Chapter 016: Ten Years of Cultivating Good Karma

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I once hid under the covers at two in the morning, reading novels by flashlight.
I once snuck out of the house with my backpack at three a.m. to play Tian Long Ba Bu at a shady internet café.
But never once have I dug up a coffin at four in the morning.
Could there really be some treasure in that coffin?
What could possibly make the old man, who usually sleeps till eleven, so enthusiastic?
It couldn’t be treasure, that’s for sure. But when Grandpa woke me at three thirty, dark circles under his eyes and the whites shot through with red, I knew: whatever this was, it wasn’t good.
For Grandpa to care this much, it had to be either extremely profitable or extremely dangerous.
At three a.m., the streets were especially quiet; the amber glow of the streetlights still lingered on either side.
I rode my little electric scooter through the alleyways, Grandpa sitting behind me.
The early morning wind was still a bit chilly. I couldn’t help but purse my lips and ask, “Grandpa, what’s going on? Whose coffin are we digging up this early?”
I was already bracing myself for a scolding and for him to refuse to tell me anything.
To my surprise, this time Grandpa did the opposite and actually told me: “It’s the coffin of Zhang Shancai’s daughter.”
Zhang Shancai’s daughter? I remembered she’d been buried only half a month ago, and Grandpa had personally overseen the whole affair. Why dig her up now?
And Zhang Shancai was no ordinary figure—he was the most renowned philanthropist in our city. The hope primary schools in the surrounding counties, the city’s nursing homes, every charitable place you could think of, all funded by him.
Even the computer lab at my old school—those computers were his donations.
But despite being such a great benefactor, Zhang Shancai had been without a child until he turned sixty-eight.
Rumor had it that at fifty-eight, he’d met a master who told him that if he wanted an heir, he’d need to do good deeds and build connections for ten years.
From that year on, he sponsored impoverished students all over the country, never missing a year. People he helped could be found in every corner, in every walk of life, and his reputation spread far and wide.
Just as the master predicted.
Sure enough, ten years later, at sixty-eight, his wife gave birth to a daughter—Zhang Zhiyuan.

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From the moment she was born, Zhang Zhiyuan was the apple of her father’s eye, spoiled beyond compare.
But this girl, born with a silver spoon in her mouth, was not destined for a long life. Before she could truly enjoy anything, she died at twenty, leaving Zhang Shancai, now eighty-eight, bereft.
“Grandpa? She was just buried less than half a month ago. Has Zhang Shancai lost his mind? Why dig her up?”
I asked, confused, but Grandpa’s next words caught me off guard.
“Zhang Shancai knows nothing about this. And you, brat, don’t breathe a word. Just do as I say.”
“Understood.”
In the round side mirrors, I could see clearly how grave Grandpa’s expression was.
I thought about asking more, but was afraid of being scolded, so I kept quiet.
But Grandpa spoke up instead: “By the way, how did things go with the Gu family?”
I grinned. “Grandpa, when I handle things, you can rest easy. The family guardian spirit is back where it belongs—everything’s fine!”
Grandpa nodded, asking no more, just directing me which way to go from the back seat.
I’d never asked much about funerary matters.
Logically, someone as wealthy as Zhang Shancai would have buried his daughter in a prime feng shui plot.
But following Grandpa’s directions, we ended up at a cemetery on the outskirts of town.
Most buried here were from ordinary families who’d purchased plots for their elders long ago.
In our area, there’s a custom: once someone turns seventy, their children start preparing their grave and coffin.
Grandpa has one too—it’s in his house, and by now it’s become his treasure chest, crammed with all sorts of odds and ends.
“Grandpa? Zhang Shancai’s so rich, and he picked this spot for his daughter? At the very least, he should’ve bought a luxury plot in the city cemetery, right?”
Looking at Zhang Zhiyuan’s simple grave mound, I couldn’t help but ask, “Grandpa, did he buy this plot from you?”
“No,” Grandpa said after a glance at me. “He bought this spot thirty years ago.”

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Grandpa must have known what I wanted to ask, for before I could speak, he said, “I can’t see anything special about it either.”
With that, Grandpa took the hoe from the scooter, tossed it to me, and sat down on a large stone nearby. “Hurry up, no nonsense—dig. Call me when you hit the coffin.”
No sooner had he finished speaking than he closed his eyes and started snoring.
If he weren’t my grandpa, I’d have cursed him out loud right then.
But he was my grandpa, and I was his grandson—what else could I do? I dug.
Yet the deeper I dug, the stranger it felt. The last stroke of the hoe struck something hard, like stone.
Digging up a grave is hard work; I’d long since stripped to the waist. Now I jumped down into the pit, crouched, and brushed away the dirt with my hands.
Shining my phone’s light into the hole, I was stunned to find a thick layer of concrete beneath the soil.
I scraped away more earth with the hoe, and discovered that the entire coffin had been sealed in concrete.
Baffled, I climbed out of the grave and softly called Grandpa over.
He cracked his eyes open. “Found it?”
I nodded. “Grandpa, you’re something else—someone sealed the coffin in concrete. I can’t break through!”
At this, Grandpa’s brow furrowed even deeper. He stared at me for ten seconds, then suddenly pushed me aside and strode to the edge of the pit himself.
Peering down, he muttered, “Just as I thought.”
I joined him, but before I could ask, he pulled out his phone and dialed a number.
“Hello? Xiao Sun? Come over, and bring two power drills—the kind that can get through concrete.”
Grandpa was really going all out this time—using a power drill to open a coffin?