22 Lost and Found

Yuan Ge could not get "Rong Qiuchen", whether the real one or the unreal one, out of his head. Thinking about the nonsensical yet vivid scenes in his dream, his sleepiness is all but driven away, so he decides to leave home early and goes straight to the filming set.

When he arrived at the entrance of the Rong Mansion, he saw the cameraman Du Jinghai talking to the security guards. Yuan Ge pats him on the shoulder and greets him cheerfully, "Jinghai, are you free? I need to discuss with you the location of a scene."

Du Jinghai, however, replies with a wry smile on his face, ''Ah! Yuan Ge...You're here early today, I see you didn't sleep in...but let's not worry about the scene locations yet. Director, you'd better deal with the coffin first!"

Baffled by his words, Yuan Ge follows him to the Dragon Pond, and see two security guards of the Rong Mansion pointing at a large vermilion coffin on the shore and asking with a grim face, "Did you leave this behind last night after your crew finished the shooting? Why did you throw it into the water? It's so heavy, like it's made of iron! It took us both a lot of effort to drag it to shore!"

"There's no one inside, is there?" Yuan Ge looks at the ancient looking coffin and blurts out. A stupid statement that almost gives himself the creeps.

"Don't be ridiculous! It was still open when we hauled it up. How could anyone have been there!" The guard replies snappishly, "It's such an unlucky thing to look at, so I put the lid back on."

"But this coffin really is not ours. Could it belong to the Guan family?" Du Jinghai asks.

"How is that possible!" The older guard snorts, "I've been a security guard here for twelve whole years! Everything here is recorded in the inventory book clearly. How can anyone of social standing like the Guan family store a coffin on their own property!"

"You guys should just hurry up and send someone with us to go and explain the situation to Assistant Liu. It's too unlucky to keep this thing around. If you don't use it for filming, then get rid of it as soon as possible, otherwise if the Guan family gets the word of it, we'll both lose our jobs!" The other security guard says with a serious face.

Amélie also arrived at the scene at this point, but when she saw the coffin, she stayed away from it and looked a little apprehensive. Yuan Ge, on the other hand, who is known as "Daredevil Yuan" since childhood, slowly circles the coffin and then pushes open the lid to take a look, scaring Amélie into covering her eyes.

Yuan Ge glances inside and says with a smile, "This should be a prop left behind by the previous filming crew that used this house for filming. Although the coffin is of good quality, the paint has peeled off here and there, and the patterns in some places are not fully carved, so it's a half-finished product."

"Why don't I get a van and tow it to the dump, let's not make it difficult for the security staff." As the chief technician in charge of the camera crew, Du Jinghai is a man of action.

"Not so fast, let me send a few photos to my mum first. We can wait until this afternoon to decide what to do with it."

Despite his boldness, Yuan Ge is a meticulous man, calmer and sharper than most of the crew when it comes to dealing with the unexpected. He touches the coffin cautiously and feels that the texture of the wood is very unusual, not like the material of ordinary props. When he leans closer and takes a sniff, there isn't a hint of the smell of a corpse, and there is actually a faint aroma. Even though the coffin has been submerged in water for a long time, there is no sign of rot and the bottom of the coffin is still cold, as if it was made of ice. What puzzled Yuan Ge most is that the thick lid and walls of the coffin are carved with many mysterious patterns, and there are several pieces of bright yellow talisman paper nailed to the bottom of the coffin. These papers and the ink on them have long since been soaked through, making it impossible to tell what was written on them.

"Yeah, no rush to get rid of it. Let's hurry up and give it a good clean instead. Let's put other scenes on hold today and shoot the funeral scene first! By the way, Yuan Ge, how many people are going to die in this film?"

"Plenty... Ah!?"

Yuan Ge answers automatically, then when he turns around he sees that somehow Dragon Dreams' boss Chow Mingrun has arrived on the scene.