Zhou Xuan couldn't help but release his icy aura to probe. Good heavens, Lawrence's antiques were almost all over the world. Not to mention other countries, Chinese antiques alone filled two whole shelves, accounting for one-fifth of the entire collection room.
From large Warring States bronze tripods to coins the size of a fingertip, and even micro-carvings the size of a grain of rice, the collection includes calligraphy and paintings from the Tang and Song dynasties to the Qing dynasty.
Zhou Xuan took a look. The porcelain, bronze and iron antiques, jade carvings, and other artifacts were all there. Some of them were worth over ten million yuan, a conclusion he reached after a long period of research and understanding. After all, he had the ability to detect the authenticity of items using ice energy, and combined this with his knowledge from the past few days to make a rough estimate of the price.
If judged by the value of Chinese cultural relics, it would be worth at least one billion RMB. Zhou Xuan was secretly astonished!
This old man has spent who knows how much money on this!
However, Zhou Xuan also knew that not many of the treasures that had flowed out of China were now being sold. Most of them were lost during the chaotic period of the Kuomintang and the warlord era. The Eight-Nation Alliance looted countless national treasures of China!
Lawrence stayed by Wei Haihong's side the whole time, and said with a smile, "Mr. Wei, that hexagonal gold mesh stone that you sold in Hong Kong last time, haha, it's a pity I couldn't win the bid, what a pity!"
As Wei Xiaoqing's clear and pleasant translation voice rang out, Wei Haihong chuckled and said, "Mr. Lawrence, that gem does not belong to me, but to this man," he said, pointing to Zhou Xuan beside him, "...but to my little brother."
"Oh," Lawrence then noticed Zhou Xuan, not expecting that this unassuming young man was actually the owner of the gem worth thirty million US dollars!
Although 30 million is not much to him, if an ordinary person had this amount of money, their expression would be very obvious. It's like a poor person or an ordinary person suddenly winning a large lottery prize; the arrogance of a nouveau riche is impossible to hide!
But he couldn't see anything in Zhou Xuan. He just saw him as an ordinary young man who was plain and unassuming.
From this point alone, Lawrence's perception of Zhou Xuan changed drastically. For someone to do this was already a remarkable feat. Wei Haihong, who had been observing the antiques and artifacts in the room, was also a collector who had devoted a great deal of time and money to collecting, but at this moment he had to admit that this old foreigner was even more fervent than him.
Zhou Xuan had no other intention than to take this opportunity to test more antiques from China and abroad, to understand their age and molecular structure, so that he wouldn't be fooled and cheated if he encountered them in the future.
After touring for half an hour, Lawrence invited everyone back to the main hall, saying as they walked, "Mr. Wei, Mr. Fujimoto has brought over some treasures. Let's take a look together."
After sitting down in the lobby, Fujimoto gestured to Ito. Ito then picked up a leather suitcase from a corner of the lobby. Although his hand was injured, his wrist was still strong enough that a suitcase was no problem for him.
He placed the box in the middle of the hall next to the coffee table, and then opened it himself, taking out a scabbard about a foot long. The hilt and scabbard were antique, and the surface looked like an antique.
The other item was a wooden Buddha statue, the wood a deep red, with a very aged color.
Zhou Xuan secretly used his icy aura to test it; the short samurai scimitar was five hundred years old. It was an antique, but the wooden carving was a fake.
Wood carving, like the porcelain forgeries he had seen before, uses high-tech methods to re-fire old clay, and even seasoned experts can fall for it.
The outer layer of his wooden Buddha statue was made by crushing extremely ancient wood into powder using a high-pressure machine, then applying it to a mold under high pressure, and finally adding some signs of aging. It could indeed fool the eyes of an expert. Even if it was tested with instruments, the result would still be that it was an antique.
Zhou Xuan determined that the wood fragments and mud were from a 720-year-old agarwood tree, which is considered an antique even in the short history of Japan.
I wonder if Fujimoto was aware of this counterfeit product or not? I also wonder if he was scammed by someone else and then resold it to someone else?
Fujimoto placed the two items on the table, then picked up the knife and drew it. Its cold, gleaming light indicated it was indeed a fine knife.
"This sword is called 'Blood Ground.' It was forged by the master craftsman Maruzo five hundred years ago. It is made of low-temperature tamahagane steel and is incomparably sharp. It can cut a hair with a single blow. Ordinary swords will break when they come into contact with each other. It was once the sword of the famous Japanese samurai Ueda Itsuki. Later, it was lost. My friend obtained it by chance in the countryside of Nagasaki. It is a treasured sword."
Fujimoto explained in English, but Zhou Xuan and Wei Haihong couldn't understand it. Wei Xiaoqing could understand it, but she knew nothing about antiques.
Of course, Lawrence himself is an expert, but even he cannot have a deep understanding of the history, customs, and famous figures of various countries.
In fact, Fujimoto had already lied about this.
