Chapter 1767: A fate

Ye Chen's words made Song Wanting's heart surge instantly.

She had always wanted to make the collection trading and auction business bigger and stronger, but she hadn't found a suitable breakthrough point.

It was precisely because she valued this business very much that when she saw Ye Chen use the lost cultural relic restoration technology to restore her own antique at Jiqingtang, she immediately wanted to make friends with Ye Chen.

She originally hoped to recruit Ye Chen to work for the Song family at Jiqingtang, but who could have expected that Ye Chen, who was just a loser son-in-law at the time, had a real identity as the young master of the Ye family in Yanjing, and his own strength was extremely powerful.

Therefore, Song Wanting's wish to revitalize Jiqingtang through Ye Chen had long since vanished into thin air.

And since then, Jiqingtang hadn't found a better development opportunity.

The collection industry, although it seems to be too far away from ordinary people, and rarely hears any big moves, is an out-and-out profiteering industry, and the market scale is huge.

The transaction volume of a large auction house's auction can be as much as tens of billions. If there is a super hit, the transaction amount is even higher.

Sometimes, just auctioning a painting can bring the auction house a transaction amount of over 100 million US dollars.

And the profit of the auction is also very generous. Its profit method is generally divided into self-operation or commission extraction.

Self-operation is nothing more than buying low and selling high, mainly based on the picking-up model of the traditional antique market;

While commission extraction is the main revenue channel for the auction.

Generally speaking, auction companies will charge a commission ranging from 5% to 15% for auction items, and the more famous the auction company, the higher the commission ratio.

Under normal circumstances, if a famous painting is sold for 100 million US dollars, the auction house can get 15 million US dollars just by commission.

Converted into RMB, it is almost 100 million yuan.

Therefore, the larger the auction house, the more geometrically its ability to make money increases.

An auction sells for tens of billions, and the commission alone is more than 1 billion in cash income.

Such an auction is held twice a year, and tens of billions of net profit are in hand.

Moreover, once the auction is made bigger and stronger, the profit it can bring is far more than commission, but the overall improvement of the entire industrial chain.

Generally speaking, under a large auction house, there will be multiple collection shops, because the auction house's reputation is big enough, so the customer flow of these shops is also very large.

This kind of collection shop not only conducts ordinary collection sales but also provides paid appraisal services and paid in-store consignment for individual sellers and collectors.

Many collections that are not qualified to be auctioned but have certain value are mostly traded privately in such shops.

Because the shops are open all year round, the transaction volume accumulated in a year is also astronomical, and the commission profit is no lower than the auction.

However, this powerful money-sucking ability is limited to the top few large companies in the industry. For Song Wanting's Jiqingtang, the net profit for the whole year can't even reach 100 or 200 million.

The reason why Jiqingtang can't be built up is not that Song Wanting is not hard-working enough, but that Jiqingtang can't get really good things.

Without enough good things, there is no capital to talk about on par with those top auction houses.

When top auction houses are auctioning Van Gogh, Picasso, Paul Gauguin, or the famous paintings of world-class masters like Qi Baishi and Zhang Daqian, Jiqingtang can't even take out a painting with a transaction price of over 10 million.

The reason is that the popularity is not enough, and those big collectors can't possibly give things to Jiqingtang for auction.

Song Wanting, who was suffering from not finding a good opportunity, was suddenly pulled by Ye Chen with the Rejuvenating Pill, which made her grateful to Ye Chen from the bottom of her heart, and also couldn't help but feel surging.

This is because she knows the value of the Rejuvenating Pill very well, and perhaps in this world, no other collection can be compared with a top divine medicine like the Rejuvenating Pill.

Therefore, she can almost foresee that the auction of the Rejuvenating Pill will definitely create a historical record.

This is naturally a good opportunity for Jiqingtang to make a name for itself.

It is equivalent to a third-tier star finally having the opportunity to perform on the same stage as the world's top stars, which is absolutely a good opportunity to rise to the top!

Therefore, she said to Ye Chen very excitedly: "Master Ye, rest assured, I will definitely do my best to make this auction the best!"

Ye Chen nodded and said with some emotion: "Although Jiqingtang is an industry of your Song family, it has extraordinary significance to me... so Wanting, you must make Jiqingtang's reputation bigger and stronger, so as not to waste my fate with it."

Back then at Jiqingtang, if it weren't for his father-in-law Xiao Changkun accidentally knocking over that antique vase, Ye Chen would never have had the opportunity to obtain the *Nine Mysteries Heavenly Sutra*.

If there were no *Nine Mysteries Heavenly Sutra*, there would only be Young Master Ye in Jin Ling today, not Master Ye.

Therefore, Ye Chen felt that Jiqingtang was of great significance to him.

However, he didn't know that Song Wanting, who was beside him, misunderstood when she heard this.

Hearing Ye Chen's sigh, Song Wanting's heart rippled immediately, and the look in her eyes when she looked at Ye Chen was like a pool of spring water, full of affection.

In fact, for Song Wanting, who had always loved Ye Chen deeply, she had long regarded Jiqingtang as one of the most important places in her life.

However, she didn't expect that Ye Chen would also feel that Jiqingtang was of extraordinary significance.

This made her misunderstand that this feeling of Ye Chen's was all because of her.

It also made her feel that she had loved Ye Chen for so long, and it seemed that it was not unrequited love. At least in Ye Chen's heart, there was a place for her.

Moved, she couldn't help but sigh softly with some shyness: "Master Ye... thank you for taking Jiqingtang so importantly... actually, Jiqingtang is... equally important to me..."

Speaking of this, she looked at Ye Chen with affection and said softly: "Master Ye, when I first met you, although I looked like the eldest lady of the Song family, I was actually only responsible for the Jiqingtang business in the Song family. At that time, I never dreamed that I could one day become the head of the Song family..."

"Until... until that day... at Jiqingtang, I met you..."

"It was precisely because I met you that Wanting could live to this day... and could have everything today..."

At this moment, tears were already welling up in Song Wanting's eyes.

For the Song Group with a market value of 100 billion, Jiqingtang was just a little inconspicuous scrap.

And Song Wanting had long lost her parents. She was already alone in the Song family, not to mention that under the secret suppression of her uncle Song Tianming and cousin Song Rongyu, it was very difficult for her to stand firm.

Therefore, when the Song family divided the Jiqingtang business to her, it was equivalent to using such a little bit of petty profit to send her away.

Song Wanting didn't care about these at the time, and she also knew that she was just a woman, and she had no parents to rely on. She was already very satisfied that the Song family could divide Jiqingtang to her.

However, what she couldn't imagine was that her life ushered in the biggest turning point at Jiqingtang.

That turning point was Ye Chen.

Without Ye Chen, she might have died in the trapped dragon formation back then, or died at the hands of her uncle and cousin. How could she have safely passed through all the disasters and become the current head of the Song family? ===== CHAPTER 1768 =====