The Art of Teasing - Chapter 24

Chapter 24

Li Bin was completely flustered when he saw Wen Zhengyu looking for him. "I really don't know either! I was in the bathroom at the time. How was I supposed to know how the Old Master fell?" he protested, immediately turning to Sun Yuan. "Sister Sun! Sister Sun, you have to back me up on this. You watched me come out of the bathroom. When I went in, there was no toilet paper left—I even asked you for some! You've got to vouch for me." He then turned to Wen Zhengyu. "Eldest Miss, people of your standing wouldn't try to scam someone, would they?"

Ye Ling's mouth twitched. She sat silently on the chair by the hospital room door, watching Li Bin.

Zhan Cheng interrupted him. "Binzi, what nonsense are you talking about? The Eldest Miss is asking you who the Old Master went to see today and what exactly he did." He turned to Wen Zhengyu. "Eldest Miss, shall I take over the questioning?"

Wen Zhengyu nodded.

Li Bin exhaled a long breath of relief. He thought for a moment, organizing his thoughts, unsure where to begin. "Then I'll start from the very beginning," he finally said. "From this morning."

Zhan Cheng, fearing any detail might be missed, nodded.

Li Bin began his account. "This morning—I picked the Old Master up at seven-thirty. He went straight to the bird-and-flower market. He'd set his eyes on a pair of birds and wanted to buy them, but the shop owner was trying to get the highest possible price. They'd haggled back and forth many times without reaching a deal. He went back today to see them again."

Wen Zhengyu knew it couldn't be about the birds. Even if someone else had bought them, or if the birds had died, the Old Master would have only felt a moment's regret. He wouldn't have collapsed like this.

Zhan Cheng pressed on. "And after that?"

"After that," Li Bin continued, "he went to a teahouse with a few other elderly gentlemen. They had tea and brought out several calligraphy scrolls and paintings to appreciate together. Close to noon, the Old Master went home for lunch and even took his afternoon nap. He told me to pick him up at three in the afternoon. He went to an antique shop."

Wen Zhengyu's brow jumped.

Zhan Cheng also furrowed his brow.

Seeing Zhan Cheng's expression darken, Li Bin immediately grew tense. "Brother Zhan, was there something wrong about this?" he asked.

"No, continue," Zhan Cheng said. "Tell me everything you can, with as much detail as possible. I need to piece this together carefully."

Li Bin elaborated. "It was a rather large antique shop—a two-story storefront. The renovations were very luxurious, and everything on display looked extremely expensive."

Zhan Cheng asked which shop it was.

Li Bin gave the address and the shop name.

Zhan Cheng and Wen Zhengyu exchanged a glance. It was indeed a shop the Old Master frequently visited.

Zhan Cheng pressed for more specific details.

"I'm not clear on the details," Li Bin admitted. "When I followed the Old Master into the shop, the owner was very enthusiastic. He said he'd been waiting for the Old Master for a long time, that if he hadn't arrived soon, the guest would have left. I tried to follow the Old Master upstairs, but the owner looked at me and asked who I was. The Old Master said I was filling in for you. The shop owner was reluctant to let me go up, so the Old Master had me wait downstairs with some tea. After about an hour—maybe a little more—the Old Master came back down, holding a box with extreme caution. He's at that age, and I could see carrying that box was straining him. I offered to help, but he wouldn't let me. I figured it had to be some valuable antique. Oh, right—after the Old Master fell, I saw that the box was open, just sitting on the coffee table. Inside was a vase."

At this point, Wen Zhengyu could already piece together what had likely happened. A wave of dizziness washed over her. She pressed her fingers against her forehead, headache throbbing.

Zhan Cheng kept his face taut and continued his questioning. "From the moment the Old Master came downstairs until he arrived home, was the box ever out of his sight?"

"Never!" Li Bin replied. "It was clearly something that valuable—I didn't even dare touch it. Even when he was sitting in the car, he kept one hand on it the whole time. Seeing how careful he was, I honestly didn't dare lay a finger on it. But the vase inside wasn't broken or damaged." Suddenly, a spark of inspiration struck him, and he blurted out, "Could he have bought a forgery?"

The fortune her grandfather had accumulated over his lifetime came entirely from investments and antique trading. His eye for antiques was even sharper than his skill with a brush. Zhan Cheng hadn't been there, and Li Bin hadn't gone upstairs. Her grandfather had gone up alone to examine the item, to receive the item. The item he examined would have been genuine, and the item placed in the box would have been genuine. But whether the item he was actually handed when he left was still genuine—that was the question.

