The whole internet hails him as "the foremost figure in bringing national treasures back home."
Only I know that all sixteen Western Zhou bronze vessels he donated to the museum were dug out of ancestral graves.
The seventeenth is still hanging in the tomb, untouched for three thousand years.
One set of vessels, seventeen pieces in all. Sixteen in the exhibition hall, one left in its original place.
The bronze knows who's lying.
Twenty years ago, he shoved my grandfather into an abandoned well, blew up the mountain to erase all evidence, and faked a "mountain-collapse accident."
Twenty years later, I've returned with a restoration knife.
I can peel away three thousand years of verdigris, and I can peel away twenty years of lies.
He thought that by laundering the evidence into the museum's storage rooms, no one would ever reopen the case.
He didn't know the rule of the tomb guardians:
As long as one person still recognizes the mark, this tomb will never be lost.
