Chapter Fifteen

The next day, she took the broken blue and white porcelain plate to the antique market.

The first shop Zuo Xutong entered was owned by an elderly man in his seventies with gray hair and wearing titanium alloy reading glasses.

Zuo Xutong hesitated for a moment, then handed over the package and asked, "Sir, do you have plates like this?"

"Let me see." The old man slowly reached out, picked up the largest fragment, adjusted his glasses and examined it for a long time. His lips gradually drooped, and he sighed, "Tsk tsk, what a pity, such a good thing."

Zuo Xutong was taken aback: "Isn't this a fake?"

"A fake?" The old man's cloudy eyes widened, his voice trembling slightly. "The glaze, the body, the foot rim, and the mark all match the characteristics of official kiln porcelain from the Yongzheng period. Who says it's a fake?"

Finally, he added, "I've been watching this for decades, it can't be wrong."

Is it true?

"Yes, it's definitely genuine," the old man said with certainty.

"Oh, thank you." Zuo Xutong put the things away, thinking to herself, this old man must be seeing things; how could it be real!

Seeing that she was about to leave, the old man quickly asked again, "Are you selling all this stuff?"

Zuo Xutong shook her head and smiled apologetically.

A few minutes later, she went into another antique shop specializing in porcelain. The owner of this shop was a short, stout middle-aged man with dark skin. He had a large string of Bodhi seeds around his neck and was also holding two patinaed lion heads in his hands.

This time, Zuo Xutong didn't say anything, but directly took out the fragment and placed it in front of the fat man.

The portly shopkeeper immediately understood. He put down the walnuts he was holding, raised his swollen, chubby hand, and picked through them for a long time before finally managing to pinch off a single piece. After examining it with the naked eye, he picked up a magnifying glass and squinted to observe it carefully.

After looking at it, the chubby shopkeeper turned around, took the bag of fragments, spread them out on the table, pieced them together, and nodded, saying, "Hmm, it's quite complete. How about three thousand?"

Three thousand? Zuo Xutong was shocked and stammered, "I... I don't want to sell, I just want to find someone decent."

"Oh, I see. You broke someone's things and want to buy them a replacement."

Zuo Xutong pursed her lips, her heart pounding faster, and nodded uneasily.

"I don't have this kind of high-quality item here. I doubt you could find many places in the entire antique market."

"So...it's true?" Zuo Xutong asked with difficulty.

"After all this fuss, you still don't know if it's true or not?" the fat man exclaimed.

Zuo Xutong's head was buzzing. She picked up her things listlessly, turned around and left.

"Hey, hey, don't rush off! Four thousand, four thousand or not? Four thousand five? Five thousand..."

She had walked quite a distance, but the fat shopkeeper was still shouting prices behind her, as if she had gone deaf and couldn't hear anything.

That day, Zuo Xutong visited three antique shops and finally confirmed that the blue and white porcelain plate she broke was a genuine official kiln piece from the Yongzheng period.

On Monday morning, the pile of things reappeared in front of Peng Kun.

"Fake? And you even fed it to stray cats? You think I'm a complete idiot?" Zuo Xutong was a little agitated. She tried to lower her voice to appear less agitated. "Do you know how many people are vying to buy these fragments at high prices?"

When his lie was exposed, Peng Kun leaned back in his chair without saying a word, appearing completely unfazed.

Zuo Xutong didn't want to waste any more time with him, so she asked directly, "How much did you pay for it?"

"I didn't buy it; it was given to me by someone as payment for a debt."

"How much did you get as a discount?"

"I forgot."

"Fine, I don't have any money to compensate you anyway. So, tell me, what do you want to do?"

Peng Kun chuckled upon hearing this, thinking to himself, "I never intended for you to pay, but you insisted on paying anyway, and now you're showing this shameless, 'what the hell' attitude. Well, these days, debtors are the bosses,' and I wouldn't dare to stoop to their level."

"If you ask me, just forget about it. I don't need this thing anyway. If you hadn't broken it, I wouldn't have even remembered that I had a plate."

Zuo Xutong shook her head. Of course she wanted to let it go, more than anyone else. Before coming here, she had also gone through a fierce internal struggle. In the end, she found that she couldn't pretend to be ignorant when she knew the truth. She felt uneasy about owing someone such a big favor.

"How about I write you an IOU and you pay it back in installments?" she said.

"Installment payments?" Peng Kun suppressed a laugh. How could she come up with such a thing? Anyone who didn't know better would think she was buying a house or a car. However, he was also aware of her financial situation. She still owed him rent and it was impossible for her to come up with such a large sum of money all at once in a short period of time. In the end, he could only nod and say, "Then let's do it your way."

