Siheyuan: tomb robbing? I am serious about hunting.

Chapter 759 Crescent Moon

Chief examiner Chen Huaijin pushed his gold-rimmed glasses and glanced at Lin Shen's cramped overalls. In front of this top domestic porcelain identification expert were magnifying glasses, glaze testers and other equipment, and behind him was a large screen broadcasting the details of the treasure identification in real time. Lin Shen swallowed his saliva and carefully unfolded the velvet cloth. The lake green luster unique to the Song Dynasty's celadon porcelain flowed under the light, and the darkly engraved twined branches could be vaguely seen on the bottom of the bowl. There was a gasp from the audience, and someone in the back row raised his mobile phone to record the video. Chen Huaijin's fingers suddenly stopped - there was a crescent-shaped gap on the edge of the bowl, like a sigh cut by a sharp blade. "This is a celadon porcelain from the Hutian Kiln in the Song Dynasty," Chen Huaijin's voice echoed in the loudspeaker, "but there are obvious signs of repair." He picked up the broken porcelain fragment with tweezers, "This gap was caused by modern tools, and..." The old man's pupils suddenly contracted, "The glaze is suspected of being old." The studio fell into silence. Lin Shen felt the blood rushing to his head, and the memory of three months ago suddenly became clear: the attic on a rainy night, the musty smell mixed with the sandalwood fragrance, and the porcelain bowl was hidden in the ancient book "Tao Shuo" at the bottom of the camphorwood box. Before his father died, he held his hand and said in a breath: "Don't let outsiders touch the bowl." "Wait!" Lin Shen suddenly grabbed Chen Huaijin's wrist, and the whole audience was in an uproar. The security guard stepped forward quickly, but Chen Huaijin raised his hand to signal them to leave. The young man's red eyes were filled with tears: "This is a family heirloom. My grandfather said that there is a secret at the bottom of the bowl." Chen Huaijin's fingers groped at the bottom of the bowl. When the engraved vine pattern was fully revealed, the old man's hands trembled violently. On the big screen, tiny seal characters appeared between the branches: "In the 23rd year of the Republic of China, the treasure protector Lin Yuanshan recorded." The audience erupted in commotion, and the director urgently switched to the commercial screen. "Follow me." Chen Huaijin pulled off the microphone and rushed to the backstage with Lin Shen. In the dressing room, the old man took out a yellowed file from the safe: "Seventy years ago, the cultural relics of the Forbidden City were moved south, and a batch of porcelain was attacked in Jiangxi. Among them was a pair of celadon porcelain bowls, which were rumored to contain a map of the migration route to the south." Lin Shen opened the file, and a photo of his father when he was young fell to the ground. In the photo, a young man in a long gown stood in front of the Jingdezhen kiln factory, with the kiln fire behind him illuminating half the sky. Chen Huaijin pointed to the corner of the photo: "Your father was the last person to see the pair of bowls, and the one you brought..." He pushed over a sealed bag, which contained half a piece of porcelain, and the gap fit Lin Shen's bowl perfectly. The advertising time ended, and the studio resumed live broadcast. Lin Shen held the reassembled porcelain bowl, his palms full of cold sweat. When the camera zoomed in, he saw the outline of a map looming on the bottom of the bowl-Poyang Lake, Lushan Mountain, and Guling Town. The barrage was refreshed frantically, and the number of people online in the live broadcast room exceeded one million. "According to my speculation," Chen Huaijin raised the porcelain bowls to the camera, "this pair of bowls does not record the route of the cultural relics' migration to the south, but the secret location where the national treasures were moved." He called up the satellite map, and the mark on the porcelain bowls was facing a cliff somewhere in Guling Town. In the front row of the audience, several men in baseball caps suddenly stood up and left. Late at night, Lin Shen returned to his ancestral home alone. The moonlight shone through the broken window of the attic on the mess on the ground - someone had searched every corner. He took out the diary hidden in the cracks of the bricks, and his father's handwriting was as hideous as blood in the moonlight: "They are chasing us, and the bowls cannot be put together..." At this time, the mobile phone vibrated, and an unfamiliar number sent a color message: Chen Huaijin fell in the parking lot of the treasure appraisal program group, with broken porcelain pieces scattered around him. Lin Shen's fingers hovered on the dial key, and the engine roared outside the window. He grabbed the flashlight and rushed to the back mountain. The old photos in the diary were blown up by the wind - the young Lin Yuanshan stood on the edge of the cliff, holding two identical shadow blue porcelain bowls in his arms. The wind on the top of the cliff was carrying the pine waves, and Lin Shen swept the rock wall with his flashlight. Suddenly, the beam of light stopped on the moss-covered stone carving: "In the autumn of the 23rd year of the Republic of China, the treasure protector Lin Yuanshan hid the national treasure in..." Before he finished speaking, there was a sound of heavy objects falling to the ground behind him. Three men in black approached with electric batons, and the moonlight shone on the badges on their chests - it was the logo of a foreign cultural relic smuggling group. "Hand over the other half." The leading man pulled off his mask, and it turned out to be the man in the baseball cap who was in the audience during the day. "Your father embezzled the pair of bowls, which made us look for it for 30 years." Lin Shen took a half step back and kicked the loose stone with his heel. The memory suddenly flashed back to his father's words before his death: "The bowl is broken, and the secret is safe." He held the porcelain bowl tightly and smashed it against the rock wall. With a crisp cracking sound, the fragments of the map flew with the porcelain chips and were swept into the abyss by the mountain wind. The man in black roared and rushed over. Lin Shen turned and jumped down the bush slope next to him. The light of the flashlight drew a desperate arc in the night sky. Three months later, the special program of "Appraising Treasures" was on stage. Chen Huaijin walked onto the stage with a cane. The big screen played the picture of the Song Dynasty cellar discovered by the archaeological team in Guling Town. When the camera swept over the intact pair of celadon porcelain bowls, the audience burst into thunderous applause. The director suddenly cut to a close-up of the audience - the young man in the corner was wearing a peaked cap, revealing half of his wrist, with an old crescent-shaped scar there, exactly the same as the gap on the porcelain bowl back then.

