**Chapter 7: Are You Also a Fan of Bai Xiaohua?**
“Name?”
Luxianbei looked expressionlessly at the police officer sitting across from him, feeling complex emotions.
“Luxianbei…”
“Age?”
“Nineteen.”
The police officer lowered his head to take notes, then looked back at Luxianbei and said seriously, “Tell me what happened.”
“Uh…” Luxianbei opened his mouth and suddenly remembered something, hesitating for a moment before weakly asking, “Comrade, this situation won’t leave a record, right?”
“That depends on your behavior and the severity of the situation.”
“Oh, oh, I will definitely behave well, honestly confess, and start anew.”
This kid probably hasn’t been caught for the first time, huh? Being handcuffed there felt just like coming home… the police officer thought, then said sternly, “Speak!”
“Yes, yes.” Luxianbei hurriedly replied, “At two-thirty in the morning on the day of the incident, the suspect, myself, came to Lions Mountain Cemetery with a large hammer, intending to break open Luxianbei’s grave to take the things inside…”
“Wait!” The police officer interrupted, waving his hand, “Did you just say you were planning to break open whose grave?”
“Luxianbei’s.”
“What’s your name?”
“Lux, Luxianbei?”
The police officer looked at Luxianbei in surprise, furrowing his brow, “So you are planning to dig your own grave?”
Luxianbei pondered for a moment and replied earnestly, “From a general rational perspective, indeed.”
“Bang—!”
The police officer slammed the table and raised his voice slightly, “Nonsense! How could anyone dig their own grave? Besides, where does a living person get a grave?”
That thing, living people definitely don’t build it!
Just then, the police officer seemed to hear a noise in the room, and a knock on the door sounded, followed by another officer poking half his body in and calling the other officer outside.
The room fell silent, and faint voices of conversation could be heard from outside. Upon hearing this, Luxianbei’s eyes darted around sneakily, and he perked up his ears to listen carefully.
“Old Zhang, I just confirmed with the people from the cemetery; the grave that kid smashed indeed has ‘Luxianbei’s grave’ written on the tombstone, and the years of birth and d*ath match his information…”
“Are you saying he really dug up his own grave?” The officer called Old Zhang said in astonishment, looking at Luxianbei, “So is he a living person, or…”
“Looks like a living person, but who knows, especially with so many urban legends happening nowadays…” another officer whispered.
“If you ask me, why not just let him go? I always feel he’s giving me the creeps; I can’t believe I’ve wrapped myself up in my cotton coat.”
“Just letting him go like that?” Old Zhang countered.
“The key is, it’s hard to charge him with anything!”
“…” Old Zhang was momentarily speechless.
Luxianbei’s situation indeed made it hard to charge him; digging up a modern person’s grave would generally be labeled as theft and disrespect to a corpse.
But he was digging his own grave, and the stuff inside technically belonged to him. Although there’s a theoretical debate about this behavior, in practice, it does not constitute a crime.
Disrespect to a corpse was even less relevant; not to mention that there was no corpse in that grave, even if there was, manipulating one’s own body could only be deemed as self-harm, and depending on the severity, at most it could be considered self-touching.
After a long silence, Old Zhang sighed silently, “There’s no helping it; later I’ll go in and tell him to pay a fine and call his family to come pick him up.”
Hearing this, Luxianbei slightly knitted his brows, quickly brainstorming who should come to pick him up.
Jiang Li definitely wouldn’t work; if she knew about this, she would laugh at me for the rest of my life.
Water Brother wouldn’t work either; if he came, I wouldn’t be able to explain why I have a grave.
Du Sixian wouldn’t work either; she’s hanging out with those urban legends, and if news got out, it would tarnish my magnificent image in the urban legend circle of Huacheng.
So it can only be…
“Creek!”
The door to the room was pushed open, and Old Zhang walked in, looking serious as he addressed Luxianbei, “Kid, we’ve got your situation figured out; later you go pay the fine, then call your family to sign for you, and you can leave.”
“I don’t have anyone in my family besides me; can I ask my teacher?” Luxianbei asked.
Old Zhang nodded, “A teacher from school? That would be fine.”
After pausing, he leaned closer to Luxianbei and quietly asked, “By the way, how did you end up with a grave?”
