Chapter 42: Is He Actually Not Lying?

The morning mist had not yet dispersed, and the bluestone path was damp; Lin Sicheng curled up in the shadow of an old, crooked-necked locust tree.

He held a coarse porcelain bowl in his palms, the spicy aroma rising in steam, his lips reddened by the heat.

On both sides were diners just like him, squatting in a line along the curb, the sound of slurping soup filling the air.

Xiao Yuzhu glanced over, then glanced again. Then she took out her phone and tapped out a message in a flash:

Senior Sister Li, I've found Lin Sicheng, at Xing Laosan Spicy Soup by the north gate of the academy.

Li Zhen replied almost instantly: I'll be there right away.

Alrighty.

Putting her phone away, Xiao Yuzhu pretended to wait in line; after just four or five minutes, Li Zhen came jogging all the way to the entrance of the restaurant.

Well, well, finally caught him?

Professor Shang asked about him every day, and she didn't know how to reply. She couldn't very well tell her mentor: Lin Sicheng promised perfectly well that he would go see her after class, but then he stood her up?

And for three whole days at that?

She let out a breath and followed the line to find Xiao Yuzhu.

"Senior Sister, aren't you going to block him?"

"No rush, even a prisoner gets a full meal before being beheaded!"

"That's true, what do you want?"

"Get me a beef pancake, skip the soup!"

Xiao Yuzhu nodded: "I know!"

There were seats on the second floor, but what if Lin Sicheng ran away?

Li Zhen looked left and right: seeing that Lin Sicheng only had a soup bowl and no pancake, she quickly ran to the porridge and pancake shop next door and ordered two steamer baskets of buns and three cups of soy milk.

……

Drinking only soup certainly wouldn't fill him up, but the flavor of Xing Laosan's pancakes was too bland, so Lin Sicheng hadn't ordered any.

He set down the empty bowl and was just thinking about whether to get two more meat sandwiches or two more steamer baskets of buns when two figures blocked the sun.

He looked up instinctively: Xiao Yuzhu was blinking her eyes, looking as if to say, "Let's see where you run to this time."

Li Zhen didn't speak either, just watched him quietly, her expression gentle and serene as water.

Lin Sicheng's heart skipped a beat: Oh no.

He had agreed to go see Professor Shang, but had he forgotten it to the back of his head?

He gave a sheepish laugh and stood up: "Senior Sister!"

Li Zhen tucked a strand of hair behind her ear: "Just drinking soup, you certainly can't be full, here..."

Two steamer baskets of meat buns and a cup of soy milk.

Lin Sicheng hesitated for a moment: this breakfast, he feared, would be hard to digest?

Xiao Yuzhu laughed with schadenfreude: "After eating Senior Sister's buns, you can't stand her up again, right?"

Why bring up the one pot that won't boil?

Lin Sicheng didn't say a word and took them.

Li Zhen inserted the straw and handed him the soy milk too: "What classes do you have this morning?"

Xiao Yuzhu shook her head: "Anyway, there are no core classes, and even if there were, he wouldn't attend them properly!"

Lin Sicheng sighed: "Xiao Yuzhu, it's a real pity you weren't born before the Liberation!"

Xiao Yuzhu thought for a moment, then balled up her fist and punched him: "You're the one who's a traitor!"

It felt just like a tickle; Lin Sicheng didn't care at all and looked at the sun that had just poked its head out: "Professor Shang shouldn't be at work yet, right?"

"It's fine, knowing you're coming, she'll definitely be at work!"

"I'll go to the classroom to drop off my bag first!"

"Mm, that works, I'll go too, just to drop off A Zhu!"

Lin Sicheng paused: "That... Senior Sister Li, Professor Wang told me to go to his office first after I arrived at school!"

Which Professor Wang, the new Professor Wang?

That was the same excuse as last time.

Li Zhen smiled lightly: "It's fine, I'll wait for you outside the office. As it happens, Professor Wang and Professor Shang are in the same building."

Lin Sicheng sighed helplessly: it seemed he couldn't escape it.

Forget it, you get a blade if you stick your head out, and a blade if you pull it back.

