My name is Xu Ye, and I’m Panjiayuan’s most down-and-out antiques appraisal streamer. I can’t even afford instant noodles without running up a tab.
One day, I received a mysterious private message: “Want to pass off a fake as the real thing?”
I opened it without thinking. In my livestream, a battered bronze mirror worth fifty yuan instantly turned into a Xuande-era gilt masterpiece. The comments went wild, and viewers showered me with virtual rockets.
But at the same time, a notification appeared backstage: “Erasure successful: the Yongle-era blue-and-white platter has disappeared.”
That was one of the Palace Museum’s signature treasures!
The official task force, the leader of the haters, and Lin Mo, the previous Host behind the scenes, all set their sights on me.
What I didn’t know was that the patina spreading across the back of my hand was counting down to my own erasure.
Within three days, I have to make three more fake national treasures “real,” or I die.
At the seventy-second hour, I pointed my gun at the System:
“If a fake can become real, then… can this fake called ‘me’ become the real thing too?”
