Chapter 93 He Looks Injured

Ming Yuanxing's face remained expressionless. He whispered a few words to his friend Chen Weiming, then stood up and left. Another uproar erupted. Ming Yuanxing made only one bid before leaving. What did this signify? Was this set of Western Zhou chime bells genuine?

Seeing that Ming Yuanxing attracted everyone's attention, Chen Weiming handed his sign to his assistant and picked up Ming Yuanxing's sign.

After Mingyuan walked, the speed of raising the sign slowed down significantly.

“5.25 million! 5.25 million once! 5.25 million twice!”

The auctioneer scanned the room. Suddenly, he saw a new bid and said, "5.3 million!"

The Taipei Museum had lost interest in the fight and gave up the bid.

“5.3 million once! 5.3 million twice! 5.3 million three times!”

The final word.

Outside the auction hall, Ming Yuanxing was watching the live broadcast on the screen inside. The moment the hammer struck, he picked up his phone and stared at it without blinking.

The first time his phone rang, he swiped to answer it. Chen Weiming's voice came from the other end.

"Got it. 5.3 million Hong Kong dollars."

Tong Zhongyuan's cell phone rang and he picked it up and took a look.

"The Sotheby's auction is over. Ming Yuanhang, on behalf of the Shanghai Museum, won the Western Zhou chime bells for HK$5.3 million. As I left the Chater Building in Central, I was questioned by the Hong Kong media."

Customers in Hong Kong sent messages from the scene.

"Thank you." He replied.

He copied the message, opened WeChat, and pasted it into Qin Tian's chat box. But he hesitated to click send. He glanced at the time. It was 11:30. She probably hadn't gone to dinner yet.

He closed his computer and went to her office. As he walked down the hallway, he heard her voice from around the corner.

"Didn't you say you'd come to the museum this afternoon?"

"I can't sleep, come here early."

"Last night..." She lowered her voice so that only a few words could be heard, "He...was also...late?"

"Well, he didn't go back until daybreak either. He won't be coming in today. Why are you asking about him?"

"Let's not talk about it," she sighed. "I've offended him badly."

"What's going on?"

"Let's eat first and talk while we eat. You haven't had breakfast yet, have you?"

"I just woke up, what's the point of having breakfast? Come with me to eat outside, I don't want to eat in the cafeteria."

Their voices grew closer. He stood still, neither moving forward nor backward. They passed through the passage in front of him, heading towards the hall. They were immersed in their long-lost conversation and didn't even glance over.

"What to eat?"

"Pick the one you like."

"It's you who came back from America, not me. Go eat what you want."

"What you like is what I want to eat."

"I like shit, do you want to eat it?"

"...Sister, we're eating together. I eat shit, what do you eat?"

“Hahahahahahahahahahaha…”

She smiled widely, and her laughter spread out in the corridor, gradually fading away until it could no longer be heard.

Song Suiyang saw Tong Zhongyuan go out earlier and thought he was going to eat. She cleaned up the repair table a little and was about to go to eat when she saw him come back.

"Teacher Tong, don't you want to eat?" she greeted him.

He didn't answer her, but walked straight to the desk and sat down.

She was no longer surprised by his indifference. She sent a message to Chen Yun asking if she could eat. Chen Yun said, "Wait for me in ten minutes."

She turned on her phone and played Connect the Dots game to kill time. After finishing a game, she looked up and saw Tong Zhongyuan still sitting there, neither on his computer nor on his phone, with his head half lowered, wondering what he was thinking.

She played another round for about ten minutes, then asked Chen Yun if she was done. Chen Yun said she was going to the bathroom and would leave soon.

She raised her head, and Tong Zhongyuan was still in that trance-like posture.

She was a little curious. Normally, he was as gentle and charming as a spring breeze and a bright moon in public. But when he was working, he was cold and distant, aloof. She shifted her chair, changing the angle at which she could see his face. His long eyelashes drooped, his gaze fixed unfocused on the distant ground.

She was stunned. She had never seen such an expression on his face before. She didn't know how to describe it. Was it loss? Bewilderment? Fragility? Using her limited imagination, he looked like a ragdoll cat, a beloved and elegant creature, until he strayed into a group of cats and realized he was truly ugly in their eyes.

When Song Suiyang told Chen Yun this metaphor during dinner, she laughed so hard that she fell down.

"Really?" she argued. "You can look up how ugly Ragdoll cats really are in the eyes of cats."

"I can't imagine what that expression is."