"Senior Sister, let's go then!"

"Okay!"

Li Zhen nodded, and with Xiao Yuzhu, one on the left and one on the right, they sandwiched him in the middle, as if afraid he would run away.

Just as the three of them exited the street, a Mercedes-Benz pulled up to the side of the road.

A crowd of six or seven people got out of the car, but Wang Qi Zhi was not among them.

Dan Wangshu pointed into the alley, and the group walked inside. Ye Anning had just turned around when she stopped again.

Her eyes narrowed slightly, staring at the backs of the three people: that boy in the middle, he looked a bit like the person who picked up the dog basin yesterday?

Did she see wrong?

Just as she was looking carefully, Wang Huaizhi patted her: "What are you looking at, let's go!"

"Oh..."

……

Once in the classroom, Lin Sicheng thought about it very seriously.

It wasn't that it was hard to refuse; if he really wanted to find an excuse, he could come up with a whole pile of them.

He was considering how he could decline Professor Shang's kind offer while still deepening his relationship with Professor Shang and Li Zhen.

What else could he do?

Those twenty-some Han Dynasty roof tiles had been piled up for nearly two weeks; once the machines arrived, he couldn't possibly be expected to mold them all by himself piece by piece, could he?

He didn't know many people for the time being, so he certainly couldn't let Xiao Yuzhu, that manual laborer, off the hook, but if Senior Sister Li could spare some time to help, wouldn't it be faster and better?

Besides that, having just an Electric Kiln and a pottery wheel was far from enough; he would also need to use 3D scanning, projection modeling, far-infrared heating, and might even need air compression and electric grouting.

For now, he could only borrow from the Ceramics Laboratory at the school, and since Professor Shang was currently the deputy Group Leader of the Ceramic Group, he would definitely need her approval.

If that didn't work, should he just buy a set himself and build a small studio?

As soon as the thought emerged, Lin Sicheng sighed: with only a million or so in his hands, let alone a studio, even buying a set of modeling equipment would be a stretch.

But he would have to build one sooner or later.

Because if he wanted to make money, to make even more money, he still had to rely on piecing together porcelain.

In 2014, the Skinner auction house in the United States auctioned a Qianlong multi-colored glaze large vase, which sold for 25 million USD.

Yet before it was pieced together, when the large jar was shattered into seven or eight pieces, the investment company had only spent 700,000 RMB to buy the porcelain shards.

Two years later, at China Guardian Auctions, there was a truncated Qing Yongzheng blue and white Alum Red dragon-patterned jade-pot spring vase.

This one was even more typical: before being pieced together, it was just a pile of broken porcelain, with not a single piece larger than a fist, and it wasn't complete; after being pieced together, it was only two-thirds of the original piece.

But it still eventually sold for 5.4 million.

So, how much money could one really make by picking up scraps? And one had to rely on luck; if luck was bad, one might not even encounter one piece in three years.

Piecing together porcelain didn't have that concern.

It was best if one could hunt down complete sets of damaged wares, but if one couldn't, couldn't porcelain shards from the same period be pieced together?

A single shard of Song Dynasty Jun Porcelain only cost a thousand or so, and even if one only pieced together a small item, it would still be at least 400,000 or 500,000.

About half of the family fortune his grandfather had saved for him had come from this.

But he didn't have his grandfather's status and prestige, so he shouldn't even think about borrowing the laboratory; at most, he could only mooch off it occasionally.

Therefore, he still had to work hard to earn money. He didn't need much; if he could have five or six million by the time he graduated next year, he could roughly set up a studio.

If that really didn't work, he would just rely on his family: there was no need to suffer needlessly when he didn't have to, right?

Seeing him sitting there in a daze, Li Zhen didn't rush him, slowly eating her beef pancake and occasionally chatting with Xiao Yuzhu.

Just as they were finishing, Lin Sicheng's phone gave a "buzz." He answered it, and Wang Qi Zhi's voice came through: "Have you arrived at school yet?"

Li Zhen felt a moment of suspicion: Lin Sicheng hadn't actually lied?