Wen Zhengyu hadn't seen the object herself, so she couldn't be certain. Just imagining the kind of porcelain that could have dealt her grandfather such a blow made her heart pound with alarm. She stepped into the hospital room to check on the Old Master. He was still in a deep sleep. The blood pressure monitor showed his pressure remained dangerously high, though still within a controllable range. She exited the room and told Zhan Cheng, "Uncle Zhan, stay here with Grandfather. I need to go home for a bit."

Zhan Cheng said, "Take Binzi back with you. He may be a bit slow, but he's still got some physical strength to offer."

Having just been through such a dramatic ordeal, Li Bin had no objection whatsoever to Zhan Cheng calling him slow. He readily agreed, "I may be a slow-witted man, but I am strong."

Wen Zhengyu nodded to Zhan Cheng. She could see the worry in Li Bin's face and said, "Brother Li, we're just trying to understand what happened. Nothing else. Thank you for helping Aunt Sun bring Grandfather to the hospital."

Li Bin let out a long, shaky breath of relief. "It was my duty, absolutely my duty," he said repeatedly.

Wen Zhengyu, Ye Ling, Li Bin, and Ye Ling's driver exited the inpatient building.

Li Bin and Ye Ling's driver both went to retrieve their cars. The two women stood waiting outside the building entrance.

Ye Ling spoke warmly to Wen Zhengyu. "If there's anything you need help with, don't hesitate to tell me. I'll be at the studio these next few days. The Old Master's health comes first."

Wen Zhengyu murmured a quiet "Thank you." Seeing Li Bin's car pull up, she said her farewells to Ye Ling and got in.

Ye Ling stood at the entrance of the inpatient building, watching Wen Zhengyu's car drive away until it rounded the corner and disappeared from sight. Only then did she turn and walk toward her own vehicle.

When Wen Zhengyu arrived home, she saw the square box sitting on the coffee table the moment she reached the living room doorway. She walked over. Inside the foam-lined box rested a brand-new blue-and-white porcelain vase. The glaze was garishly bright, still radiating the harsh, unsubdued fieriness of a piece fresh out of the kiln.

Going by the shape, the size, and the color, you could order as many of these as you wanted from a wholesale kiln factory for a few dozen yuan apiece.

The Old Master had handled countless antiques over the years. If the weight or dimensions had been drastically wrong, he would have caught it immediately simply by hefting the piece.

Therefore, even if someone had pulled a bait-and-switch, they would have used a replica of roughly the same size and shape.

A blue-and-white Celestial Sphere Vase—these were particularly prevalent during the Yongzheng and Qianlong periods of the Qing dynasty. In recent years, the market for blue-and-white porcelain had been driven to astronomical heights. Pieces fetching millions were common, those selling for over ten million could be found everywhere, and items hammering down at over a hundred million were not at all rare. At the 2016 spring auctions, a single large blue-and-white five-clawed dragon jar from the Ming Xuande period had sold for a staggering 135 million.

Ming dynasty blue-and-white was far too expensive for the Old Master to flip.

If it was blue-and-white porcelain—and something capable of dealing the Old Master such a shock—it was highly likely from the early or middle Qing period.

The Old Master was advanced in years, and after the catastrophic upheaval their family had already suffered, he constantly worried that if something were to happen to him, she would be left completely in the dark, knowing nothing. So after they moved into her aunt's residence, he had disclosed a great many matters to her.

She went into the Old Master's bedroom and turned on his computer. Using the password he had saved in the browser, she logged directly into his bank account to check the transaction history.

The Old Master had just over four million yuan in his account. Two days ago, a transfer of six million yuan had come in. Today, at a little past four in the afternoon, nine million eight hundred thousand yuan had been transferred out.

Wen Zhengyu's gaze locked onto the figure of 9.8 million. She pressed her hand firmly against her forehead, taking a long moment before she could regain her composure.

After the incident involving her father, the Old Master had been left with only three or four million yuan as his retirement safety net. He enjoyed using that modest sum to dabble in small flips for extra income.

That six million yuan—either the Old Master had borrowed it from someone, or he had already lined up a buyer for the blue-and-white piece he intended to flip, and the money sent was a payment from that buyer.

In antique transactions, everything hinges on the buyer's own judgment. Once money and goods have been exchanged, sellers bear no further responsibility. Even if you end up with a counterfeit or a fake, you can only blame your own faulty eye. There are absolutely no returns or exchanges. This is the same principle as scoring a bargain. If you have a sharp eye and land a massive find at a low price, once you've paid in full, the seller cannot track down the buyer to reclaim the item. This is the iron law of the trade.

