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Things progressed smoothly for the next week, but that grandmother's whereabouts remained unknown.
Dahai inherited Pang family's a.s.sets one by one.
No one would've imagined just how much a.s.sets the family possessed before this.
There were over 200 of Pangs, after all.
The Pangs inside the nation alone have houses in almost every city.
Overseas a.s.sets have been frozen temporarily due to procedural issues. Dahai would have to fly all over the world to sign and claim them.
Even then, it would take him at least half a year of consecutive flying. It's the result of having successful relatives in every corner of the globe.
The fourth son has to take the most credit since about 90% of the funds Dahai possessed now belonged to his family since he had been the one to inherit all the lands.
He had inherited a few hundred pieces of land in Beijing from his father and kept them all through China's reform.
The once worthless land started increasing in value and the fourth son laid an order not to sell properties recklessly.
Since then, prices only rose further.
Government compensation was astonis.h.i.+ngly appealing as well.
When the idea of property deed came along, the fourth son ventured into property business and had been successful ever since.
He had ill.u.s.trated perfectly how the poor get poorer while the rich get2 richer.
His family followed in his footsteps and even started expanding overseas.
They only involved themselves in the buying and selling of properties and never other businesses.
Dahai didn't feel the need to rush to claim the properties overseas and since I'm just a sidekick, there's even lesser reason for me to feel anxious.
We're still staying in Pang Guang's house at the moment.
Dahai had a specialist open all three safes and we discovered many bank cards and wads of cash within.
Just being the boss of tens of stalls in the ghost market was enough for Pang Guang to fill his pot with gold.
Dahai's having the time of his life with all this and I, too, have been lucky enough to be a part of it.
We enjoy our days but whenever we aren't busy, we would pause to stare at the watch.
The day that we brought it home, Dahai cleaned it thoroughly, revealing its blackish green color and contrastingly vivid-looking eye.
We've done a few tests after Dahai bought a few rats from the market.
We took a photograph of them, cut it out, and placed it inside the watch.
Before doing that, Dahai repeatedly checked that his reflection wasn't caught on the photograph.
All of them died simultaneously when the clock struck 12, allowing us to confirm the effectiveness of the watch.
Dahai also decided to hand my drawing of the grandmother out to the public and by noon that day, people actually called in between intervals to say that they recognized her.
Some even claimed that she was dead and that they were her son.
Dahai requested for photographs as proofs but the pictures they presented only bore about a 30% similarity at best.
I suspected that these people were simply making use of the old lady to draw some strings with Dahai since he's rich and famous now.
Three days later, as Dahai and I were getting frustrated with the calls, a family portrait entered the picture. Right in the middle sat the old lady who gave the watch to me.
We met up with the caller and he agreed to bring us to his grandmother.
"Has ma.s.s death ever occurred in your family?" Dahai asked doubtfully.
"Ma.s.s death?" the man repeated.
"Like many of your relatives dying simultaneously?" Dahai clarified, only to be responded with a blank look.
When he brought us into his home, we saw that old lady cooking by the stove. She was shocked to see me.
"Remember me?" I asked nervously.
"Why have you come?" she returned a question with the same nervousness.
"The watch... care to explain its history?"
She pointed at the wall opposite her. "It was my husband's."
"My grandfather took part in WWII. He was a soldier," her grandson chimed in.
We quickly ran to the wall. It was a meritorious service acknowledgment wall and we found a lot of information on the war.
"This watch killed my husband," she added.
There was a whole bunch of memorial essays lying on the table before the wall.
I picked one of them up and asked, "Can I take a look?"
She kept quiet but the man nodded. "That's my grandfather's diary."
We looked through the content and the one that I picked was all about the war that year.
It consisted mostly of handwritten descriptions of the war and how his leader had s.n.a.t.c.hed his credit. There also was a photograph in it of soldiers in black and white uniforms.
What was chilling was there was a hole in the photograph; someone had cut out the head of a soldier on the front row.
The size of the hole matched the watch face. The old man must've hated his leader.
The fact that he had cut out the photograph showed that he knew how to use the watch.
"Is your grandfather in the photo?" I raised the picture up.
"The first soldier on the second row," he answered.
Dahai tapped on my shoulder and said, "This watch was seized during WWII."
WWII? Golden watch?
It seemed to be Swiss-made.
"Was the Swiss involved in the war?" I questioned.
"No, it's always been a neutral country. I'm a fan of military affairs," the man offered.
I did a search on my phone and found out that he was right.
We turned to the old lady and saw that she was now crying.
"What's going on?" I asked her.
She explained between breaths, "There's a yearly reunion and my husband couldn't stand the fact that his leader was living such a great life. He eventually put his photo into the watch and claimed that he could kill the leader. However, he died that night, too. All because of that watch."
"Didn't Grandfather die last month? Why did you bring up the watch?" her grandson asked.
"Your husband died last month from using this watch?" I added and she nodded.
"And you removed the needles?"
She nodded again.
"Why buy a voodoo doll from me, then?"
"My husband is dead but his leader is still alive and living happily. I wanted to jab him to death."
My back turned cold as I turned to Dahai who was also staring at me with disbelief.
