vncnus Chapter 52 The Detective's Anti-Theft Lecture
Chapter 52 The Detective's Anti-Theft Lecture
By the time the police resurfaced the main exhibition hall, which was flashing warning lights, the white-haired assassin dressed as a ninja had already escaped.
The scene was littered with traces of Pokémon using slashing moves. The leader had dismantled the booth that Detective Hugo and Deputy Curator Kuri had painstakingly set up, but left without taking anything with him.
The police officers stared blankly at the shattered pieces of sheet metal and the remains of some kind of electronic device resembling a recording device. They had no idea whether tonight's mission had been a success or a failure.
"Hugo, is this display case base the safe you and Muli prepared to store the Founding Stone? Did the thugs retreat because they obtained the treasure?"
The aloe curator followed the detective through the encirclement of many people and arrived at the front of the wreckage.
"How could that be? The real Founding Stone is still in this museum." The detective spread his arms and looked around at the crowd, beginning his detective speech in the dead of night surrounded by thousands.
"Where exactly is that stone?" asked the detective's assistant, Azure, cooperatively. "We still need the prisoners to lead the way to retrieve the artifacts, so now is not the time to waste."
“Don’t worry about that.” Officer Jenny from Qibao City, who seemed to appear out of nowhere, pushed past her colleagues and called out to the detective, “Fortunately, the demonstrators outside have dispersed, and the police have already diverted resources to recover the artifacts. More than what’s happening outside, I’m curious about where Hugo hid the Founding Stone.”
There are three main ways to perfectly hide an item.
Hugo was not at all surprised by the developments before him, and waved his fingers as if he were about to give a concluding speech.
"One is to win by surprise. The most dangerous place is the safest place. Hide things in the place that others are most likely to think of. This way, they will easily think that they have already searched that place and will miss the inspection. There is another way to use this strategy. You can openly give the other party what they want to hide, and then try your best to imply that it is a fake, and then make the enemy obediently return the treasure."
"You mean the one that was stolen this morning was the real Founding Stone?" Officer Jenny asked, her eyes wide with confusion.
"Of course not, the Plasma Cluster isn't that easy to fool." Hugo shook his head regretfully, then raised his second finger—
"The second best way to hide things is to hide them in the forest. The best place to hide a branch is a forest, the best place to hide a dagger is a battlefield, and the best place to hide a murder is a series of serial murders."
"I'll remember your words next time there's a serial murder case." Seeing that Hugo wouldn't reveal the truth immediately, the policewoman simply gave a weak reply this time.
"From this perspective, the best way to hide the founding stone is to put it in a pile of identical imitation stones and then randomly shuffle their positions, so that no one will know which one is the real stone."
Aloe made an X with her arms and explained to Officer Jenny, "The Qibao Museum would never do that. We firmly oppose the production of counterfeits. The Founding Stone that was previously made to prevent theft also had text written on it to avoid confusion with the genuine article."
Hugo ignored the curator's protest and continued to explain: "Similarly, placing treasures among a pile of treasures is a similar hiding method based on a similar logic. An excessive quantity will hide the value of an individual, which is the core of the theory of hiding a tree in the forest."
"But... Group Plasma stole all the artifacts. They cut down the entire forest, not just the trees."
It was Azure who offered the sharpest criticism. While grooming Eevee's fluffy tail, she reviewed the detective's speech. Judging from her ability to immediately offer such incisive commentary, she must have learned a great deal.
The detective did not directly answer Azure's question, but continued his lecture on burglary prevention, because he knew that the answers to all the questions lay in the following narrative.
"The third principle is to take the initiative. As the saying goes, it's not the theft itself that's scary, but the thief's eye on it. When something you want to hide is targeted by a specific person or group of people, we should not use a passive defensive attitude to protect what we want to hide, but should take the initiative to find ways to deal with those people with ill intentions."
Azure chimed in, "Just like today, when we let the plasma cluster walk right into our trap."
"That's right. In fact, my anti-theft design for Qibao Museum is based on the above three principles, so that the most dangerous things can be avoided under any circumstances."
“What do you mean?” Officer Jenny asked.
“It’s past midnight now, so it must have been yesterday morning. The Plasma Group inhumanely looted most of the museum’s collection. They thought they had stolen the Founding Stone and completely emptied the museum, so they left without a second thought. But they didn’t expect that when designing the museum’s security system, I replaced the most important Dark Stone with a fake.” Hugo pointed to himself.
"If I, as a detective, hadn't made it to the museum in time, this design would have served as a safety net. Even if Team Plasma had taken all the artifacts, they would never have found their most important objective—the legendary stone that could awaken the mythical creatures of the Unova region—and it would have been troublesome if they had actually succeeded in doing so."