The Mystery of Celadon (Continued)

The searchlights of the archaeological team's excavation site pierced the night sky, and Chen Huaijin stood outside the cordon with a cane. The broken pieces of the porcelain bowl three months ago hurt in his pocket. At this moment, on the big screen, a pair of complete celadon porcelain bowls were carefully taken out of the Song Dynasty cellar - the map on the bottom of the bowls was pieced together into a complete star map of Poyang Lake. "Mr. Chen, the unearthed cultural relics show that this pair of bowls is a secret work of the Song Dynasty's 'Tiangong Kiln'." The young researcher handed over the test report, "But strangely, trace amounts of modern chemicals were detected in the glaze." The old man's pupils shrank suddenly, thinking of the traces of deliberate aging on Lin Shen's broken bowl - could it be that the treasure protector had already arranged it? The young man in the peaked cap in the audience suddenly stood up, and the crescent scar on his wrist glowed bluish-white under the spotlight. He mixed in the crowd leaving the stage and took out his mobile phone to send an encrypted text message. The black-clad people in the dark began to gather, and in the parking lot, the engines of several black commercial vehicles quietly started. Lin Shen hid in the bushes, with a telescope aimed at the archaeological site. He repeatedly rubbed the old photo in his father's diary, and the pen handwriting on the back was blurred: "In the winter of 1943, I parted with my mentor in Guling Town. He said that the pair of bowls was bait..." The night wind rolled up the dead leaves, and he suddenly noticed that there was a crescent-shaped gap in the rock wall behind his mentor in the background of the photo. "Mr. Lin?" The cold female voice startled him and turned around. The woman in the windbreaker held up a recorder, and her eyes behind the lenses were shining. "I am Shen Zhixia, a reporter for the "Cultural Relics Tracking" column. I want to talk about your father and the pair of bowls." She opened the notebook, and there were yellowed clippings pasted inside -