Chu Xinghe did not reply. He stepped inside, following Li Wei through the large glass doors guarded by two burly men in black suits. As soon as he entered, the thumping of heavy bass music struck his chest, its vibration felt down to his ribs. A mixture of expensive perfume, electronic cigarette smoke, and alcohol filled his senses.
"Ugh... the perfume is so pungent," Chu Xinghe muttered, furrowing his brow as he navigated through the crushing crowd. "Who brought animal shampoo to a club? It smells like a horse that was just bathed."
Li Wei burst into laughter at Xinghe's grumbling, his voice nearly drowned out by the deafening EDM music. "That's called high-end masculine aroma, Xinghe! It's only your nose, which smells old paper too often, that can't appreciate it!"
They climbed the spiral staircase to the second floor, the VIP area that Zhao Lin had reserved. There, the atmosphere was slightly more exclusive, yet still filled with clouds of vapor from vapes and the shouts of young people who felt they ruled the world simply because they had just gripped their high school diplomas.
In the center of a wide circular sofa, a young man with slicked-back hair and a flashy gold watch was pouring champagne into a tower of crystal glasses. That was Zhao Lin. Beside him, a girl in a tight red dress that accentuated her curves laughed playfully while leaning her head on Zhao Lin's shoulder. Xin Yan.
"Look who's here! The History Genius and his round bodyguard!" Zhao Lin exclaimed in a high, affected tone meant to be heard by everyone in the area. He didn't stand up; he only raised his glass in a dismissive gesture.
Li Wei offered an awkward grin, while Chu Xinghe walked in with a steady pace, his face showing no emotion. His eyes briefly met Xin Yan's. The girl froze for a moment; there was a flash of both guilt and pride in her eyes before she finally turned away and returned to laughing with Zhao Lin.
"I heard you're busy collecting dust in your apartment, Xinghe," Zhao Lin continued, sipping his champagne. "How is it? Have you found a treasure map from the Qin Dynasty yet? If you need capital for an expedition, you know who to call."
The friends around Zhao Lin erupted in laughter. Chu Xinghe pulled up a high stool at the corner of the bar, turning his back on the crowd of the dance floor below. He ordered a glass of cold mineral water from the bartender, an act that made the bartender raise an eyebrow since it was unusual for anyone to order plain water in the middle of a wild party like this.
"Just save your money to pay the electricity bill for this building, Zhao Lin," Xinghe replied without looking back. "Reading history is a hobby, and I have no intention of going on an expedition. That is why my grades in class are perfect—because of knowledge, not because my parents' money bought my scores."
Chu Xinghe swirled the glass of cold water in his hand, took a sip, and set it back down. "Laozi once quoted the phrase 'Zhi zhe bu yan, yan zhe bu zhi,' which means those who know do not speak, and those who speak do not know."
Zhao Lin's face instantly turned a deep crimson. He might not have understood ancient Chinese deeply, but he was smart enough to catch that he had just been called a loud, empty vessel in front of everyone, including Xin Yan.
"You—" Zhao Lin slammed the table, causing several crystal glasses on it to clink loudly. "How dare you bring up my parents! You're just a lucky orphan with a small apartment inheritance. Without that, you're nothing more than a vagrant who can only eat old paper!"
Xin Yan touched Zhao Lin's arm, trying to calm him down although her eyes kept darting toward Chu Xinghe with a complicated gaze. "That's enough, Lin. He's always like that. Don't ruin the party atmosphere."
Chu Xinghe only shrugged casually; he wasn't bothered at all. However, the complicated feelings he once had for Xin Yan made him let out a soft sigh. He chose to reach for his phone inside his jacket pocket. The screen lit up brightly as Chu Xinghe rested his chin on the table and tapped the browser icon.
Recently, after reading the works of Laozi, he had begun to read things related to cultivation. He tapped the search logo, his fingers moving nimbly across the screen, typing keywords that for a teenager his age might be considered signs of a premature existential crisis. Once the results appeared, he tapped a finger against his jaw.
