After I Became Dirt-Poor, the Pawnshop Started Raking in Gold

Have you ever seen a pawnshop so poor that even the mice move out in tears, while the spiders write “UNSAFE BUILDING” on the rafters? Welcome to the Dustbound Pavilion, the “family heirloom” Chen Mo’s parents left him, complete with six months of unpaid utility and internet bills and a bunch of relatives waiting to laugh at him.

Just as Chen Mo was about to keep himself alive by “breathing antique dust,” a strange old man in a Taoist robe and Hermès clothes smashed open the door to a new world with a broken jade pendant caked in market mud. Ding! Your “Keen Eye for Treasures” appraisal System has been activated. Your cheat is here, so please claim it!

From then on, everything changed. A stone a market auntie uses to hold down plastic bags? He’ll take it! A national treasure from the Tang dynasty, a treasured inkstone, goes home with him. A broken crock used to pickle cabbage in a demolition zone? He’ll buy it! Wash it up, and it’s a Yuan dynasty blue-and-white jar. A rival sets a trap with a high-quality fake porcelain vase? He goes live and exposes the fraud, making the fake expert suffer a triple dose of public humiliation. He can also use points to redeem all sorts of completely useless skills: “Wordcraft: Little Mishap” makes gang leaders step on banana peels every time they go out, while the “Relic Matchmaking Function” frets over the “troubled relationship” between a Ming dynasty vase and a Qing dynasty brush pot.