Chapter 2 Chapter 1 Entry

The surroundings were engulfed in darkness, and I ran around in panic, with several bursts of biting cold wind blowing on my face, even so, I was still sweating profusely, and my nervousness and fear were beyond words. Suddenly, not far away, a pinch of faint light illuminated my heart like a morning star in the darkness. I felt as if I had grasped a life-saving straw, and ran towards the light with all my might.As it got closer, my joy gradually faded away. When I slowly approached the bright light, it had completely turned into growing fear. This?What is an eye?But I saw a huge erect human eye-like thing in the darkness, staring straight at me. Resentment, sarcasm, and hatred seemed to be the contents of this eye. The light just came from this weird eye. issued in human eyes.I tried my best to step back and try to escape, but my legs didn't listen to me, and I was sucked towards the eye forcefully, no matter how hard I struggled, it was useless.I collapsed on the ground, screaming for help in a frenzy, with my hands fluttering around... "Hey! Yoshiko, what are you doing? Wake up!" He was holding Er Xia's arm tightly, and he was shaking my body non-stop: "Why, you still have nightmares in broad daylight? Let go, why are you still holding me?"

I just woke up, reached out my hand to wipe the sweat off my face, and made a gesture of drinking water towards Er Xia, Er Xia took a glass of water and handed it to me, I took it and drank it all in one breath. It was a midsummer afternoon in an antique shop in Beijing’s Panjiayuan Antique Trading Market. The electric fan was blowing hot air on people’s bodies. It felt like a sauna. There were very few customers, these two were me and Er Xia. The weird experience a year ago is still vivid in our minds, and that weird eye always sneaks into my dreams regardless of the time of day.Of course, everything has a source. Ordinary people will naturally not have such a bizarre experience like mine. It is all because the occupation I have been engaged in is not ordinary, at least in my opinion. I am a grave robber!

My two long-term partners and I successfully held the most mysterious local fight in our hometown, the tomb of Liu Wushang, the cave king of the Western Han Dynasty.The nightmarish experience was exchanged for a valuable possession, and there was also a strange mystery that made people unable to understand. If I had to make a judgment on my career from praise and criticism, I probably couldn't make a decision, because this profession itself is not glorious, but no one wants to demean themselves.But regardless of praise or criticism, one thing is for sure, at least I have experienced strange events that no one else has experienced, which is considered a kind of glory.Materialism tells us that there are no ghosts in the world. Although I also believe it, I have reservations.Because even if there are no ghosts in the world, there are always some unexplainable things that are quietly hidden in the ground. If it is not for the existence of us, they will always be silent out of people's sight.

I also believe that everyone in the world has occupational exhaustion, especially people like us who are engaged in shady occupations. Since ancient times, horse thieves can be recruited and eaten by the emperor, while gangsters holding machetes on the modern street may turn into a man in a few years. I met the owner of a sauna bath center.As the situation requires, we naturally cannot avoid being arty. After all, it is by no means a long-term solution to take the risk of squatting in a brothel and stealing things from the dead all day long. Familiarity is worse than life. Even though we are halfway monks, we still have some experience in that area. When a friend’s family’s shop in the Panjiayuan Antique Market on the South Third Ring Road of Beijing was about to be sold, I sold it without hesitation. It serves as the beginning of a new life, trying to escape the nightmare that should not belong to me.

There are roughly three types of business models here. One is street stalls, which are the kind of antique stalls lined up in the aisles. Customers will see them when they pass by. At this time, they have to shout hello and bargain.But I don’t think we can do this. The main reason is that we are too thin-skinned. We can’t save face by setting up street stalls and talking about prices with others, and squatting on the ground to watch people have to look up.The other is a high-end store with gorgeous decoration. Just from the appearance, you can tell that it is for high-end customers, so ordinary customers will directly bypass it when they see this style. This kind of store can really be called a three-year old Opening and opening for three years, but the cost is extremely high, not only the rent is horribly high, the management fee, labor cost, and decoration cost are also ridiculously high, and you have to be mentally prepared not to open for half a year. You have no foundation and background. Sorry.On the balance, we chose a compromise, which is the kind of open shop, just like the counter in the mall, but it is much larger than the counter, and there is also a place to invite customers to sit and drink tea and talk about things. Our This shop is divided into inside and outside. There are several antique shelves displaying all kinds of antiques. In fact, most of them are worthless, but they are just good-looking. Experts can tell at a glance. The real good things are not so open to the public. put out.

The summer in Beijing is more difficult than in our hometown. In my hometown, there is a huge natural swimming pool - Guanyue Lake, but here I spend the whole day in the car exhaust and sauna-like hot air, the only way to relieve the heat. The way is to turn the air conditioner to the highest level and drink water desperately. "Huanzi! It's been a few days since I opened, so I'm afraid I can't stand it!" Er Xia said to me while frantically shaking his fan, "Look at that girl next door, she doesn't know What kind of magic weapon did you get, the business is very good all day long, and our brother's limelight is completely covered by her!"

