104: Chapter 104 Zhu Fen, do you even know what you've stolen?

But this batch of silk seemed to have been wrapped thicker originally. A few pieces still had three or four layers of silk; while the outer layers had crumbled, the inner layers remained, still having a bit of texture when pinched.

The system finished scanning, and the information box appeared.

[Item: Jewelry, Qing Dynasty, Emperor Kangxi to Yongzheng Emperor periods, single source, traceable in the records of the Imperial Workshop]

[Quantity: Seventy-two pieces of jewelry, approximately one catty and four taels of loose gemstones; see appendix for the detailed list]

[Origin: Unified style across the batch. Some pieces have the names of Imperial Workshop artisans and years inscribed on the inner side of the bases, which can be cross-referenced with existing archives in the Forbidden City. The source is more straightforward than the previous box.]

[Condition: Better preserved than the previous box. Gemstones are undamaged, the gold and silver bases show minimal oxidation, and the overall condition is excellent.]

[Estimated Value: Jewelry produced by the Imperial Workshop with verifiable records. The highest valuation for a single piece is approximately 18 million to 32 million RMB. The total valuation for the entire box of jewelry is approximately 95 million to 120 million RMB. If auctioned and the archival records are verified, there is significant room for a premium.]

Hu Tian finished reading the information and took another look at the items in the box.

He casually picked up the top item, a Phoenix Hairpin with a gold base inlaid with jadeite and rubies. The jadeite was a deep "old mine" green with a stable color, and the rubies were Burmese material with a true, vibrant red. He held the hairpin up to the light; the light refracted through the gemstones, scattering clean colors without impurities.

He rummaged through again and found a pair of Gold Earrings inlaid with Sapphires. They were a matching pair; paired items are generally more valuable than individual pieces. The system didn't list their valuation separately, but he knew in his heart that this pair of earrings was conservatively worth over three or four million.

He put the earrings back and stored all the jewelry into the System Space.

He pushed the empty box into the sea, and it sank.

Only one last box remained.

This iron box was the largest of the remaining four. It was bulky but felt lighter than the jewelry box, which meant the contents were not very dense—not metal, nor large blocks of stone.

He guessed to himself that it might be porcelain, calligraphy and paintings, or some other artifacts.

He inserted the pry tool and began to work.

The lock on this box was rusted shut and harder than the others. He went through four pry tools; the first one snapped, the second slipped twice, and he used the third and fourth alternately. It took nearly half an hour before the lid finally loosened.

He flipped the lid open and set it aside.

The box was lined with a thick layer of hay. The hay had long since become brittle and turned black, crumbling at a touch. He brushed the hay aside with his hand, revealing the items inside.

It was porcelain, wrapped in cloth. The cloth had also long since rotted away, leaving only its shape, but because the hay padding was thick, the porcelain seemed well-protected.

He picked up the topmost piece; the cloth crumbled, revealing the porcelain inside.

White background with blue flowers—it was blue and white porcelain. The shape was a Prunus Vase. Hu Tian held the Meiping in his hands and glanced at it; there was a band of interlocking lotus patterns from the shoulder to the belly, with smooth lines and a stable, non-floating blue pigment. The foot was cleanly finished, and the walls were of uniform thickness. He turned the Meiping over to check the mark on the bottom: four characters in two rows of regular script, enclosed in a double square frame.

He didn't rush to let the system scan it but poked around to see the other items in the box. There were four pieces in total. Besides this Meiping, there was a Dish-Mouthed Vase, a Beast-Ear Vase, and a Pure Water Vase. None of the four were in poor condition. After a quick look, he already had a rough judgment in his mind.

Then he let the system scan.

After the blue light finished scanning, the information box appeared.

[Item: Porcelain, ming dynasty, four pieces]

[Quantity: Four pieces, consisting of one Blue and White Interlocking Lotus Pattern Meiping Vase, one Blue and White Sea Water and Dragon Pattern Dish-Mouthed Vase, one Blue and White Beast-Ear Ring-Handled Vase, and one Blue and White Lotus Pattern Pure Water Vase]

[Origin: Based on a comprehensive judgment of glaze color, body quality, blue pigment development, and the style of the bottom marks, all four pieces were produced by the Official Kilns during the xuande reign of the ming dynasty, highly consistent with the characteristics of surviving xuande Official Kiln pieces.]

[Condition: The Meiping is in perfect condition, with no cracks or chips and a lustrous glaze. The Dish-Mouthed Vase has a very tiny chip on the rim, about two millimeters, which does not affect the overall condition. One of the beast ears on the ring-handled vase is slightly displaced due to soil pressure but can be restored. The Pure Water Vase is in perfect condition, with both the glaze and colors excellently preserved.]

