Imperial Treasure
Chapter 82 - 70: A Scam? It Doesn’t Look Like It

Chapter 82: Chapter 70: A Scam? It Doesn’t Look Like It

At this moment, he squatted next to Sui Yi, looking at these objects just like her, sometimes talking to Sui Yi about some of the idle gossip from this street.

The stall owner was making a transaction with a woman, and it seemed that they were about to close a deal—the amount involved appeared to be quite large, causing Su Ziyi to slightly curl her lips.

Sui Yi, on the other hand, was not paying attention to them but had picked up a purple sand teapot that looked very quaint. She glanced at it and smiled.

Her smile was quite playful, making the stall owner, who had a square and honest face, raise his eyebrows in surprise, and Su Ziyi was also momentarily stunned.

"What, you like this purple sand teapot?" Su Ziyi frowned, just about to say something...

Suddenly, a force surged from behind Sui Yi.

So abruptly, someone bumped into her through the crowd, making her involuntarily lean forward...

Her palms pressing on the table, Sui Yi furrowed her brows, clutching the purple sand teapot and dodged to the side, standing steadily, but collided unexpectedly with the person behind her.

"Ah!"

A clinking sound as it hit the ground, a woman’s high-pitched scream! She turned around and saw a tourist-dressed woman and the shattered colored porcelain on the ground.

"You bumped into me... and broke my colored porcelain~!!!" the woman raged, storming up to Sui Yi, "I paid one hundred thousand Yuan for this!!!"

"Give me back my colored porcelain!"

The voice was too shrill, full of fury; beside her stood a middle-aged man who was equally livid, surrounding Sui Yi and shouting, "Give us the money; we paid one hundred thousand Yuan for this colored porcelain!!"

"Give the money..."

Sui Yi sidestepped the attempt of the other person trying to grab her arm, set the purple sand teapot on the ground, and looked at the couple, her gaze sweeping over them and then toward the broken pieces on the ground.

By now, a crowd had gathered, pointing and chattering.

No matter where, rubbernecking is human nature. The crowd grew more dense, many silent onlookers, some laughing and jesting, others egging on...

Was this a staged accident or a genuine mishap?

Sui Yi raised her eyebrows, just about to speak when an elder dressed in a teal shirt, holding a magnifying glass, walking with a scholarly air, came out of the crowd. He stooped to pick up the fragments, examining them for quite some time, and then revealed a look of astonishment.

He lamented, "What a pity, such a pity...in such good condition...and now broken."

What’s a pity?

The complaining couple seemed to freeze in their grief and anger, and the woman asked, "What do you mean by that?"

"I mean, your colored porcelain is a shame to have broken; it was an authentic piece. If you were intending to sell it, I would have been willing to buy it from you, but unfortunately, it’s broken..."

Authentic!

"How much is it worth?!" the man asked urgently.

The elder put away his magnifying glass, stood up, and raised his index finger...

Does this mean...

"One hundred thousand?" someone in the crowd whispered.

"Two million. I’m prepared to offer that amount. This is Ming Dynasty underglaze red painted ware, well-preserved. Naturally, if you were to auction it, the price could be higher, but then you’d have substantial consignment fees. I’m not trying to take advantage of you," the elder said with a stern look.

The crowd was abuzz, having initially thought this was a staged scam, but they didn’t expect it to be identified as an authentic artifact.

Two million, nonetheless!

The noise escalated among the spectators; some commiserated with Sui Yi, thinking how unfortunate she was. Meanwhile, the stall owner glanced at Sui Yi and said, "Everything I sell here is genuine, you still don’t believe it, just look..."

The couple were going out of their minds, the man ferocious, "Two million Yuan! Compensate! You must compensate!"

Su Ziyi had absolutely not anticipated encountering such a situation. Though she suspected there was considerable strangeness and conspiracy at play, still...

She couldn’t find a breakthrough.

A staged accident?

Ordinarily, staged accidents were the doing of the stall owner, demanding compensation for the value of a genuine item if a fake one was destroyed—something familiar to see, but what was happening now was...

"Sui Yi, you.." Su Ziyi wanted to step in front of Sui Yi, saying, "We didn’t do it on purpose, don’t bully a girl..."

Su Ziyi was familiar with the area and wasn’t intimidated by these people.

The couple didn’t care about Su Ziyi, cursing and shouting, refusing to let it go, entangling themselves in the situation while the elder casually looked over at Sui Yi, lifted his eyebrows, and said, "I normally wouldn’t get involved in these matters, but young lady, you did bump into their property, ruining their potential two million Yuan windfall... It would be quite unfair if you didn’t offer any compensation."

His words indeed seemed reasonable.

Many in the crowd, particularly the tourists, agreed. If they found themselves in a similar predicament, they would surely expect compensation, especially for something they had spent one hundred thousand Yuan on!

"Two million is a lot for you—after all, this was an accident. How about this, you compensate them with seven hundred thousand Yuan as restitution, and you can make a call to consult with your family about it..."

The elder appeared to believe it wouldn’t be right to be too harsh on Sui Yi, hence his remarks were somewhat in her favor.

Bystanders also felt there was some reason in what the couple had said, but the expressions of some of the vendors varied: some were gloating, while others were shaking their heads...

Su Ziyi found the situation troublesome and wasn’t sure how to handle it. After all, he was just a student and lacked the necessary skills.

