Chapter 378: Qionglong Stone Shadow: Recollection (Part 1)

I immediately snatched it over, held it straight to look, and found that the beautiful cover contained only two pages. The first page was a welcome speech, and the second page had a large photo pasted on it. The photo was very large, showing a seal with a square base, on which intricate carvings were sculpted in one piece, a very deep cyan color with little luster. As I looked at it, it even seemed somewhat familiar.

Below were a few lines of handwritten text, all numbers, which were the dimensions of the object in the photo. At the very bottom there was a small line: "Ghost-knob Dragon-fish Jade Seal, from Baiyanping, Guwen County, Hunan."

The carvings on the seal were extremely complex. There were several main motifs at a glance. I saw a few ferocious ghosts that stood out most prominently, and the other parts had scales and shapes of either fish or dragons—I couldn't immediately discern anything suspicious from the photo.

I sucked in a cold breath. Judging by the size, this thing was a bit large, not like a seal used by ordinary households. Looking at the style of the knob, it should be from the Warring States period, when private seals existed. I had seen three such seals on the market before, all with beast knobs, but I had never seen a ghost-knob seal.

Warring States private seals, though very rare, are not considered top-tier. For under one hundred thousand, you could acquire a small seal of one to two centimeters. But this seal was four centimeters in size, very likely an official seal. What especially caught my attention was its name: Dragon-fish Jade Seal.

This name must have been given by the seller. The character "dragon" he mentioned was extremely crucial, because any seal with a dragon on it is an entirely different concept. Whether it was a prince's seal or a formal imperial seal, those are objects whose numbers in history can be counted. Even a small-state jade seal would be a priceless treasure in today's world.

In our country, all unearthed cultural relics automatically belong to the state and cannot be traded, but they can be collected. Moreover, if a collector damages a collection, they can be sentenced. In other words, in China, antiques from before the Qing dynasty are like ticking time bombs: either nobody knows about them, or if others find out, there's no good outcome.

This thing must have been dug up from a tomb robbery. Leaving aside auction, first of all it's stolen goods. Now that it's being semi-publicly auctioned here, we're all already breaking the law. If this object is of extremely high value, then the crime we're committing could be outrageously serious. Let me give a slightly exaggerated example: if time went back twenty years, in a scene like this, opening fire on the second floor with an AK47 might even be called "ridding the people of a scourge."

The things I had done before were also pretty outrageous, but this time I was in the city of Beijing, under the emperor's nose. Ordinary people would hide even small misdeeds, but here such a big crime was being made into such a grand spectacle. Was the hotel owner raised on bear bile? On second thought, I suddenly remembered Old Mrs. Huo's background. I thought, damn, what if she had already called the police? Once the cops show up, I'd have to run, and then she'd have a legitimate reason not to tell me.

Then I thought again, that wasn't right either. Back then she didn't want me to sit in this seat, as if sitting here would come with some special treatment.

Anyway, it seemed that this object was the only auction item today. So all these people had come prepared, determined to win it. As I thought about it, I glanced again at the pink shirt not far away. He was sitting on a Western-style sofa, no longer playing with his phone, but sprawled arrogantly in the sofa, arms crossed, staring bored at the ceiling.

I closed the booklet and handed it to Poker-face. He had been faithfully playing the role of the cold-faced henchman. Maybe Fatty had briefed him before coming, but with Fatty and me as foils, he looked out of place. He didn't even glance at the booklet, just set it aside. Fatty's face was ashen, and he whispered to me, "Recognized it, right? Looks like we came to the right place."

Although the jade seal was impressive, I wasn't particularly fond of such things, so I wasn't as excited as Fatty. I whispered back, "Don't you fucking distract me. I keep feeling something's about to go wrong. You need to have my back. If things go south, we need to figure out a way to pull out."

Fatty was taken aback: "How can you still be thinking about that? Don't you see what this thing is?" He immediately opened the booklet again and shoved it in front of me. "Take a good look—where have we seen this before?"

"Seen it?" Although I also felt a hint of familiarity, the old lady's strange attitude had kept me from digging deeper at that moment. Now that Fatty said that, I looked again.

As I recalled, that feeling returned. I really did seem to have seen something similar to this jade seal, and thinking more carefully, more than once.

I thought back to previous goods and archaeological illustrations I had seen, but none matched. Yet, the more I recalled, the more a sense of panic crept over me, as if this memory was touching something deep inside that I didn't want to face.

As the memory came back, cold sweat broke out involuntarily. I remembered that moment—inside the Cloud Summit Palace at the bottom of the Changbai Mountains, deep in that place. The person who had held it was standing right behind me at that time, walking into that huge bronze door amid the thick fog.

"No way," I thought. What was going on?

How did this thing end up here? I didn't know what that object was used for, but my impression of Poker-face holding it was very deep. Honestly, the fog had been thick then, and some time had passed since that day, so I wasn't sure if the jade seal in the photo was exactly the same as the one he had held. But even if they were different, there must be a connection between these two "seals."