I've spent half my life collecting junk. At fifty-two, I went blind.
Don't worry, it's a different kind of “blind”: Song-dynasty porcelain glows purple in my hands, Tang paintings shimmer with golden light, and a rusty lump of iron I picked up in a pigsty nearly blinds me with the eight ancient bird-script characters inscribed on it: “By Heaven's Mandate, may the emperor live long and prosper.”
The next day, big shots from every corner crowd around my dump. A city expert wants to study it, a professor from the capital wants to meet me, and a cool, beautiful female agent shows up with an official document to “have a talk.”
Clutching the jade seal in the corner, I look innocent in front of the livestream camera. “Boss, I'll come clean. I'm really just a junk collector!”
Just then, a voice rings out in my head: “Ding! A spark of civilization detected. The Past and Present System is activating, ”
“Greetings, Host. In your previous life, you were China's chief antique appraiser...”
That was when I dug up a rusty lump of iron in a local villager's pigsty. Eight ancient bird-script characters were carved on it
The Imperial Jade Seal, by Heaven's Mandate.
I thought I'd struck the jackpot, but the next day, experts from the county cultural relics bureau, the city museum, and even Beijing were all waiting outside my cramped junkyard, which was less than ten square meters...
It all began when I suddenly started to “see” the “treasure glow” radiating from old objects.
No wonder no one is watching