After breaking up with my boyfriend, I made a fortune and rose rapidly in my career.

At the edge of the pit, Chen Ping squatted down and shone a flashlight on the bottom of the pit.

The blue bricks are neatly stacked with staggered joints, creating hollow cavities underneath, which produce a hollow sound when tapped. A few pieces of dark-glazed cylindrical tiles are piled in the newly turned soil.

The way this thing was placed is too obvious.

Chen Ping stood up, casually picked up a pinch of mud from the pit wall, and rubbed it between his fingertips. The granules were very uniform; it was soil that had been mechanically loosened, not naturally deposited subgrade.

He took out his phone and took four photos of the bottom of the pit from different angles. The last photo was zoomed in on, focusing on the side cut of the brick.

Chen Ping stared at this detail for more than ten seconds.

The brick's texture is too uniform. Hand-fired bricks are irregular in surface, with each one having slight variations in pressure distribution, but this batch of bricks is uniformly made, indicating they are machine-made bricks.

Instead of making a call immediately, he turned around, walked a few steps away from the workers and the exploration team, and sent four photos to a number.

I got this number from Lin Xiangdong last night. The other party is a senior archaeological researcher from the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, surnamed Jiang. He has presided over the excavation of several important sites and is a very well-known person in the industry.

After sending the photos, Chen Ping dialed Lin Xiangdong's number.

"Brother Xiangdong, could you help me make an appointment with Professor Jiang for that thing I just sent you? He's at the construction site this afternoon. It would be best if you could bring two colleagues with you. It won't take long."

Lin Xiangdong immediately understood.

"Did you dig something up at the construction site?"

"It might be something, or it might be something else."

"Okay, I'll arrange it. How about 3 PM?"

"Three points, okay."

After hanging up the phone, Zhang Chao followed over, looking rather grim.

"Director, the Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau has sent a notice requiring us to stop work and saying that they will send someone to be stationed on site tomorrow morning."

Chen Ping put his phone in his pocket and walked steadily out of the construction site.

"So, they're going to be stationed there. What time will they arrive?"

"Tomorrow morning."

"Then we'll have an expert take a look this afternoon; there's no conflict."

Zhang Chao caught up with him and asked somewhat uncertainly.

"Director, aren't you going to wait for the Cultural Relics Bureau to complete the procedures?"

"The cultural relics bureau has its procedures, and the experts have their own perspectives."

Chen Ping stepped onto the hard ground of the parking lot and immediately turned around to give the order.

"Call Su Qingwan over and have her bring a photographer to the construction site at 3 PM. Have Jiang Fan handle the approval procedures and get permission to broadcast live."

---

At 2:55 p.m., Professor Jiang arrived at the construction site with two people. One was a man and the other a woman, both around 30 or 40 years old. Judging from their backpacks and clothing, they were clearly people who spent a lot of time in the field.

Su Qingwan arrived ten minutes earlier than them, and the photographers had already set up their lenses. The live broadcast channel used the main account of a local media outlet in Nanzhou, and the number of online viewers steadily increased from the start of the broadcast: two thousand, four thousand, and soon exceeded ten thousand.

Chen Ping stood at the edge of the exploratory pit without saying a word. He simply invited the experts to the edge of the pit, then stepped back and leaned against the fence, waiting quietly.

Professor Jiang squatted down, first scanning the area with his flashlight, then touching the brick surface, and then flipping over a piece of tile to examine the glaze closely. He paused for a moment, then continued flipping over the tile.

About forty seconds later, he flipped the tile over and held it up to the camera lens.

"The shrinkage lines in this glaze are a result of the gas kiln firing process. Gas kilns only became widespread in China after the 1980s, much later than those so-called Tang and Song dynasty imitations."

Another male researcher took several photos of the cross-sections of the bricks, speaking without looking up.

"Brick density and texture are characteristics of machine-made bricks. Machine-made bricks were officially introduced to China during the Republic of China period, but the quality of these bricks is closer to modern industrial standards. They were mass-produced and did not have the deviation characteristics of hand-fired bricks."

