The Enforcer Hunting My Pen Name Reads Every Chapter novel · Chapter 23 of 24
Chapter 23: Plum Tree
Bamboo Bend was one lane, nine houses and a plum tree.
The tree stood in the yard of the last house, where nobody had lived for twelve years.
They came to it on foot, by the river road, in the second week of the tenth month, with a spade borrowed from Liang.
The plum was bare.
The wall around it had fallen in one corner.
A wooden gate hung by a single hinge, and Mo put a hand on it and it swung open with a sound he plainly knew.
"My father's house," he said. "I did not sell it. I never came back."
"You came back once."
"For the cart." He crossed the yard. "I did not look at the tree."
Shen stood at the gate and did not follow yet.
Mo stopped at the foot of the trunk, between two big roots on the sunny side.
He looked at the ground, and then at the sky, and counted paces in a low voice.
"Here."
He knelt.
He did not use the spade at first.
He put his hands flat on the cold earth and left them there.
Then he began to dig.
Shen came across the yard and knelt beside him.
He took the spade without asking, and Mo let it go.
The earth was dark and wet.
It came away in clods, and the roots of the plum were thick and white where the blade bit.
Twice they stopped, and Mo put his hand in and felt, and drew it out empty.
At the length of an arm the blade struck something that rang.
It was a clay jar, the height of a man's forearm, sealed with red wax and wrapped in oiled cloth that had rotted to threads.
The third one.
The first two had gone in the same spring, a little farther along the root, and were not meant to be touched.
Mo lifted it out in both hands.
It was heavier than he remembered.
He wiped the earth off the lid with his sleeve, and the wax under it was intact.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of The Enforcer Hunting My Pen Name Reads Every Chapter are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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