Early the next morning!
Su Chen was still sleeping soundly when the phone on his nightstand jolted him awake.
He was ready to unleash his morning fury, but one look at the caller ID and his temper vanished.
He glanced at the faint light of dawn outside his window and sighed in resignation. ’What a mess!’
Sighing was one thing, but he still had to answer the call.
"Hello? Shuraya, what’s up?" Su Chen couldn’t help but yawn as he spoke.
"Mr. Su, I’m sorry to disturb your rest."
Hearing the apologetic tone in Shuraya’s voice, Su Chen couldn’t bring himself to be upset. "It’s fine, I just woke up. Are you planning to go out for breakfast?"
Upon hearing that, Shuraya’s voice became audibly excited. "Yes, yes! I want to try all the classic local breakfast foods—the fermented bean milk, the stewed pork with flatbread, the sweet fried cakes..."
Shuraya must have done her homework last night, because she rattled off seven or eight different dishes, some of which even Su Chen had never tried.
"Alright. I’ll get ready. We’ll head out in half an hour."
After hanging up the phone, Su Chen walked out of his bedroom in his pajamas and knocked on the other two doors.
Jiangyang and Chen Fei hadn’t gotten back until after eleven last night. After asking, Su Chen learned that the two of them had been busy sorting that batch of artifacts.
They not only had to authenticate the items but also had to pick out the highest-quality ones, hoping to score a hidden gem if any particularly valuable artifacts were mixed in.
The National Museum had also sent a ten-person team led by the curator himself. Including Jiangyang and Chen Fei, the thirteen of them spent a full six hours and had only barely managed to sort and categorize all the artifacts.
The vast majority were common artifacts and not particularly valuable. Only a small number could be considered genuine treasures.
As for the two national treasures, who knew who had leaked the news, but the museum in Xiang Province had found out someone was donating the body of the Min Fanglei. The complete Min Fanglei consists of a body and a lid, and the lid is currently on display at the Xiang Province Museum.
The Min Fanglei is a bronze artifact from the Late Shang Period, a national treasure of the highest order. Furthermore, it was originally excavated in Xiang Province, so naturally, the Xiang Province Museum hoped to see "the body and lid reunited, the complete vessel returned to Xiang."
Sure enough, after receiving the news, the curator of the Xiang Province Museum and several staff members took an overnight flight to the Imperial Capital to directly negotiate the artifact’s ownership with the head of the National Museum.
Who would have thought the National Museum also had its eye on this national treasure? They even tried to persuade the Xiang Museum’s curator to send the Min Fanglei’s lid to the Imperial Capital for a ’business trip’.
But everyone knows the National Museum has a reputation for never returning what it borrows, so how could he possibly agree? The two curators started arguing right there on site, nearly starting a war between the Xiang and National museums.
In the end, it was Jiangyang who mediated. Knowing the Min Fanglei’s body was the source of the conflict, he simply took it and the 56 Qin gold ornaments back with him. His reasoning was simple: both artifacts still belonged to the Arno family, and he was merely their temporary custodian.


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