This sword is indeed an antique, but it wasn't used by Ueda Yuki himself; rather, it belonged to his beloved concubine. In ancient Japan, samurai were a privileged class, so only samurai could carry long swords; ordinary people had no right to use them. Most non-samurai, such as farmers, merchants, and women, usually carried short swords for self-defense. The typical image of a samurai is one with two swords at his waist, walking with an arrogant and haughty air.
There's no need to elaborate on samurai who use dual swords.
Ueda Yukiki's concubine removed her husband's name from the blade as a sign of loyalty and love, but this does not mean that Ueda Yukiki personally wore and used it.
I recommend the new historical novel, *Traveling Back to the Ming Dynasty with My Brain*. Book ID: xinsi. To find out what happens next, please log in to [website name - likely a gaming site] for more chapters. Support the author and read the official version!
Volume One: The Lotus Buds Just Begin to Emerge, Chapter Forty-Nine: A Nest within a Nest
Although Fujimoto lied, it is true that the knife was indeed an antique. However, his main purpose was not the knife, but the fake wooden Buddha statue!
Using a genuine item to conceal a lower-quality one is an extremely common tactic. The interplay of truth and falsehood, reality and illusion, easily confuses people's judgment.
Lawrence was no naiveté. Although he didn't look at the wooden Buddha statue, his attention was actually on it. His eyes, however, were fixed on the precious sword in Fujimoto's hand. He smiled and asked, "Mr. Fujimoto, name your price. How much for this sword?"
Fujimoto smiled faintly, sheathed the knife, placed it on the table, and then turned to Ito in English, asking, "Mr. Ito, how much is this knife for?"
"Huh?" Ito paused for a moment. When Fujimoto asked him, he hadn't been paying attention to the situation in the room at all, as he was thinking about Zhou Xuan and Fu Ying. When Fujimoto asked him, he paused for a moment, then realized what was going on and quickly said, "Minimum three hundred thousand US dollars!"
Zhou Xuan could tell that the knife was an antique, but he didn't know if it was worth 300,000 US dollars. Besides, what was 300,000 US dollars to someone like Lawrence? Not to mention Lawrence, even for him now, it wasn't a huge expense!
While the supernatural ice energy could detect the authenticity of objects, it couldn't detect the thoughts in a person's mind. Zhou Xuan had no way of knowing what Fujimoto and Ito were thinking. However, he had absolutely no good feelings towards Ito. Considering what happened in the Yin River Cave, it was safe to say that Ito was neither a person of integrity nor a person of virtue, and was absolutely not trustworthy.
As the saying goes, "A fox's friends are a dog's friends, and a snake and a rat's nest are alike." Given Ito's character, how good could his friends be? And look at Fujimoto's sinister eyes. This guy is definitely full of bad intentions. Just by looking at that wooden Buddha statue, Zhou Xuan knew he had no good intentions. All he did was try to trick Lawrence into spending even more money to buy it.
Of course, this was just Zhou Xuan's guess. After all, neither Fujimoto nor Ito had mentioned the price of the Buddha statue.
But what Zhou Xuan found suspicious was that Ito was clearly someone who had just escaped, yet his appearance on Fujimoto's website seemed like he had been forcibly brought in as a partner.
Lawrence took the dagger, drew it, and carefully examined the name engraving on the blade, the hilt, and the fittings of the handle and scabbard. He wasn't particularly concerned about the sharpness of the blade; this wasn't the age of samurai anymore. Collecting this sword was about its intrinsic value, not about using it in combat. Even if the sword was blunt and lacked a sharp edge, as long as it was an antique and had extremely high collector value, that didn't matter.
After visual inspection and examination, Lawrence confirmed that the knife was genuine. He lightly flicked the blade with his finger, producing a crisp sound, and said, "Two hundred thousand." Fujimoto glanced at Ito, his eyes and face slightly turned away from Lawrence, but Zhou Xuan saw it clearly from the side.
Fujimoto glared fiercely at Ito, clearly not as a reminder that Ito had bargained, but as a warning and a menacing suggestion.
From the glare in his eyes, Zhou Xuan sensed that Ito was definitely not the owner of these two items! The one in charge was definitely Fujimoto. Putting it all together, the two of them were just putting on a show to deceive Lawrence.
Ito, glared at by Fujimoto, quickly perked up and said to Lawrence, "Mr. Lawrence, 200,000 is a bit low. Let's make it at least 250,000. Let's each compromise."
Lawrence chuckled. "Alright, with Mr. Wei here today, I'll be more straightforward. Two hundred and fifty thousand it is. Is it an electronic transfer or a check?"
Lawrence pointed to the laptop on the table, saying that if Ito requested a transfer, it could be done immediately on the computer.
Fujimoto said, "Well, let's wait a moment. There's another Buddha statue here. Let Mr. Lawrence take a look at your wooden Buddha statue!"