The Ming Dynasty’s Antiquities Bureau: This Fake Painting Came to Life?!

[Artifacts gaining sentience + historical what-if] In the thirty-third year of the Jiajing reign, on the night a scholar dies in a ruined temple, a fake copy of Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains that he had collected for two hundred years comes to life using his corpse. His name is Zhen Mo. He is a fake painting that has gained sentience, a “false spirit” condemned to be destroyed under the laws of the Great Ming. But as luck would have it, he carries a bloodstained letter in his arms. It says that Yan Song and his son colluded with Japanese pirates, embezzled military provisions, and treated human lives as worthless! From that night on, the authorities in Yingtian Prefecture want him dead, the Bureau of Antiquities wants to kill him, and the Yan residence wants to silence him. Then Zhen Mo discovers that he can devour artifacts and imitate all manner of spirits, painting other people’s abilities into his own sea of consciousness! Chenghua blue-and-white porcelain, a Han dynasty jade guardian, a soul-weeping lantern, a carefree tree, the Zhanlu sword... All kinds of artifact spirits come flocking to him. Since the whole world calls him a fake, he’ll use the power of these forgeries to fight his way into Beijing and ask this corrupt Great Ming dynasty: Why can’t something fake be more real than the real thing?