NHWSG chapter 30

According to Sheng Zhao’s plan, he and Xing Yingzhu should have first gone to the hotel to drop off their luggage, then comfortably slept, had breakfast the next day, and leisurely visited the museum. Since Xing Yingzhu had been searching for so many years without success, it seemed that waiting another day or two wouldn’t matter.

However, Sheng Zhao didn’t expect Xing Yingzhu to be so unconventional.

“Boss—” Sheng Zhao stood at the entrance of the Jinling Museum of Paleontology, his eyes shifting between the large characters on the gate and the reservation screen for the next day on his phone. After a mental struggle, he couldn’t hold back and said, “Are we here to find something or for a seven-day detention tour?”

Xing Yingzhu seemed too lazy to even mock him this time. With his hands in his pockets, he gave Sheng Zhao a disdainful glance.

Sheng Zhao: “…”

“You have the nerve to look down on me?” Sheng Zhao felt a surge of anger. He thought to himself that he was risking his life to advise Xing Yingzhu, saving him from losing face as the Demon King. Not only might they fail to find anything, but they might also end up with a bonus of a jail sentence.

However, Xing Yingzhu seemed unaware of Sheng Zhao’s goodwill and almost without hesitation, he stepped up the stairs.

Sheng Zhao hesitated for a moment, wavering between “let him go crazy” and “I brought him here, I should take responsibility.” In the end, he chose the latter.

He hurried to catch up with Xing Yingzhu, who was already standing in front of the closed door of the museum, reaching for the handle.

Sheng Zhao didn’t expect him to really plan to break in so simply. He was surprised, and before he could advise him to think twice, he heard a creak as the door, seemingly effortlessly, swung open inward.

Sheng Zhao: “…”

Contrary to his expectation of a violent breach, Xing Yingzhu calmly withdrew his hand, as if he had just opened his bedroom door, not the high-security gate of a national museum.

Did the security forget to lock the door? Sheng Zhao wondered.

But this speculation seemed even more implausible than “Xing Yingzhu’s bones being displayed in the museum.” So, Sheng Zhao shook his head and dismissed the thought.

In the meantime, Xing Yingzhu had stepped through the door, and Sheng Zhao took a sharp breath, feeling as if the next moment would be filled with earth-shattering alarm sounds, followed by the rapid arrival of the police to arrest them.

He even imagined the headline for the next day’s news — “Two Men Sneak into Jinling Museum of Paleontology for Theft, Apprehended on the Spot Within Ten Minutes.”

He wondered if it would make it to the top ten of the year’s most absurd news stories.

However, the chaotic scene he anticipated didn’t happen. Not only that, but the entire museum seemed to have been shielded in an instant, as if someone had activated an invisibility cloak. There was no sound, not even the rustling of leaves.

Xing Yingzhu glanced at him from inside the door and said, “Are you coming or not?”

Sheng Zhao, acting on reflex, hurried a few steps to catch up with Xing Yingzhu, maintaining his “ten thousand whys” persona and asked, “Why aren’t you afraid to use your occult abilities this time? Aren’t you afraid of being struck by lightning?”

“Is anyone watching the surveillance?” Xing Yingzhu asked.

Sheng Zhao subconsciously glanced at the time on his phone screen and said, “At this hour, probably not.”

“Then it’s fine,” Xing Yingzhu said casually. “If no one sees me, why would I be struck?”

Sheng Zhao: “…”

That makes sense.

“But last time, Xiong ge told me that demons living among humans shouldn’t disturb human life trajectories,” Sheng Zhao said. “You can’t even transform in places where nobody sees.”

“That’s their problem,” Xing Yingzhu said ruthlessly. “But I can.”

Sheng Zhao understood. It seemed that the person in front of him was a lawbreaker, intermittently following the rules, and whether he listened or not depended entirely on his mood.

The exhibition halls in the Museum were not small. Sheng Zhao figured that even if Xing Yingzhu’s skeletal frame was small, it still wouldn’t be insignificant. So, he simply bypassed several smaller halls and headed straight for the dinosaur area and the Rehe Biota area.

