Tomb Raiding: Caught Red-Handed, and You Call It Protecting Cultural Relics?

S Provincial University of Technology has three oddballs. Yang Fan from the geology department has failed his classes two years in a row and gets by forging geological survey reports. His advisor says, “If you put that talent for forgery to honest use, you'd have been admitted to graduate school by now.” Wang Hao from computer science hacked into the academic system and changed his grades. When asked how, he said the firewall password was admin123. The registrar's face turned green. Liu Chuan from mechanical engineering was disciplined for tampering with lab equipment. While writing his confession, he casually modified his counselor's car to save two liters of fuel per hundred kilometers. The counselor didn't know whether to punish him or thank him. The three teamed up for a private job: helping an antiques dealer locate a Ming dynasty tomb. They agreed to survey only, with no digging and no touching burial artifacts. It was supposed to be as simple as delivering takeout. They found the tomb, but there was no gold or jewelry, only a stone coffin. Carved on the lid were the words: “There is no gold or jade here. Think carefully.” Inside a stone box in front of the coffin lay a bamboo manuscript with two seal-script characters: Lianshan. The long-lost Lianshan Divination, missing for two thousand years. Yang Fan immediately sensed something was wrong: a man from the Ming dynasty burying something from the Shang and Zhou dynasties was like finding an iPhone 18 stuffed into a tomb. Three days later, the antiques dealer was found dead in his shop. The manuscript had vanished. When the police came knocking, Yang Fan was eating instant noodles. The moment he saw their uniforms, he instinctively hid his forged reports. “What about the twenty kilograms of explosives in your car?” “Fireworks for the Mid-Autumn Festival!” “The Mid-Autumn Festival is in July?” “...I like to stock up.” In the interrogation room, the police stared at him. He stared at his handcuffs. “Go on.” “Can I ask you something first?” “Ask.” Have you heard of the Lianshan Divination?