It was Sui Yi who lightly laughed, took a few steps forward, and while the puzzled and wary couple watched, he bent down, idly shuffled through some pieces, and flipped over a fragment from the ground for about half a minute before picking it up.

The fragment still had an underglaze color with a vivid hue and broken patterns of landscape and flowers.

"Ink outlines drawn with light and heavy strokes, colored with light ochre, water green, grass green, light blue, light purple, among others. Well-integrated with brushed writing, the painted porcelain presents a serene and ethereal scene in light rouge color, which is indeed well done," Sui Yi said softly, glancing at the elder, "Wouldn’t you agree?"

The elder frowned, thinking that this girl seemed to know her stuff... However, it played right into his hands, and he said, "That’s exactly it, which is why I said this is genuine, such a pity..."

After speaking, he shook his head slightly.

Gently stroking the fragment, Sui Yi said in a faint voice, "Ming Dynasty’s underglaze red colors, correct?"

"Right, just look at that landscape painting... It’s worth two million!" the middle-aged man blurted out.

"But light rouge color didn’t exist until the Qing Dynasty," Sui Yi replied coolly.

The crowd was taken aback, and some people slowly came to realize their mistake. The Qing Dynasty? Wasn’t it the Ming Dynasty?

That elder had said this was an underglaze red color from the Ming Dynasty...

"I remember it like this, the light rouge color was indeed a creation of the Qing Dynasty, a first-rate innovation in history that marked a new style for colored porcelain..." someone who knew a bit chimed in.

The elder’s face showed embarrassment, and he chuckled awkwardly, saying, "Then I must have been mistaken; this is colored porcelain from the Qing Dynasty... but the value is about the same..."

"The Qing Dynasty, eh..."

Sui Yi let out a deep sigh as she turned the fragment in her fingers over, "There’s even a mark that says ’made by Xu Yi’ on it... This is a modern printed font, isn’t it? Made with a branding iron."

"From the Qing Dynasty to the modern age, a combination of three periods, elder, are you playing games with me?"

Astonishment rippled through the crowd as they suddenly understood. Damn, this thing was definitely fake!

Modern fonts from the Qing Dynasty? And modern branding techniques... Moreover, the elder misspoke twice in his explanation. What kind of expert was that?

They had almost believed it to be true!

The item was fake, and so was the two million. The elder’s face turned a mixture of red and white, appearing quite deflated.

Su Ziyi watched Sui Yi and couldn’t help but feel shocked, and yet he knew that his opponent was not easily fooled.

The couple seemed to realize that they had been fed a bunch of nonsense by the elder and that two million was out of the question. However...

The woman’s eyes darted about before she raised her voice, "Even so, you still damaged our property. We bought it for one hundred thousand yuan! You can ask the vendor! I just transferred one hundred thousand to him!"

With that, she even showed everyone the transaction record on her phone...

Well, it was a bona fide transaction.

By the rules, Sui Yi could not escape compensating a large sum...

--Even though the item was fake.

Here lay a legal blind spot: the declared value of an item versus its actual value for compensation. You say it’s fake, but the other party just bought something for one hundred thousand yuan, so they have lost one hundred thousand yuan.

But to put it another way, if someone spent ten million on a piece of ordinary glass and someone else accidentally broke it, would they have to compensate ten million?

That’s not realistic. Legally, there isn’t a strict rule about this: it’s mostly based on the actual value of the goods, but also considered on a case-by-case basis. Generally, if the matter is settled privately, you could still end up paying a substantial sum...

Now, it seemed the couple was going to make Sui Yi pay tens of thousands at least. Of course, making the vendor pay was out of the question, since the sale of antiques was subject to a willing buyer and a willing seller, and once the goods were sold, the vendor was no longer responsible.

In fact, such a sticky situation is quite distressing, and most people just have to accept their bad luck when they encounter it.

Tens of thousands? For Sui Yi, it wasn’t a significant amount of money. She glanced at the couple, then at the vendor, and finally, her gaze lingered on the elder. After a pause, she took out her phone, dialed a number, and placed her phone in front of the vendor, speaking softly, "This is the phone number of Lin Quan, the newly appointed police chief. Ask him if you four should be invited to the police station for a chat, regarding the innovative way of scamming you’ve come up with..."

The police chief!

From the other end, Lin Quan’s voice came through, "Sui Yi? What happened? What scam? Damn it, is someone troubling you?"

Oh no!

The couple and the elder went pale! The vendor, who seemed honest enough, turned red and white before chuckling awkwardly after a moment, "This... this isn’t my fault..."

Sui Yi took her phone back and exchanged a few words of courtesy with Lin Quan before hanging up. Lin Quan guessed most of the situation and could only laugh to himself about how foolish these people were for picking trouble with Sui Yi... Didn’t they know how deeply connected that girl was in Nanxun?

Elder Tang, the Nanxun Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Yi on the side, and his own connections in the police force - this network was enough to give her free reign in Nanxun.

After the call, Sui Yi turned to the vendor and said, "So this is my business, then?"

Was Sui Yi someone to be trifled with? (To be continued. If you like this work, you’re welcome to vote with recommendation tickets and monthly tickets on Qidian (qidian.com). Your support is my greatest motivation. Mobile users, please visit m.qidian.com to read.)