Chapter 4

"Strange, could there be something wrong with my eyes? Am I becoming nearsighted?" Yang Kang thought to himself. Goodness, could it be that his eyes were fine when he was in school, but now they were having problems?

Thinking about this, he hurriedly raised his hand to rub his eyes, then focused again on the book. This time, the book was lying on the ground, perfectly normal, with no mist at all.

"Is this a living ghost?" Yang Kang cursed in his heart, reaching out to touch the book again. As soon as his fingers touched it, the mist reappeared. The moment he withdrew his hand, the mist vanished instantly.

"Does the mist only appear when my hand touches it?" This thought flashed through Yang Kang's mind, and he immediately reached out to test it again. Indeed, the mist only appeared when his hand touched the book, wrapping around it.

"Strange, strange!" Yang Kang was puzzled and a bit afraid. He then picked up a few comics to test, but when he held the comics, everything was normal, with nothing unusual.

"Could there be something strange about that book?" Yang Kang pondered.

"Hey, young man, are you buying or not?" The middle-aged woman selling the books, seeing Yang Kang squatting on the ground just looking without buying, felt a bit unhappy and couldn't help but urge him.

"Oh..." Yang Kang hurriedly said, "Yes, I'll buy these, and this one too. Auntie, what's your price?"

He placed the selected storybooks, novels, and a few comics, including the English version of the "Quotations," together.

"Three hundred yuan!" The woman looked at him and squinted as she quoted the price.

"What?" Yang Kang almost choked. Just a few old books, and she wanted three hundred yuan? What a joke! "Auntie, you keep them for yourself."

Saying this, he stood up, dusted off his hands, and was about to leave.

"Hey, hey, young man, if you really want them, I can give you a discount." The woman selling the books hurriedly called out.

"Thirty yuan!" Yang Kang said irritably. Although he was very curious about the book with the mist and wanted to buy it to study, three hundred yuan was clearly a rip-off.

In the end, after haggling, driven by his curiosity, he spent forty-five yuan to buy all the books. This time, he was more cautious and deliberately held the "Quotations" in his hand while looking at the middle-aged woman.

However, the woman just smiled at him, showing no reaction. Yang Kang concluded that the mist could only be seen when his hand touched the book, and only he could see it. Otherwise, the woman would have surely asked out of curiosity why the book looked like it was steaming.

This phenomenon was very strange, and anyone would be unable to resist asking about it.

Back at Jiang Yan's Jade Treasure Antiques Shop, Wei Yan had already returned. Seeing him, she couldn't help but scold him again. Yang Kang pretended not to hear.

He threw the items into the storage room, made some hot water, and ate some instant noodles. Then he climbed into the storage room to read, ignoring Jiang Yan and Wei Yan's family.

"Hey, what kind of attitude is this? I'm feeding a white-eyed wolf!" Wei Yan couldn't help but start cursing again.

"What do you want me to say?" Yang Kang, unable to bear it, opened the door and looked at Wei Yan.

"Mom, don't bother with him!" Jiang Xiaoyue, who had been snubbed by him earlier, was also very angry. "I just don't understand why Dad would take in such a person to live with us. Now, it's hard to get rid of him. Look, he's made the storage room stink, making it inconvenient for us to store anything."

"That old man must have taken the wrong medicine, hmpf." Wei Yan cursed angrily.

"Wait until Dad and Brother come back, and I'll talk to Dad about it. I want him to move out. I can't stand seeing him." Jiang Xiaoyue looked at Yang Kang with disdain.

Yang Kang turned and went back inside, ignoring her. He thought to himself that he needed to find a place to rent and move out as soon as possible; he couldn't stay here any longer.

The next morning, Yang Kang went out to submit resumes, look for a job, and find a cheap place to rent. However, finding a job wasn't easy, and while there were many houses for rent, most were too expensive for him to afford. For three consecutive days, he went out every day, but found no job prospects.

When he returned that evening, it was already very late. He was frustrated and, not encountering the Jiang family, didn't bother to eat. He went straight to the storage room, lay on the bed, and pondered the situation. Although he had saved some money after working for a year, living off his savings without an income source was unsustainable. He couldn't beg and take away the beggars' jobs, could he?

While he was feeling frustrated, his fingers accidentally touched the "Quotations." He had studied this book for three days but still couldn't figure out what was special about it. He couldn't understand why he could see mist-like things when he touched this book, but not with other books.

After repeated study, he concluded that only the cover page showed mist when he touched it, while the other pages were completely normal.

Yang Kang touched the cover, and a thought suddenly struck him. He remembered the famous "Forty-Two Chapters Sutra" in "The Deer and the Cauldron," where the cover had a hidden layer with a treasure map.

Could there be something wrong with the cover of this book? Thinking about this, he hurriedly sat up, took a flashlight, and shone it on the cover. The color inside the cover was very old, yellowed, and had some oil stains. Yang Kang stared at it for over ten minutes, his lips trembling slightly.

"Such a skillful binding," Yang Kang thought to himself.

If his family hadn't been in the antiques business, if he hadn't worked in a pawnshop for a year, and if he hadn't learned some binding techniques from Zhou Bomin, he wouldn't have noticed anything different about the cover.

However, now Yang Kang could guarantee that the cover of this book was not the original. It had been tampered with. No published book would use such a complex binding technique. From the technique, it appeared to be Wu binding, and the person who did it was clearly an expert. The bound cover was perfectly integrated with the original book, indistinguishable from it.

With this discovery, Yang Kang instantly felt elated. He got up, went to the bathroom to get a glass of water, and then carefully closed the storage room door. He cautiously applied a little water to the cover.