Imperial Treasure
Chapter 292 - 213: Degreased Leather Painting

Chapter 292: Chapter 213: Degreased Leather Painting

"You overestimated him," Sui Yi wouldn’t be overly modest, but he would honestly ignore some people.

Wu Gu was one of them.

Liang Qing was startled, then laughed, "It seems we agree on this point; he indeed is useless... But even though you had planned for it, I still took that bottle from you, didn’t I?"

"Sui Yi, you still lost."

Sui Yi showed no reaction to Liang Qing’s frivolous and proud demeanor but asked curiously, "It’s just a small bottle, I wonder what its origin is that forced you, who had been hidden fairly quietly, to take action."

Liang Qing seemed hesitant to tell Sui Yi but decided to speak, "This was actually an accident. The item was originally what we wanted, but it was a case of a miscalculated move and you just happened to intercept it. Its origin is indeed not simple, but I think there’s no need to tell you... Since it no longer belongs to you, right?"

"If you don’t say it now, I think you’ll still have to tell me before long," Sui Yi’s slight smile made Liang Qing frown, ominously feeling that something wasn’t quite right.

She didn’t like this feeling, so she threw the broom aside, stepped over, and ran onto the balcony in the blink of an eye, just as Gong Jiu also entered the study.

"Miss Sui, thank you for the hospitality these past days... Consider my salary as the rent... Bye~~" Whoosh! She leaped straight off the balcony,

"Crack! She’s running!" Gong Jiu quickly followed to the balcony and saw Liang Qing, like a cunning rabbit, leaping across the rooftops. In the blink of an eye, she was on the ground in the garden, running away!

Gong Jiu was about to draw her gun... seeing the culprit’s speed, she put it away, cursing under her breath, "Damn, I didn’t expect her to be this good!"

Liang Qing’s strength was not yet known, but her speed was indeed very fast; even Gong Jiu couldn’t match her.

So the always competitive Gong Jiu looked a bit annoyed.

She turned to look at Sui Yi, "Was it an inside and outside joint effort last night?"

"Mhm."

"How powerful?"

"One with seventy years of Inner Strength, called Wu Gu... Liang Qing is stronger than Wu Gu."

Seventy years!! Gong Jiu’s expression suddenly turned solemn, touching her chin, "These two are quite strong. In Ghost Teeth, they would already be considered D-level... No, hold on, you managed to deal with Wu Gu last night; your strength..."

"Is a bit stronger than his," Sui Yi didn’t conceal, "facing Liang Qing is yet to be seen."

"...." Gong Jiu’s expression froze for a good while before she exhaled, "Freak!"

Just a few months ago, this guy had less Inner Strength than her, and now?~~

"So you just let her go that easily? Wasn’t the bottle taken by her?! Shouldn’t you have taken it back..."

"The bottle was already taken by Wei Feng when she left in the morning,"

Then Sui Yi briefly explained the events of the previous night and the chase after Wu Gu that led to Wei Feng. Gong Jiu was astonished, but the most shocking was still a remark from Sui Yi.

"There’s a man with him; remember the night we were chased on the overpass... the driver in one of those cars was him."

Gong Jiu burst in from the balcony, exclaiming, "Ghost Teeth!?"

"They’re people from Ghost Teeth!"

Sui Yi nodded, "I’ve seen them at school..." As soon as school was mentioned, Gong Jiu understood vaguely, sighing deeply, ".AGE Corporation has substantial financial strength. Since Wei Feng is one of Ghost Teeth, it’s almost certain that the corporation belongs to Ghost Teeth too... His business tactics are always fierce, and I heard he’s recently been getting close to the Yun Family too... awfully troublesome, not easy to deal with..."

As she spoke, Gong Jiu suddenly frowned, "No, you haven’t said why you let that Liang Qing go; I don’t believe you couldn’t have stopped her."

Well, Miss Gong was particularly picky about this matter.

"No need to keep her... The bottle she took is already useless."

"Ah?" Before Gong Jiu could react, Sui Yi went to his room. After a little while, he came back and put that small bowl on the table.

Meanwhile, atop the mountain villa, Wei Feng placed the bottle to one side, smiling.

"Sui Yi, what a good move indeed,"

Wei Jiang picked up the bottle, looked at it from side to side, "Has she already taken it?"

"Of course... No wonder Liang Qing got it so easily, I think she must be almost back by now,"

Wei Feng closed his eyes in contemplation, "With this, she won’t just be here to help... We can only cooperate, no wonder she agreed so readily, heh~~"

--------

The bowl was neither too large nor too small, and floating on the water surface... was a picture.

As if it had been painted right there!

If it were someone else, they would undoubtedly be astonished, but Gong Jiu immediately realized, "Vegetable oil? No, it doesn’t smell like vegetable oil, it’s tung oil... There’s a painting on vegetable oil... Is this degreased hide painting?"

Degreased hide painting is a high-level skill that has been passed down through the ages, both in the royal court and among the common folk. The reason it’s said to be between the court and the common people is that the craftsmen were from the populace, but they only served high-ranking families and the royalty, because the fur used for degreased hide painting came from the rarest of sable pelts. After a complex production process using numerous precious materials, the resulting hide was as thin as cicada wings. Special ink was used to draw and write on it, and once soaked in water for a shichen, it would merge completely into the hide, disappearing without a trace. When this nearly invisible hide was affixed to an object, it would appear as if nothing was there at all, indistinguishable from the real thing to the average person.

