[Reborn + treasure appraisal + period setting + unrequited love becomes mutual + two strong leads, satisfying read]
Su Li, a top cultural relic restorer in 2025, was blown to pieces while restoring a Yongle-era blue-and-white porcelain piece concealing the national treasure sea chart, the Hehe Map. When she opened her eyes again, she was a pitiful orphan on the Loess Slope in 1983, being sold to an old bachelor by her wicked stepmother for thirty yuan!
A hellish start? Penniless? At the mercy of others? Su Li sneered. Reborn with a golden finger that let her sense the memories of cultural relics, she knew that even junk heaps were full of treasures!
Standing on a stone mill and holding up a broken bowl meant for the dogs, she shouted, “Jun ware from the Song dynasty! One piece is worth an entire city! Whoever calls the police for me can have half the shards!” One swing of a hammer awakened the whole village’s greed, and she promptly sent her stepmother to jail!
She found a battered copper jar used as a chicken feeder at the junkyard. The moment her fingers touched it, the clash of armies rang out: the golden finger revealed a Western Zhou bronze jue!
She bought a complete bronze jue, dismissed as an ashtray, for fifty cents at the Friendship Store. Overseas Chinese tycoon Fu Yancheng approached with a smile. “Miss, you have a good eye.” Behind his gentle, refined exterior, the gaze beyond his glasses was sharp as an eagle’s, carrying an inquiry she could never forget, even in death. They were the same despairing eyes that had stared at her just before the explosion in her previous life’s laboratory!
On the surface, he was a cultured businessman who had returned from overseas and funded cultural relic preservation. In secret, he was the “Third Master,” who controlled the black market for cultural relics along the southeastern coast. His study was covered with photos of her at work in her previous life. His love for her had become an obsession.
She founded the Liguang Pavilion to hunt for overlooked treasures and protect cultural relics, while he controlled a smuggling syndicate and pulled the strings behind the scenes. When she discovered his double identity and threatened to report him unless he agreed to work with her, he let out a hoarse laugh and pinned her against an antique chest stained with blood. “Su Li, every object you’ve ever touched... I’ve bought them all back and kept them hidden for ten years.”
