Tomb raiders: You stole my little Qilin?

Wu Wei practiced martial arts with Hei Xiazi every day.

From feeling sore all over after the first sparring match to gradually being able to counter dozens of moves without suffering a major loss, the progress was clearly visible.

That afternoon, Wu Wei was nestled on the sofa flipping through the booklet Zhang Qiling had left him when his phone suddenly vibrated.

He picked it up and saw that it was a text message from a familiar number, with very polite wording.

My fellow disciple, Yin Fengjue, said he had a batch of unearthed ancient characters and wanted me to ask him to take a look.

Wu Wei and Yin Fengjue were not very familiar with each other.

Both of them studied under the same supervisor during their doctoral studies, and their research focused on ancient writing systems.

We met a few times during our school days and occasionally exchanged greetings via text message during holidays. We were classmates who "knew each other but didn't keep in touch often."

However, he had a good impression of Yin Fengjue; he was reliable and of decent character.

He replied with a message and arranged to meet there in the afternoon.

After lunch, I greeted Hei Xiazi: "Hey, I'm going out for a bit. My junior brother needs me to translate something."

Hei Xiazi was squatting in the kitchen examining his newly bought casserole dish when he heard this and asked, "Are you coming home for dinner tonight?"

"Return."

"Alright then." Black Bear waved his hand, indicating that they could pass.

The address given by Yin Fengjue was in a residential area in the east of the city. Wu Wei was too lazy to drive himself, so he hailed a taxi.

After arriving at the destination, I climbed four flights of stairs. Just as I reached the door, before I could even knock, the door opened from the inside.

Yin Fengjue must have heard the footsteps and was waiting in the entrance hall.

He was half a head shorter than Wu Wei, wore silver-rimmed glasses, and had a somewhat shy smile.

He stepped aside to let Wu Wei into the house: "Senior brother, I'm so sorry to have troubled you to come all this way."

Wu Wei waved his hand: "We're fellow disciples, no need to be so polite."

The tea set was already laid out on the coffee table in the living room, and the tea was freshly brewed, with wisps of steam rising from it.

The two exchanged a few pleasantries, nothing more than what they had been busy with lately and how their supervisor was doing.

After chatting for a few minutes, Yin Fengjue got up and carried something out of the study, carefully placing it on the coffee table.

It was a square stone slab, about the size of four hands put together.

It is less than two fingers thick, with obvious cracks on the edges, and the surface is not smooth with fine chisel marks. Several lines of text are engraved on it.

The characters are simple and neat, with powerful strokes. Even after being buried underground for countless years, the lines are still clearly discernible.

Wu Wei's gaze fell upon it and he couldn't look away.

He bent down, his fingers hovering above the stone slab, slowly tracing the strokes.

He had seen this script before; it belonged to the same system as an ancient sacrificial script that he had focused on studying during his doctoral studies.

"I got this from a friend who works on the national excavation team."

Yin Fengjue poured Wu Wei another cup of tea and explained.

"Last month, a small county in Henan was hit by a torrential rain. After the floodwaters receded, someone found a large collapsed hole in the fields."

"After the report was submitted, people from the national authorities came and saw that it was a very old tomb-raiding hole, so they organized a team to start excavating it."

He pointed to the stone slab on the coffee table, "The tomb is quite large, but it has long been looted. Apart from a few damaged burial objects, there is only a batch of stone slabs with inscriptions and patterns."

"No one on their team specializes in this area, so my friend brought the slate to me and asked me to help translate it."

As Yin Fengjue spoke, he pushed up his glasses somewhat embarrassedly, "But my skills are limited. I've been looking at them for several days and I still can't recognize them all. I can only trouble my senior brother."

"No trouble at all," Wu Wei said, his gaze still fixed on the stone slab.

"This thing itself is very interesting."

Wu Wei looked at it carefully for about fifteen minutes, then took out a notebook and wrote and drew on it, comparing it with the text that resembled the pictures.

After a while, Wu Wei straightened up and pointed to several key symbols on the stone slab: "This is a record that says there is a tribe at the highest point of a mountain range, whose name is—"

He paused, his fingertip pointing to the last few words.

"Legacy".

Yin Fengjue waited a few seconds, making sure he wouldn't say anything more, before asking, "That's all?"