Hearing what he said, I turned around and looked at the adjacent shop, only to see that the girl next door was drinking tea and chatting with two customers wearing gold chains, laughing in harmony from time to time, forming a pattern with the desertedness on our side. Great contrast. The girl next door is a girl from the antique shop next door to us. She is very young, and you can’t tell she is the boss at first glance. Because I don’t know her name, I call her the girl next door. She looks very beautiful and has a sweet voice. , although the dress is sexy and fashionable, but the temperament is excellent, without any pretentiousness.

But we scoffed at this at the beginning, cursing in our hearts that attracting customers in this way is better than being a bitch, why come here to mess with these things?But since she is a colleague and a competitor who is close in front of us and sees her every day, we also started to pay attention to her. Gradually, we discovered that the girl next door's knowledge of antiques is really jaw-dropping. I think no matter how good the tongue is, the profession of our thing is the first. We suffered from this aspect. Last time Unable to resist the instigation of others, I spent tens of thousands of yuan to buy a so-called Tang Sancai, but I brought it back and let the experts check it out: it is a fake.We were so angry that we scolded our brains for fever. Can Tang Sancai be obtained for tens of thousands of dollars?Up to now, that thing is still placed in the corner of our shop, and it has become a vase for vases. Every time I see it, I remind myself that I must improve my professional level.

Since then, I have worked hard to practice my skills in antiques, and I have read the stolen book countless times, but this book is all about inversions, and I have learned a lot about inversions Few, but there is still no place for heroes to show their talents. Antique appraisal is still insufficient. It has basically been losing money since its opening, but we are quite open-minded, thinking that we have seen such a large treasure with our own eyes. Instead of passing by, it's nothing to lose such a small amount of money now, so I found my psychological balance for myself, and I felt much happier.

Just thinking like this, when I turned around, I suddenly saw a short figure standing in front of our shop door, looking in with his head outstretched. I saw that he was in his thirties, dressed in rustic clothes, with a white shirt on his upper body and black trousers on his lower body. A gray cloth bag that is completely out of tune with the atmosphere of the times, seems to want to come in but seems a little hesitant. As soon as I saw it, I knew that this person must be from the countryside and had something to sell. I often see people like this in Panjiayuan every day. Some people just accidentally dug out a broken bowl at home and brought it here. Asking one after another, what's more, a few people who can talk about it directly say that his is something used by the Jade Emperor, which makes people laugh.

After hesitating, my buddy has already greeted me, and asked politely according to my shop rules: "Hello! Are you here to see something or have something to sell?" "Ah? Oh! There's something for sale!" The man wiped his forehead, patted the cloth bag on his body and said happily, "You guys take it?" Without waiting for the guy to answer, I said directly: "Come in, take it away and have a look first, if it's good, we will accept it!" While talking, I got up and motioned for him to come in and sit down. It's okay to be idle now, so why don't you take a look at this thing and just take a look at it? When you give yourself a chance to appraise the artifact, check whether you have made any progress recently. The man walked in happily, sat down with us, the man poured him a glass of water, he drank it, then took off the cloth bag on his body, carefully took out a bronze vessel from it, and handed it gently over to me. "Look, brother, how much do you charge for this?" the man asked softly.This man’s Mandarin is not standard. He must have never traveled far. Hearing his accent, he feels like he is from Yunnan. There is a tea shop in our market that is opened by Yunnan people. I buy Pu’er tea from there every time. When entertaining customers, I feel that the person in front of me speaks like them. My eyes immediately focused on this bronze ware. Just looking at the appearance, I can't tell the name at a glance with my level. I saw a big snake with its mouth open and its core hovering above a bronze column, lifelike. Extremely fierce, some weird characters are distributed around the square base at the lower end of the cylinder. "This is (is it) a good thing? How much is it worth?" The man seemed a little impatient, and kept urging. In our business, like any business, it is largely a psychological tactic. The more anxious you are, the more you expose your psychological bottom line, and you may end up being taken advantage of by others. Right now, this person He was very anxious, obviously because he wanted to get rid of the things in his hands earlier. I believe our place is by no means the first one he went to. I looked at him, and asked him softly: "Brother, you have a mediocre shape. If you want to know the price, you have to tell me how you got it!" The purpose is to confirm whether this thing is poured out of the bucket, and the second is to see if we can judge its dynasty history based on this, so as to judge whether it is actually worthless. Anyway, I don’t see anything now. Come on. "I still want to ask this? Anyway, let me tell you, it's fine if I didn't steal this!" "This is very important. We don't dare to accept things that can't tell the specific origin. If something goes wrong, we will be in trouble!" Er Xia handed him a lotus king from the side, and ordered him while pointing it out. he said. The man lit the cigarette on the fire of the second shrimp, took a deep breath and praised: "Your cigarettes are still delicious, and the cigarettes in the valley, hehe, it's annoying to smoke!" Said, "I picked this up, this is it!" As soon as I saw this guy still refused to recruit, it seemed that it would be impossible not to provoke him, so I got up and said to him: "Brother, if you don't say anything else, we're sorry, we dare not accept your things!" After speaking, I was ready Turn around and walk away. "Hey! Brother! What kind of (what) is this? Listen to me!" The man was a little anxious, and stretched out his hand to signal me to sit down, "You still don't believe me, I really picked it up, this... ...I picked it up from the belly of the snake!"