"Well, actually, this metaphor is not quite right." She tried to pick up the tofu, but it broke apart, so she had to get a spoon. She finally remembered how to describe it. She put down the spoon and said to Chen Yun: "..."

Qin Tian and Tang Zhixu sat in the izakaya. Tang Zhixu ordered a table of dishes, and Qin Tian looked at him with a frown.

"After all this time, you're thinking about Japanese food. I thought you missed Chinese cuisine."

"I'd like something spicy. Didn't you say you've been working overtime this week and have a sore throat? Let's have something light."

She was amazed. She had noticed that he had become much more attentive in the past two years.

He told her about the Chunhua Collection. The entire calligraphy and painting department had been working all night to verify the Chunhua Collection. Initially, they discovered three pages were missing from the seventh volume, and he nearly banged his head against the wall. Fortunately, after checking everything, he found the missing pages were inside the eighth volume.

Qin Tian also told him about the Nanbo incident. When he mentioned that Wang Qiqing had given her three days to take responsibility for the Shanghai Museum, Tang Zhixu's face darkened.

"He's so cruel? He has nothing to do with the work of the appraisal department. What happened next? How did you solve it?"

Qin Tian recounted the story of thermoluminescence separation. He thought for a moment and said, "That's not right. Your new paper is almost done, but that's based on reference data for porcelain. Where did you get the reference data for bronze?"

She looked at him with sparkling eyes, knowing she couldn't hide it from him. Just as she was about to speak, her phone rang. A WeChat message popped up.

She glanced at it and was startled. This message was from Tong Zhongyuan, who never sent her WeChat messages unless it was necessary. She clicked on it.

"The Sotheby's auction is over, and the Western Zhou chime bells were sold."

Her heart skipped a beat. She'd been thinking about this since the morning, but the news hadn't come out so quickly. She immediately typed a line to ask him, "Who took this photo? Director Ming?"

But he didn't reply.

"Is there anything wrong?" Tang Zhixu asked her.

"Nothing." She put down her phone and picked up a bunch of salt-grilled chicken wings to eat. He had just sent her a message, and her phone was in her hand. He should be able to reply to her soon.

She finished her chicken wings, but he still hadn't replied. Puzzled, she typed two more words: "Where's he?"

She finished typing and started eating her sukiyaki. She kept glancing at her phone, nearly burning her mouth. When she finished half a bowl, her phone was still silent.

She picked up her phone and looked at the chat interface, expecting to see the other person typing... but there was nothing. He had sent that message and then nothing happened.

Seeing her uneasy look, Tang Zhixu couldn't help but ask again: "What's the matter?"

Qin Tian didn't hear her. Her mind was full of thoughts. There was no reason for him not to reply to her. Did he leave his phone right after sending that message? What urgent matter could he have in the middle of the day? Or did Director Ming fail to take the photo? Or maybe something happened and he was struggling with whether to tell her? The more she thought about it, the more confused she became. She looked up at Tang Zhixu and said, "You eat first. I'm going out to make a phone call."

Tang Zhixu grabbed her and asked, "What call do you want to make outside?"

She pointed at the indoor environment with her chin: "It's too noisy here for work."

He let her go, and she walked outside with her phone and called Tong Zhongyuan. The dial tone rang five or six times, and just when she thought no one would answer, the phone was connected.

"Why don't you reply to my message?" she asked bluntly.

"Where are you?" he asked.

"Eating outside. How's the Xizhou chime bell? Did Director Ming take that photo?"

"It should be."

"What do you mean should be?"

"The client was at the scene and said that they changed the person during the final shoot. It wasn't Ming Yuanxing who was holding the card."

"What do you mean? He wasn't the one holding up the card, so how could he have hit it?" Qin Tian became more and more confused as he listened. Tong Zhongyuan's speech was always logical and clear. Was it her problem that he couldn't understand?

"I've also asked the client, but he hasn't replied to me yet."

She thought it would be better if she didn't ask, but after asking, instead of clearing up her confusion, she was left feeling anxious and worried. Was this captured or not?

Tong Zhongyuan said, "Why don't you give Director Ming a call and ask him."

If she could call, would she need to ask him? If Ming Yuanxing had taken the photo, he would be busy signing the agreement now. If he hadn't taken the photo, was she calling to bring bad luck?

"Then tell me if you have any news about the client."

"Yeah." He responded, "I'll hang up first. There's a message coming in."

When Qin Tian heard the word "news," she wanted to ask if it was a client's message, but he had already hung up, leaving her with only a series of merciless "beeps."

She stayed for a while before returning to the store dejectedly.