Chapter 87

Chapter 87

After attending Liu Tan's funeral, Jiang Yicen and Nan Shuyi headed back to Lincheng.

The last time they went to Ningzhou, the two of them had come home happy, but this time they came back feeling down.

After returning, Jiang Yicen seemed the same as usual on the surface, but Nan Shuyi knew he was in a bad mood. The biggest tell was that when Jiang Yicen was home alone, he'd space out so bad he didn't even notice Nan Shuyi walk in.

In all the time Nan Shuyi had known him, he'd never seen Jiang Yicen this down.

Even though he still got up, went to work on time, and did his job like clockwork, Nan Shuyi could tell he was a wreck, hit hard by Liu Tan's death.

Why was the impact so great?

It wasn't like they were close—they'd only just met the old man.

Nan Shuyi recalled Liu Tan's behavior before his death. Why was he so dead set on Jiang Yicen being the "Sixth Master" he knew?

He remembered Liu Tan had already mistaken Jiang Yicen for someone else the first time they visited. Did Jiang Yicen really look that much like that Jiang guy?

For a moment, he had no idea how to cheer Jiang Yicen up. His usual shameless jokes weren't working anymore—Jiang Yicen's smile just kept fading.

The handwriting expert Jiang Ruolin had found was busy helping the police with a criminal case, so Nan Shuyi didn't want to push him. Instead, he tried a different angle and reached out to a psychologist.

Nan Shuyi went to a shrink his friend recommended—ten grand an hour. He wore a mask and sunglasses.

He asked the doc, "So my buddy's been in a funk ever since he went to some old man's funeral. What do you think's going on?"

Psychologist: "How long has this been going on?"

Nan Shuyi: "About three days. He's not eating much, he's mopey, and he keeps spacing out. Is he depressed?"

Psychologist: "Did he come in himself?"

Nan Shuyi: "No."

Psychologist: "Was the old man who passed someone he was really close to?"

Nan Shuyi: "Not really—it was only the second time they'd ever met."

Psychologist: "So what happened?"

Nan Shuyi: "The old man thought he was someone he knew when he was young. So to make the old man's last wish come true, my friend played along and talked to him as that person for two days. The old man died the next day. After the funeral, we came back to Lincheng, and he's been down ever since—like he can't get into anything anymore."

Psychologist: "Has he ever had mood swings like this before?"

Nan Shuyi thought hard about whether Jiang Yicen had ever had a big emotional dip in the six months they'd been together.

"Once, yeah. He got up in the middle of the night and cried by himself on the balcony."

Psychologist: "Why? Did you ever find out what was wrong?"

Nan Shuyi: "Because he didn't have enough cash to buy this shop he wanted."

Psychologist: "And then?"

Nan Shuyi: "I bought it for him. Cost me a hundred million."

The psychologist's hand froze mid-pen. "...So did he cheer up after that?"

Nan Shuyi: "Of course he did."

At that, something clicked in his head, and he shot up out of his seat. "Doc, thanks! I gotta go!"

Psychologist: "..." If they kept going, he might end up being the one who needed a shrink!

·

After leaving the clinic, Nan Shuyi called up Liu Dan, who'd already gone back to work after wrapping up the funeral.

"Master Liu, got a question for you."

Liu Dan had been a lot more polite to Nan Shuyi lately: "What's up?"

Nan Shuyi: "You guys got any photos of that Master Jiang from the Jiang family?"

Liu Dan: "We found some old photos when we were going through my dad's stuff, but we packed 'em all up. My son's still back home—I'll get him to dig around for them."

Nan Shuyi: "By the way, did your family ever have any dealings with the Jiang family in Lincheng?"

Liu Dan: "You mean President Jiang's family?"

A bunch of big shots had come to pay their respects at his dad's funeral, and he'd picked up some gossip about the Jiang family. He figured President Jiang had it rough too.

Nan Shuyi: "Yeah."

Liu Dan: "Not at all. We never had any contact with them, and we're not related. Why?"

Nan Shuyi: "Nothing. Just see if you can find any old photos or group shots in the old man's stuff."

Liu Dan: "Got it."

Nan Shuyi: "That recipe book Yicen gave you—was it really your family's originally?"

Liu Dan: "Yeah. My dad tasted the dishes and said they were exactly like what he remembered. It's just that during the war, with all the chaos and moving around, a lot of recipes got lost. President Nan, don't worry—the recipe book President Jiang gave us won't have any copyright problems."

Nan Shuyi: "Okay." That wasn't what he was getting at.