"The universe is boundless; cultivation is just a story of the past," Chu Xinghe murmured, staring at the search results. "Cultivation is mentioned as the absorption of energy. I always thought that energy might be like solar radiation triggering a Vitamin D reaction in the body. But what does energy mean here?"
Chu Xinghe narrowed his eyes, ignoring the increasingly sickening noise around him. His phone screen displayed articles from marginal archaeology forums and metaphysical speculations. He read a line from an ancient text that was roughly translated: 'Man is a microcosm, and heaven is a macrocosm. Energy flows between theua through gates locked by flesh.'
"Energy," Xinghe whispered, his fingers scrolling further. "If modern science calls it radiation, electromagnetics, or kinetic energy, why do ancient texts always refer to it as the essence of heaven and earth? What kind of essence do heaven and earth actually emit?"
Chu Xinghe reset his search, switching to a private browser equipped with protection from a cheap VPN he subscribed to. His fingers typed a phrase that had haunted him since he found a footnote in his grandfather's oldest diary. The Great Collapse of Ancient Law. Behind the layers of the internet not indexed by public search engines, Chu Xinghe began to scour encrypted forums containing frustrated ancient linguists, illegal artifact collectors, and conspiracy theorists.
"The mystery of the disappearance of the Nine Tripod Cauldrons created by Yu the Great of the Xia Dynasty," Chu Xinghe muttered, beginning to focus his gaze. "The transition of the nine cauldrons through Shang, Zhou, and finally Qin. It is said the nine cauldrons vanished mysteriously."
Chu Xinghe took another sip of his mineral water, feeling the cold contrast with the club's stuffy air. His eyes remained glued to the screen. "One cauldron is said to have fallen into the Si River and is also uncertain, while the other eight vanished without a logical historical trace. If those cauldrons were truly symbols of heavenly authority, their disappearance coincides with the fading records of humans who could split mountains with a single swing of the hand."
"Thousands were sent to search the Si River, and some history I read only speculates about a dragon that severed the connection to that furnace," Chu Xinghe continued.
"But... wait." Chu Xinghe's eyes widened as he caught sight of a record that did not use Qin Dynasty seal script, nor oracle bone symbols. "There is a translation by a linguist and ancient collector who found a foreign record."
Chu Xinghe's fingers froze on the glass surface of his phone. The photo displayed was a fragment of silk charred at the edges, found by an amateur diver at the bottom of the East China Sea a few months ago. The writing on it was not the ancient Mandarin characters he knew—it resembled strokes of lightning or frozen leaf veins.
A linguist had placed a translation beneath the photo of the silk fragment. "The sky is no longer ours. The nine cauldrons manifested into golden scales and red wings. They flew like a blanket of light. The eye of the god stared at heaven and earth; we did not know what to do."
Chu Xinghe was stunned. "Golden scales and red wings?" he whispered softly. The description was too specific to be dismissed as mere poetic metaphor about power. In official historical records, the Nine Cauldrons were symbols of the emperor's legitimacy; their weight was immeasurable, and their presence was an anchor for the stability of the land. But this silk fragment spoke of something alive, something that flew away from the earth toward an expanse of light.
He scrolled again, becoming increasingly curious. "The disappearance of Laozi, and also Emperor Jianwen," Chu Xinghe murmured. "Hmm? Why do they say that figures like these moved to an unreachable place?"
Chu Xinghe tapped his fingers on the cold bar table, his eyes never shifting from the screen. Theories about the disappearance of great historical figures always had the same pattern: they didn't die; they were simply no longer here. Laozi riding his green ox toward the Hangu Pass and vanishing to the west, or Emperor Jianwen disappearing amidst the palace flames without leaving a single speck of ash.
"Where did they go?" Chu Xinghe whispered, feeling a sense of irony. "What does 'unreachable' mean? Is it a metaphor for the inability of the people at the time to pursue or find out where these people were?"
