard my uncle calling the little yellow dog over. His demeanor was quite unusual, and his gaze hardly lingered on me at all. In the past, this would have been completely unthinkable; when we were young, all the neighbors within ten miles knew that Doctor Sun cherished his nephew as if he were his own eye.

"Shut up!" Uncle suddenly shouted, his face turning ashen, seemingly afraid that the little yellow dog would continue speaking. Then, he pointed to the ancestral hall and said to the little yellow dog, "Go on your knees." Inside, there are altars dedicated to various deities, including the Medicine King Sun Simiao, commonly worshipped in Chinese folk religion. Generally, doctors will have a statue of him in their homes. My uncle is relatively affluent, so he built a hall.

Immediately afterward, he reached into the hidden compartment. It was deep and pitch black inside, making it impossible to discern what was stored there. As I pondered whether it contained some family heirloom, I saw my uncle pull out an unremarkable wooden box from the compartment.

After the little yellow dog obediently knelt as punishment, the uncle sighed, stood up, and said, "Follow me"

The room was dimly lit without the lights on, and with the curtains drawn, the light was even more obscure. I watched as my uncle took out a small key and opened the old brass lock. My heart suddenly tightened; what exactly did the medical prescription recording the elixir of immortality look like?

Playing? I couldn't help but cough a little, squatting down to meet my uncle's gaze, I said: "Uncle, I'm already this old, what is there left to play?" After a pause, I continued: "Just now, your apprentice told me everything. If you still treat me as an outsider, I won't come to your place anymore."

The wooden box, at most, is only as wide as an adult's palm, dark and black, with most of the paint already worn off, essentially a piece of rotten wood. I thought to myself, could the other half of the book be contained in this wooden box? That would truly be a disservice to Wang Chongyang's treasure

As soon as I heard my uncle's tone soften, I immediately sensed an opportunity and cautiously spoke up: "I heard Ah Tian say... that half of the book was given away by grandfather. Do we still have the other half?" My uncle was taken aback for a moment, then looked at the little yellow dog, his gaze turning stern and vigilant as he said, "Ah Tian, I didn't tell you this. How did you find out?"

A word suddenly flashed through my mind: night pearl

I turned my face away, pretending not to see anything, and took my uncle's hand, saying: "Don't be anxious, sit down, sit down. Uncle, it's really just a matter of a medical book. If we truly owe something to the Chen family, we can just return it to them. Our Sun family's ancestral medical skills are already well-known in the area; there's no need for us to learn any talismans or ghost-catching techniques."

Uncle walked to the incense burner, reached out to take down the calligraphy scroll hanging on the wall, and to his surprise, behind the scroll, there was a square hidden compartment.