Chapter 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 was all but driven away, so he left home early and went 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 patted him on the shoulder and greeted him cheerfully, "Jinghai, are you free? I need to discuss with you the location of a scene."
Du Jinghai, however, replied 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 followed him to the Dragon Pond, and saw 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 looked at the ancient looking coffin and blurted out. A stupid statement that almost gave himself the creeps.
"Don't be ridiculous! It was still open when we hauled it up. How could anyone have been there!" The guard said 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 asked.
"How is that possible!" The older guard snorted, "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 said 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 was known as "Daredevil Yuan" since childhood, slowly circled the coffin and then pushed open the lid to take a look, scaring Amélie into covering her eyes. Yuan Ge glanced inside and said 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 touched the coffin cautiously and felt that the texture of the wood was very unusual, not like the material of ordinary props. When he leaned closer and took a sniff, there wasn't a hint of the smell of a corpse, and there was actually a faint aroma. Even though the coffin had been submerged in water for a long time, there was no sign of decay and the bottom of the coffin was still cold, as if it was made of ice. What puzzled Yuan Ge most was that the thick lid and walls of the coffin were carved with many mysterious patterns, and there were several pieces of bright yellow talisman paper nailed to the bottom of the coffin. These papers and the ink on them had 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 replied automatically, then turned around and saw that somehow Dragon Dreams' boss Chow Mingrun had arrived on the scene.