Zhou Xuan was also smiling, but he didn't say anything. He found Li Qing's leisurely expression quite amusing. Indeed, she was watching the swindler perform in front of her, yet she didn't realize that she had been tricked. At this moment, the roles were reversed. The swindler was performing, while the fool who thought she had been fooled was just watching her play the clown.
Li Qing didn't think too much of Zhou Xuan, because the only one who had been making decisions and seemed to be quite capable was **, and it seemed that ** was the one who made the decisions and negotiated prices, so he was obviously the boss.
The van stopped on the side of the road to the left of the China Merchants Bank. Li Qing smiled and opened the door. After Zhou Xuan and his sister got out, she said, "I'll be in the van. Half an hour should be enough, right?"
He waved his hand hastily and said, "No need, no need, it'll only take ten minutes at most!"
Zhou Xuan looked at Li Qing, smiled, and suddenly asked, "Miss Li, please give my regards to Mr. Fang Zhiguo!"
Li Qing froze, then her face turned deathly pale. But she quickly forced a smile, suppressing her shock, and said, "What did you say? Heh, I don't understand!"
Zhou Xuan waved his hand, turned around and walked leisurely towards the bank with **, then patted him on the shoulder and said, "Boss, let's go get something to eat first!"
Startled, he turned to look at Li Qing's car and said, "Aren't we supposed to be withdrawing money for this deal? Why are we going to eat now?"
Zhou Xuan extended his icy aura. The distance between where they were standing and Li Qing's vehicle was only twelve or thirteen meters, and the icy aura easily reached them.
Inside the car, Li Qing was angrily muttering, "Damn it, how did they figure it out? By the way, what's Zhiguo up to? Wasn't it supposed to be that Zhang guy? How come there's another person? Look at the situation just now, wasn't it that unfamiliar young man who appeared?"
The driver in front also found it strange: "Yeah, judging from his young age, he shouldn't have such a good eye. We've fooled countless experts with this kind of stuff. How could someone his age know anything about it? Besides, it hasn't been tested with any instruments. Even if we tested it with instruments, this stuff would be a genuine early Ming Dynasty official kiln piece. I guess," he paused for a moment and then said, "I guess he probably didn't realize the goods were fake, but rather noticed some other flaw. Look at the expressions on their faces when they boarded the truck—they were definitely two fat sheep!"
Zhou Xuan chuckled and withdrew the icy aura. This Li Qing was indeed connected to Fang Zhiguo. It seemed he would have to be much more careful in the future. Scams and traps were truly everywhere, impossible to guard against.
This is all my fault. When I first tested Li Qing's jade pendant, I thought it was genuine. I figured she was probably trying to sell it to tide her over, and there might be other valuables involved. She was actually more vigilant than me then, and I was on guard. It's all my fault for dragging her into this mess, so I can't really blame her. Besides, those items were definitely of exceptional quality. It's understandable that I was fooled. Luckily, my icy aura saved me from this predicament!
"Boss, did you hear what I just said to Li Qing?" Zhou Xuan asked with a smile.
"What did you say to her?" He thought for a moment before replying, "Oh right," he said, "you said you'd give my regards to Fang Zhiguo, how come..."
After a moment of stunned silence, he stood there as if he had been slapped in the face. It took him a while to look up and see that the van had vandalized.
After a moment of stunned silence, she punched Zhou Xuan, angrily demanding, "You knew it was a scam? Why didn't you tell me?"
Zhou Xuan laughed, "What could I have said in the car? Besides, if I had said it, and the driver had floored the gas and taken us both to their place, wouldn't we have been helpless and at their mercy?" **He paused for a moment, scratched his head, and asked, puzzled, "I just don't understand, that thing wasn't fake. How did you tell something was wrong?"
Volume One: The Lotus Buds Just Begin to Emerge, Chapter 124: Enemies Meet
"The next two pieces of blue and white porcelain... I happened to see something similar before," Zhou Xuan said awkwardly. "Boss, it's not that I have a better eye than you, it's just that I happened to see that kind of technique. It uses an old, discarded clay body as the base, then applies an early Ming dynasty glaze—of course, it doesn't necessarily have to be an early Ming glaze—and then fires it in a kiln. If you use high-tech equipment to test it, the result will be genuine. This is specifically designed to deal with experienced collectors. But someone who can pull off this technique is definitely not an outsider, so I'm a little suspicious that they know our background. Boss, think about it, how can a deal worth millions be settled by just pulling up a stranger on the street?"
Once you understand, you'll realize that there are flaws everywhere, but being caught up in the situation and blinded by greed, you become like someone who is blinded by their own involvement.
"***, this girl looks so innocent, how can she act so convincingly?" he muttered under his breath.
"Also, boss, our whereabouts in Yangzhou have been exposed!"
Zhou An said calmly.
He immediately recalled Zhou Xuan's teasing remark to Li Qing, and judging from Li Qing's expression, it was highly likely related to Fang Zhiguo. Putting it all together, only someone who knew their background would do such a thing. Gritting his teeth, he angrily said, "That bastard Fang Zhiguo! But..."
I was very puzzled. "I didn't mention our arrival to Fang Zhiguo at all. How did he know? Now that I think about it, it seems like the woman knew we were coming and followed us all the way, then looked for an opportunity to get us into her car. It's strange!"
Zhou Xuan laughed and said, "Boss, you're usually so shrewd, how come you're so confused now? You've been in Beijing for years, do you know anyone? It wouldn't be difficult to just spend a few bucks to hire someone to keep watch until we board the plane, would it?"
