Chapter 150: Academic Misconduct
Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations
Editor: Karai
Because of the sudden uproar, neither Lin Xu nor Arnold had lowered their voices while speaking in the living room. The noise woke Yuanxiao, who had been dozing atop the fireplace. The little dragon touched down on all fours, stretched out his body in a lazy arch, and yawned.
Then he looked over at his papa and Uncle Arnold, flapped his wings, and took off in Lin Xu’s direction.
“Ying ying wuuu~” [Papa, hug!]
But Yuanxiao had just woken up and was still groggy. Mid-flight, he smacked into the lampshade of a floor lamp and plopped down onto the sofa. Shaking their head, they clambered up the back of the couch with all four limbs, wide-eyed and pitiful as he looked at his papa’s serious expression.
[Hug! Oh—and dada too!] Yuanxiao had spotted Heinrich on the screen. Looking at the innocent black-and-white baby dragon, Lin Xu exhaled a long breath. He closed his eyes, forcing the tension in his face to ease. He reached out and scooped Yuanxiao into his arms, cradling him like a baby so the little dragon could rest his head on his shoulder. Yuanxiao fluttered his wings, their warmth brushing lightly against the back of Lin Xu’s hand.
Lin Xu turned to Arnold. “Sit down.”
Arnold glanced into Yuanxiao’s bright blue eyes, and the anxiety in his chest eased a little. He followed Lin Xu and sat on the sofa. The floating screen with Heinrich’s image was positioned diagonally in front of Lin Xu. Yuanxiao, ever curious, couldn’t help but reach out with a paw to try and grab the holographic projection of his dada. He came up empty.
After several failed attempts, Yuanxiao drooped his head, looking dejected as he laid his chin on the back of the sofa and let out a long “hmm…”
Lin Xu began opening up news reports across major media outlets, reading them one by one. He also had Arnold reopen the original forum post from Capital Star University for review. The content of the most widely circulated media reports matched the original forum rumors almost word for word.
Numerous ancient Earth scholars, as well as experts in linguistics and archaeology, had jointly submitted a report to the Imperial Committee for Humanities and Social Sciences, accusing Lin Xu of multiple counts of academic misconduct.
The primary allegations included fabricating sources, falsifying data, and conducting artifact forgeries in the lab. Among the charges, there was even an accusation of bribing peer reviewers. All of it pointed squarely at Lin Xu’s research in ancient Earth languages.
The comment section below was flooded with condemnation. Academic misconduct could destroy a scholar’s reputation and career—but such scandals typically circulated only within academic circles and rarely made it into major media.
However, Lin Xu’s unique status—as both a prominent family heir and the spouse of the Imperial Marshal—had thrust him into the center of a public firestorm. His recent live-streamed seminar speech, now widely circulated, had taken his previously low-profile research career and launched it into the spotlight, riding the wave of the ancient Earth revival movement. But the higher one flies, the harder the fall.
Feeling betrayed, internet users were already piling on, bolstered by the credibility of the experts and the academic committee.
[Ha! So this is the so-called Dr. Lin? He was flaunting himself everywhere lately—I thought he was someone impressive. Turns out he’s just another fame-hungry fraud without any real skills.]
[It’s not like he needs the talent—he’s rich and has a powerful husband. Couldn’t he just stay home and enjoy life instead of deceiving people?]
[With that kind of money, I bet he paid his way onto the stage at the seminar the other day…]
In an instant, Lin Xu had fallen from being a celebrated academic to a criminal worthy of public disgrace.
[I wonder if Marshal Chu knows about this.]
[Marshal’s off fighting battles on the front lines, while back home it’s turning into a circus. I’m afraid Lin’s gonna use this time to bribe someone to scrub the news off the net. Then when Marshal comes back, he won’t have a clue—still thinking everything’s peachy at home.]
[Everyone, keep the pressure on! This isn’t over—Lin Xu has to make a public statement!]
[I say we investigate everything Lin Xu has ever published.]