Now he realized a lot of stuff about Jiang Yicen was weird. Grandpa Liu's last words were off too—when he talked to him, he was totally sharp, not senile at all. According to Liu Dan, he didn't have Alzheimer's—he was just old and sometimes forgot things. How could a sharp old man like that suddenly go senile and say all that stuff so clearly and logically? He was literally settling his affairs before he died.

How could Grandpa Liu, who went from an army mess cook to head chef for state banquets, be dumb? If he were dumb, how could he have so carefully planned everything for after his death and worried about whether someone would take good care of Jiang Yicen?

Why did he ask him to look after Jiang Yicen? It wasn't like Jiang Yicen was his actual old boss.

Did Jiang Yicen really look that much like the old Master Jiang?

And Jiang Yicen's reaction was weird too—when Liu Tan talked about the old days, he played along perfectly, like he really was that "Master Jiang."

Before, he'd figured Jiang Yicen was just honoring Liu Tan's last wish and didn't think twice. But now, something felt off, even if he couldn't quite say what.

If Jiang Yicen's mood hadn't changed, he wouldn't have noticed. But now that he was back and down, something felt wrong. It really seemed like he was mourning an old friend, even though they clearly didn't know each other.

He ran through the whole timeline in his head.

When he was desperate for a head chef, Jiang Yicen handed him a recipe book. But the Jiangs and Lius never had any contact—so how did he, as a Jiang, even know about it? Where did he get the Liu family recipes? The Lius couldn't find them for years, but he just had them, and the Lius confirmed they were the real deal.

Nan Shuyi sat in his car, mulling over all the weird stuff about Jiang Yicen.

A little while later, Liu Han added Nan Shuyi on WeChat.

"Liu Han: Mr. Nan, what kind of old photos are you looking for?"

"Nan Shuyi: Among your grandfather's photos, are there any group photos with his former employer?"

"Liu Han: You mean that Master Jiang?"

"Nan Shuyi: Your grandfather would mistake him for someone else, which means the two of them looked very much alike. Can you find any related photos?"

"Liu Han: Let me dig through them again."

Roughly ten minutes later, Liu Han sent Nan Shuyi a few more photos, but since they were black-and-white and the lighting was poor on the photographer's end, the people in the photos were hard to see clearly.

Nan Shuyi asked when he'd be back in Lincheng to hand over the photos. Liu Han said tomorrow, but Nan Shuyi was getting impatient—he wanted to see the photos right away.

"Nan Shuyi: I'll head over."

"Liu Han: How about I have a courier deliver them to you?"

"Nan Shuyi: No, I need them ASAP."

"Liu Han: Okay, sounds good."

With a clear destination in mind, Nan Shuyi hit the gas and headed straight for Ningzhou.

It was actually the psychologist who helped him sort out his thoughts today. It wasn't just the Liu family's recipes, but also the old brand Yutu—both were things Jiang Yicen had told him about. He was quite knowledgeable about old brands and customs from the Republic of China era.

But when he asked He Nuanqing and the Jiang family's butler, who had watched Jiang Yicen grow up, they said he'd never had any contact with these brands. So how did he know about them?

Besides, his friends in the U.S. had also said that he had no friends with names that sounded like "Yuanshu" or "Yuanshu" (different characters, same pronunciation). When they did research projects, apart from historical or modern marketing cases, they mostly used foreign examples—domestic ones were very rare, after all, these textbooks were written by foreigners.

He put on his Bluetooth headset and called Assistant Tang.

Assistant Tang: "Boss."

Nan Shuyi: "Those two old storefronts I rushed to buy earlier—help me look into which family originally owned them. And who was the original founder of the Yutu brand?"

At first, they'd only focused on Yutu's current owner and the brand's quality, but had never looked into its original founder. That era was just too chaotic—the brand was sold and resold over and over. All they knew was that Yutu was a brand that had existed since the Republic of China era.

Nan Shuyi: "By the way, send me the phone number of Yutu's former owner."

Assistant Tang first sent Nan Shuyi the number he'd asked for: "Is there something wrong with those two shops?"

Nan Shuyi: "Nothing's wrong."

He just wanted to know why Jiang Yicen had singled out those two shops.

Also, his mention of Yongjiang Restaurant definitely wasn't just offhand. Jiang Yicen wouldn't make that kind of joke casually with just anyone, especially since Jiang Gongming had wanted him to marry Jiang Yicen back then, and the two of them were only mutually attracted to each other at the time. Given the tense father-son relationship between Jiang Yicen and Jiang Gongming, it was unlikely he'd just say it casually.

After finishing with Assistant Tang, he dialed another number.

The Yutu owner was as enthusiastic as ever: "President Nan, hello, hello!"

Nan Shuyi: "Boss Chen, there's something I'd like to ask you about."

Yutu owner: "Go ahead."

