Chapter 327: Global Attention, Shocking the World!

After a brief browse through the System Panel, Chu Chen silently closed it, then tucked himself into the bathtub.

Following Chu Chen's disappearance, the news of the British Museum being robbed also completely ignited the globe that night!

This night, the news push systems of all mainstream media outlets worldwide experienced an unprecedented collapse!

After the BCC's push server sent out its first breaking news alert at 9:13 PM Greenwich Mean Time, it received over 200 million click requests from 170 countries within two minutes; the server crashed in the third minute!

The situation at CNN was even worse!

Their CMS system entered a protective lockout just seven seconds after pushing the "British Museum Robbed" headline due to traffic overload, and it took technicians a full forty minutes to reopen the backend!

And during those forty minutes, only a line of gray text was displayed on CNN's homepage: 500 Internal Server Error.

When the British Museum published the detailed list of the first batch of stolen artifacts on its official Twitter, the entire International Council of Museums' official website went directly paralyzed!

And in the depths of the internet, the real storm had only just begun!

Within the first hour after Chu Chen disappeared, Twitter generated over 300 million related tweets; this number exceeded the discussion volume of any single event in the platform's history!

Including royal weddings, World Cup finals, and any general election!

But in these tweets, there was no grief, no condemnation, and none of the formulaic, angry phrasing found in official statements; there was only shock and praise for this magic of Chu Chen's!

Egyptian archaeologist Hasan Abdulle posted a tweet on Twitter, accompanied by a photo of the empty display case for the Rosetta Stone: "This stone has been lying in London for over two hundred years. Every time I went to the British Museum to see it, I felt it shouldn't be there. Now, it is finally gone."

This tweet was retweeted over one million times within forty minutes!

Lina Mendoni, former Minister of Culture and Sports of Greece, wrote a longer text on her own account:

"The Statues of the Three Fates were stolen—please allow me to correct the phrasing. These statues were not stolen; they left. They left a place that did not belong to them to go to a place where they should be. As for where the destination is, I do not know. But I know they stayed in the Duveen Gallery of the British Museum for over two hundred years, and every time the Greek people demanded their return, the British response was always the same gesture—shaking their heads."

As soon as this tweet was sent, the Greek government immediately stated that her remarks did not represent their official position, but everyone saw how many likes that tweet received before it was deleted!

Nigerian netizens were the most direct!

The British Museum houses thousands of Benin Bronzes; these bronze carvings, cast by craftsmen of the Edo people in southern Nigeria between the 16th and 18th centuries, are the core part of the British Museum's Africa Hall collection.

A user signed "Son of Edo" posted a photo of an empty display case for the Benin Bronzes, with the caption:

"How long have these things been kept in the dark, sunless underground warehouses of the British Museum? One hundred and twenty years. For one hundred and twenty years, every time we demanded their return, the British said, 'Our preservation conditions are better.' These guys are truly shameless! They have finally paid the price for their robbery!"

This tweet was liked by the Nigerian President's social media assistant.

On Reddit's r/AskHistorians subreddit, a verified user with a PhD in Egyptology posted a long thread titled "As someone who studies ancient Egyptian civilization, here are my thoughts on the British Museum theft incident."

The core content of the post was only one sentence!

"The establishment of the British Museum itself was a theft that has lasted for over two hundred years. Chu Chen just turned it into a complete closed loop." This post was pinned by Reddit moderators for seventy-two hours and received over 500,000 upvotes and more than 3,000 awards.

The hashtag #BringThemHome climbed to the top of the global trending list, reaching the top of the trends in thirty-seven countries simultaneously!

But strangely, most of the content under this tag was not condemning Chu Chen, but celebrating the "departure" of those artifacts.

An Indian netizen's tweet was quoted repeatedly: "The British Museum should be renamed the British Stolen Goods Museum. You stole artifacts from over 170 countries around the world, and now that someone has taken a few of them, you called the police? This is like a thief running to the police station to report that their stolen goods have been stolen." This tweet was retweeted over eight million times within India.

Of course, there were also different voices.

James Morrison, a professor in the Department of Art History at Harvard University, published a sternly worded article in the opinion section of the *New York Times* titled "No Matter What Happened in the Past, Theft Is Theft."

