Chapter 294: Grave Robbery 1: The Manor Officials Tricked the Ghost

The ultimate beauty often makes people marvel at it.

Although Zhuang Long is already a familiar face to most people in Hong Kong due to his early movies and promotional activities during this period, the image of Zhuang Chen, the owner of this antique shop, still astounded all the audiences, whether familiar or unfamiliar with him.

Compared to his previous Western-style looks in other movies, the antique shop owner's black stand-up collar long gown is a typical modified Chinese retro clothing. Many older people wear it during traditional festivals or even for daily wear. But in this movie, his not-so-uncommon black stand-up collar long gown, combined with his appearance, figure, temperament, lighting and other factors, reveals a kind of excellent texture like a memory filter, which is particularly moving.

KiKi, who seemed full of youthfulness at first, was instantly weighed down by the heavy feeling like fine wine that had been aged for years, and her previous good looks were completely gone.

While Er Dongxing was still trying to analyze the composition of this scene, Zhang Wanyu beside him had already covered her chest and whispered, "I originally thought Zhuang Long was handsome enough, but I didn't expect that he would look more handsome in this old-fashioned-looking long gown than in a suit..."

Noticing the caring look of the people around him, Zhang Wanyu immediately glared back at him: "It's hard for a grown man like you to understand the appreciation of beauty from the bottom of our hearts."

"It's just infatuation in the end." Er Dongxing sneered, and then said, "Of course I appreciate beauty - but my appreciation is different from your superficial appreciation. I look at the skills and efforts behind this scene..."

A picture like this, captured seemingly unintentionally, is already perfect in every pixel. In real life, I don’t know how many times I tried to get the effect.

A simple-minded young girl like Zhang Wanyu would just follow the ordinary people and exclaim in amazement at the beauty in front of the stage, but she has no idea of ​​the heart-wrenching things behind the scenes.

After this scene that immediately caught the audience's attention with its extreme beauty passed, the focus returned to KiKi.

As I was dusting the items in the cabinet with a feather duster, a color photo placed on the top of the storage cabinet by the wall came into the audience's eyes: it was a close-up photo of a very young girl, about sixteen or seventeen years old, smiling shyly at the camera in front of her, looking very gentle and charming.

"This is Mr. Zhuang Chen's sister, a mixed-race girl. Occasionally, Mr. Zhuang Chen happily calls her NiNi." KiKi stood in front of the locker and quietly admired the photo for a while, with a complicated smile on her face, "She... is indeed very cute."

"And...it matches my name, doesn't it?" These words were expressed in the form of voice-over to express KiKi's thoughts at the moment, and many of the love-minded audience who wanted to pair up with someone as soon as they saw them smiled knowingly.

"I recognize the girl in the photo!" Zhang Wanyu looked at it carefully for a while and said in surprise, "This is the girl who played Mary's best friend in "The Fault in Our Stars". I think her name is Sophie!"

"Sophie Marceau." Er Dongxing sighed and added, "She is one of the new talents that has been very popular in the French film industry in the past two years. I heard that it was because of her good performance as a supporting actress in "The Fault in Our Stars" that she received attention and her family began to pay attention to her that she gradually embarked on the road of acting."

"Then I guess, her character should be a pair with KiKi's character." Obviously, Zhang Wanyu is now also a member of the army of love-brained viewers.

The movie has long announced that Su Yun's character and Zhuang Long's character are a couple, so KiKi, played by Keanu, should also have a corresponding CP.

It just so happened that Sophie had worked with him before in "The Fault in Our Stars". Although the two had no intersection in "The Fault in Our Stars", Su Yun specially invited Sophie back, it was impossible for her to just be a passing supporting role.

Especially since both Sophie and Keanu have Western faces that lean towards Eastern aesthetics. They are rare Western looks that most Orientals can appreciate the beauty of... If you think about it this way, these two people are a perfect match, and the more you look at them, the more they look like a couple!

While Zhang Wanyu was still sitting in her seat agreeing to her own guess, the calm tone of the movie began to change.

An old lady holding a cloth bundle pushed the door open and started by wanting to sell an ancient heirloom painting of hers. She said in an anxious manner that her grandson, whose parents had died young, had been in a car accident that morning and was now lying in the hospital, waiting for the money from the sale of the painting to save his life.

"Grandma, don't be anxious. I have to take a look at the goods first." Zhuang Chen said calmly, and then stretched out his hand to open the bundle: his antique shop in New York's Chinatown is often visited by compatriots who are in urgent need of money and come here to sell their ancestral heirlooms.

As we all know, when something is urgently needed, the price is often pushed down to the lowest. Unless people are desperate, most people would rather borrow than sell their heirlooms at a low price.

This is often a good opportunity for people like them to make a profit, but the world is dangerous and people's hearts are not as good as they used to be. There are also some scammers who pretend to be pitiful and in urgent need of money, and use counterfeit goods to defraud money.

With the intention of knowing the dragon and the phoenix at a glance, Zhuang Chen made preparations and slowly opened the ancient painting.

On the dark yellow drawing paper, a dark dragon's horns and claws appear in the rolling sea of ​​clouds. A beautiful woman in colorful clothes seems to be flying away with the wind. However, the tone of the whole painting is faintly filled with a sense of expectation and hope, as if the departure of this beautiful "goddess" will not make people feel sad, but will make people extremely happy.

The most peculiar thing is that ancient paintings that usually depict beauties, no matter what style of beauties, are intended to make the viewer feel that the beauty in the painting is a peerless beauty; but in this painting alone, the style of depicting the beauty is not to show the woman's innate beauty, such as delicate and gentle, dignified and elegant, or graceful and luxurious, but to carry a kind of... respect that the painter has for the beauty in the painting.

