The Coiling Dragon Ring (Part 1)

The sun was setting. Crimson clouds filled nearly half the sky, bathing even the earth in red.

“Cleaning the ancestral hall was easier than I expected.”

Linley stepped out of the ancestral hall and had to admit that he had overprepared. Work he had expected to take an hour had taken only fifteen minutes.

On the Yulan Continent, a year had twelve months, each month thirty days. A day had twenty-four hours, and an hour had sixty minutes. Most nobles owned grandfather clocks and could tell the exact time, while the exceptionally wealthy or high-ranking even possessed exquisite pocket watches.

“The ancestral hall is cleaned every month. In only one month, it hardly gets dirty at all. A quick wipe is enough. There is still nearly an hour before evening training. What should I do?” Bored, Linley looked around.

The ancient Baruch estate was more than five thousand years old.

The front courtyard was cleaned and maintained every day. But the larger rear grounds, aside from the ancestral hall, were filled with dusty rooms and courtyards, some even cracked with age. Tangled weeds and green moss covered the corners of the walls and the stone paths.

“Hm?” Linley looked over the old, decaying buildings. “No one has cleaned or maintained so many places in the rear grounds for more than a hundred years. Could there be some old, valuable things inside?”

At the thought, Linley's heart began to pound.

If I can find something valuable and give it to Father, he will surely be happy. Linley took a deep breath and headed toward a dilapidated room beside the ancestral hall. He moved forward carefully, gripping a sturdy wooden pole to sweep away cobwebs as he searched for anything of value.

The moment Linley entered the old room, he smelled decay. Dense cobwebs hung in the corners, with spiders crawling over them.

Cobwebs covered many ornaments. Looking closely, Linley could see that the ornaments on the walls were extremely old, but they had long since rotted away, leaving only barely recognizable shapes.

“If these ornaments had not rotted, and were still new, they should have been worth quite a bit.” Linley shook his head helplessly and continued looking. He cleared away layer after layer of cobwebs with the wooden pole, carefully inspecting every object.

He searched the floor, the wooden shelves, and even the walls for concealed mechanisms.

“According to the books, it is perfectly normal to build hidden mechanisms into walls.” Linley tapped the walls carefully, listening to the sound.

Linley enjoyed the feeling of treasure hunting in old rooms. But he had forgotten that if he could think of searching old rooms for treasure, then surely his father, grandfather, and the Baruch Clan's earlier elders could have thought of it too.

The Baruch Clan's ancestors had long since searched these old rooms clean.

Linley was only eight. Though his family's education had made him rather mature for his age, he was still far from an adult and did not think things through thoroughly enough.

“Nothing in this old room. The next one—” Linley left the first old room and headed for the second.

There were still many buildings in the rear grounds. The front courtyard where Linley and his family now lived made up only one-third of the entire estate; the area behind it was much larger. Linley estimated that searching everything would take a full day.

“Every ornament has rotted away. Not one valuable thing.” Linley emerged from yet another old room.

He looked at the sky.

“Hm. There are probably fifteen minutes left before evening training.” Linley turned to look at a particularly large set of old rooms in the distance. “That one. The largest set of old rooms. I will spend ten minutes searching it. If I find nothing, I will go straight to training.”

Having decided, Linley ran toward the largest set of old rooms.

This group of old rooms covered far more ground than the front courtyard's living room. Entering it, Linley inspected his surroundings carefully. “Several hundred years ago, this must have been where the Baruch Clan dined together.” From the decorations and layout, he could tell that it had been a living room.

And a particularly spacious, imposing one.

“First, the floor.”

Following his usual method, Linley lowered his head and carefully searched every spot. Whenever he saw something, he prodded it twice with the wooden pole and inspected it closely. If it was only a stone, he discarded it at once. As evening training drew near, he searched faster and faster.

“Time to search the walls and the ornaments. Hah, this is my last hope.” Linley puffed out his cheeks and looked around. “Ancestors of the clan, leave one or two things for me. Even a little trinket will do.”

Linley carefully examined every place, even looking behind the rotted ornaments on the walls.

A wooden shelf stood against the wall of the old room, and it still had drawers. Linley immediately opened them one after another and looked inside, but the drawers were very clean and completely empty. If they contained anything at all, it was dust.

“Sigh.”

After checking the final drawer of the wooden shelf, Linley felt disappointed.

“After searching for so long, I did not find a single valuable thing. All I got was a sweat-soaked body and a layer of dust.” Linley looked at himself. He was filthy, and the thought irritated him.

Linley swept his gaze across the old room.

“Hmph. I'm going back.” Angrily, Linley hurled the wooden pole in his hand at the shelf beside him, as though he wanted to vent the frustration of nearly an hour of fruitless work in that single throw.

Crack!

The wooden pole struck the shelf solidly.

The shelf had a long history, and more than a century of decay had already left it unable to bear much weight. After the wooden pole struck it so hard, it began to creak.

Hearing the sound, Linley looked back and was startled. “Oh no, it's going to collapse.” While searching the earlier rooms, he had already knocked some ornaments down and broken them, so he had experience with this sort of thing.

Linley hurriedly backed away to one side.

The shelf, twice as tall as Linley, finally fell. With a boom, it smashed into the floor and broke into seven or eight pieces, sending a cloud of dust through the old room. Within that rising dust, Linley failed to notice that—

As the shelf shattered, a black ring that had been hidden in one of its compartments for who knew how long fell out and rolled across the floor.

“Puh! Puh!” Linley spat two or three times and waved his sleeve to clear the dust.

“What bad luck. I'm covered in dust, and training is about to start. I should hurry and wash up, then change into clean clothes.” Linley waved a hand and headed out of the old room.