Wu Wei shook his head: "That's all that's carved on the stone slab. It's not a complete document, just a fragment. The rest should be on other stone slabs."

Yin Fengjue tentatively asked, "Then, senior brother...would you be interested in going there yourself?"

Wu Wei looked up at him.

"My friend invited me to Henan to participate in the excavation."

"Other stone slabs were also unearthed there, which might be able to piece together more complete information. Moreover, there are more professional tools on site, which may be able to reconstruct some of the parts that were chiseled away."

"This is your strength, senior brother. I would feel much more at ease if we could go together."

Yin Fengjue laid out his thoughts, paused, and then quickly added:

"The archaeological team has ample funding; they can reimburse travel and accommodation expenses. I'll negotiate the consultant fee for my senior colleague; he just needs to tell me a figure..."

Wu Wei did not answer immediately.

He wasn't hesitating about whether to go or not, but rather calculating the time.

Zhang Qiling hasn't returned yet, but Hei Xiazi is. And being away on business means he doesn't need to practice his skills.

The moment this thought crossed his mind, his scales tipped immediately.

"Okay, I'll go." Wu Wei agreed readily. "But I might have someone else coming with me. Is that convenient?"

Yin Fengjue nodded without hesitation: "Convenient, convenient. Senior brother can bring whoever you want. I'll tell them to book an extra room."

"Then let me know in advance once you've confirmed the time." Wu Wei had already stood up to say goodbye.

Yin Fengjue hurriedly nodded and escorted Wu Wei to the door.

"Okay, senior brother, you go ahead and do your thing. I'll send you a message once I've arranged everything."

After leaving Yin Fengjue's house, Wu Wei did not go straight back.

He walked slowly along the street for a while, turned into a fruit shop and picked out some passion fruit and pineapple, and bought a few ice creams from a roadside cold drink stall.

Beijing summers are dry and long, and the sun is still scorching hot at four or five in the afternoon. Wu Wei, biting into an ice cream, walks through the shade of a tree.

Pushing open the door of the courtyard house, the sound of chopping ribs came from the kitchen.

Black Bear was standing in front of the chopping board wearing an apron. With a swift stroke of his knife, he neatly chopped the ribs, leaving clean bone fragments.

Wu Weichong called out from the kitchen, "I'm back!"

The sound of chopping ribs paused for a moment, and Hei Xiazi's voice came from the kitchen: "We're making rib soup today."

Wu Wei changed into slippers and walked over, standing at the kitchen doorway and looking inside.

The water for blanching the pork ribs had already boiled, bubbling and steaming. The white steam softened his angular face and fogged up his sunglasses.

Wu Wei pulled an ice cream out of the bag and tore open the wrapper.

Black Bear was busy putting ribs into the water, his hands were covered in oil.

I caught a glimpse of the ice cream in his hand and was about to say, "Just put it there," when a cold, sweet treat was already being offered to his lips.

Hei Xiazi paused for a moment. He looked down at the ice cream, then looked up at Wu Wei.

His sunglasses covered most of his face, making it impossible to see his expression, but he still turned his head slightly and bit down.

The cool, sweet flavor exploded on the tip of the tongue, colliding with the sweltering heat of the kitchen, creating a strange temperature difference.

Wu Wei tore off another one and put it in his mouth, then stuffed the rest into the freezer.

When he turned around, he found that Black Bear was still in the same position, with half an ice cream stick in his mouth, facing him without moving.

"What are you staring at, you're blind."

Wu Wei waved his hand in front of him.

Black Bear came to his senses, squeezed out a pump of dish soap, and rinsed it clean.

Holding an ice cream in one hand and pressing down on Wu Wei's shoulder with the other, he turned him around and pushed him out of the kitchen door.

"Get out, get out! No unauthorized personnel allowed in the kitchen."

Wu Wei was pushed out of the kitchen door by him, and looked back at him inexplicably.

I don't know what I just did wrong, so I shrugged and went to cut the fruit.

In the kitchen, Hei Xiazi pushed his sunglasses up to his forehead, ignoring the faint redness on the tips of his ears.

The ice cream in my mouth hadn't completely melted yet; it was cloyingly sweet, and the coldness made my tongue feel numb.

He chewed on a piece of ice and muttered under his breath, "This lousy ice cream is sickeningly sweet."