Luxianbei pondered for two seconds, sighed, and said helplessly, “Officer, to be honest, this is all my ex-girlfriend’s fault!”
“These days online, it’s said that after a breakup, you treat your ex-boyfriend as if they’ve already died, but I didn’t expect her to do such a thing, secretly burying my most cherished figurine inside! Can you believe it?”
“So after learning this, I couldn’t sleep that night and rushed over to smash that grave.”
Today’s young girls really know how to play… Old Zhang thought, patting Luxianbei’s shoulder sympathetically, “Kid, don’t take this too much to heart; breaking up with a girl with such a quirky temper might actually be a good thing.”
“By the way, do you smoke?”
“No, no.” Luxianbei waved his hand, then took a spicy strip and brought it to his mouth, “This is what I’ll eat.”
Old Zhang, “???”
Where did he pull that from?
“By the way, officer, after going out, can I still smash that grave?”
Old Zhang rolled his eyes at Luxianbei, “What do you think?”
Luxianbei, “…” Looks like I can’t.
————
5:47 AM, Huacheng University Family Housing Complex.
At this time, there were no signs of daylight; the entire complex was black as pitch, with only room 702 of building 6 lit up.
That was Professor Ma’s home, and the lit room was his study. Approaching departure, he had been restless all night with the continuous news coming from Tangcheng.
In the study, Professor Ma sat in front of his computer with one hand holding a cup of strong tea, and the other hand continuously scrolling through the images sent from the project team, his expression grave.
The images displayed various uniquely shaped cultural relics, black pottery tripods, bronze cups, bone inscriptions on jade… The more than twenty relics were dazzlingly numerous, and anyone without knowledge of the truth would likely think Professor Ma was browsing a museum’s collection display.
However, all these objects were found recently in various antique trading venues around Tangcheng, each with high historical and cultural research value.
Usually, it’s rare to find even one of these relics—now a sudden influx raises suspicion that there may be deeper issues at play.
Some even speculated that this situation could very well be the result of illegal excavations of a necropolis of Dongyi culture nearby Tangcheng.
And it was precisely because relevant departments discovered a massive influx of cultural relics into the trading market that the project team was forced to initiate the research project ahead of schedule.
Unlike before, this time the project team took on the mission of assisting the relevant departments in recovering the cultural relics while conducting research.
“What a disaster, what a disaster!”
Professor Ma gazed at image after image, sighing in agony. Suddenly, an image flashed before his eyes, and he shuddered slightly, pulling his finger away from the mouse wheel. He stared at the picture on the screen, frowning.
The image showed a piece of bronze artifact shaped like a flying bird, with prominent eyes looking forward, the bird’s head raised, wings slightly extended, full feathers, long gilded tail, and a square base decorated with hollow cloud patterns. Its design bears some resemblance to a gilded phoenix-shaped ornament from the Western Han Dynasty unearthed years ago.
That artifact, unearthed over a decade ago, is typically regarded as a continuation of the worship by the Dongyi ancestors after Qin unified the world.
However, this image from an older bronze artifact, which clearly dates back further, is not a common phoenix form; it somewhat resembles…
A magpie?
Professor Ma furrowed his brow; although the Dongyi culture worshiped flying birds, the unearthed artifacts have almost always centered around phoenixes, with very little sign of a culture that reveres magpies.
“This thing…”
It’s special. If observed up close, it may offer a new direction for studies on Dongyi culture. Professor Ma thought as he scrolled the mouse wheel and noticed the text accompanying the image below, silently sighing.
**[Western Zhou Bronze Magpie-shaped Ornament: Stolen. Last seen: Three days ago, in an underground antique trading venue in Tangcheng.]**
Looking at the bronze artifact on the image, Professor Ma’s expression turned lost and disappointed, murmuring, “What a pity, such a pity…”
As he spoke, he scrolled the mouse wheel and found that image again.
Just as he was about to examine it in detail again, he suddenly noticed, on the side of the bronze artifact in the image, buried under mud, tiny special characters.
Noticing those small characters made Professor Ma pause; he hurriedly zoomed in on the image and carefully identified it based on his years of experience studying special characters.