Chen Ping placed the pottery jar aside without saying a word, resting the back of his hand on the edge of the enclosure, waiting for the final appraisal result.

Su Qingwan stood next to the camera, tilting the microphone closer to the professor, and waited without saying anything.

The female researcher turned the last pottery jar over, spread it out on the edge of the pit, held the bottom up to the light, and looked at it closely for less than three seconds before looking up.

"The bottom of the vessel has a mold number, which is an Arabic numeral arranged sequentially. This is a mass-produced handicraft, not an unearthed artifact. This numbering system is very common in the antique pottery market in Panjiayuan."

She held the pottery jar up so the bottom would face the camera, giving the camera a close-up of the string of numbers.

The live stream chat was instantly flooded with comments.

"Fake!" "Who did this?!" "A man-made tomb!" "They're so audacious!" Comments flooded the screen, the barrage of comments almost obscuring half the view.

Professor Jiang stood up, patted the dirt off his knees, and spoke towards the camera.

"Based on the actual objects on site, these bricks and pottery are modern products and do not possess the attributes of cultural relics. Currently, there is no evidence to suggest the existence of an underground cultural relic site here. It is recommended that the relevant authorities investigate the origin of these items."

Although the statement was made in an academic style, the viewers in the live stream went wild, and the popularity doubled.

---

Forty minutes after the live broadcast ended, the Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau called a second time.

The other party's tone was completely different from yesterday. They were very polite and said that the expert's assessment results needed to go through an internal review process, and the original work stoppage request was "temporarily suspended" until the bureau's official letter arrived.

After finishing the call in the car, Chen Ping leaned back in his seat and hung up.

That move by the other party was perfectly timed. If he hadn't managed to bring in experts and start a live broadcast before the cultural relics bureau's on-site personnel arrived, this matter could have dragged on for six to twelve months.

Six to twelve months is just enough time to completely exhaust the window of opportunity for the second phase of Corefire.

Zhang Chao turned around from the passenger seat, holding a printed screenshot of the surveillance footage.

"We've retrieved the construction site surveillance footage. Between 11 PM and 1 AM last night, four people—three men and one woman—entered the construction site in two separate trips. The first time they went in, each of them was carrying a woven bag, but the second time they came out, the bags were all empty."

Chen Ping took the screenshot and scanned the figures of the people.

"Have you found out yet?"

"Found it."

Zhang Chao handed over another piece of paper, speaking more slowly.

"All four are local thugs with no formal jobs. One of them was released six months ago due to a case involving a demolition dispute in the south of the city."

He paused, then continued.

"The money to hire them was transferred out through an account called 'Shunxin Demolition Service Co., Ltd.'"

"The actual controller of this company is Ma Guoliang's brother-in-law, named Liu Yuanzheng."

The car fell silent.

Outside the construction site fence, the roar of the rammed earth machine seeped in through the gaps, one beat after another, dull yet solid.

Chen Ping folded the two pieces of paper together and placed them on his lap without moving.

Having just lost out on the land deal, Ma Guoliang immediately had his brother-in-law resort to this tactic. If the city investment company couldn't acquire the land, they'd prevent the construction from proceeding. By exploiting the rules of cultural relic protection, they could drag things out for six to twelve months, completely disrupting the construction schedule of the Xinhuo Phase II project without Ma Guoliang even needing to intervene.

This is no longer following the rules; it's resorting to underhanded tactics.

"Organize the materials and, together with the surveillance video, transfer them to the Nanzhou Municipal Commission for Discipline Inspection and the Public Security Bureau, so that they can proceed according to procedure."

Zhang Chao wrote it down and was about to get off the bus when Chen Ping spoke again, his tone very calm, as if stating a fact.

"It seems that simply taking down the Zhao family is not enough; the grassroots ecology in Nanzhou is too rotten."

Chen Ping fastened the strap of his briefcase, leaned forward, and said the second half of his sentence.

"Since they like to play dirty tricks, let's do a thorough cleaning."