WWY Chapter 47

Chapter 47: The Museum – This is our museum’s Warring States Dragon Pattern Jade Disc…

Stripping away the layers of what’s called “emotion,” Lan He finally understood.

Wasn’t Tuxi Ling clearly showing that he didn’t like him?

What was there to fear? Anyway, that police officer Ling had a soft heart and wouldn’t break off friendships easily. As long as they didn’t break up, he had hope!

After all, he was so outstanding!

He adjusted his mindset and felt that his words just now were a bit harsh, so he chuckled, trying to break the awkwardness.

As expected, Tuxi Ling’s chopsticks paused.

More customers came in, and a little fresh air suddenly poured into the cramped noodle shop, and the sticky, stagnant feeling dissipated in an instant.

Lan He added some vinegar to his bowl of noodles for him: “Police Officer Ling, did you forget to add seasoning? I remember you added a lot of vinegar last time! Although you didn’t eat much last time, hey, do you want some pepper?”

Last time, he didn’t eat much? How could he still remember?

Tuxi Ling looked at him blankly, licked the corner of his mouth subconsciously, and nodded.

Lan He unscrewed the lid of the pepper powder and said as he poured it, “I was just kidding with you, what’s with that expression? Are you so reluctant to end things with me?”

He winked ambiguously, but his hands didn’t stop, pouring almost half a bottle of pepper into his bowl, adding a private act of revenge to vent his anger.

Sure enough, Tuxi Ling was choked and sneezed several times in a row, tears forced out of the corners of his eyes.

Lan He smiled triumphantly and handed him a tissue.

He lowered his head, and the slightly drooping bangs covered the upper half of his face. Lan He couldn’t see his expression.

The pepper powder absorbed water and added weight, floating densely on the noodle soup, but it didn’t sink for a long time. He sniffed, stirred it a few times with his chopsticks, and drank it all in one gulp.

“Hey?” Lan He wanted to stop him, but it was too late. Half a bottle of pepper powder also entered his stomach along with that small half bowl of noodle soup.

The spicy, scalding, and viscous liquid slid from his throat to his stomach. Tuxi Ling coughed, covered his mouth, swallowed hard, and then showed a very ugly smile to the person opposite him.

“Are you crazy!” Lan He stood up “with a whoosh,” turning his face on the spot, half angry and half annoyed in his heart.

He turned around and took a bottle of mineral water from the beverage rack, unscrewed it, and urged him to drink it quickly.

“Tuxi Ling, what do you mean? Are you holding a grudge against me?”

“If I don’t drink, you’ll be angry, and if I do drink, you’re not happy either. What do you want me to do?”

Tuxi Ling’s voice was hoarse. Under the dual effect of pepper powder and strange emotions, his brain was buzzing.

He only didn’t want to make him unhappy, but it seemed that he had backfired again.

Lan He saw his red eyes, his heart softened, he pursed his lips lightly, and raised his hands: “I surrender! I was wrong! I shouldn’t have joked around! Police Officer Ling, spare me!”

He was indeed too impatient today. Wasn’t this just asking for trouble?

Tuxi Ling stared at him for a moment, and finally a smile appeared on his face: “Stop it, I’ll take it seriously.”

Lan He smiled cheekily and pointed to the small bar: “Okay, okay, I won’t dare to do it again! Hurry up and pay!”

Tuxi Ling went to the boss to pay the bill, the depressed emotions were still lingering in his heart, but he had to pretend that nothing had happened.

As the night deepened, the lights awakened like giant dragons, illuminating the city as bright as day.

In the courtyard of the Municipal Bureau, Si’nian He and Jiu Ya were standing close together, talking about something. The two of them shared a light, and when Si’nian He looked up, he saw Lan He and Tuxi Ling turning into the gate together, and quickly put out his cigarette.

“Brother!”

“What are you doing here?”

“It’s so late, I’m worried about you. I brought lawyer Chu here. He went in to understand the situation!” Si’nian He frowned, and roared at Tuxi Ling aggressively, “What’s wrong with you police? How can you keep people until so late? Why are you summoning my brother? What evidence do you have?”

The barrage of questions was obviously targeted provocation. Even when Lan He pulled his arm, he ignored him.

Tuxi Ling patiently explained: “Lan He was summoned as a witness. Our public security organs have this power.”

