S.C.I Mystery Series Volume 3 Chapter 75

Lucky Murderer 05 – Number of Stone Figures

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The three tigers of the Xu family came to their doorstep and were caught by Bai Yutang and his men.

Bai Yutang and Zhan Zhao felt that there must be some important clues with these three men, so they told them to take them back to the police station. After a quick look around the tomb, they found nothing, so they went back to the police station to interrogate them.

Inside the SCI office, Ma Xin, with her hands in the pockets of her white coat, wandered back to the forensic office.

Gongsun was dissecting the bodies and when he saw Ma Xin enter, he smiled and asked, "You're back? Don't you want to take an extra day off?"

"Mm-hmm." Ma Xin smiled and seemed to be in a good mood.

"What's wrong?" Gongsun looked at her in confusion, "Why are you so happy?"

Ma Xin stretched out her finger and wiggled it. Touching his chin, Gongsun saw a flash of something bright, and upon closer inspection, there was an extra ring on Ma Xin's left middle finger, a silver and white platinum ring.

"Oh..." Gongsun smiled, "That's what your heart wants?"

Ma Xin was happy and didn't say anything. She carefully pulled on a sheath for the ring and then put on gloves, ready to uncover the body with Gongsun.

Gongsun smiled, there were times when Ma Xin was a little feminine.

After staring at the corpses for a while, Ma Xin asked Gongsun, "Where are Captain and his team?"

"Went to the tomb. If I had known you were coming back, I would have gone along." Gongsun said and asked Ma Xin, "By the way, these are psychopaths and their bones are over a hundred years old, did you know that?"

"Huh?" Ma Xin felt incredulous as she took the recorded data and flipped it open to read, "Oh yeah... so godly?!"

"The case is indeed a bit godly." Gongsun shrugged, "So far it looks relatively simple, I think the bone age condition might be caused by genetics."

As they spoke, they heard movement outside. The two removed their gloves and went out to see.

"Eh?" Zhan Zhao saw Ma Xin, "Xin Xin, are you ready to go to work?"

“En." Ma Xin nodded. Seeing the three people being escorted behind him, Ma Xin frowned slightly and pointed, "I know the three of them!"

The crowd was stunned, these three were naturally the three tigers of the Xu family.

"What are you talking about?” The three looked particularly nervous and all pretended not to know Ma Xin.

“I know you guys!" Ma Xin said to Bai Yutang, "When I was attacked by those stone figures, they rushed in and helped call the police or something, I thought they were from the archaeological team."

“You’re that sure?" Zhan Zhao asked.

"Mmm! Are they three brothers? They look alike, so I remember them!"

"What were you guys doing in the ancient tomb?" Bai Yutang and Zhan Zhao brought the three into the interrogation room and asked, "Going in and coming out again, what do you want?"

“Gongsun," Zhan Zhao suddenly called out to Gongsun, “help me check if the lottery ticket has the fingerprints of any of these three men on it."

Gongsun nodded and walked away with the lottery ticket. The three hurriedly said, "Ai, all right we'll confess... but, we didn't kill them, we didn't kill anyone!"

Bai Yutang frowned, "Say it."

According to the three of them, these three knew from the lottery shop owner that Ah Mao and the others had bought the winning multi-million dollar lottery ticket but had not come for the prize.

At that time, the deadline for the lottery prize had not yet passed, so they thought that there was ten million dollars here and it would be a pity to give it to a few psychopaths, so they searched around for the whereabouts of those three people.

Originally, they thought they would be in a mental hospital, but they didn't expect them to have been released, and... they found out that these guys were often around the ancient tomb.

"Ancient tomb?" Bai Yutang was confused, "What were they doing in the ancient tomb?"

"How would we know that, they are mentally ill." The few said helplessly.

Zhan Zhao gestured for them to continue.

These three later kept an eye on Ah Mao and the others. They found them sneaking inside the ancient tomb in the middle of the night, and the three tigers followed them in and encountered bizarre things.

Zhan Zhan and Bai Yutang glanced at each other and felt puzzled – Why would Ah Mao and the others sneak into the tomb in the middle of the night? There was nothing interesting about that place.

"That hospital, how irresponsible, those psychopaths are obviously not healed and they still let them out!" Xu Gensheng felt a chill run down his spine just thinking about it, "A few of those guys were digging a hole in the ancient tomb in the middle of the night, and they were all talking like the ancients!"

"Huh?" Zhan Zhao froze and raised an eyebrow at Bai Yutang – Doctor Fan said that those three had memories of their past lives, could they be...

Bai Yutang's expression looked like a smile but wasn’t a smile – Who cares what happened to them? Anyway, sick or not, the three of them can certainly communicate normally with each other.

Zhan Zhao coughed and continued to ask, "What did they say?

Xu Gensheng frowned and looked at his two brothers.

All three shook their heads and said they did not know.

Zhan Zhao slightly raised an eyebrow, carefully looked at the three people's expressions, and smiled, “You know... I've said it before, this time it's three people, three lives. They have mental problems, you don't, which means they don't go to jail for killing you, but you have to pay for their lives... You just assaulted a police officer, and you are fully suspected and motivated. I advise you to cooperate, otherwise, it will be too late to regret it."

The faces of the three men changed colour, the two younger ones both looked at their elder brother, Xu Gensheng.

Xu Gensheng seemed a bit anxious, then finally reached out and fiercely scratched his hair a few times, “Okay, I'll say it!"

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang exchanged glances with each other, waiting for him to speak.

"This is what happened." Xu Gensheng explained honestly, "We were inside the tomb passage and listened to the three of them conversing, although they were speaking nonsense, they could be understood."

