"Is there no law anymore! My daughter isn't back yet鈥攏obody's touching this house!"



Before Shen Qiufeng even reached the village entrance, her mother's hoarse shouts came rolling across the rice paddies and into her ears. Her feet were already running before she knew it.



A bulldozer sat at the front of her house. The tracks had torn through the chive patch, churning mud and crushed green leaves into a pulpy mess that bled across the ground. A crowd had gathered several layers deep; no one noticed her approach from the ridge path.



Her mother stood blocking the door, hair disheveled, both hands gripping the doorframe, fingers jammed into the wood grain as if trying to nail herself there.



Village director Zhou Dehou stood by the threshold, a paper trembling in his hand, the corners of his mouth wrinkled into a tight line: "Auntie, the hazardous building assessment report has come through鈥攊t's officially stamped. Even if you don't sign, the town government will enforce the demolition. I'm doing this for your own good."



"For our own good?" Her mother's voice cracked. "Last year you said you'd fix our wiring, spent an entire afternoon poking around the house鈥攚hat were you really looking for?"



Zhou Dehou's face stiffened. "Fixing your wiring because it was shorting out! If I don't check thoroughly, there could be serious problems. You wouldn't understand."



Qiufeng pushed through the crowd. Zhou Dehou hadn't noticed her coming up from behind. When he turned and saw her, the wrinkles on his face froze first, then hastily rearranged themselves into a smile. But it didn't land right-s if he sensed the scene wasn't unfolding the way he'd planned.



"Qiufeng, you're back just in time. This is the town's arrangement鈥攖here's over a hundred thousand in compensation..."



"Director Zhou." Shen Qiufeng cut him off, pulling a pen and notebook from her canvas bag. "Hazardous building assessment鈥攚hich organization conducted it? The assessor's name. Does the town government even have the qualifications to issue a hazardous building report? If not, bring me the county's documentation."



Zhou Dehou was used to dealing with people who couldn't read or write. These moves didn't work on a college graduate.



"Before I go to the county to ask around," she said, closing her notebook, "try moving a single brick. Just try."



Zhou Dehou's mouth hung open, words stuck halfway out. Qiufeng had already led her mother inside.



Behind them, the bulldozer's engine sputtered and died. The shadow of its steel arm slanted across the courtyard wall, like a dull cleaver frozen mid-swing.



Her mother sat down at the old octagonal table. Shen Qiufeng poured a glass of water and handed it to her. Her mother took it but didn't drink, setting it down on the table instead.



"Ma, what secret is this house hiding? Don't keep it from me."



"Feng, I don't really know either. There are rumors everywhere鈥攑eople say this old house has hidden mechanisms, buried treasures..." Her mother broke into sobs. "All these years, you were away at school, your brother was enlisted in the army鈥攊t was just me here alone. Every time he came, it seemed like he was searching for something. If it weren't for Uncle Zhao's help, they'd have gotten their hands on it long ago."



Shen Qiufeng looked up at the crossbeams coated with raw lacquer, at the pillars wrapped in red paint. Though they'd weathered countless years, they showed no signs of age or fatigue. The open space beneath the courtyard skylight鈥攈ow many generations of footprints had it held? And everything in the east and west wings-ll of it carried the childhood memories of her and her brother.



"Before your father passed, he kept muttering nonsense those last few days鈥攕aying this old house could never be torn down or sold, that it was a rule set by the ancestors." She paused, choking back sobs, her voice dropping to barely a whisper. "The doctors in this town couldn't find the cause... and then he was gone."



Shen Qiufeng steadied her mother, thinking to herself: I was still in elementary school when Dad died鈥擨 didn't understand anything. Now I've graduated from college, and someone shows up with a bulldozer to knock down the house, offering a hundred thousand for an old building. Since when does free money exist in this world?



She crossed the main hall to the backyard. The rose bushes in the flower bed had grown wild and tangled; only the stone carving at the center remained as it had always been.



"How did Grandpa die?"



"They say he got lost in the mountains. No one can even say exactly where it happened. Twenty years now. And then there was Chen Youshan鈥攖he one sent down from Guangzhou for re-education. Those two both disappeared around the same time. Your grandfather was a landlord-class element; the other was an old cadre doing reform through labor. They were very close. Nobody else associated with them鈥攂oth their identities made people keep their distance. Word of this even reached Guangzhou. Investigators came, but nothing ever came of it..."



One got lost in the mountains. One died of illness. That night, she learned more about the family's buried history from her mother than she ever had before.



The night deepened. The cicadas fell silent. Only the old pendulum clock's ticking echoed through the house. Shen Qiufeng lay in bed, tossing and turning. Zhou Dehou's eagerness, the old house's peculiarities, the family's strange history鈥攃ountless threads tangled together, sending chills down her spine. She had a creeping feeling that this old house held a secret buried by time, and that behind the demolition was a long-planned plunder.