The so-called “clueless and pitiful Marshal Chu,” whom netizens pitied as if he were a deceived Snowy Rabbit, was in fact sitting with Lin Xu, reviewing the news with cold, sharp eyes. He didn’t believe Lin Xu had done any of the things he was accused of—fabricating sources, falsifying data, or anything of the sort.
More accurately, Lin Xu had no reason to do such things. Most ancient Earth languages were obscure and phonetically awkward, difficult to decipher. It wasn’t unheard of for people to take advantage of that, making things up and slipping them through undetected.
But Lin Xu had truly come from ancient Earth, from three thousand years in the past. These languages weren’t just research subjects to him—they were his native tongue, far more familiar to him than the Imperial Standard. What could he possibly fabricate?
Heinrich, who spent most of his time drifting through the stars, wasn’t familiar with academic politics. Lin Xu, on the other hand, had been deeply embedded in the scholarly world for years and understood it far better.
He considered himself somewhat of an outsider due to his unwillingness to participate in academic social functions and his typically distant interpersonal demeanor, but he didn’t believe he had provoked any grudges strong enough to warrant this level of attack.
What puzzled him further was that the joint accusation included scholars from entirely different fields—people he had no connection to, whose work didn’t intersect with his in the slightest.
If someone claimed this wasn’t organized, Lin Xu wouldn’t believe it for a second. The attackers had been smart in their choice of accusation—fabricated citations and data manipulation.
In terms of academic misconduct, the most vicious and public-inciting accusation would have been plagiarism. But Lin Xu’s work and theories were highly original, and there was no foothold for them to exploit in that direction.
Once things reached the level of complex theoretical frameworks and data analysis, the general public’s blind trust in authority and majority opinion kicked in. Even though the scholars had merely submitted their accusations, StarNet was already treating it as if the evidence were airtight—as though Lin Xu would lose his job and be hauled off to prison any moment now.
Even so, Lin Xu remained relatively calm despite being drenched in metaphorical filth. He didn’t care much about online public opinion. Heinrich and Arnold, on the other hand, seemed even more anxious than he was.
But Heinrich was all the way out in the Dionysus Border Region, and while Arnold held the rank of colonel, his past work had mostly focused on military and political matters. He had little experience with academic disputes or public opinion management.
Lin Xu told them both to stay calm. Then he got on a call with Metz and asked him to step in—do something to keep the public discourse from spiraling completely out of control. Zhou Pingbo also reached out, asking if Lin Xu needed help. Lin Xu thought it over but ultimately decided not to involve him.
The Imperial Academic Committee for the Humanities and Social Sciences operated independently from the Committee for the Natural Sciences. Zhou Pingbo held significant sway in the latter, but not necessarily in the former.
And this was, at its core, an academic scandal. Having someone as high-profile and powerful as Professor Zhou speak out on his behalf could easily backfire in the court of public opinion. It was better to keep him out of it.
In the days that followed, Lin Xu logged into the academic committee’s website and accessed the publicly available joint complaint. It came with a massive trove of attached data files.
The complaint page had racked up over a hundred million views, but the number of downloads on the attachments barely passed 300,000. Most of the people flooding in from the news headlines simply glanced at the surface documents. Very few had the interest—or the ability—to dig into the actual details of the accusations.
Curator Zhao also called to check on Lin Xu’s situation. After all, he was technically Lin Xu’s direct supervisor—and his inbox had been flooded with complaints, many of them laced with ugly insults.
Some colleagues had started urging him to resolve the matter quickly. A few even suggested he speak with Lin Xu about stepping down. The pressure he was under was immense.
“Lin Xu, you should continue your leave for the time being,” Curator Zhao said. “Given the current situation… it’s not appropriate for you to appear at the museum. I’m worried about radicals.”
Lin Xu agreed without emotion. On the other end of the call, Curator Zhao could only hear the sound of rain and the crackling of burning firewood. He paused for a moment before speaking again. “No outsiders know your address. You’re safe at home… Lin Xu, what exactly is going on?”