With a cry of "Ouch!", he couldn't help but slap his head, saying resentfully, "Little brother, I thought I was more experienced than you, but it turns out you saved me both times. It seems I really underestimated you!"
Zhou Xuan shook his head, smiled, and said, "Boss, don't underestimate yourself. Actually, your experience and skills are much better than mine. I just happened to know this by chance. If it were any other factor, I wouldn't know. I should say we were lucky, haha!"
"Yes, yes, we're lucky!" Zhou Xuan's words pleased them, and as long as they weren't completely humiliated by him, they felt proud. "Luckily you came along this time. It seems we're just lucky; we didn't fall for the tricks we were supposed to. Hehe, and we certainly didn't fall for the tricks we shouldn't!"
After saying that, he felt there was a contradiction in his words and couldn't help but chuckle awkwardly a few times.
"Should we still go to Fang Zhiguo's place?" he asked again. Although he had a bit of a headache, he had come to Yangzhou to get a few things that would make a good impression. Should he just go back empty-handed?
"Go, why wouldn't we go?" Zhou Xuan chuckled. "Although he wants to lure us in, he wouldn't dare to openly rob us, would he? Hehe, as long as we keep our eyes open and don't fall into his trap, we might actually find some good stuff in Yangzhou!"
He nodded, "Alright. Let's go tomorrow morning!" Then he sighed. He cursed, "That bastard Fang Zhiguo, years of friendship eaten up by a dog!"
"never mind.
Zhou Xuan patted him on the shoulder again and said, "Boss, only true brothers have brotherhood. What kind of brother is Fang Zhiguo? He's just a scumbag with whom you only have fair-weather friends!"
With that one change of scenery, their desire to philander vanished. After having dinner with Zhou Xuan, they obediently returned to the hotel. The next morning, they called Fang Zhiguo, who immediately said he would send someone to pick them up from the hotel.
After waiting for about ten minutes at the square outside the Yangzhou Hotel, Fang Zhiguo finally arrived in person.
He drove a large Mercedes-Benz. Fang Zhiguo was slightly overweight, with a beer belly, but he wasn't very old, only in his thirties, and had a smiling expression. Zhou Xuan didn't like this guy, putting aside what happened with Li Qing yesterday. Just because of his appearance, Zhou Xuan disliked him.
Fang Zhiguo's driver got out of the car and opened the door, waiting for him. Fang Zhiguo shook hands warmly with him, smiling broadly, and said, "Brother, you really don't treat me like a friend! You didn't even tell me beforehand, and now you're doing this surprise visit!"
Judging from his current state, if Zhou Xuan and ** didn't both know the truth, they would definitely be fooled by him.
On the surface, she smiled and exchanged pleasantries with him, but inwardly she was cursing. ***. Quite the actress. She's on par with that Li Qing. It's a real shame she's not an actress!
Fang Zhiguo knew **'s background. He estimated that ** had accumulated several million yuan in wealth over the years. Yesterday's scheme failed to get any money from **, so naturally, things wouldn't go so smoothly today. However, he still thought he had put on a good show; that Mercedes-Benz should be enough to make ** envious and drool.
Seeing Fang Zhiguo's behavior, he realized Fang was just putting on airs. He scoffed inwardly, "Damn it, what a big shot! My car is also a luxury car worth a million or so, though I didn't dare say that before. But now my net worth is definitely no less than Fang Zhiguo's—twenty or thirty million worth of shares. Fang Zhiguo might not even be better off than me."
Once in the car, Fang Zhiguo sat in the front, letting ** and Zhou Xuan sit in the back. After they started driving, he turned around and said with a smile, "Brother, I heard you opened a shop. How's it doing? Is it doing alright?"
Knowing that he should keep his abilities hidden at this time, he said calmly, "Is my ability to compete with yours, Lao Fang? I only have a few hundred thousand yuan to spare, just trying to see if I can find a few good quality and cheap items from you to make a good impression."
Fang Zhiguo's antique shop is located on a dedicated antique street in Yangzhou New District, which is almost entirely lined with antique shops. There are also several well-known chain pawnshops.
Fang Zhiguo's shop was decent-sized. Zhou Xuan immediately probed the shop with his ice-cold energy upon entering, finding a few genuine items, but none particularly valuable antiques. He estimated the best pieces were a few porcelain items on the right, but even those wouldn't be worth more than 100,000 yuan. Most of the others weren't fake, just not very valuable, worth only a few hundred or a thousand yuan. Of course, Zhou Xuan now understood that in the antique business, there were ways to sell expensive items and ways to sell cheap ones. Antique shops naturally hoped to make big deals, as larger deals meant larger profits. But as anyone in business knows, big deals are rare, not something you can force. After all, truly valuable antiques are scarce, and there are national regulations governing their value. National treasures and cultural relics cannot be privately traded, much less auctioned off and lost overseas.
In the antique business, the most profitable and numerous items are actually the smaller ones. Even though you might only make a few tens or hundreds of dollars per piece, there are many buyers. Many customers like to wear or collect these items, such as jade, which is the most popular. Female customers especially love buying jade pendants and bracelets. Jade priced between two or three hundred and a thousand dollars sells particularly well. The price isn't high, and it's genuine, even if the color and texture are slightly inferior. However, those in this business have many techniques to make the jade appear to be the same color as the best jade.
Customers who buy these kinds of goods are usually not discerning; they only look at the surface and the appearance, and if they think it's a good product, they buy it without hesitation. Even if they find the quality is a bit poor after buying it, as long as it's not fake and the price is cheap, they won't cause any trouble. After all, you get what you pay for.