It was a night on the head of April this year.

In the wee hours of the morning, as usual, after a few drinks at his favorite bar, Lao Chen walked to Wenchang North Road, not far from the bar, with a hint of drunkenness, intending to wander around the jade market there to see if he could find a few items he liked.

Unexpectedly, as soon as I entered the market, there was a heavy rain.

April is a rainy season, but Tianguang Market is mostly open-air stalls, and the stalls that are closed for a while, and the shelter from the rain are chaotic on the already congested road. By the time Lao Chen finally found an acquaintance in the chaos and hid in the storefront, his body was already drenched in half, and his whole body shivered with coldness, so he asked the shopkeeper for a cup of hot tea, and while drinking, he helped the shopkeeper who was anxious to go out to the toilet to watch the shop for a while.

Compared with today's Wenchang North Road, Lao Chen is more nostalgic for Qingping Road back then.

At that time, there were many stalls, acquaintances, and customers, and they became ruins every day, unlike now, when people love to nest at home and trade online. The popularity is less, the fun of seeing things is naturally a lot less, and the day of opening the market has become a specific day a week, but often into the market, there are always some familiar sellers, such as this one, the owner of the goods is good and sincere, so every time he comes to Lao Chen, he will choose one or two pieces here, whether it is to look at it or not, it is considered to be a friendship.

But even so, it's clear that the things in the store are not as good as they are every year. Take the past six months as an example, I hardly saw the boss buy many new goods, and even if they did, it was difficult to see the high-end goods that could be seen at a glance in the past. Asked about the reason, the boss lamented that now the market is sluggish, good things are either not known goods bargaining, or shake their heads and look away, business is difficult to do, can only choose some low-priced or relatively mediocre goods, run the volume.

That's true. Nowadays, the jade business is indeed becoming more and more difficult, on the one hand, the inflated prices are daunting, and on the other hand, some people create fakes to disrupt the normal trading of the market. As the so-called 369 grasps cash, the inferior nature of the philistines has caused chaos and depression in the current market.

I was sighing, and suddenly saw a person standing at the door of the store, drenched and drenched, but he didn't enter the door, just looked at the store without a sound, and I didn't know whether he wanted to come in to hide from the rain or want to see the goods, but the narrow space in the store was blocked by Lao Chen, but he was embarrassed to speak.

Hurriedly moved his body inward, and Lao Chen beckoned him in.

But the man shook his head and refused, blinked his gray eyes and looked at Lao Chen for a while, and then asked him in a very refreshing Beijing film, "Boss, do you want to receive the goods?"

Lao Chen said, I'm not the boss.

The man sighed. But he didn't mean to leave for a long time, and still stood motionless in the rain and looked at Lao Chen.

Lao Chen couldn't help but feel a little moved by compassion.

After many years in business, Lao Chen has developed a pair of sharp eyes, so from the first moment he saw this person, he roughly had a little understanding of this person's origin.

The pupils of this person's eyes are gray, which is a typical symptom of cataracts, but he is at most in his early thirties, and his eyes are sick like this at such a young age, and the eye bags are deep and the eye circles are dark, so if it is not for physical weakness, he should be an excessive energy consumer.

But don't look at him like this depressed and weak, but his family background should be quite good, because he has an unspeakable bookish atmosphere, and his hands and ten fingers are delicate, and his nails are long and bright, which shows that he often does maintenance and never gets involved in any miscellaneous things. Although the clothes look old, but each piece is exquisitely made, and a white jade wrench is worn at the thumb, which is extremely delicate and fat, and the parts that are not stained yellow by dirt are as white as fat, and the end is a piece of good Hetian seed material.

Not only that, but looking at the craftsmanship and fineness, it should still be an antiquity that is old.

Looking at a qiē, it really doesn't look like a person who came here to do business by running from Beijing to Guangzhou, and rushing to open the market in Tianguang Market with black lights. But not only in such a rainy night to visit Tianguang Market, but also for the purpose of hoping that others will receive the goods, it seems that the family may have suffered something unexpected recently, so they were forced to run to this kind of place, looking for people who know the goods to sell something.

This kind of person is usually the most popular type of person among the merchants in the Tianguang Ruins, because the things on hand are good and the prices can be kept very low. At that moment, with a kind of sympathy for the down-and-out, and with curiosity to know what kind of objects he would bring to sell, Lao Chen very politely invited the man into the store for the second time.

This time the man didn't refuse.

After bowing his head and entering the store, he was no longer as restrained and silent as before, and introduced himself as surnamed Li, a native of Beijing, because he was quite short of money recently, so he wanted to sell something for some money, and he was afraid that the auction house would take a high commission, so he went here to Tianguang Market to take a look.

Sure enough, it's pretty much the same as I thought. Lao Chen pondered while standing in the store with him for a while, and then asked him as if casually: "Then what are you selling, it just so happens that I also like this bite, you might as well take it out and take a look at it first, maybe I can help estimate the price." ”

The man was hesitant at first.