“What sentence, what treasure? Oh dear, why are all these characters scraped off? Tsk! d*mn the soil worker, doing things so clumsily, it’s exasperating!”
Professor Ma cursed fiercely. Just then, his phone on the desk suddenly vibrated. He picked it up and, after glancing, answered the call, only to hear a vigorous voice on the other end.
“Hello, is this Ma Zhen, Professor Ma?”
“Yes, that’s me. May I ask who this is?” Professor Ma inquired.
“I’m from the Lions Mountain Police Station; do you know someone named Luxianbei?”
That scoundrel, caught again? Professor Ma thought bitterly, “Yes, I know her. She’s my granddaughter.”
“Granddaughter!?” The police officer on the other end exclaimed, glancing over at a bewildered Luxianbei, who was dazedly eating a spicy strip while staring at the ceiling.
“Uh…” Professor Ma paused for a moment and cautiously asked, “So… is she a student?”
The police officer, “…”
Seeing that the police officer didn’t interrupt, Professor Ma cleared his throat and said earnestly, “Um, officer, the situation is that we are like old friends, so she is both my student and my granddaughter.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure.” Professor Ma affirmed confidently.
“…” The police officer fell into complex silence for a moment before flatly saying, “I think you should come over quickly.”
After a pause, the police officer added, “Uh, it’s best to bring some form of ID with you.”
Having finished speaking, he turned to look at Luxianbei, whose expression resembled a scene from a melodrama between mothers and daughters-in-law.
Suddenly hoping he was lying and hadn’t coordinated with his accomplices, what on earth is going on?
If what he said is true, a male granddaughter or something…
Eww—! So messy, so messy, it’s making me not dare to think further!
“By the way, officer, can I ask what exactly did Luxianbei do?”
“He…” The police officer paused for a moment, his tone becoming strange, “Um, he dug his own grave.”
Professor Ma, “？？？”
————
More than an hour later, at the Lions Mountain Police Station.
Professor Ma sat on a bench opposite the police station’s entrance, smoking for the first time in twenty years.
He had no idea what sin he committed to have gotten on the Luxianbei’s boat, resulting in himself, a fairly well-respected people’s teacher, suffering social d*ath.
After decades of hard work to build his positive image, wasn’t it almost all ruined by this little brat? Professor Ma thought heavily.
Recalling the bizarre expressions of the surrounding police officers who struggled to contain their laughter during his meeting with Luxianbei at the police station, he couldn’t help but take a deep drag on his cigarette.
Before long, footsteps approached.
Professor Ma looked up to see Luxianbei walking out of the police station with a grim face. He grimly threw his cigarette b*tt to the ground, rolled up his sleeves, and walked toward him, slapping the back of his head hard.
“Stinky kid, my old face was totally ruined today because of you! Didn’t you tell me before that your Nightfall Syndrome usually flares up at night?”
“Ah—!” Luxianbei rubbed the back of his head, mumbling, “Isn’t today a special case? It’s all because of you, always thinking about granddaughter this and granddaughter that, not even bothering to get the situation clear. You wouldn’t know, when I was in there, those cops looked at me like they were having a stroke, their mouths twitching.”
“…” Professor Ma was momentarily at a loss for words; he indeed shared some responsibility in this matter.
“Alright, enough about that; we’re departing tomorrow, and instead of thoroughly familiarizing yourself with the materials I gave you at home, why are you running over here in the middle of the night?”
Digging my own grave? Probably only you could do that… Professor Ma thought.
“Look, I’m here thinking we have to go tomb raiding; I thought I should familiarize myself with the specific process first,” Luxianbei said in a nonsensical manner.
Professor Ma was taken aback, exclaiming, “You knew about that?”
Luxianbei, “？？？”
What do I even know!?
Professor, could you stop secretly adding difficulty to things when I’m unaware?
Grumbling, Luxianbei tentatively probed, “So, Professor, are we really going to raid the tomb? I was just saying it casually; don’t take it seriously!”
Professor Ma shook his head, “Of course not.”
“That’s good, that’s good.” Luxianbei secretly sighed in relief.
Nowadays, among the undiscovered ancient tombs, seven or eight out of ten hide urban legends. If we really go tomb raiding, in my current state all stacked up with DEBUFFs, encountering an urban legend would be just a free experience.