“Witness? Can’t you just ask at the door? Don’t you know my brother has heart disease? Can you afford to take responsibility if something happens to him? Can you use your brains when you do things? What’s the meaning of bringing people to the bureau? Do you know what kind of impact it will have on the public opinion of our He family?” Si’nian He pointed at Tuxi Ling’s nose in anger, and all the old and new grudges erupted together.

Lan He’s face suddenly turned cold: “Si’nian, Police Officer Ling is doing his job, don’t cause trouble, let’s go.”

“Brother! He has to explain it to me clearly today. I want him to apologize immediately, otherwise I will definitely complain about him!” Si’nian He became more and more angry as he spoke, his fingers almost poking into Tuxi Ling’s eyeballs. The bits and pieces between Lan He and him, and the smiles on their faces when they entered the door just now, made him lose all his composure. “Don’t think you owe him anything. He saved you, but that’s what you police should do. I’ve seen a lot of people like him, they’re either after money or people! Don’t be fooled by him, don’t look at him wearing a police uniform and looking like a human being, but actually…”

Unexpectedly, his chin was hit hard with a punch, and then he was grabbed by the tie and slammed the car next to him. The force wasn’t too strong, and only a few fingerprints were left on the car paint.

Si’nian He supported himself to stand firm, covered his chin, and the shock in his eyes was hard to conceal: “Brother?”

Lan He rubbed his aching hand, his eyes colder than ice picks: “Get back to your own home, I don’t want to see you again in the future!”

Si’nian He’s face and neck were flushed.

Lan He actually hit him! He actually hit him in front of Tuxi Ling! This made him more uncomfortable than death!

He didn’t know that he had accidentally become Lan He’s punching bag, and the reason was also Tuxi Ling. Lan He had been holding back all night and finally found an opportunity to explode, his anger was full, and the mountains collapsed and the earth cracked.

“Brother, I…”

“Embarrassing.”

Lan He left a sentence and got into the car. After waiting for a long time, Jiu Ya didn’t come up, so he slammed the steering wheel hard.

The car horn made a short “beep,” startling the three people standing. Jiu Ya quickly threw away his cigarette, got in the car, and started it.

This was too fierce, wasn’t it?

He swallowed nervously: “Young Master Lan, where are we going?”

“Home.”

“Yes!”

When the car turned out of the gate of the Public Security Bureau, Lan He saw that Tuxi Ling and Si’nian He were still standing in place in the same posture as before, like two sculptures.

When Tuxi Ling returned to the team, Shengbo Xia and Li Wu were gnawing on buns, looking helpless at the computer screen.

As soon as they saw him, the gossip souls of the two people burned fiercely.

Shengbo Xia hurriedly stuffed all the buns into his mouth, and followed him, asking: “Ling, what happened just now? I didn’t see that Lan He has quite the young master’s temper. That punch, he didn’t hesitate at all!”

Wu Li also chimed in: “Yes, yes, isn’t that his brother? What’s wrong? Is he staging a dog-blood drama about wealthy families again?”

In fact, Tuxi Ling had been very upset just now, and had been trying hard to hold it back, but they just had to poke where it hurt.

He glanced at the portrait of himself placed on his desk, sighed in his heart, and reprimanded: “Do you have nothing to do? Are you still investigating Professor Qiu’s case?”

Shengbo Xia scratched his head: “Suicide, what else is there to investigate?”

Wu Li also echoed: “The family members came to identify the body just now, and we did an inquiry record by the way. Professor Qiu’s wife and her younger brother said that Professor Qiu had been normal recently, and he even made plans for a family trip during the summer vacation yesterday.”

“If he’s making travel plans, then he can’t have any intention of committing suicide.” Tuxi Ling’s tone was serious, “A highly educated person, living without worries, and highly respected, was fine the moment before, chatting with people about his favorite professional topics, and then jumped off the building the next moment. Is this normal?”

Shengbo Xia looked at Wu Li, and Wu Li looked at Shengbo Xia: “It seems… a little abnormal, huh!”

Shengbo Xia asked thoughtfully: “Ling, do you think Lan He might be lying to us? Did he say something that threatened Professor Qiu?”

As a qualified criminal police officer, Tuxi Ling vaguely had this suspicion, he just didn’t want to face it.

He said, “That’s why we need to continue the investigation.”

