Prologue

On a dark night, the bright moon hung high on the horizon, stars glittered across the sky, and a small meteor with a long tail streaked through the black curtain of night, plunging into the silent, deserted mountain ridges...

Three days later.

A bustling market was packed with stalls selling fruit, pork, duck, fish, meat, daily necessities, toys... All kinds of vendors mingled through the crowds that surged through the market.

This was a remote little town in the countryside. Most of the people in the crowd were farmers from the nearby villages, living off the land and coming into town on market day to buy things to take home.

A refined young man seemed out of place among them as he led a handsome little boy through the lively market.

The man looked to be twenty-five or twenty-six, with a scholarly face. He wore a blue suit jacket over a white shirt and a pair of black-rimmed glasses, giving him the air of a man of letters.

The little boy holding his hand looked seven or eight years old at most, with features strikingly similar to the young man’s. He clutched his father’s hand and curiously darted his round eyes all around.

“Dad, where are Grandpa and Grandma’s house? Why aren’t we there yet?”

As he looked around curiously, the little boy asked the man beside him.

“We’ll be there soon. Grandpa and Grandma live in the village below town.”

“Haoran, stand here and don’t move. Dad’s going to buy some fruit. Wait for me to come back.”

Seeing a fruit stall up ahead, the young man patted the little boy on the head and reminded him before walking toward it.

The fruit stall was under a canopy, only seven or eight meters away.

The little boy watched his father speaking to the fruit seller not far away. His bright eyes rolled around, and while his father wasn’t paying attention, he slipped into the crowd and vanished.

The mischievous little boy ran through the market with great excitement, stopping and starting as he went. Sometimes he would stand curiously in front of a vendor’s stall to look, and sometimes he would dart left and right through the market, having the time of his life.

“Hey, hey, hey... little handsome guy, want to buy something?”

A stall owner with shifty, rat-like features noticed the boy. Seeing that he was dressed well and had a bulging pocket, the man’s eyes lit up and he immediately called out to him.

At the sound, the little boy curiously walked up to the stall. On it were all sorts of strange odds and ends, most of them worn and shabby. Among them, a pitch-black object shaped like a ring caught his eye.

He came from a well-off family and lacked nothing in the way of children’s toys, but he was especially interested in odd little trinkets like this.

The ring’s surface dipped slightly in the middle, and all around it were carved mysterious symbols he could not understand. That piqued his interest.

Before he knew it, the boy had picked it up and examined it closely. The ring was entirely black, with dust built up on its surface. In his hand it had the cool feel of metal, but after a closer look, the boy felt a little disappointed, because the ring wasn’t intact. A crack had split open at the bottom.

The shady vendor saw the boy put down the black ring and turn to leave.

Panicking, the vendor hurriedly called after him, “Hey, hey... little handsome guy, don’t go.”

“That thing you just held is called the Qianlong Ring. It’s a treasure passed down from my ancestors. According to what my great-grandfather told my grandfather, this ring was once worn by an emperor in ancient times.”

“Worn by an emperor?”

The boy was obviously inexperienced in the ways of the world. At those words, his eyes lit up and he quickly pressed, “Really? You’d take out a family treasure to sell? Don’t think I’m easy to fool just because I’m young.”

The vendor saw that the boy was speaking skeptically, but his eyes were already shining at the black ring, and he grew delighted inside, continuing to bluff him. “Heh... don’t say you don’t believe it. If I weren’t in a rush to marry a wife and desperately needed money, I’d never take something like this out to sell, even if you killed me.”

“What’s a wife?”

The little boy asked in confusion.

“Uh... a wife is, well...” The vendor was a little embarrassed by the question and quickly laughed it off. “You’ll understand when you grow up.”

“Do you want it? If you do, I’ll painfully sell it to you.”

“How much?”

“How much money do you have?”

The vendor couldn’t tell how much money the boy had on him, so he asked.

The boy reached into his pocket and pulled out a thick stack of bright red hundred-yuan bills.

When the vendor saw the red bills, his eyes went wide and round at once. His heart started hammering, and his breathing grew a little quick.

By his estimate, there had to be at least two or three thousand yuan there. In this day and age, that was a fortune.

He really hadn’t been wrong. This was a fat sheep!

“Five thousand!”

Without hesitation, the vendor quoted an outrageous price.

“So expensive?”

The little boy frowned. Even though he was young, he knew that was a huge sum.

“Heh... how could something an emperor wore possibly be cheap?”

The vendor said it as though it were perfectly natural. After thinking it over, the boy felt it made some sense. His frown relaxed, and he began counting the money. One bill, two bills, three bills... When he was done, there were about 31 notes.

Thirty-one notes came to only 3,100 yuan, still a fair distance from the 5,000 price.

The boy frowned again.

“But I don’t have enough money?”

He was a little embarrassed.

“How much do you have?” the vendor pressed again.

“Three thousand one.”

The boy counted again and confirmed it.

“Haah~”

The vendor deliberately sighed. “Three thousand one it is, then. I’m in a hurry to marry a wife and need money right away, and since little handsome guy, you really do want it, I’ll sell it to you cheap.”

Hearing the shopkeeper’s words, the little boy, who had already given up hope, brightened at once and nodded eagerly. “Okay, okay, I want it. Here’s the money.”

As he spoke, he handed over the money, picked up the black ring, and had originally wanted to put it on his finger, but he was too young and it didn’t fit.

So he stuffed it into his pocket and disappeared into the crowd with a pleased expression.

Once he saw the boy had gone far enough, the little vendor immediately lifted the cloth covering the ground, gathered up all the goods into it, tied it into a bundle, slung it over his back, and hurried off out of the market.

Today had been a windfall for him. He had casually picked up a broken ring on the mountain, only to sell it for an outrageous price.

...

A so-called “emperor’s ring.” The ignorant little boy still had no idea how much of a storm it would cause in his future life.

The story begins ten years later!