Chapter 316: The Real Protagonist!

At the same time!

Yanjing!

The study of the famous historian, Professor Li Bingqian!

The clock had just struck 1:00 AM.

At this moment, Professor Li was wearing his reading glasses, hunched over his desk, examining a student's thesis on the mold-casting method of Shang and Zhou bronzeware with a magnifying glass.

In the enamel mug at the corner of the desk, the strong tea had already gone lukewarm.

Suddenly, his daughter Li Wei rushed in without even knocking, her face a mix of disbelief and extreme excitement, her voice slightly distorted by urgency:

"Dad! Look at this livestream! Those cultural relics in the British Museum... they... they actually flew back to the Forbidden City by themselves!"

Professor Li frowned, slightly displeased by his daughter's rashness!

But the moment his gaze touched her phone screen, this displeasure quickly turned into frozen astonishment!

On the screen was the very Kanghou Gui of the Western Zhou dynasty that he had been dreaming of for nearly forty years!

It stood quietly on the cold gold-brick floor of the Hall of Supreme Harmony square, the light of the palace lanterns softly spilling onto the vessel!

At this moment, those deep Taotie patterns and Phoenix Bird Patterns seemed to come alive, the interplay of shadow and light outlining the majesty and magnificence of three thousand years ago!

"Impossible... this is absolutely impossible..."

Professor Li muttered to himself, his right hand subconsciously loosening, and the enamel mug shattered on the floor with a "crack," the brown tea soaking into the carpet.

The next second, he snatched the phone directly from his daughter, his hands trembling violently with excitement, his nose almost touching the screen!

"It's it... it really is it! Look at this patina!"

Professor Li pointed to the peacock blue and dark red rust on one side of the vessel, saying to his daughter, or perhaps more to himself:

"This layering, this texture, is 'raw pit rust' that can only be formed after thousands of years in a specific burial environment; artificial aging could never have this charm! And here—"

His fingertips hovered over the inscription area at the bottom of the vessel: "These twenty-three characters of gold script, 'Xing Hou received the mandate, made this vessel to be treasured forever'... the turns of the brush strokes, the depth of the bronze casting... it is exactly the same as the copy I secretly traced with a pencil behind the glass cabinet in London in '86!"

By the time he reached the last few words, his voice was already choked with emotion.

Tears instantly blurred his lenses, rolling down his wrinkled cheeks!

He turned abruptly, stumbling toward the bookshelf, his trembling fingers searching eagerly through rows of books, finally pulling out a notebook with a cowhide cover and worn, yellowed edges—*London Antiquities Notes*.

He flipped through it with trembling hands to a certain page, where the gold script rubbings were neatly copied in fine pen.

Looking at the characters on the paper, then looking at the bronzeware on the screen, after repeated comparisons, Professor Li finally tilted his head back, closed his eyes, let the tears stream down, and let out a sigh that was almost a sob from his throat:

"It's just too incredible..."

After a moment of exclamation, Professor Li composed his emotions and asked, "Wei'er, how did it cross thousands of miles to return to the Forbidden City?"

"It's Chu Chen from the recently viral *Simulated Crime*! He just used magic to empty the Huaxia collection hall of the British Museum!"

"Magic?"

"Yes, magic!"

"Chu Chen, isn't that the young man who proposed the eight extreme challenges?" Professor Li had glanced at Chu Chen's program once or twice before, but because he wasn't interested, he didn't know much.

"Yes, that's him!"

"You mean, these cultural relics were all stolen back by him from the British Museum?"

"That's right."

Professor Li had been to the British Museum more than once, and he had personally experienced their security.

He racked his brains but could not figure out how Chu Chen had successfully managed Deceiving the Heavens and Crossing the Sea to steal those relics; it was an almost impossible task!

At the same time, Shanghai!

In the home of the famous cultural relic expert Professor Shen Qingwu!

Sixty-five-year-old Professor Shen Qingwu suffered from severe neurasthenia and was almost always in bed preparing to sleep by nine o'clock every day.

But today, she was draped in an elegant silk robe, sitting on the sofa in the living room the whole time!

The light from the tablet computer reflected off her snow-white silver hair and her eyes, which were shining brightly with shock.

Her student, Zhou Jinlai, now a researcher of calligraphy and painting relics at the Forbidden City, was describing it to her via video call, almost incoherently!

On the tablet was the Tang dynasty copy of the *Admonitions of the Court Instructress*, hailed as a peerless treasure in the history of Chinese painting!