Just as Luxianbei was grateful, Professor Ma suddenly grasped his shoulders, stood straight, and said solemnly, “Luxianbei, besides conducting our research project, we also need to assist relevant departments in recovering the cultural relics flowing into the trading market…”
Upon hearing half of this, Luxianbei paused, interrupting, “Wait! Professor, what did you just say? Recover cultural relics?”
Professor Ma nodded, “Exactly. Do you know why our joint research project started early? Because someone discovered a massive influx of cultural relics into the trading market, suspecting that someone had excavated massive tomb groups.”
“Professor…” Luxianbei said with a distressed expression, “Is it too late for me to back out now? I think you’d better not go either.”
The urban legends in the unknown tomb groups are already frightening enough. To be able to come back alive with a large number of cultural relics from tomb raiders would be starting at least B+ level for spirit energy fluctuations.
Moreover, there will definitely be more than one; it’s absolutely a bunch.
Thinking of this, the sound of retreat drums in Luxianbei’s mind began to resonate.
“This…” Professor Ma seemed to realize something, lowering his voice, “Does this involve any mystical elements?”
“Um, yes.” Luxianbei nodded.
“Is it dangerous?” Professor Ma asked.
Luxianbei kept a serious expression, saying with conviction, “Very dangerous.”
“……”
So you have to go with us even more?
Professor Ma thought for a moment in silence, a determined glint flashing in his eyes, and straightened his back, “Then we must go!”
As he spoke, he looked at Luxianbei seriously and said, “Luxianbei, if there really is danger, I won’t force you to go.”
“But I want to say, those things are our country’s cultural treasures. If we don’t recover them now, once they flow overseas, it will be difficult to retrieve them later. Do you understand?”
“I understand the reasoning, but Professor…” Luxianbei nodded, grabbing Professor Ma’s hand and shaking it, coquettishly saying, “But I’m scared!”
“Get lost! Get lost! You’re the one making me scared!” Professor Ma shook off Luxianbei’s hand, stepped aside, and after a brief thought, decided to change strategies.
Since the greater good can’t move him, maybe empathy is a better approach?
Professor Ma thought, looking at Luxianbei, and casually asked, “Luxianbei, the officer said earlier that you dug your own grave to retrieve the figurine your ex-girlfriend buried inside?”
“Um… Huh? What’s wrong, Professor?”
What kind of scheme is this old guy up to? Luxianbei thought grumbling.
“Well!” Professor Ma nodded, “Speaking of which, I’ve heard an interesting saying before: those cultural relics are like your ancestors’ figurines, and the tomb raiders are just a bunch of unruly children.”
“Just think about it; if a bunch of unruly kids broke into your house, smashed open your cabinet of figurines, took things out to sell for cheap, and didn’t even understand what they were doing, labeling Bai Xiaohua’s rose as 001 camellia, how would you feel?”
“Is there really such a thing?” Luxianbei said fiercely, unwillingly clenching his fists.
The empathy was too strong; he was already getting angry.
“Alright, now there’s a chance to deal with the unruly kids in front of you; what do you want to do?” Professor Ma raised an eyebrow.
“Of course, I’ll go beat the hell out of that scoundrel, and we have to do it overnight; the unruly kids shouldn’t be left alone!” Luxianbei gritted his teeth and said.
Professor Ma nodded in satisfaction, “No need to rush; we can still set off the day after tomorrow morning.”
Luxianbei, “？？？”
“Wait, Professor, are you trying to set me up?”
“…” Professor Ma turned away, as if he didn’t hear Luxianbei’s words, and said lightly, “Ah, those cultural relics… such heartache!”
“…” Luxianbei stared at Professor Ma’s back, momentarily speechless, then suddenly remembered something, exclaiming, “Wait a minute, Professor, you also know about Bai Xiaohua’s rose and 001 camellia?”
Those are commonly agreed upon as the two most difficult to distinguish figurines; only some details differ in body shape. How would the professor know?
“Could it be that you are also a fan of Bai Xiaohua?”
“Cough cough cough!”
A distant intense coughing sound came, causing Professor Ma to stumble. After regaining his balance, he quickened his pace and walked toward the car parked by the side of the road.
