*Incense Lineage* — Chapter 1: The Black Timber in the Old House Beam

*Incense Lineage* — Chapter 1: The Black Timber in the Old House Beam

> Column: Original Serial Fiction | Date: 2026-10-22 | Language: English (EN)

Prologue

Tan Niu town, Wenchang, Hainan. Seven days of rain had just stopped.

Chen Yanqiu walked the wet flagstones back to the ancestral house. His purpose was vulgar: sell it. His parents gone eleven years, the house empty eleven years, his promised annual visits stretched to once every three.

The agent said another rainy season and the roof would fold.

1

The house had been built by his grandfather. Chen's memories of the old man were three fragments: him smoking a water pipe in bed, a chipped celadon censer on the altar, and a sentence the village elders kept repeating —

"Your grandfather's roof beam is a treasure."

As a boy he took it for an old man's bragging. Now he stood in the central hall under a collapsed corner of the ceiling, rain dripping onto a dust-furred table — and caught a strange scent. Not mold. Something cool and sweetly medicinal, like mint steeped in honey.

His flashlight found the beam: black as ink, dense and glossy, with oil lines where it had cracked. His fingernail drew across it — hard, cold, yet somehow waxy.

The next morning he messaged the agent: "Don't sell the house yet."

2

Eighty-year-old Old Fu, thirty years in the town carpentry shop, squatted and smoked half a cigarette staring at the beam.

"Son, that's not common timber. That's incense."

"Agarwood?"

"Can't swear to it. But in the nineties your grandfather took a boatload of wood as debt payment and used it all for beams. The village laughed at him. Open his camphor chest — there's an oil-paper packet of offcuts from that same boat."

Chen burned a corner of a chip: a rush of coolness first, then sweetness wrapping a milky note, settling into warm resin. The smoke didn't sting; the ash was white. Old Fu sniffed once and his hand froze in midair.

"Nha Trang... no, steadier than Nha Trang. Get that beam taken down whole, by professionals. Don't price it. Don't sell it."

3

In Haikou he found retired forestry-institute expert Master Liang, who examined the sample through a loupe for twenty minutes and asked three questions: any nail holes? how old the house? wounded-trunk position?

"Built in the 1940s. Grandfather said the wood had scented itself after injury. Details unknown."

Liang wiped his glasses for a long time. "Let me be ugly first: in this trade, stories outnumber material — remember that for life. But two things are certain. One, this is real agarwood, the highest oil content I've seen in structural timber. Two, its formation is unusual: natural injury, fungal infection, at least sixty years of maturation. No one puts sixty-year material in a roof beam."

"How much is it worth?"

"If I named a number, you should distrust me. Meet an instrument lab first. Until the component report is out, trust no one's price — including mine."

4

On the footbridge at dusk, Chen emailed his company four words in the subject line:

Requesting leave.

The agent kept texting about the sale. He watched the sunset and remembered the chipped censer, the pinch of incense his grandfather lit every dawn. Not superstition.

A family, raising a piece of amberized time in the quietest way possible.

(End of Chapter 1. Tomorrow: *Chapter 2 — The Lab Report and the Uninvited Guest*)

*Tags: #agarwood-fiction #serial #incense-culture #hainan-agarwood*