Yao Jingjing was at the Biological Research Institute of Southern Yunnan University, waiting for the results of a special test.
The theft in Cuan Family Village was ultimately left unresolved. The police station sent people to check the old house and cemetery, but found nothing. No strangers had been seen in the village before or after the incident, and since no actual property was stolen—only an old photo album—the police left after making a brief inquiry and taking notes. If it weren't for the desecration of Old Madam Cuan's grave, which caused widespread panic, it's likely that no case would have even been filed.
When Yao Jingjing arrived at Cuan Family Village, the police had already left. She went to her great-grandmother's grave and saw that it did indeed show signs of being dug up, and it looked like it had been dug open with claws, which was the strangest thing. Because of this, the villagers were afraid, saying that the old woman had crawled out of the grave herself.
Yao Jingjing, of course, didn't believe such a thing. She carefully examined the area around the cemetery, because everyone in the village had come to see it. The footprints here were already very messy, and like the police who had come before, she hadn't been able to identify the grave robbers' footprints. Perhaps the grave robbers hadn't left any footprints at all.
But she didn't leave empty-handed. In the newly dug mound of earth beside the grave, she found a red hair, entangled in the root of a vine on the ground. Who would bow their head by a grave, causing their hair to become entangled in a withered vine?
She returned to the village without making a sound and went through everyone in the village, but found no one who had dyed their hair red.
With no resolution in sight, everyone simply refilled the old woman's grave and went back to their lives as before. Only Mama Yao was heartbroken, sighing all day long, and said to Yao Jingjing:
"Where did your great-grandmother go? How could she have disappeared?"
Yao Jingjing sent her parents back to the city and stayed with them for two days before heading to Spring City. She contacted Shi Dazhuang and asked him to introduce her to someone at the Spring City Public Security Bureau to have the red hair examined. The forensic center said the hair was broken, had no follicle, and therefore DNA could not be extracted. Furthermore, the hair's keratin was severely degraded, indicating it was not recent and was at least several decades old. The forensic center mainly handles criminal cases; to obtain more information about the hair, they recommended further examination at the Biological Research Institute of Southern Yunnan University.
Yao Jingjing didn't know anyone at the Institute of Biology, so she called Professor Mei. The professor was very helpful and, without asking what it was about, introduced her to the president of Southern Yunnan University. The president then introduced her to the director of the Institute of Biology, who in turn introduced her to a young associate professor to handle the hair.
The associate professor didn't know why the school wanted him to stop his project and help a woman analyze a strand of hair, without specifying the direction of the analysis. He seemed reluctant, but not wanting to upset this woman with powerful connections, he got the hair extension for the experiment, only asking Yao Jingjing to wait two days.
Taking advantage of the past two days, Yao Jingjing took the old photos left by the old lady to an art inkjet studio in Spring City for restoration.
The young man at the studio was very responsible. After scanning the photo, he started repairing it bit by bit using Photoshop on the computer, and he even consulted Yao Jingjing for her opinion on the severely damaged areas.
Yao Jingjing said, "Just edit it according to your experience. I haven't seen what the original photo looked like either."
The young man said, "Nothing else is a problem, but I'm worried about people's facial features changing. These photos are too old. Look at this one, you can't even recognize the face."
"They're all the same person, so you can refer to each other for reference."
Yao Jingjing felt most regretful that the photo of her great-grandmother and a man under the big tree was gone. She really wanted to see what the man looked like. When she first saw the photo, he seemed very familiar, but the photo was too blurry, and she couldn't tell if it was the man or the scene that she recognized.
The young man restored a photo of the Old Madam Cuan in her military uniform and asked, "How do you think this restoration turned out?"
Yao Jingjing kept watching and said, "Okay, not bad."
The young man exclaimed, "That woman is very beautiful!"
Yao Jingjing said proudly, "Of course!"
The young man said, "Hey, what a heroine! I didn't recognize her at first; wearing a military uniform, I thought she was a man! These days, you can't find such a spirited and beautiful woman."
Handsome and dashing?
For some reason, Yao Jingjing thought of Bi Shenghua, and then when she looked at the restored photo of her great-grandmother, she felt that her eyebrows and eyes were somewhat similar to Bi Shenghua's.
She remembered the lost photo again, and the image of Bi Shenghua and Qingmu posing for a picture under the big willow tree appeared before her eyes, with a Crow perched on the tree, cawing Guagua.
She shook her head, banishing these strange thoughts from her mind. When she looked at the photo again, although Bi Shenghua's image still inevitably came to mind, she was more likely to think of her mother. After all, her mother inherited her great-grandmother's beauty, Yao Jingjing thought.
After the photos were retouched, they were all printed on Hahnemühle art paper using an Epson printer. The young man said that this kind of inkjet printing could guarantee that the colors wouldn't fade for 150 years. Yao Jingjing didn't know if it was true, she only knew that it wasn't cheap, but no matter how long the photos would last, she felt it was worth it for the skill of the retoucher and the digital copies that were saved.
The research institute's results were in. The previously reluctant associate professor suddenly seemed excited, and before even announcing the results, he asked Yao Jingjing where the hair came from. Of course, Yao Jingjing wouldn't tell the truth, so she casually said that a friend had commissioned it, and she didn't know.
The associate professor asked, "Is your friend an archaeologist? Did he discover anything else?"
Yao Jingjing looked completely bewildered, not understanding why he asked that, so she simply remained silent.
The associate professor seemed to understand immediately, and said "Oh," "I understand, I understand, I won't say anymore." Then he handed Yao Jingjing a file folder and said:
"It's certain this hair isn't from a modern person. Our testing indicates it's three thousand years old or even older. Although the keratin has clearly degraded, and the sample size is too small to extract DNA, SNP testing can still determine its genetic characteristics. This should be a hair from a Europe three thousand years ago, belonging to a purebred red-haired race. This race now makes up less than 2% of the global population, and even then, most are not this purebred anymore. You..."
He paused for a moment, looking somewhat mysterious, "If your friend is willing, we can cooperate."
Yao Jingjing was taken aback and asked, "What kind of cooperation?"
The associate professor said, "If you had discovered it in Europe, you probably wouldn't have needed to come back to China to do the testing. But if it was discovered in China, that would be a huge deal! It could very well overturn some established conclusions about racial distribution and population genetics. You know, universities are very generous with these kinds of groundbreaking research projects; they can secure substantial funding, and there are rewards for successful results—far more than what you're painstakingly working on, with almost no risk..."
Yao Jingjing suddenly found it ridiculous. She had only wanted to investigate the theft of her great-grandmother's tomb, how did it become such a big deal in the academic world? So they thought she was a tomb raider!
She didn't want to explain anything, so she casually replied, "I'll go back and ask my friend," and took the file folder and left.
The whole thing is completely out of the question. Why would there be a hair from a Europe who lived thousands of years ago on my great-grandmother's grave? Where did the old woman's body go? Was it stolen, or was she never even in the grave to begin with?
Unable to figure it out no matter how hard she tried, Yao Jingjing decided to return to Wuzhong first, where there were still a lot of things to do. Moreover, she could ask Professor Mei Yiqiu about the hair when she got back, and she could also discuss some things with Hou Biao. That guy had an almost abnormal intuition for dangerous and strange things, probably something he had developed in the jungle.
She calculated the time and realized that Shi Dazhuang and the Beauty should be heading back soon, so she called Shi Dazhuang to ask if he wanted to come along. Shi Dazhuang replied that something had happened at Kuaziba and he couldn't leave for the time being, telling her to go back first.