“But, where do we start?” Shengbo Xia pinched his chin, “From the surveillance, Lan He didn’t threaten Professor Qiu. He kept telling Lan He about the content related to the painting. You can see from Professor Qiu’s expression that he was calm throughout the whole process!”

Wu Li suddenly widened her eyes: “That’s right, hypnosis! Could the paintings he showed Professor Qiu have a hypnotic effect, which led to Professor Qiu’s suicide? I’ve seen it before, some cultural relics unearthed from tombs, placed in museums, come alive in the middle of the night and stuff like that!”

She vividly described it, Shengbo Xia shivered violently as if he had seen a ghost with his own eyes: “Don’t talk nonsense, we are materialistic warriors!”

“The end of science is metaphysics, do you understand! Just because you can’t explain it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist! Could you have imagined Tianyan tracking down criminals fifty years ago?”

“You’re changing the subject! Are you saying that Professor Qiu saw a painting and it became haunted? He didn’t see the real thing, if you said that the real thing has a magnetic field that can affect people, I might believe it!”

“Then how do you know that the patterns can’t hypnotize people? Aren’t there those three-dimensional pictures that create spatial illusions?”

…

Tuxi Ling had too much pepper powder, and his throat was still on fire.

He took a glass of cold water from the water dispenser and gulped it down, then took another glass, this time drinking slowly while watching the two of them argue.

Hypnosis and ghosts were pure nonsense, but they reminded him of cultural relics.

Professor Qiu was a doctoral supervisor in the Archeology Department of Jiannan University, and was considered a leading figure in the industry. If, according to the family members and colleagues, he had no abnormalities before, then the problem could only lie with Lan He.

Lan He didn’t plan it, so maybe it was really the problem with the painting.

“Bozi, did you take pictures of Lan He’s paintings this afternoon?”

“I took them, here!”

Tuxi Ling glanced at it, but didn’t take his phone: “You and I will go to the City Museum tomorrow morning.”

Early the next morning, they drove to the City Museum. When they arrived, the museum had not yet opened.

Hearing that they were police officers from the Criminal Investigation Detachment, and one of them was the famous Team Leader Ling, the curator came out to greet them in person. Tuxi Ling thought to himself that this curator was very dedicated. In such a leisurely unit, it was not easy to go to work on time.

“Oh, hello, officers! I’m Yishi Pan, the curator.” Yishi Pan showed a gentle smile and invited them to sit on the simple red sandalwood sofa, “I wonder what brings you here?”

Tuxi Ling directly explained his purpose.

After listening to the process, Yishi Pan’s calm expression collapsed in an instant: “What? Something happened to Old Qiu?”

Old Qiu?

Tuxi Ling was a little surprised at first, but then he thought that they were all in the circle of antiques and cultural relics, so it was normal for them to know each other.

“Curator Pan, do you know Professor Qiu?”

“Of course I know him, he also came to the museum to help. Later, we often interacted.”

“Helped with what?”

“Oh, that was… about ten years ago…” Curator Pan looked out the window and recalled for a moment, looking pained, “Almost ten years ago, when Old Qiu had just taken a job at Jiannan University, I asked him to come to our museum to repair several cultural relics. He is a master in this area, and I finally persuaded him to be our museum’s honorary consultant. Alas! We also had a good relationship in private, and we contacted each other a few days ago. How did he die?”

“The initial assessment is that he fell from a building. We still need to investigate some details.” Tuxi Ling asked Shengbo Xia to take out his phone and show Yishi Pan Lan He’s painting.

Yishi Pan took the phone. Because of his presbyopia, he zoomed in on the picture a lot before he could see it clearly, and asked uncertainly, “This is?”

“Do you know what this painting is of?”

“Oh, a painting?” Yishi Pan felt incredible, “Of course I know, this is the Warring States Dragon Pattern Jade Disc in our museum’s collection!”

Shengbo Xia repeated in a lost voice: “Your museum’s?”

Yishi Pan was a little frightened by him and “ah”ed.

Tuxi Ling asked: “Curator Pan, are you sure?”

Yishi Pan’s face changed slightly. He carefully looked at it again and nodded: “I’m sure, it’s treasured in our museum. Because it was damaged and repaired, it wasn’t exhibited and is stored in the warehouse. It’s all in the registry!”