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I recalled that Xiao Hua really had come down fifteen minutes ago to open the door to let some air in. The basement had a lot of built up gas, so we had to turn on the ventilation system before coming in.

We were all chatting while we waited outside, so it was impossible for anyone to sneak in and put something in there when we weren’t looking.

Plus, the guys in the Xie family didn’t have a penchant for pranks.

What surprised me the most was that this thing was so much bigger than the door, so how was it transported down here?

There was no way it came in through the door.

“You’re so smart, tell me what’s going on.” I said to Xiao Hua.

He quietly responded: “You’re actually the smartest one in this generation. The Xie family members are generally just good-looking.”

There was no movement under the white cloth. I was most afraid that someone had contorted his body into this shape to hide underneath it, but once I thought about it carefully, I realized that it was impossible.

We stood there for a while until Xiao Hua drew out a four-segmented defense baton, went over, picked the white cloth up, and then threw it aside.

There was a lot of dust. I saw that it was actually a piano under the white cloth, and the reason why it had looked so weird was because there were a lot of tools and piano wire bobbins sitting on top. No wonder I hadn’t recognized it at first sight.

The piano didn’t seem to be dangerous, so Xiao Hua and I got closer.

That was when we noticed a pair of work gloves laying on the seat in front of the piano. Xiao Hua picked them up, and we were surprised to find that these gloves were very special. They were made of common cotton, but instead of five fingers, there were seven fingers.

This was a glove worn by a man with seven fingers.

“Is it him?” Xiao Hua looked up at the ceiling.

“Do you know what’s going on?”

“Haven’t you heard the story of Seven Fingers?” Xiao Hua asked. “Didn’t your family ever tell you?”

I shook my head.

“Back when I was a little kid and there were elders in the Xie family who cared for me, they often told me this story.” Xiao Hua looked around at the simple room. “It’s just like the ‘The Secret World of Arrietty’ (1). All the children in our family know it.”

I was kicked out of this business when I was a kid, I said to myself, before making an expression that I would like to hear more.

Xiao Hua didn’t like to be as long-winded as Uncle Three, but he really thought about it this time and said, “Seven Fingers is a mark. Our families bought a lot of real estate across the country in the 1990s. They especially looked for old houses with underground air raid shelters, mainly to use as warehouses. You know that people in this business are very sensitive to visually deceptive mechanisms, and can notice even a slight difference in the brick on an ancient tomb’s wall. They used that skill when selecting properties, and discovered a particularly interesting phenomenon.

Xiao Hua went back to the stairs, sat down, and looked at the time on his phone: “There are a lot of ‘excess’ parts in many buildings, which had been hidden using various illusions. For example, the inner corridor in an old house in the northeast was a hundred meters, but the house had been extended to a hundred and thirty meters. So, where was the extra thirty meters? We later found that a staircase had been enclosed in the wall at the end of the corridor. The upper and lower parts were sealed off and didn’t go anywhere, but each step was engraved with numbers.”

“Was it an architectural drawing error?” When I looked at him, Xiao Hua said, “No, it was a prank. We found a handprint with seven fingers on the building’s concrete wall. Later, we found this mark in many buildings that had the same problems. We concluded that there was an architect after liberation who probably had some talent that couldn’t be displayed, so he played practical jokes on all the projects he handled. Of course, it would be an insult to simply call him a prank master, because we soon found some buildings that weren’t only interesting, but could be considered real works of art. They were all seemingly ordinary, but the insides were strange and unimaginable. They were full of imperceptible dark passages, secret rooms, and hidden moving doors. He often borrowed these ‘back doors’ he designed to use the hidden parts of these buildings.”

Xiao Hua finished and looked inside the inner room. I suddenly realized something. “This building is also one of his works?”

Xiao Hua nodded. “Some people in the family were eager to find this architect, and there was a period where they collected many of the houses he designed. This was one of the buildings bought at that time. We believed that man was one of the first to renovate this building after liberation, and he must have tampered with it at that time.”

I looked at the piano in the center of the room. “Has anyone ever established contact with him?”

Xiao Hua shook his head. “But I believe he’s in this house now. This piano is the signal he sent to us. He’s someone who especially likes pranks.”

<Extra 3.1> <Table of Contents><Extra 3.3>

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TN Notes:

(1) Ghibli film. Here’s the Wikipedia page

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