Nan Shuyi: "Who did your ancestors buy Yutu from?"

The Yutu owner asked hesitantly: "Is there something wrong with our products?"

Nan Shuyi: "No, I just want to learn about Yutu's history. Our company wants to use it for marketing."

The Yutu owner finally breathed a sigh of relief. He knew that after Yutu's market value had multiplied under Nan Shuyi, he'd remarked at home that it really took young people to handle promotion, and that it hadn't tarnished Yutu's good reputation. But then again, the classic Yutu products—the ones Nan Shuyi had submitted for awards—weren't developed by their family.

Yutu owner: "It was bought at a bargain price from a wealthy family in Lincheng back then."

Nan Shuyi: "What was that family's last name?"

Yutu owner: "Jiang. They were a prominent family back then, with huge business operations. But later, the family started selling off their property, and our ancestors just happened to buy this shop. But according to my elders, the family vanished shortly after, and no one ever mentioned them again."

Nan Shuyi: "The Jiang family?"

Yutu owner: "Yes, a big family—like, super, super rich. But during the war, rich people were bound to be targeted. I figure it was a case of 'the tall tree catches the wind'—that's what led to the family's downfall."

Nan Shuyi: "Do you know who would know the most about this Jiang family?"

Yutu owner: "I wouldn't know about that."

Nan Shuyi thought to himself, wasn't Liu Tan the person who knew the most about the Jiang family?

But Liu Tan was already dead.

·

Around noon, Nan Shuyi made it to Ningzhou and arrived at the Liu house.

Liu Han had already pulled out all the old photos he could find.

"Mr. Nan, these are the old photos we found while going through Grandpa's things. They're all here. Do you want to take them all, or...?"

Liu Tan had left behind a lot of old photos, and Nan Shuyi would need to sort through them one by one.

"By the way, how old was your grandfather when he worked at the Jiang family's place?"

Liu Han did the math: "My grandfather basically grew up in the Jiang family's home. My great-grandfather was a cook for the Jiang family. He was around thirteen or fourteen when he left the Jiang family. But kids back then grew up fast—he had a real gift for cooking and was already pretty impressive at thirteen or fourteen."

Nan Shuyi: "If your grandfather was thirteen or fourteen back then, was the Master Jiang he mentioned older or younger than him?"

Liu Han: "Older, probably by seven or eight years, around twenty-one or so."

Nan Shuyi started going through the photos, with Liu Han's help, looking for pictures of Liu Tan from when he was thirteen or fourteen.

Since the pile was mixed with quite a few photos of Liu Dan, and Liu Dan and Liu Tan looked so much alike, he misidentified several of them.

The photo album was from a long time ago—the cover was worn and yellowed. He went through the photos one by one.

Liu Han watched Nan Shuyi flip through them so carefully and thought, no wonder he's the boss—he'd just flipped through them casually before, nowhere near as carefully.

He went through album after album, but unfortunately, he couldn't find the Master Jiang he'd mentioned. That is, until he reached the last page of the album.

Nan Shuyi was about to skip it, but he flipped back to it. It wasn't that he'd found a photo of Sixth Master Jiang—it was that he saw a fairly clear photo with someone he knew who it was: this glasses-wearing, refined-looking man—he'd seen him before.

It was at the Anti-Japanese War History Exhibition at Lincheng University—he was a former president of Lincheng University.

Nan Shuyi was surprised: "The old man knew the president of Lincheng University?"

This was a photo from around his middle-aged years. At the time, Liu Tan probably wasn't all that famous yet, and this photo wasn't from some state banquet or official meeting. Liu Tan was dressed pretty casually.

If they'd met at a banquet for an important national event, Liu Tan would've been in his chef's uniform, not something so casual.

In the photo, there was another man, around Principal He's age, quite a bit older than Liu Tan, seated in a wheelchair.

Since the photo was on the last page, they couldn't see the back, so Nan Shuyi asked Liu Han, "Can the photo be taken out?"

Liu Han replied, "Yes, this one's pretty new."

Nan Shuyi carefully took the photo out of the album. Liu Tan, worried he'd forget, always wrote down the names of those he posed with on the back.

Nan Shuyi asked Liu Han, "Who is this person?"

As a kid, Liu Han often heard his grandpa talk about the photos, especially when the old man got older and would flip through them to remember. Liu Han was quite familiar with the people in the photos, since grandparents usually dote on grandkids—his grandpa only yelled at his dad, but never said a harsh word to him.

"You mean this old gentleman?"

"I remember my grandpa mentioning that he was the steward of the Jiang family."

Nan Shuyi turned the photo over and saw the name corresponding to the man in the wheelchair.

His name was Jiang Yuan.