“But this is just a myth, isn’t it?” Museum Director Aloe frowned in dissatisfaction. “You’re essentially using our entire collection as a shield for the founding stone of our nation. I simply cannot agree with this approach.”
"Fortunately, your husband, Mr. Muli, doesn't think so. Having studied the history of the founding of the United States, he believes that the Dark Stone is of paramount importance. The attacks from the Plasma Group yesterday, both day and night, have also proven that the Founding Stone is indeed of unparalleled value to that ambitious religious group."
"However, after the counterfeit project succeeded, you discovered that Group Plasma was still entrenched in Shippo City, and the crisis at the museum was still not resolved. So you decided to take the initiative according to principle three, release information that the real artifact was in the museum, and lure the bandits who coveted the Dark Stone into your trap, thereby capturing them," Azure succinctly summarized.
“Exactly!” the detective snapped his fingers.
"And while we're at it, we'll recover the cultural relics." Officer Jenny emphasized the word "while we're at it," winking at Aloe.
Before Aloe got angry, Hugo quickly stopped these people from sowing discord: "But in fact, only this method can minimize the museum's losses. If it were any other unprepared museum, whether it was the stones or all the other collections, they would have been looted on that scale long ago."
At this point, Hugo's plan was crystal clear, but Azure still didn't understand the last part, so she directly asked the detective, "But since you were able to use the genuine article to attract the plasma cluster, why were you able to confidently guarantee that the stone hadn't been stolen and was still in the museum? How exactly did you do that? In other words, where exactly did you hide the Founding Stone?"
The detective, with a "I've been waiting for you to ask this" look, snapped his fingers again: "Precisely to deal with this situation, Deputy Curator Muli and I prepared a backup plan."
With his arms outstretched, Hugo showed everyone only a pile of shards on the ground.
Aloe was puzzled: "I know this display case was meant to house a fake Founding Stone, and you promised that visitors would see the legendary Founding Stone in some way. But it's been demolished now, and there's nothing inside."
“This is exactly what it means to catch someone off guard,” Hugo said with a mysterious smile as he walked to the wall that controlled the museum’s lighting effects.
In front of the detective, a row of light switches of varying sizes were arranged side by side, each switch controlling the lighting effect in a certain part of the exhibition hall.
"At first glance, each switch only controls the state of one light," Hugo said as he pressed a button.
The lights in the exhibition hall gradually came on. Some had been broken back by the plasma clusters, flickered a few times and then went out, while others simply didn't light up. But most of the lights were turned on normally, just like usual.
"My design with Mr. Muli is that when the lighting effects are turned on as they would be in the 'Stone of the Nation' exhibition, a mechanism will be triggered..."
Hugo pressed the switch for the last light according to his memory. At this moment, the main light went out, and the firefly-like side lights highlighted the magnificent creation mural on the ceiling of the exhibition hall. The radiant creator god and the three dragon gods in black, white and gray complemented each other. Even though it was just a replica of the famous painting, it was still breathtaking. The light surrounding the ceiling mural was a lighting effect specially designed for the Stone of Founding exhibition.
"That...that is!" The sharp-eyed Azure pointed to the area above the display case where the Founding Stone was originally located. Above the blank area of the mural and the empty ceiling, a blurry shadow appeared.
"This is the Founding Stone. Could it be that the real stone is here?" Curator Aloe looked enlightened and looked back at the floor where the display case had been.
Amidst the chaos, there was a small hole that was emitting light.
A small hole is projecting an image upwards.
"What a pity, the image would have been much clearer if refracted through the curved mirror hidden in the display case." Hugo sighed somewhat nitpickingly, but then rallied his spirits and continued to loudly introduce the image to everyone—
"Dear visitors, please look, the place where the fake Stone of the Founding of the Nation was originally placed is now shrouded in a strange phantom. That phantom is the image projected by the real Dark Stone after being refracted through a mirror. If you are fortunate enough to see this collection during the day, what you will see will not be a pure fake or a genuine item, but a collection of shadows that is a mixture of truth and falsehood, and is both real and illusory."
The police officers and dojo trainers stared blankly at the blurry image on the ceiling, and given the atmosphere, it actually looked quite convincing.
The detective's voice continued to echo in the hall: "This is also a great compromise made by Qibao Museum between the safety of cultural relics and the rights of visitors. It combines the dreamlike ideal with the hard reality. Even if Czechrom and Reshiram appeared here at the same time, they would admire the ingenuity and brilliance of this hiding trick."
Hugo bowed deeply to the crowd like a magician finishing a performance.