In the south of Xi'an, an old bookstore called "Shiyi Zhai" barely stands at the end of an alley with few pedestrians. In the evening, the rain was falling diagonally, and the fluorescent tubes in the store were buzzing, reflecting the dusty old books and a few dusty "antique" fakes on the bookshelves.
Chen Mo faced the computer screen. On the screen was a graduation thesis that had been revised countless times and was criticized beyond recognition by his tutor - "On the Astrology Metaphor in Pre-Qin Sacrificial Architecture and Its Reflection in Geography". In the email, the last sentence of the tutor was particularly eye-catching: "The idea is novel, but the evidence is weak and the argument is vague. It is recommended to move to a more 'realistic' direction, or... Postpone it."
A familiar feeling of powerlessness and confusion swept over me. He took off his glasses, rubbed his sore eyebrows, and his eyes unconsciously fell on the old framed photo on the wall. In the photo, a high-spirited man wearing khaki overalls stands on the edge of a steep archaeological site, with rolling loess hills and ravines in the background - that is his grandfather Chen Yuanshan, an archaeologist who was said to have disappeared in an "accidental" landslide in the northwest when he was five years old. The so-called evidence consisted of only a few broken survey tools stained with mud.