Curator Zhao had been the one to personally interview, hire, and promote Lin Xu over the years. They weren’t related in any way, nor had he ever received a single star coin of bribe money from Lin Xu, despite what people on StarNet were saying. In fact, with Lin Xu’s cold and aloof temperament, Zhao had valued them solely for their exceptional work and academic ability.
He wasn’t like those baseless conspiracy theorists online, who ran their mouths just for fun. He had solid academic credentials himself and had read most of Lin Xu’s published papers—he’d even seen their raw experimental data. Lin Xu had always maintained an unusually rigorous approach to research, rarely making even the smallest of errors. His only flaw at work was a tendency to take too much time off.
“This whole thing’s blown way out of proportion,” Curator Zhao muttered. “It’s not like you plagiarized or ghostwrote anything. Even if there were some errors in the data or an incomplete theory, publishing a follow-up correction should’ve been enough. What’s with all this talk of ‘punishment’ and ‘exile’…”
Lin Xu interrupted. “Curator Zhao, the problem isn’t with my paper.”
Zhao paused, then understood the implication in his words. If the problem wasn’t academic, then it had to be political—or the result of factional infighting in academia. And Lin Xu’s current status really was… sensitive.
“Alright,” Zhao sighed. “If you’re confident you can handle this, I won’t ask further. Your position at the museum will still be here. Just finish dealing with this mess and come back to work soon.”
Lin Xu already knew someone was targeting him. The emperor. It could only be the emperor. He had clearly noticed Lin Xu for some time now, and the sudden cancellation of his seminar speech—followed by the explosion of public interest—was almost certainly not a coincidence.
Ancient Earth studies was an obscure field. Only by first thrusting Lin Xu into the spotlight and surrounding him with endless accolades—by crafting a “new god”—could the academic accusations, normally limited to scholarly circles, gain enough traction to ignite social outrage and drag that god into the abyss of disgrace.
The emperor knew he couldn’t simply arrange a “random” death for Lin Xu. That would only make him take the truth to the grave. But if he could equate Lin Xu’s image with that of a liar and fraud, then even if they tried to reveal the truth about ancient Earth, no one would believe a word they said.
New accusations continued to pour in. The people targeting Lin Xu worked like tireless machines, uploading wave after wave of claims and attachments. Public opinion online didn’t die down—it intensified. Malicious speculation about Lin Xu grew more extravagant by the hour.
[I heard Lin Xu came from the frontier. I’m not trying to discriminate, but if you look at Imperial Exam records, only one person from the frontier’s been accepted into Capital Star University in the past fifty years—and it’s him. That’s… suspicious.]
[If you think his scores were faked, just say it. It’s not like they can shut you up.]
[Probably were. Who knows what else they faked. Why would Marshal Chu ever take an interest in someone like that?]
[Looks like fraud to me.]
[Just saying, Capital Star U is the top school, but also full of power struggles. Lin Xu came from nothing—no money, no background. You expect me to believe they made it this far without outside help?]
[Marianna Perser, obviously. She was his advisor. I looked into it. She signed off on his accelerated program application, and then stayed his mentor the whole way through. And she’s the heir to the Perseus Group. She’s rich. Covering for her favorite student wouldn’t be hard.]
[Getting into Capital Star is already nearly impossible. Inside, it’s just more academic politics. What hope do the rest of us have?]
[If she took on a student like that, doesn’t that reflect badly on Perser’s own academic standards? She studies literature, the easiest field to BS your way through.]
Lin Xu shut the page, not wanting to read any more of these attacks on Marianna. They took screenshots and sent them to Mandan, asking him to send cease-and-desist letters to the posters for slandering Ms. Perser.
Then, they opened the Academic Committee’s homepage, found the “Report and Response” tab, and clicked into it. After entering his credentials, he submitted a formal request for a public academic hearing.
He could tolerate the smear campaign against themselves—but they wouldn’t let it burn Marianna too.
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