Antique Appraisal: I Can See the Past of Antiques!

After three years as an apprentice in an antique shop, Shen Yan's daily tasks were mostly dusting, running errands, and dealing with unsellable fakes for his boss. Until the eve of Jubao Studio's bankruptcy, he touched a Republic-era imitation painting that was about to be thrown away. At that moment, he saw the painting's past—eighty years ago, a mounter hid a genuine Ming dynasty masterpiece in the painting's core, and left half of a mysterious "Returning Crane Seal" on the back. Others appraise antiques by looking at patina, inscriptions, and provenance; Shen Yan can see a moment that an antique has witnessed. Forgers mix old clay under lamplight, tomb raiders carry bronze vessels out of tomb passages, impoverished painters trade their last painting for medicine money, and guardians in wartime pack national treasures into wooden crates bound overseas... However, what he sees are only fragmented scenes, not appraisal answers. To make the truth acknowledged by the world, he still must find evidence and confront forgers, auction houses, capitalist collectors, and the transnational black market in cultural relics head-on. When that hidden painting brings him his first income, a strange phone call follows: "That Returning Crane Seal—where did you see it?" Only then does Shen Yan learn that there were twenty-seven national treasures secretly numbered back then. The seventh remained in the country. The other twenty-six all disappeared overseas. — Description from novelcodex.orgFull novel: Antique Appraisal: I Can See the Past of Antiques! — read the rest free on N​o⁠v​e⁠l​C⁠o​d⁠e​x⁠.​o⁠r​g⁠