"Name your price."

"Fifty thousand, is that alright with you?" Peng Kun asked in a consultative tone, as if he were not a creditor but a plate salesman.

When money was mentioned, Zuo Xutong immediately wilted. She glanced at him and said with difficulty, "I've already had someone appraise it. This kind of condition... this Yongzheng official kiln blue and white porcelain plate with this pattern is probably worth two or three hundred thousand."

"It's worth so much?" Peng Kun feigned surprise, though he already knew its true value perfectly well. The plate was indeed given to him by a friend who desperately needed money, and he received 350,000 yuan from him.

“Market valuations are usually inflated. Would you buy this dilapidated plate for 200,000?” Peng Kun said again.

"I wouldn't buy it even for twenty yuan." Zuo Xutong was telling the truth. In her eyes, it was just a dish for holding food, and the value of the porcelain clay was its only value.

“That settles it. Only what can be sold is worth money. You say it’s worth a million, but the key is whether anyone will buy it?” Peng Kun’s words had a double meaning.

Zuo Xutong knew he couldn't tell her the truth, and she was too lazy to listen to his logical analysis anymore. She calculated that if she calculated based on the lowest price of 200,000 yuan, and the monthly repayment was 3,000 yuan, without considering interest, it would take at least five and a half years to pay off the loan.

She took out paper and pen and wrote him an IOU for 200,000 yuan to be repaid in installments. This meant that for the next five or six years, she would have to pay him a sum of money every month, just like paying a mortgage. Sure enough, misfortune did not leave her easily. Sure enough, she had broken an antique. It was truly a case of "sitting at home and trouble comes out of nowhere." When someone is down on their luck, even drinking cold water can cause problems. It seemed like she hadn't done anything, yet she had unknowingly incurred a huge debt.

For several days, Zuo Xutong couldn't shake off the trauma of the incident. She spent 3,000 yuan a month paying off her debts, plus 2,000 yuan for rent, leaving her with barely enough to make ends meet, and no money left to buy experimental materials. Without materials, her membrane electrode research couldn't continue. Thinking about this, she felt like dying.

After lunch, Zuo Xutong returned to her office. Recently, the office seating arrangement had changed, and Tan Chao was now next to her. She sat by the window, and every time she went in or out, she had to pass behind him.

Tan Chao has recently become obsessed with online novels. Despite his busy work schedule and physical exhaustion, he spends his lunch break at his workstation engrossed in reading them on his phone.

Zuo Xutong wasn't in the mood to pay attention to what he was doing, but when Tan Chao saw someone coming, he deliberately blocked the screen with his arm. This only made Zuo Xutong angrier. Lately, he had been very distracted at work, causing the battery test, which they expected to complete in two or three days, to be delayed until the weekend. She was already in a bad mood these past few days, and seeing Tan Chao's sneaky behavior only made her angrier. So, she deliberately peeked at the screen when he wasn't looking, only seeing half of the title: "Beautiful Boss XXX," before he quickly covered it up.

Seeing her work partner spending all day and night lost in fantasies about ethereal beauties, even severely shortening his lunch break, Zuo Xutong finally couldn't help but ask, "Tan Chao, is the novel you're reading about a poor loser who's good for nothing but can't eat enough, suffering from cold looks and discrimination at the bottom of society, who one day suddenly meets a super beautiful woman who is powerful, wealthy, and influential. This super beautiful woman doesn't like anyone else but the mediocre and incompetent male protagonist, and she provides him with all sorts of advantageous resources. Then the male protagonist's life is like a cheat code, achieving a complete reversal of fortune, ultimately gaining both fame and wealth, and winning the heart of the beauty?"

Tan Chao panicked and slammed his phone face down on the table, staring wide-eyed as he asked, "You've read this novel too?"

Zuo Xutong shook her head and said dismissively, "Isn't that how it's always written?"

"I didn't realize you were interested in this, given how you're always buried in your work?"

"To be honest, I haven't really researched it. I just glanced at the title and guessed."

"I don't believe it. How could someone guess so accurately?"

"Isn't this just a male version of Cinderella? What's so difficult about it?"

Tan Chao scratched his head awkwardly, his face turning red all the way to his ears: "Hey, I was just looking around for fun, it's because I don't have a girlfriend either. If I had a girlfriend, would I be drooling over her every day? Why don't we just get together?"

"You can keep reading, I won't bother you anymore." Zuo Xutong turned her head away and ignored him.