Sheng Zhao’s suggestion to visit the museum wasn’t just a casual remark or an attempt to please Xing Yingzhu. Before coming here, he had done some research. He was thinking that if Xing Yingzhu’s remains were truly lost somewhere in the human world, the likelihood of such a large skeleton remaining undiscovered for so many years was extremely low.

So, in other words, if they couldn’t find it in the museum, it meant that Xing Yingzhu’s remains must have fallen into places inaccessible to humans. In that case, the scope of their search would be greatly narrowed down.

Mountains, glaciers, and the ocean—these were the three possible locations.

However, even though Sheng Zhao had prepared himself for the possibility of not finding anything, he still couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed when they came up empty-handed.

“This one too?” Sheng Zhao asked.

Xing Yingzhu shook his head again.

They had already gone through the Rehe Biota area twice, and Sheng Zhao would ask about almost every fossil they passed by. The one in front of them now was the last exhibit in this section, but it still had nothing to do with Xing Yingzhu.

Frowning, Sheng Zhao persisted, “Um… do you think your sensing ability might be weakened by the glass cover?”

It was clear that Xing Yingzhu had lost something, but Sheng Zhao seemed more anxious than him. Xing Yingzhu found it amusing and shook his head again.

Disheartened, Sheng Zhao sighed.

“What’s wrong?” Xing Yingzhu raised an eyebrow, smiling. “Something I’ve been searching for for thousands of years, and you think you can dig it up in a few hours?”

“No, not really,” Sheng Zhao said with a pained expression. “I just thought, what if?”

This little guy who came up with this idea seemed so clueless that Xing Yingzhu couldn’t help but find it amusing. After watching him for a while with lowered eyes, he suddenly and without warning flicked him on the forehead.

Sheng Zhao let out a pained grunt, clutching his forehead with both hands and taking two steps back.

“Not finding it is the norm,” Xing Yingzhu said casually. “Forget about whether we can find it or not, whether it’s even here is another matter. Why are you so concerned about it?”

“I just… I was too complacent, thought I had a good idea,” Sheng Zhao said with a worried look, his confidence waning, feeling the need to apologize before Xing Yingzhu could scold him. “I should have checked it out myself first, shouldn’t have dragged you out here in the middle of the night. It’s so disappointing when expectations are dashed. I am, but you must be even more so.”

Sheng Zhao still seemed unwilling to give up. After a moment of thought, he said, “No, let’s go check out the previous halls. What if it’s fragmented—let’s go, let’s go.”

He tried to grab Xing Yingzhu’s arm, but Xing Yingzhu skillfully dodged and flicked his forehead again.

“Hey—” Sheng Zhao protested, annoyed. “Stop flicking me like that.”

“You weren’t smart to begin with,” Xing Yingzhu said.

Sheng Zhao, a university student, couldn’t let his intelligence be questioned without a retort: “Boss, that’s—”

“What are you getting at?” Xing Yingzhu asked casually. “Whether we find it or not, what’s the rush?”

“It’s you who wants to find it,” Sheng Zhao said, feeling baffled. “Not me.”

“What I want to find has nothing to do with you,” Xing Yingzhu said.

“Heh,” Sheng Zhao thought to himself, Look at that, how clueless he is.

“In other words, whether we find it or not, why are you in such a hurry?” Xing Yingzhu continued. “I’m not as anxious as you are.”

“Right, right, I’m not in a hurry,” Sheng Zhao rolled his eyes, saying impatiently, “Anyway, decades from now, when I’m long gone, you’ll still be youthful and have plenty of time to search. If all else fails, you can wait for the next unlucky guy.”

This remark was quite sarcastic, and even Xing Yingzhu, who didn’t interact much with people, could detect a subtle flavor in it.

Xing Yingzhu smirked, amused by Sheng Zhao’s embarrassment. Suddenly feeling much better, he no longer felt the slightest disappointment from their failed expectations, only a malicious enjoyment of the spectacle.

Sheng Zhao had no idea that Xing Yingzhu had found a new source of entertainment in him. If he knew, he might have been so angry that he’d bite him.

Xing Yingzhu snapped his fingers in front of Sheng Zhao to bring him back to reality, then cheerfully pinched his chin, teasing him like a cat, and said, “First, take care of yourself, Xiao Sheng. I don’t need you to worry about me.”