If it weren’t for Sui Yi’s ability to use Magnetic Sensation to detect the magnetic energy present and sense the anomaly, he might not have been able to obtain the bottle before Wei Feng.

With such mystery, degreased hide painting has long been used to preserve secret maps of the royal courts—the primary purpose was indeed—maps.

Gong Jiu was also a practitioner in this field. Though not as astonishing in professional level and brain capacity as Flower Demon, she was still experienced and had a broad vision. She could speculate the general idea at a glance.

Sui Yi nodded, "It’s a degreased leather painting... I guess the student’s family must have some ancient heritage. They acquired this leather painting, and later, being smart, they kept transferring it onto different objects to preserve it to this day. It’s a shame it was ignorantly sold off by later generations... Wei Feng must have found out too, but it’s a pity I beat him to it."

"Ghost Teeth wouldn’t have set his sights on a leather painting like this if he was just bored. It’s probably a map of a treasure site from some dynasty..." Gong Jiu was most interested in this kind of thing and now couldn’t wait to put on her gloves, carefully extract the leather painting from the tung oil, spread it out on the table, and distinctly see the overlapping mountains and dense routes drawn on it...

"Where is this?" Gong Jiu, who had always been geographically challenged, looked it over from all angles but couldn’t figure it out...

Sui Yi didn’t know either. After all, the world was vast, with various geographical features, and even the top travelers wouldn’t dare claim to recognize every beautiful landscape under the heavens.

"Hey, I don’t believe I can’t find this. I’ll look up some information online... Hey, Sui Yi, your computer has no protection at all. Let me tell you, with a firewall as poor as this, anything I search could be known to Ghost Teeth and his people within minutes... Nevermind, I’ll set it up for you..."

Gong Jiu immediately picked up Sui Yi’s laptop, nestled into the bed, and with a flurry of fingers, she began to work. Sui Yi then discovered this guy was not only proficient with all kinds of firearms and had extraordinary racing skills, but his computer skills were also top-notch.

In this field, Sui Yi didn’t have much ability and thus complemented Gong Jiu.

It wasn’t long after Gong Jiu fiddled with the computer that she called out, "Found it, it’s over in Xinjiang!"

"Xinjiang?" Sui Yi was surprised—it was quite far away.

"Yes, Xinjiang. Part of it is the Tianshan Mountains in Xinjiang... Odd, historically, dynasties seldom ventured into this region. It wouldn’t make sense to bury a treasure so far away... Plus, this place itself is peculiar..."

"But this map is strange; it seems to be cut apart and then reassembled. It’s very odd... Anyway, it is in Xinjiang, it’s around those areas. Once I crack this map, we can organize a team and be ready to leave..." Gong Jiu always loved adventures, and treasure hunting adventures were her favorite. She was already so excited that she was pondering setting out without having secured the exact location.

But Sui Yi looked at her, that glance made Gong Jiu’s expression freeze, "Uh, don’t tell me you aren’t allowing me to come along~~"

"No... I need to take a call."

Just as Sui Yi finished speaking, her phone rang.

It was Wei Feng.

"Miss Sui, did you see the map?"

"Mm"

"Hehe, seems like I don’t need to guide you... Though I must tell you, our people have been there three times, a total of fifty-eight died, all killed in action."

"Is this a threat?"

"No, it’s a friendly reminder from our partnership, and a precondition... I really worry that someone as beautiful and rare as Miss Sui might perish in that dirty and ugly place."

After a pause, Wei Feng added another sentence, "Perhaps Gong Miss and her companions as well..."

He seemed to have anticipated everything about Sui Yi and the others.

And Sui Yi responded more directly, "Indeed, Gong Jiu and the others should be counted."

Her condition was that she had the right to bring another group, which also meant that she wasn’t his subordinate but an independent collaborator.

"Heh, good," Wei Feng understood right away and agreed readily, just like how Sui Yi had previously agreed to him.

The two hung up the phone with unspoken understanding.

Gong Jiu, already impatient, asked, "That guy called? What did you mean by your words just now, working with him?"

"Yeah, I agreed."

"Are you crazy, that guy’s a trickster! The old guys in my clan have been duped by him a few times... Did he threaten you?"

"A threat? Kind of..."

"Damn, what kind of leverage does he have?"

"Hmm~~" Sui Yi tilted her head as if thinking for a moment before murmuring softly, "Seems like I accidentally saw him skinny-dipping."

"....."

Next door, Jiang Chenyu was writing when she suddenly heard something akin to the roaring and fighting of a great ape. Her hand twitched, and the brush stroked beyond the scroll...

Blinking lightly, she put down the brush, turned, and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window, looking at the warm sunlight outside, deep in thought...

And the sunlight fell upon the scroll, with words already written.

All the ships of the past were not the one, a thousand years forbearing for the reed wine.

A dream passes, the heart breaks at Parrot Isle.

That year, the misty drizzle ceased, he lay across the land, yet was lost in a drunken dream of nine...

The words following were interrupted, and Jiang Chenyu did not continue writing.

It was as if the air softly carried the words she murmured.

The Ninefold... Tower...

----------(To be continued. If you enjoy this work, welcome to qidian.com to cast your recommendation votes and monthly tickets. Your support is my greatest motivation. Mobile users, please go to m.qidian.com to read.)