The Old Master's 9.8 million yuan had vanished into thin air. It was enough to wipe out every last remnant of their family's dwindling fortune.

Not only had his retirement fund been completely swallowed, but he was now saddled with six million yuan in debt. How could the elderly man possibly withstand such a blow?

Wen Zhengyu didn't grieve for the money. She was young. If the money was gone, she could work harder, push herself further, and find a way to earn it back. But the Old Master—at his advanced age, enduring such blows one after another—how could he endure this?

She rose and went to the sink. She splashed her face with cold, crisp water until her emotions steadied. She dried her face with a towel, composed herself, and then packed a few daily necessities for herself and the Old Master into a bag. Carrying it downstairs, she found Li Bin sitting rigidly on the sofa, staring fixedly at the blue-and-white vase on the coffee table with an intensity that looked like he wanted to bore a hole straight through it. She called out, "Brother Li, I need to trouble you to drive me back to the hospital."

Li Bin responded with a quick "Right away," and rose to his feet. He didn't dare ask a single question. He simply drove Wen Zhengyu dutifully back to the hospital.

Upon arriving at the hospital, Wen Zhengyu told Sun Yuan and Li Bin to go home first. "You two still haven't had dinner, have you?" she asked. "Go home, grab a late-night bite, and get some rest. I'll stay here and keep watch." She then turned to Zhan Cheng. "Uncle Zhan, you should head home and rest too. You've been away on business for several days—you need to go home and see your family. You can all come back tomorrow."

After Zhan Cheng, Li Bin, and Sun Yuan had all left, she placed the small blanket she had brought onto the sofa. Seeing that the Old Master was still asleep and worried the water dispenser in the hospital room might not be clean, she went to the vending machine and bought several bottles of mineral water. As she was returning with the bottles of water, she saw that the Old Master had woken up. She called out, "Grandfather," and sat down at his bedside.

The Old Master's eyes were barely open. Weak and frail, he asked, "You're back? You weren't too frightened, were you?"

Wen Zhengyu let out a soft laugh. "Me? Frightened? Come now, our family has been through things before." She paused briefly before adding, "But when I got Aunt Sun's call saying you were ill and had fallen, I'll admit that did give me a proper fright."

The Old Master asked again, "You didn't tell your aunts, did you?"

Wen Zhengyu shook her head. "Before I got back, I didn't know the full situation. I was afraid they'd worry themselves sick without knowing what was going on, so I said nothing. And since coming back… well, this is a matter between us—grandfather and granddaughter. I won't tell them."

The Old Master gave a faint nod and closed his eyes again.

Wen Zhengyu desperately wanted to put on an easy, untroubled face. But seeing the Old Master—who had always been so spirited and full of vitality—suddenly looking as though all the life force had been drained out of him, she found the ache rising within her almost impossible to suppress. The Old Master had endured far more than she had in life. He understood more than she did, had far deeper knowledge. Whatever consolation or comfort she could offer, he understood it all already. The only thing she could do now was take good care of the Old Master and take good care of herself. As long as she remained steady, as long as she didn't give him further cause to worry, she could find a way to repay that six-million-yuan debt for him.

Celestial Sphere Vases: These are large items. The Qianlong Blue-and-White Lotus-and-Eight-Auspicious-Symbols Celestial Sphere Vase that inspired this novel is over fifty centimeters tall. Celestial Sphere Vases are tall, heavy pieces. A modern imitation would be easy to distinguish from a genuine antique simply based on the weight and feel. Even a highly skilled forger would find it extremely difficult to replicate the exact weight of a genuine Qing-dynasty piece.

In the case of a bait-and-switch, if the fake is too light, someone experienced can tell just by lifting it. If the shape and size differ drastically—for example, a genuine piece being fifty centimeters tall while the fake is only twenty-something—the difference is immediately obvious. No experienced collector would be fooled. Therefore, even if a switch were made, it would be with a piece of similar size and type. It's like switching a bottle of genuine Moutai liquor with a bottle of fake Moutai. If someone switched your Moutai with Erguotou, you'd spot it instantly. The same principle applies here.

Additionally, in the antique trade, all sales are final based on personal judgment. Whether you score a massive bargain or buy a complete forgery, the transaction stands. After the money is paid and the goods are taken, you cannot go back and demand a refund after examining the piece at home.

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