Super-rich: Spending money is just a job!

Xiaomeng walked a few steps through the night market and spotted a familiar antique stall. It had the same familiar recipe and taste. Wasn't this the same antique stall that specialized in ripping people off?

The two night markets are located in two districts that are quite far apart.

Is this antique shop owner just a hit-and-run operator?

Xiaomeng told Xiaotang, "Look, that boss who tried to extort money from people with antiques the day before yesterday."

Xiao Tang looked around: "Where?... Ha, it really is him. How dare he go out to do business every day? Isn't he afraid of being targeted by the anti-gangsters?"

Xiaomeng walked past the stall with her eyes fixed straight ahead and at a distance, afraid that she might "accidentally" touch someone's antiques, "who might be a repeat offender who gets arrested for a few days and then released."

"Dang Cang."

"Stop right there, beautiful ladies! You broke my porcelain, you have to pay for it."

Hearing this familiar routine, you know that the antique stall owner has "stocked up" again.

Xiaomeng and Xiaotang looked over curiously to see which unlucky person had been scammed.

To everyone's surprise, the shop owner grabbed Xiaoyu instead. Xiaoyu exclaimed in alarm, "No, I didn't touch your things!"

The antique stall owner was very assertive: "It was you who touched the antique porcelain plate on my stall. We saw it with our own eyes. It only cracked after you touched it. You have to pay for it."

Xiao Wei stepped forward and separated the two, saying, "Just talk, why are you pulling on that girl?"

Xiaoyu's outfit today is quite sophisticated: a Chanel suit paired with a gold bracelet, pearl earrings, and a small handbag. She looks much wealthier than Xiaomeng. She's clearly a wealthy tourist from out of town.

No wonder the antique stall owner chose her.

There was nothing they could do, so Xiao Tang and Xiao Meng went over and stood behind Xiao Yu. The bodyguards they brought also gathered around and vaguely surrounded them.

The boss sensed something was wrong. "What are you doing? Don't you have to pay for the broken things? Are you trying to renege on your debt?"

Xiao Tang didn't want to get into a fight, so he handed over a Zhonghua cigarette. "Boss, get rich. Here's two hundred yuan. Take it and have a cup of tea. Can you help me out?"

“This is a piece of Qing Dynasty imperial porcelain, worth at least ten thousand.”

"..." Xiao Tang was speechless. With a wave of his hand, two bodyguards behind him stepped forward and squeezed the antique stall owner into the corner behind the wall.

The two assistants who were with the stall owner last time didn't show up. I don't know if they didn't come with the stall or if they hid.

Xiaoyu nervously clenched her hands and asked, "Are you alright? What happened?"

Xiao Wei looked in Xiao Tang's direction and said, "It should be fine, at most we'll call the police. But it seems like Xiao Tang can handle it."

With nothing to do, Xiaomeng squatted down to examine the antique stall. To her surprise, the stall had significantly more items this time, and the styles and types were much stranger.

A sign with black lettering has been added in front of the stall: "Clearance sale of underwater antiques and treasures, genuine shipwreck salvage, authentic and reasonably priced. Don't miss it! The stall owner is leaving the country after clearing out his stock."

Xiaomeng looked thoughtfully at the bronze artifacts on the stall.

This thing clearly couldn't have been salvaged from the seabed; it's more likely to have been unearthed from some large tomb. And judging from its condition, it looks like it was dug up, oxidized for a while, and then piled up in a cellar for decades.

She frequents various auctions and has handled thousands or even tens of thousands of antiques, both genuine and fake, so she has a good eye for them.

What's more, she had a cheat code: she spent points to authenticate it and confirmed that it was a burial object from a Zhou Dynasty feudal lord's tomb in the Central Plains. That famous feudal lord's tomb was looted in the 1920s, and later generations speculated that the number of burial objects inside was enormous.

Many of the ancient artifacts that circulated among bronze collectors around the world after World War II were somewhat related to that burial complex.

She never expected to see several genuine ones here. The jade belt hooks and knife-shaped coins displayed nearby also have very similar craftsmanship; they might even be from the same mine.

Where did this antique stall owner go on a shady business? A few days ago he was selling nothing but fakes, but today he's brought a few genuine items.

When Xiao Tang returned from talking to the antique stall owner, he saw Xiao Meng squatting on the ground looking through the items on the stall. "Anything nice? Which one do you like? Ask the boss to sell it to you for a discount, right, boss?"

The antique stall owner, looking dejected, replied listlessly, "Yes, ma'am, which one do you want? I'll give you a discount."