On the scroll, the ladies depicted by Gu Kaizhi with "High-Ancient Floating Silk Strokes" had fluttering sleeves, the lines flowing like silk spun by spring silkworms, full of the rhythmic sense of "Wu Belt Dancing in the Wind."

"Teacher, look!" the student in the video shouted excitedly.

Professor Shen did not answer; she seemed to have been sucked into the screen.

She adjusted her reading glasses, leaning forward, almost wanting to climb into the image. "This cinnabar... this azurite... this clam white... Jinlai, is everything you just said true? Did this *Admonitions of the Court Instructress* really fly back from the British Museum?"

She asked in a murmur, every word trembling!

"Yes, Teacher! We also just received the notification, and we are currently performing protective mounting on this painting!"

Hearing this, Shen Qingwu suddenly stood up, walking somewhat unsteadily to the window, looking at the brilliant neon lights of Lujiazui outside, but her gaze pierced through time and space, returning to that cold, gloomy afternoon in 1991.

At that time, she was just a young visiting scholar, standing in that dim exhibition hall of the British Museum, looking through thick glass at the fragility and dullness of this national treasure due to improper preservation; the feeling of her heart aching like a knife twist was still fresh in her memory.

"It... it really went back..."

Professor Shen's voice carried an incredulous trance!

Immediately, an extreme ecstasy surged into her heart, making her smile with relief, her eyes filled with excited tears!

At the same time, Chang'an, in the study of researcher Li Lichen!

This evening, Li Lichen had just finished an international online conference on the latest discoveries at the Qin Mausoleum Hundred Plays Figurine Pit and was preparing to shut down his computer, but his email and chat software were flashing frantically as if they had exploded.

He clicked on a link sent by a colleague, and the screen cut to the Hall of Supreme Harmony square in the Forbidden City, where the *Painting of the Guiding Bodhisattva* from the Dunhuang Library Cave was resting quietly on the carved railing, the Bodhisattva's compassionate eyes seeming to watch every viewer.

"Holy crap!"

Li Lichen, known for always being calm and rational, suddenly sprang up from his ergonomic chair with such force that he knocked over the tall stacks of archaeological reports and folders by the desk, which scattered across the floor with a clatter.

But he didn't even glance at them, grabbing the professional drawing monitor on the desk and switching the live stream to full screen.

"Old Zhang! Look! Look at the live stream!"

He shouted at his colleagues still on the video conference, his voice hoarse with excitement!

Everyone was startled by his roar, all staring at him as if he were a monster!

"What live stream?"

Before long, one of the colleagues in the meeting asked.

"The Simulated Crime live stream! That painting of the Guiding Bodhisattva has returned to the Forbidden City!"

"The color saturation! The cinnabar red on the Bodhisattva's robes! And the lapis lazuli blue on the clouds! Do you see it? These are the original mineral colors that those high-precision CCD cameras and spectrometers at the British Museum could never fully restore!"

Hearing him say this, all the meeting participants picked up their phones and entered the Simulated Crime live stream!

When they saw the scene Li Lichen had just described, their expressions were identical—they were completely crazed!

"Holy crap!"

"Is this real?!"

"This is unbelievable!"

At this moment, Li Lichen was pacing back and forth in his cramped study, his fingers tapping rapidly on his phone screen as he sent over a dozen 60-second WeChat voice messages to several core academic groups.

His shock quickly shifted from an emotional level to one of rigorous scientific verification, yet that excitement stemming from the depths of his soul over the recovery of a national treasure was fully revealed through his rapid speech and shining eyes.

This was not just a miracle, but a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to "personally experience" and verify the return of a national treasure using modern technological means!

While these three, and even scholars across the country and the world, were immersed in this unprecedented shock and ecstasy, the live stream camera steadily switched from the Forbidden City back to Russell Square in London!

"Ladies and gentlemen!"

Chu Chen's clear voice traveled through some invisible medium, ringing out clearly in every corner of the globe, waking people from their extreme shock!

"These treasures that have crossed mountains and seas to return home, they tell of history and carry civilization, but—"

Chu Chen deliberately drew out his tone, his gaze like a torch, sweeping over every face filled with astonishment and curiosity at the scene, as if piercing through the screen to look directly into the hearts of countless viewers.

"They are merely the prelude to a magnificent movement."

As he spoke, the corners of Chu Chen's mouth lifted slightly, outlining a mysterious and confident arc.

"What comes next is the true moment to witness a miracle! Because the artifact that will appear in a moment can absolutely be called the protagonist of today's performance!"