"We just heard them talking about how a lottery ticket worth tens of millions is nothing, what they have is a big treasure, this thing is worth at least hundreds of millions!"

Both Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang were stunned.

The crowd listening to the interrogation at the door looked at each other, and Zhao Hu asked Ma Han, "What's worth hundreds of millions of dollars?"

Ma Han shook his head.

Gongsun reached out and pushed up his glasses, "It shouldn't be a single thing. Unless the golden body of the Pharaoh in the Pyramid of Khufu is dug up in the ancient tomb, it really can't be worth hundreds of millions... Or perhaps if you find the body of some ancient domestic emperor, and it has to be a famous one, Cao Cao, Han Wudi, Li Shimin or someone else."

The crowd all subconsciously stuck out their tongues, who dares to buy that stuff.

"But if it's just for the money, I guess it's a bit more cost effective to buy a lottery ticket.” Qin Ou said, "After all, even if what they dug up in the ancient tomb was gold, it couldn't be directly circulated as currency, it would have to be exchanged at a pawn shop or gold shop... If the amount was huge, it would definitely attract the attention of the police."

"So it could be worth hundreds of millions, just a description?” Bai Chi thought for a moment, "They're there to show that the things are important!"

The crowd all nodded and continued to listen. Zhan Zhao's view was similar to Qin Ou's, it didn't seem to have anything to do with money, but he didn't say anything about it and asked, "What about more specifically?"

"Then we don't know, they seem to be looking for something, sneaking around and touching the bodies of those dead people.

"Those dead people?" Bai Yutang caught an odd phrase in his words, “Wasn't there just one dead person inside the whole tomb, the others were all stone figurines, where did those dead people come from?"

"We heard it from them!" Xu Gensheng said, "That Ah Mao clearly said, 'How come there's nothing on these dead people'!"

Bai Yutang looked at Zhan Zhao.

Zhan Zhao was frowning, "You guys didn't go in to look afterwards?"

"Wow! The nerve! An eerie ancient tomb where three psychopaths were touching corpses, who knows what they were up to, they might even eat people later on. We were scared to keep listening and ran out!" Xu Gensheng said, bowing his head, "But then, as the saying goes, people die for money. After we came out, a few of us felt reluctant, so we waited for them at the entrance."

"Then, they came out before dawn and we tried to rob them of their lottery tickets.” Xu Genfa went on to say, "After the lottery ticket was snatched, the three of them fled back to the tomb and we didn't bother to chase them, thinking that it would be good if we got the lottery ticket, so whatever... But just when we wanted to leave, we heard the sound of screaming coming from inside!"

"Screaming?” Zhan Zhao wondered, "Could there be someone else in the ancient tomb?"

"Who knows what it was, we were scared to death by that scream so we turned around and ran." Xu Gensheng said and sighed softly, "What happened after that, we don't know."

"You went again early the next morning?" Bai Yutang asked.

"We pretended to go to carry mud out for the archaeological team, and when we went in, we slipped inside the ancient tomb. Third Brother had sharp eyes and saw at a glance those few psychopaths were pretending to be stone figurines."

"If they were just starting out, it is indeed possible to recognise them.” Ma Xin spoke.

"Oh?" Gongsun gently stroked his chin, "I find it somewhat unbelievable, they are a professional archaeological team, why couldn't they have noticed that the stone figures in the pit were people impersonating them?"

"No one ever went down there or paid attention to it." Bai Chi thought about it, "That's unlikely, unless… someone high up in the archaeological team gave an order that no archaeologists were allowed to go near those stone figures!"

"What Gongsun said... is the number of stone figures right?" Qin Ou suddenly understood and looked at Gongsun.

"En." Gongsun smiled, "At a glance at the stone figures in the pit, it's hard for anyone to be suspicious of whether they are real people... What puzzled me, though, was the number of stone figures that were counted. When you enter the tomb, the first thing you do is count all the burial goods!"

"Unless..." Ma Han raised an eyebrow gently, "the number has never changed."

The corners of Zhao Hu's mouth twitched gently... The number has never changed, was there such a possibility?

"There's only one reason, there were originally three fake stone figures in the pit!" Gongsun said in a cold voice, "Three for three, so no one found out, otherwise, no matter how senior the archaeological team was, it would be impossible to make everyone lose their memory!"

The crowd's hearts trembled, could it be related to what Ah Mao and the others said – "these dead people"?

"After we found Ah Mao and the others, we really didn't know if they were dead or possessed by some kind of ghost." Xu Gensheng sighed, "We had the lottery ticket in our hands, but we didn't dare to go submit it because we were afraid of being jailed if something went wrong. Although we aren't rich, we manage a chess room for people, so our lives are quite good. In the end we had to watch that lottery ticket worth millions of dollars rot away!"

"Did you guys keep moving mud for the archaeology team after that?"

“That’s right." The three tigers of the Xu family nodded and admitted that they had rushed in when Ma Xin was attacked for one purpose, to hide the stolen lottery ticket so that they wouldn't be the least bit suspicious. What do they care about those psychos being dead or alive?!

They wanted to go into the tomb just now because they heard that the police were coming and they wanted to get in before they did – to find what Ah Mao and the others had said was worth a fortune!

‿︵‿︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ・❉・ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿︵‿︵

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Translator Notes

Has anyone watched Heartstopper? I love it so much. I haven't read the graphic novel or webtoon yet but now I must!

Please feel free to comment any mistakes I made so I can improve and do better as I go through the book.

Translated: March 28, 2022 by Angel