After touching a fragment of an heirloom porcelain vessel, modern antiques enthusiast Zhou Ming unexpectedly unlocks the ability to travel back and forth between the present day and a rural village in the 1970s, along with a storage space where time stands still. He has no x-ray vision or System pop-ups. Every judgment he makes about an object's authenticity and value depends entirely on the discerning eye he has honed over the years through his family's expertise.
When he arrives in the 1970s, he finds that his counterpart of the same name is in dire straits: he is in debt, and his paternal cousin is eyeing the old items left behind by the Zhou family, determined to seize them. In those days, countless antique porcelains, bronze vessels, inkstones, and bits of old silver in the countryside are treated by villagers as useless junk and left lying around.
Given the times, Zhou Ming sticks to his principles and never crosses the line into illegal speculation. He makes mountain produce and medicinal herbs his public business, using legitimate channels such as supply and marketing cooperatives and bartering at rural markets to buy undervalued antiques from farmers at low prices, then sells them at modern antique markets. He also takes scarce modern goods such as medicine, fine cloth, and quality seeds back to the 1970s to pay off debts and build a home.
His clan makes things difficult for him, out-of-town antique dealers maliciously undercut him, and the antiques circle sets traps with forgeries. Crisis follows crisis. Zhou Ming refuses to endure trouble in silence; when he encounters a trap, he turns it to his advantage, relying on his keen eye and sharp mind to maneuver and fight back. Starting in the countryside, he builds a network of suppliers and establishes workshops for processing mountain produce and bamboo and timber, laying the foundations for a business amid the tides of history. Back in the present, he contends with all kinds of merchants in the antiques market and exposes fakes passed off as genuine.
Across two eras, one world is shaped by rural life and the pursuit of industry in the 1970s, while the other is the modern antiques world, where genuine and fake are locked in a battle of wits. Zhou Ming stays true to himself, appraises antiques, builds a family business, and forges his own path to prosperity amid the currents of time.
