Reborn As Super Heiress

Chapter 712: Chapter 709 20W45S

Huo Sining applied gentle pressure and crushed the wax pill into tiny pieces; the dry candle wax powder scattered all over the ground, leaving a small, somewhat yellowed, crumpled piece of paper in her hand.

The answer lay in her hands, and Huo Sining couldn’t help but be excited, but despite her excitement, she still noticed that the yellowed paper was brittle, perhaps because the wax pill had been inside the ivory carving for too long, and the paper already showed signs of oxidation. A little carelessness could shatter it.

Carefully, Huo Sining unfolded the small paper ball. Although it had been crumpled into a very small wad, when she spread it out, it was as big as a palm. Initially, Huo Sining prepared a magnifying glass to observe it carefully, only to find that the writing on the paper was so large she didn’t need the magnifying glass at all.

On the palm-sized piece of paper, there was only a strange string of numbers and symbols: 20W45S.

What did this mean?

Huo Sining was somewhat stumped, turning the piece of paper over from front to back and all around, confirming that these were the only characters on it.

Huo Sining could understand the numbers and symbols, but put together, they were puzzling. She had no idea what the purpose of the paper ball was, and thinking it over and over again didn’t clarify its meaning.

However, Huo Sining didn’t believe the paper ball was meaningless; otherwise, the owner of the ivory carving wouldn’t have gone to such great lengths to seal a small wad of paper inside a wax pill and hide it within the carving.

At this moment, Huo Sining could not figure it out, so she simply copied the characters from the paper ball again, carefully folded both the copy and the original paper ball, and placed them in a storage box in her ring’s space.

After all that trouble, Huo Sining finally felt her limbs weak and her body exhausted. Checking the time, it was already past one in the morning. Without giving it much thought, she hastily washed up and climbed into bed to rest, falling into a deep, peaceful sleep soon after.

At this time, Huo Sining had completely forgotten about the peculiar post album she had traded a garlic-head vase for at the Ghost Market.

After a dreamless night, Huo Sining woke up naturally early the next morning. Just as she got up, she received a phone call from Liao Song. It turned out he and his friend planned to head to Changhua in the afternoon to purchase chicken blood stone, and he asked if Huo Sining would join them.

Of course, Huo Sining agreed readily; in the Imperial Capital, she had no pressing matters, the television station had finished recording the first episode of her program, and with more than half a month left until the new semester started, she had some spare time—why not go with Liao Song to Changhua to gain some experience?

With this in mind, she hurriedly got out of bed to pack her luggage. When she picked up the backpack on the desk, a thick album fell out.

Only then did Huo Sining remember that last night at the Ghost Market, besides winning back an ivory carving of Guanyin, she had also bought a post album.

Before this, Huo Sining’s attention had been focused on the wax pill inside the ivory carving, naturally not sparing a thought for the peculiar post album.

Now that she had calmed down, curiosity couldn’t help but well up inside her. She picked up the album and flipped straight to the last page, wanting to see what was so special about the last stamp in it.

The album was made from kraft paper, the yellow pages extremely thick and durable, seemingly quite old.

However, Huo Sining knew that all the stamps collected in the album were counterfeit, not a single one authentic.

If it weren’t for the fact that when she flipped through the album the night before, she saw a faint purple aura enveloping the last page through her Heavenly Eye, she would never have traded a Qing Dynasty garlic-head vase for the album, knowing full well that the stamps in it were all fakes.

With that thought, Huo Sining couldn’t help but scrutinize the last page of the stamp album, looking up and down over it, very puzzled in her heart. On this last page, aside from a few butterfly stamps, she really couldn’t see any problem.

Huo Sining initially suspected that it might be due to those butterfly stamps, but after a careful study, she confirmed that those stamps were all fake.

Heavenly Eye’s judgment had always been accurate and had never made a wrong judgment. How could Huo Sining be content without figuring out what exactly was going on with this stamp album?

Just as she was thinking about whether to tear apart the album page by page for a thorough search, a stroke of inspiration suddenly flashed through Huo Sining’s mind.

The last page was connected to the cover, thus it was thicker than the other pages. This sole difference sent a shiver through Huo Sining’s heart, compelling her to focus all her attention on the thickness of that page.

She tried to pinch that last page with her hand and felt her hunch was very likely correct.

Thinking it over, she fetched a razor blade and carefully started to peel away at that last page.

The last page of parchment, although it appeared thick, looked the same as the other pages in terms of both edge cutting and shape.

When Huo Sining used the blade to shave the paper, she encountered some difficulty, and had no choice but to wet a cotton swab and carefully wipe the edges of the parchment little by little.

Quickly, the edges of the paper began to soften, and under the careful cutting of Huo Sining’s blade, they slowly parted.

Huo Sining felt elated, keeping her hand steady. In the process of one corner of the parchment being slowly peeled away, a thin piece of paper appeared before Huo Sining’s eyes.

Huo Sining secretly rejoiced in her heart, indeed, there was a layer sandwiched in the middle of the parchment!

As one corner of the parchment paper was already parted, Huo Sining lost her patience; anyway, the stamps on that album were all fake, so there was no need to be so delicate. She decisively tore off all the superfluous pages, leaving only the last one, and continued to dampen the edges of the paper with water. The parchment softened upon contact with water and quickly the pages separated.

Huo Sining gently lifted the top layer, revealing slowly the hidden compartment page behind the parchment.

A piece of snow-white xuan paper as light as a cicada’s wing was revealed, its texture pure white, fine, with clear patterns, exhibiting the top quality of Qingtan Xuan.

However, at this moment, Huo Sining’s attention wasn’t on the quality of the xuan paper; her entire focus was on the few stamps pasted on it. Once she saw the design of those stamps, her eyes widened in disbelief.

It was a complete set of the Toothless Cloud Dragon Pattern, alternating between red, yellow, and green colors, split into ten separate sections, with denominations of 2-cent silver, 4-cent silver, 6-cent silver, 8-cent silver, 1 mace 2-cent silver, 1 mace 6-cent silver, 4 mace silver, and 8 mace silver.

At the four corners of the stamps were printed the characters ”Shang,” ”Hai,” ”Gong,” ”Bu,” with the right side bearing the inscription ”Post Office,” and the central part featuring the Cloud Dragon Pattern.

Although the stamps had yellowed and aged, they were preserved extremely well and had no postmark; the clean and neat stamps were hidden within this parchment compartment, leaving Huo Sining staring agape.