Courtyard House: Starting with handing over the keys, the state helps me abuse birds.

The night was as dark as ink, and the courtyard was immersed in an almost eerie silence.

Inside the east wing of the front courtyard, Yan Bugui huddled on the edge of the kang (a heated brick bed). The dim light cast his thin, hunched figure onto the mottled wall, making him look like a ghost.

The 15-watt light bulb on the table crackled and flickered, much like his anxious state of mind at that moment.

Six hours had passed since Yan Bugui was "discharged" from the hospital and returned to this familiar courtyard. But during those six hours, Yan Bugui did not feel at ease for a single moment.

The rib brace was too tight, and every breath was accompanied by a sharp pain. It was the result of breaking two more ribs three days ago when he struggled to push himself up during push-up training.

The injury to my right arm has almost healed, and I can at least move it freely, but my shoulder joint always aches faintly at night, as if countless tiny needles are pricking the bones.

The physical pain was bearable.

What truly torments people is the kind of fear that is ever-present and seeps into their very bones.

Whenever I close my eyes, I see Xie Weihong's eyes, calm as a deep pool, looking at them as if they were livestock to be slaughtered.

And that scene with the four-meter long jump—that's beyond human capability. That's a monster, a demon, an existence beyond reason.

Yan Bugui shivered violently, as if a cold snake were crawling up his spine. With trembling hands, he picked up the enamel mug on the table and gulped down a large mouthful of cold water. The water was icy cold, sliding down his esophagus into his stomach, but it did nothing to extinguish the burning, increasingly intense fire of anxiety in his heart.

He needed to do something, to find something to distract himself and temporarily forget this endless fear.

My gaze swept across the cramped room, past the peeling paint on the wardrobe, the cracked eight-immortal table, the corner piled with clutter... and finally settled on the old camphor wood chest in the corner.

That was his mother's dowry, used for nearly fifty years. The box had developed a warm patina from the years, and the brass hinges at the corners were rusted. Inside the box were some worthless old items.

There's one more thing.

A faint light suddenly appeared in Yan Bugui's eyes.

He struggled to move off the edge of the kang (a heated brick bed), and as his feet touched the ground, the excruciating pain in his ribs made his vision go black, and cold sweat instantly beaded on his forehead. But he gritted his teeth and moved step by step to the chest, his hands trembling as he lifted the heavy lid.

A musty smell of camphor wood mixed with old paper wafted over.

He bent down, his fingers carefully searching through the clutter at the bottom of the box. Old letters, yellowed pages, tattered rags... his movements abruptly stopped when his fingertips touched a hard cover.

found it.

It was a dark blue cloth notebook, its four corners worn, revealing the grayish-white cardboard underneath, but overall it was in remarkably good condition. In the center of the cover, two small characters were neatly written in pen: "Memo".

This was his disguise; it looked like an ordinary notebook.

Yan Bugui carefully took out the notebook and hugged it tightly to his chest, like a drowning man grasping at a last straw. The cool cover pressed against his chest, and strangely, it gave him a sense of security.

This is a habit he developed in his twenties: keeping a diary.

This is the foundation upon which Yan Bugui has made his living and navigated the courtyard for twenty years.

Every single income, whether legitimate or illicit, every single expenditure, whether necessary or calculated, every advantage gained, every trick played, every hidden agenda laid... all are clearly and meticulously recorded.

Date, amount, recipient, method, cause and effect, follow-up plans, even the mood at the time, the other party's reaction, possible risks and contingency plans... nothing is too big or small, the level of detail is outrageous.

A bad pen is worse than a good memory. Write everything down in black and white, and when you need to, you can look it up and see who owes him what, who he owes whom what, who has something on him, and who has caught him in a weakness. It will all be clear at a glance.

This is the fundamental reason why he can navigate this courtyard surrounded by wolves with ease and even often gain the upper hand.

Of course, this diary must absolutely, absolutely not be seen by anyone else.

Therefore, he put a lot of thought into hiding it. He didn't put it in an obvious place, and he didn't use a drawer with a lock, because that would attract attention.

He chose the simplest method: he mixed in with a pile of worthless junk and placed it at the bottom of an old camphor wood chest left by his mother. And before each hiding, he would carefully slip a few bills of different denominations into the pages of his diary.

Over time, the paper becomes imbued with a unique scent, a mixture of ink, the smell of aging paper, and the aroma of money.

Clutching his diary, Yan Bugui shuffled back to the edge of the kang (a heated brick bed), letting out a long, deep breath, as if a tremendous burden had been lifted. He needed to write something, he absolutely had to write something. He needed to put all his hellish experiences of the past few days, the boundless fear in his heart, and those terrifying suspicions that were vaguely surfacing into writing, to sort them out clearly. This was almost the only way he could think of at that moment to combat his inner collapse.

He unscrewed the old-fashioned fountain pen he had used for many years; the nib reflected a faint glimmer in the dim light. He opened his diary, ready to begin recording from the latest page.

The movement suddenly froze in mid-air.

He unconsciously took a deep breath through his nose.

Then, his face turned deathly pale in an instant.

wrong!

The taste is off!

Yan Bugui suddenly brought the diary to his nose, sniffing it almost greedily and repeatedly. Nothing! Not a trace! That familiar, ingrained, unique scent mixed with ink and old banknotes had vanished without a trace!

"Buzz!"

His mind went blank for a moment, followed by a sharp ringing in his ears. Cold sweat poured out of every pore of Yan Bugui's body like a flood, and his icy clothes clung tightly to his skin.

He stood up abruptly as if he had been burned. The movement was so sudden and violent that a soft "crack" and a tearing pain came from the broken ribs, making his vision go black and almost causing him to faint.

But he clenched his teeth and stubbornly refused to fall, his trembling hands frantically examining the diary in his hands.

Cover color? Exactly the same.

Paper quality? Almost no difference.

The binding stitching? Absolutely perfect.

The subtle wear on the edges of the pages, the creases he deliberately left that only he knew about...

They all look exactly the same.

But the smell is wrong! That unique "money scent," his ultimate method for verifying the authenticity of the diary, is now completely gone!

"It's over..."