Zhao Laoshi received the money and complimented him, while not forgetting to compliment Uncle Changsheng: “Old man, you seem to be a connoisseur too! Did you also work with pots when you were young?”
To support a pot is a hackneyed term used in the tomb raiding industry, which means, roughly, that one had set up a team of tomb raiders and acted as a central figure in the team.
Uncle Changsheng waved his hand and said smilingly, “I, for one, only know something about antiques, not tomb-robbing.”
It was true that Uncle Changsheng did not know much about tomb-robbing.
When he was young, he had heard some rumours of tomb-robbing and backstabbing, and even of Sun Tianying robbing Cixi’s tomb, but the point was that he had spent many years in monasticism in the temple and had little interest in tomb-robbing and in the relics themselves, so he did not know much about it.
However, when a person has lived for a long time, the amount of information he receives, actively or passively, is bound to be much greater than that of the average person, and he has also heard people talk about such dark tales as the backstabbing support pot.
Then, Uncle Changsheng asked Zhao Laoshi tentatively, “Little brother, is it convenient for you to show me this trigger finger you have?”
Zhao Lao Si knew that the old man wanted to see his finger, and he had just said so much, just to get his money step by step, so he said in a difficult manner, “Old man, this finger was given to me by my elder brother as a token, not as a gift, and you know the origin of this, it is really a bit sensitive, so I can’t show it to you, so I won’t be so transparent. I hope you can understand.”
Uncle Changsheng didn’t know what he meant.
So he simply took out two hundred dollar bills from his robe and handed them to Zhang Ermao, saying seriously, “Little brother, I’ll tell you the truth, I went to Yanjing and then to Jinling to look for my favourite antiques in these two ancient capitals. If it’s really good, I’ll give you a thousand US dollars, and you can help me make a connection with your brother.
Zhao Laoshi did not expect the old man to be so forthcoming, he had given money several times, but this time he simply took out dollars.
The money-minded man hesitated for a moment before he gritted his teeth and said, “Yes! Since you like this finger so much, I will take it off and show it to you!”
With that, he took off the jade trigger finger and handed it to Uncle Changsheng.
Uncle Changsheng was overjoyed and took the jade trigger finger with both hands, fearing that it might accidentally fall to the ground and drop.
Immediately after receiving the jade trigger finger, he realised that it was indeed an antique, and that it was a mid-Qing period item.
After all, Uncle Changsheng himself was born in the Qing Dynasty, and he still had a certain ability to identify such things.
The fact that the object was a genuine antique, combined with the fact that it carried a faint smell of blood and decay, immediately led him to conclude that it should have just been dug out of the ground not long ago.
It might have been placed with the corpse before it was unearthed.
So, he couldn’t wait to put some of his aura into it, to investigate and see what the mystery of this object was.
As soon as the aura entered the trigger finger, Uncle Changsheng immediately felt that within the finger, a formation was slowly operating.
He was startled and thought to himself, “This formation has been operating all along, I wonder what its effect is?”