Xiaomeng said, "I think your antique from the seabed is quite clean. I was just thinking of stringing it into a wind chime. Do you want to sell this coin for ten yuan each?"

The antique stall owner, as was his habit, tried to haggle, "No way, all my good stuff comes from before the Tang Dynasty. You'd need at least three thousand for that knife coin."

Xiao Meng chuckled, "Tang? The Tang Dynasty had knife-shaped coins? Boss, did you skip history class in school?"

The antique stall owner realized what was happening and had no choice but to say, "Fifteen, I paid fifteen for all my stock."

Xiaomeng nodded, "Deal. These remaining copper coins are all fifteen, right? I'll take them all. Please count them."

As she spoke, Xiaomeng reached out to take away most of the small items from his stall.

The shopkeeper quickly intervened, "What? No way! How could so many coins all be fifteen? I meant fifteen copper coins."

"How much are the other small items? You can just buy them wholesale from me. Anyway, you can always restock after you sell them all."

The antique stall owner looked at her suspiciously. "Madam, do you also want to open an antique stall?"

Xiao Tang slapped him on the back of the head, "Why ask so many questions? Hurry up and calculate, I'll give you whatever you owe."

Xiaomeng blurted out, "Yes, I also want to set up a stall and sell handicrafts. Your goods look very authentic, and I'd like to buy some from you."

I see you have about ten or twenty copper coins here, let's call them all 300. The other small coins are worth about twenty each, about thirty in total, let's call them all 600. That's nine hundred in total.

The boss was stunned by her calculation. "You actually ordered some? No way, I won't sell it to you for less than a thousand."

Xiaomeng: "Then one thousand."

Antique stall owner: "Oh no, I didn't order enough."

Xiaomeng gathered all the items into a pile and asked Xiaoli to give a thousand yuan to the antique stall owner.

Judging from the way Xiaomeng was shopping, Xiao Tang knew she was talking nonsense, but he didn't know what she was planning.

The shop owner was very interested when he saw that she could pay in cash, and took the initiative to introduce her, "Madam, look at the bronzes here, they are very well made, aren't they? There are vases and small incense burners, each for only three thousand."

"Three thousand? That's too expensive. I'll take them for one hundred each."

"One hundred won't do. I'm having a bad run of luck lately, so I need to go out and change my fortune. I'm selling everything on the stall to you cheap, five hundred each. Take a look, it's heavy, pure copper. Copper is so expensive per kilogram these days."

"Okay, I'll take all five copper coins. Put them in a plastic bag and give them to me, Xiaoli, and give him two thousand five hundred."

"The proprietress is so generous. Don't you want these porcelain pieces? You could sell them to foreigners for ten or twenty thousand. I'll only ask for three thousand."

"I don't want the porcelain anymore; I don't like collecting porcelain. These are fine."

"And this rhinoceros horn cup, no, ox horn cup, fifty. Boss lady, please take it."

Xiaomeng had almost scavenged everything from the stall owner's stall, but she didn't want the other antiques that were made from unknown animal products.

The boss received all the money in cash, picked up the bed sheet from the floor, and ran away.

Back in the car, Xiao Tang asked her, "Why did you buy so many counterfeit goods?"

Xiaomeng picked out the real ones and put them in another bag, saying, "We'll talk about it when we get back."

They first took their two colleagues back to their hotel before going home.

Xiaomeng examined all the items that seemed suspicious, and surprisingly, there were about ten genuine items among them.

All five bronze wine vessels are genuine. One of them still has faint traces of engraving on its bottom. We'll have someone scan it with an instrument later to see what's going on.

There were about ten jade belt hooks, knife-shaped coins, and copper cowrie shells scattered around.

Surprisingly, there are also antique gold ornaments from ancient Greece and Rome, such as small rings, earrings, and gold coins.

It's a mess, with all sorts of things. It seems this antique dealer is doing business globally.

The next day, Xiaomeng saw a news report about a murder and body disposal case that had recently occurred in the city.

A suspected antique smuggling gang engaged in a shootout over the division of spoils, and the city is now seeking clues to solve the case.

The news report also stated that some cultural relics were lost, and it was hoped that any citizens who found them would take them to the police station to hand them over.

Xiaomeng wasn't short of those few thousand yuan, so she had Xiaoli and the driver, who had witnessed the whole thing, go to the nearby police station and hand over the batch of antiques from China.

These bronze artifacts are worth far more than a few thousand dollars.