Chu Xinghe placed his phone on the bar table with a soft click. He stared at the beads of condensation running down the side of his water glass, trying to connect the dots between the silk fragment he had just seen and the myths he had long considered historical trash.
"The nine cauldrons manifested into scales and wings..." he muttered almost inaudibly. "Then the theory about two historical figures being in an unreachable place. It's like I hit Li Wei's head and the only thing that comes out is the face of that Yun girl. Dammit."
Chu Xinghe exhaled a long breath, trying to clear his head of the ridiculous analogy regarding Li Wei's head. He reached for his phone again, this time typing his grandfather's name, Chu Feng, in the national archive database search bar accessible only with family credentials. The result remained the same: Status: Missing. Last Location: Unknown.
Two years ago, his grandfather had left only a short note on his library's teak table. Its content was not a will of wealth, but a sentence that Xinghe had then considered a sign of early senility. 'The stars are calling home the anchors they cast upon the earth. I must go to ensure the door is not locked from the outside.'
"What door, Grandpa?" Xinghe murmured, his fingers clenching unconsciously. "Why did you leave me just like Mom and Dad?"
Chu Xinghe put his phone back into his jacket pocket. That familiar suffocating feeling returned, a mixture of longing and an emptiness that couldn't be filled by his parents' accident insurance payout or a luxury apartment in central Guangzhou. To him, his grandfather was not just a guardian, but the last bridge to a family identity shrouded in riddles.
"Oi, Xinghe! Why are you daydreaming? Your water is already warm; you'd better drink this!" Li Wei suddenly appeared beside him, handing him a glass containing a glowing blue liquid that emitted a cold mist. Li Wei's face already looked a bit haggard, the effect of downing several glasses of cheap alcohol on the dance floor.
Chu Xinghe glanced at the glass with a skeptical look. "The color of that drink looks more like floor cleaner than something fit for human consumption, Wei. I still want to be alive by tomorrow morning."
"Tsk, you're no fun! This is the Blue Nebula, the signature menu here!" Li Wei sat on the empty stool next to Xinghe, ignoring the fact that Zhao Lin was still staring at them with hatred from the main table. "Forget about your grandfather or those books for just a moment. Look over there; Xin Yan has been stealing glances at you this whole time. It seems she regrets choosing that square-faced snob."
Xinghe glanced briefly toward the VIP table. Sure enough, Xin Yan was sitting with a straight back, holding her glass with stiff fingers. Her gaze was indeed directed toward the corner of the bar where Xinghe was, but she immediately looked away as their eyes met.
"She's not my business anymore, Wei. I only came here so you'd stop whining like a puppy that lost its mother," Xinghe said flatly. He stood up from his barstool, his stature forcing several people around him to look up to see his face. "I'm going to the restroom for a moment. Don't you dare pass out here and make me carry you home."
"Damn you, Xinghe!" Li Wei laughed while gulping his drink.
Chu Xinghe walked through the crowd, his steps steady even though the floor vibrated violently from the low frequency of the techno music. He passed through a long corridor lit by dim neon lights toward the quieter back area of the club. Once the restroom door closed behind him, the thumping music was significantly muffled, replaced by the sound of water dripping from a leaky faucet.
He stood in front of the black marble sink, turned on the tap, and splashed his face with cold water. The water felt refreshing, trying to wash away the remnants of the unease triggered by the silk fragment article. He stared at his reflection in the mirror—an eighteen-year-old youth with broad shoulders and eyes that held a curiosity too vast to contain. He ran a hand through his hair and exhaled.
"The Eternal Star," Chu Xinghe murmured, recalling his grandfather's words three nights before he disappeared. "Grandpa spoke... no, he rambled that the infinite stars out there in space are just a tiny speck within something called the Eternal Star."
Chu Xinghe closed his eyes, his head slightly bowed. "If I had known he would disappear three nights later, I would have said I believed him and acted curious then, just so he wouldn't have gone away."