He wrote in the article: "We cannot justify new injustices because of historical injustices. The British Museum's collection system is indeed built on the historical background of colonialism, but this does not mean that anyone has the right to destroy this system through violent means. Chu Chen's actions are not correcting history; he is creating new historical trauma. Those artifacts he 'took away' are, in a legal sense, the legitimate property of the British Museum. Today you can take them from London in this way, and tomorrow someone can take anything from Cairo, from Athens, or from Beijing in the same way. This is not justice; this is anarchy."

This article sparked a fierce debate in the academic world!

Those who supported Morrison believed he was right—procedural justice and substantive justice are two different things; Chu Chen's actions were not authorized by any legal process and were essentially a crime.

Those who opposed him believed that Morrison completely avoided a core question: How did these artifacts get to the British Museum in the first place? If the initial acquisition itself was illegal, then the subsequent claim of "legitimate property" does not hold from the very beginning!

Most importantly, how can you prove that it was Chu Chen who stole those artifacts, rather than them sneaking home on their own?

While the internet worldwide was defending Chu Chen, the Louvre Museum in France issued an emergency statement within three hours of the incident, announcing that it would immediately conduct a comprehensive upgrade of the security systems for all exhibition halls, while temporarily closing parts of the Oriental Antiquities Pavilion and the Greek and Roman Antiquities Pavilion!

The statement did not mention Chu Chen's name, but everyone knew who they were guarding against!

Museum Island in Berlin, Germany, activated its highest level of security response on the night of the incident; all entrances and exits had their guards doubled, and reinforcement work on display cases began overnight!

The Capitoline Museums in Rome, Italy, even urgently recalled all security personnel on leave in the middle of the night; the director held an emergency meeting at 2:00 AM that was not open to the public, and the meeting had only one agenda: If Chu Chen comes to Rome, can we stop him?

The Tokyo National Museum in Japan had the fastest reaction!

Less than two hours after the incident, their official Twitter posted a tweet: "In view of the recent changes in the international cultural relic security situation, this museum has decided to suspend visitor access indefinitely, effective immediately!"

The Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia, followed closely behind, and their statement was worded even more sternly: "Any act of acquiring artifacts through illegal means and destroying the global cultural heritage protection system, regardless of the motive, is unacceptable. The Hermitage Museum announces that Mr. Chu Chen will be permanently placed on the list of unwelcome visitors."

The British Museum was the only one that did not issue a "permanently ban Chu Chen from visiting" statement!

Not because they didn't want to, but because this statement sparked fierce debate within their ranks—opponents believed that if the British Museum issued this statement, it would be equivalent to publicly admitting to the global media that Chu Chen had the ability to enter their museum, which was more embarrassing than the theft itself. In the end, their official statement consisted of only two sentences: "The British Museum is working closely with the London Metropolitan Police Department and is fully cooperating with the investigation. There is no further information to disclose at this time."

These two sentences were interpreted by the world's media as: We can't do anything about him.

On the other side of the ocean, the White House immediately convened an emergency meeting.

The high level of this meeting and its strict confidentiality made all intelligence agencies tense up!

Attendees included the President's National Security Advisor, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations, and a technical consultant from a research institution whose name was only a codename and who did not appear in any public records.

The agenda of the meeting was not that the British Museum had been emptied by magic.

The agenda of the meeting was: Could Chu Chen's technology be replicated?

According to the technical consultant's remarks at the meeting—this content came from a source who heard the meeting recording but refused to reveal their identity—he said:

"We analyzed all available data from when Chu Chen performed his magic show in Russell Square tonight. From thermal imaging, spectral analysis, and radar echoes to atmospheric electric field monitoring, we pulled data from every sensor we could use after the incident. The conclusion is: We cannot explain how he carried out the theft of the British Museum from a distance, nor can we explain how he disappeared from the encirclement. If his technology is not some kind of special equipment we have yet to decrypt, then it means there is some kind of physical phenomenon we do not understand. In either case, there is huge uncertainty at the national security level. We need to know the answer. Before we know the answer, any action plan against him should be postponed."

The President's National Security Advisor asked him: "What is your recommendation?"

The technical consultant said: "Do not catch him. We need to observe him. He is more valuable than any intelligence asset we currently have."

This conversation was not recorded in the official memorandum.

But it did happen!

And it was leaked, sparking heated discussions on the internet!