But after waiting for a few minutes and still not seeing the boss come back, he didn't continue to hesitate, maybe he also wanted to hear what the number of his goods would be valued by others, so he straightened his clothes, he slowly took out a paper bag from his personal pocket, and then carefully handed it to Lao Chen.

Lao Chen was a little disappointed when he saw the paper bag at first. Because I thought it might be a bracelet or something, but now it looks like a very small object, at most five or six centimeters by visual inspection, or a small pendant, or some kind of small handle. In this case, even if the material is good, it is not worth a few dollars, and there is no value in collecting, if this is all this gentleman came to sell, I am afraid that he will be very disappointed when he knows the price.

But since he had promised to give an estimate, he had to take a look, so he opened the paper bag and looked into it symbolically.

I couldn't help but be stunned when I saw it, because the thing wrapped in this place not only shook his eyes for a moment, but also made him subconsciously grab it, lest he accidentally break it, and then he wouldn't be able to find a second piece anyway.

Because although that thing is small, it is a thing of the Tang Dynasty.

Tang Dynasty topaz Lao Xuan, Huang Qin, calcified, brushed, hollow carved phoenix.

Why can Lao Chen be so sure with just one glance?

Because he's seen it in the past.

The so-called Jue is a kind of thing that is ring-shaped and has a gap, which was used as a token in ancient times and as a man's accessory. At one time, Lao Chen was quite interested in this kind of thing, so he collected some, and the most wonderful and valuable of them was a topaz carving Fengjue from the Tang Dynasty.

It was dug up from an unknown tomb by tomb robbers, and if it was intact, it was conservatively estimated that it could sell for at least two or three million. But because it is damaged, that is to say, half of it is missing, so the value hits the freezing point in an instant, so I thought that instead of selling cheaply, it would be better to take it down myself as a souvenir, and it is also a genuine Tang Dynasty cultural relic.

Therefore, at first glance, when he saw the other half of the broken jade suddenly appear in front of his eyes, Lao Chen's heart was still calm, and he immediately pretended to be calm, and asked the man lightly: "What is your psychological price?"

The man naturally didn't know what Lao Chen was turning over in his heart. And because he may have never done business in the past, he didn't know that as soon as he opened his mouth in this industry, he asked the price first, and it was clearly a table of "I don't move, lure the enemy to move first" to probe his bottom line.

Therefore, as soon as Lao Chen asked, after thinking about it, he gritted his teeth and reported a number that was extremely naïve to Lao Chen: "I want to ...... Although the thing is broken, I heard my grandfather say that it is something that has been handed down from the ancestors for several generations, the Tang Dynasty, so it should be quite valuable. ”

"Well, it is indeed the Tang Dynasty's Topaz Lao Xuan Huang Qin Calcified Brushed Wire Hollow Jue, not to mention 300,000 if it is complete, 500,000 can also be sold, but now it looks like this, I estimate that it is good to give up to 100,000. ”

"100,000? But even if it is broken, it is still an antique from the Tang Dynasty......"

"Brother, if you want to pay attention to antiques, you might as well sell them to museums. In a place like Tianguangxu, people pay attention to the collection value, you have a good piece of jade Jue in the Tang Dynasty is missing half, what is the collection value, besides, do you know what you say about Jue?"

"What's that?"

"The one who sees Jue is cut off or decided. It means that the person who sees Jue has a saying that everything is decided by him, and it is a token. Another way of saying it is that he was cut off, such as severing the relationship, such as the lawsuit has been broken. Therefore, the meaning itself is a more fierce thing, and it is divided into two halves, and the meaning is even more ugly. You see, who doesn't want to be lucky when buying something, don't you say? Not to mention such an old thing, so you say, who would be willing to pay a lot of money to buy back such a thing that makes them feel unlucky?"

In just a few words, Lao Chen, with his old spicy expression and tone practiced for many years, asked the man surnamed Li to sell the half of the jade jue to him at a price of 150,000 yuan.

Because he said he was a university professor. Yu Jue bought it for his university, not for collection, but for research, and to put it in the exhibition hall in the future to show this unique antiquity to the world.

So even if he was reluctant, the man still breathed a sigh of relief when he handed over the jade jue to him, perhaps because he thought that after all, he didn't sell it to someone who didn't respect it at all because of his need for money, so his expression of counting the money was also quite relaxed and pleasant.

"It would be nice if I could find the other half of the jade. Before leaving, he looked at the piece of jade reluctantly and said to Lao Chen.

"Yes, it would be nice if I could find it. ”

"If you find it, you have to tell me, okay, I've always wanted to see it in its entirety. ”

"That's for sure. ”

Having said that, Lao Chen, whose attention had always been on Yu Jue, did not notice that the man did not tell him his contact information until he left.

But even if you sue him, cultural relics are like water spilled after the business is done, and from now on, the two do not owe each other, and it is best to go their own way.

After thinking about it, he suddenly realized that the shopkeeper was walking from the opposite building, and looked at him quite incomprehensibly.

"Old Chen, I said what were you doing just now?" he asked bluntly after entering the room.

"What for?"

"Look at you for a while, a person muttering to the door of the store, there is a ghost?"