Yes, a kind of "respect" that has never been seen before.

Even if the painting was for a noble lady of high status, the sense of awe that comes from the heart that is not seen in ancient paintings of beauties would not be there.

It was as if this was not a portrait of a beautiful woman, but a depiction of a sacrificial ritual of an unknown sect.

There was a line of small dark red seal characters printed on the lower right corner of the picture. Because the painting was so well preserved, it didn't take Zhuang Chen much effort to identify it. He converted it with just a few glances: Picture of Goddess Flying.

But even if the beauty depicted in the painting is a goddess from heaven, it should not appear that this is a portrait painting without any covetous look - the painters who were able to create such masterpieces in ancient times, whether they were painting for themselves or for those in a higher position, always had a sense of male appreciation of female beauty.

"This painting is so beautiful..." Compared to Zhuang Chen who could see the problem in the ancient painting at a glance, KiKi's reaction was that of a typical layman who could not help but be amazed by a work of art that suits the public's aesthetic taste.

"I heard from my grandfather that this is an antique from the Qin Shi Huang period and is very valuable. When his family came here by boat and their business failed, he was reluctant to sell it..." Hearing KiKi's praise, the old lady raised her chin and kept repeating over and over again how valuable the painting was. Soon, Zhuang Chen, who was full of doubts after seeing the painting, slowly raised his head.

Then, he smiled with a masterful smile: "Grandma, let's be frank. This is the only amount I can give you for this painting."

He held up two fingers.

"Two hundred thousand?!" The old lady's eyes lit up.

"You think too much. It's 20,000." Zhuang Chen's smile became even bigger. "Your remarks are totally unreasonable. It's obvious that this is a well-made fake. Giving you this amount is a privilege because I am interested in the artist of this painting."

"Impossible, my paintings are real! You don't know what's real, I'll go somewhere else!" The old lady immediately got angry.

"It's up to you, but I can guarantee that the people in the shops in the nearby streets are not pushovers. The number they give you will definitely not be higher than mine." Zhuang Chen waved his hand generously, "KiKi, show me around."

After the old lady left with the painting in her arms, KiKi looked at Zhuang Chen with some confusion: "Boss?"

Zhuang Chen's micro-expressions have always been difficult to detect, but he has worked in the store for some time, so it is not difficult to notice the subtle changes in Zhuang Chen's eyes when he sees the full picture of the ancient painting: generally speaking, the things that can make him show this phenomenon must be very precious antiques.

"That painting is indeed an antique, but it is very problematic." An extremely contradictory problem that is inconsistent with history and time.

On the surface, no matter how it is examined, it must be what a genuine Qin Dynasty artifact should look like; but based on his experience, a careful examination revealed that this texture is a historical trace of no more than a hundred years old. The only speculation that can slightly explain this contradiction is that it is an antique fake made by a reclusive master during the Republic of China and the Anti-Japanese War period.

The quality of the painting should have commanded a higher price, but the fake quality held it back. He paid $20,000 for it because of the strangeness of the painting.

As Zhuang Chen expected, the old lady soon came back holding the painting with a wronged look on her face: "Twenty thousand, will you still buy it?"

It's a very unconvincing statement: Anyone who knows a little about the rules and unspoken rules knows that once a price is given, it will only be lowered again if it is returned.

In the end, Zhuang Chen bought this strange ancient painting for 18,000 yuan.

The mystery of the ancient painting lingers in the following daily plot. Zhuang Chen's sister NiNi suddenly visits and says that she took the opportunity of going camping with her classmates during the summer vacation to secretly meet up with her brother: the two siblings are half-siblings, and NiNi is the daughter of Zhuang Chen's Chinese father, who married a white wife five years after his mother died of childbirth.

However, because their father died unexpectedly during a trip, NiNi was taken away to be raised by her stepmother. Later, her stepmother remarried, so NiNi was sent to live with her grandparents.

Occasionally, NiNi would go to stay with her remarried mother for a few days. However, because her mother was disliked by the elders of the Chinese family as a non-Chinese, NiNi was forbidden by her mother who hated her brother Zhuang Chen. The only contact between the two siblings was a photo and a letter sent every year.

In this scene, KiKi always approaches NiNi to get close to her, asking her all sorts of questions as if she is very interested in her, which makes the audience smile: he dares to flirt with someone else's sister when his brother-in-law is around. It's all thanks to the free-spirited foreigners who don't understand this unspoken rule.

Just when everyone was expecting these two young people with similar names to develop feelings for each other, one night, a group of men in black broke into the antique shop and, in the chaos, tied up NiNi who had come out to check the situation after hearing the noise.

Seeing his sister being held hostage by this group of people whose intentions were unknown but whose bad intentions were obvious, Zhuang Chen immediately stepped forward and agreed to their request: "Okay, I'll go with you, but you must not hurt my sister!"

"What should we do with this kid?" one of the men in black asked the other.

"He's just a summer intern. He has nothing to do with the store. And you saw what he did just now..." Zhuang Chen turned around and looked at KiKi with disdain. He was obviously very dissatisfied with KiKi's cowardly and cowardly behavior and using his sister as a shield. "You are fired. Also, don't expect me to pay you for this period of time. Get out!"

KiKi looked at Zhuang Chen's back as he slowly walked towards the man in black with a wronged but worried look on her face. In a moment of impulse, she couldn't help but shout out, "Don't go over there - she's just a fake with ulterior motives. I'm your 'sister'!"