[Estimated Value: xuande Official Kiln blue and white porcelain is rare and has extremely high market value. The estimated value for the Meiping alone is approximately 250 million to 400 million RMB; the Dish-Mouthed Vase is approximately 180 million to 300 million RMB; the beast-ear ring-handled vase is approximately 120 million to 200 million RMB; and the Pure Water Vase is approximately 200 million to 350 million RMB. The total combined valuation for the four pieces is approximately 750 million to 1.25 billion RMB. There is significant room for a premium in auction prices, and the actual upper limit is difficult to predict.]

Hu Tian read the information from beginning to end, staring for about five seconds.

Then he gently placed the Meiping back onto the hay and stood up straight on the deck. The sea breeze blew from the right, tugging his clothes to the left, but he didn't move.

750 million to 1.25 billion—and that was a conservative estimate. And it was just for four pieces of porcelain.

In his mind, he went over the total tally for today's trip: three boxes of silver ingots, two boxes of gold ingots, one box of jade, one box of goldware, and two boxes of jewelry. Adding these four pieces of ming dynasty xuande Official Kiln blue and white porcelain, the porcelain alone was worth over 700 million at the low end and more than 1.2 billion at the high end. The two boxes of jewelry together were worth 150 to 200 million, and the silver, gold, and goldware added up to another 100 or 200 million.

He didn't speak the number aloud in his mind, but he knew it was a staggering amount.

He crouched down, picked up the Meiping again, and looked at it against the daylight for a while.

Blue and white from the xuande era—six hundred years.

This vase had been submerged underwater for an unknown number of years, pressed by silt, wrapped in hay, and sealed in an iron box, before being salvaged by him and placed on the deck of this worn-out ship. As the wind blew and the waves swayed, the sunlight fell on the glaze, and that layer of white glaze reflected a very clean light. The blue of the interlocking lotus pattern deepened in the light; the blue pigment was Su-Ma-Li Blue, a material only available in that era. Its color had that unique bleeding effect, and the iron spots were natural, something that modern imitations could not replicate.

He held the Meiping in his palm; it was light, lighter than he had imagined. The walls were thin—this was the craftsmanship of the Official Kilns. Private kilns could not achieve such uniform thickness, let alone this glaze color.

He put it back.

He picked up the four pieces of porcelain one by one and examined each carefully. He felt the chip on the rim of the Dish-Mouthed Vase with his fingertip. The rim is the easiest place for porcelain to get bumped. He didn't know when this chip had occurred—it could have been when it was put into the box or during some impact at the bottom of the sea—but it was only two millimeters and didn't affect the whole. The system was right.

He stored the four pieces of porcelain into the System Space one by one, leaving nothing on the deck.

Then he pushed the empty iron box overboard, and it sank.

The deck was now clean, with nothing left. Only he stood there as the sea breeze continued to blow and the waves maintained their rhythm, slapping against the side of the ship one after another.

He stood by the railing for a while, looking down at the sea. Everything salvaged today was now accounted for. His System Space now held two boxes of gold, one box of goldware, two boxes of jewelry, and four pieces of ming dynasty Official Kiln porcelain. The items weren't too heavy, but value is calculated by the piece, not by weight.

He turned around and walked toward the cabin. The sound of his footsteps on the deck was drowned out by the sea breeze, making them almost silent.

Before entering the cabin, he paused and looked back at the deck. It was empty and clean. There was nothing on the sea surface either; occasionally a wave would break, the foam would dissipate, and the water would become flat again.

He turned his head and went into the cabin.

These four boxes were done. Combined with the previous ones, his System Space was now packed with silver, gold, goldware, jewelry, jade, and so on, as well as that precious Silk-wrapped Documents and the pottery that had come in earlier. The system was feeling a bit full now.

It wasn't that the space was full, but a fullness in another sense—a fullness that made him want to stop and properly settle the accounts.

He sat down by the deck railing, leaning his back against it and stretching out his legs, as he began to go over today's haul in his mind.

Except for the Silk-wrapped Documents in the fourth box and the Copper Box from the beginning, the system hadn't given specific valuations for those two. One was said to be difficult to quantify, and for the other, the system simply hadn't responded.

He tried to add them up in his head but got lazy halfway through.

Because it was meaningless.

These things were all lying in the System Space now; they wouldn't spoil, rust, or run away. If he finished calculating today, the number would still be the same tomorrow. It was meaningless.

He leaned his head back against the horizontal bar of the railing and squinted his eyes, looking at the sky.

It was blue, without a cloud. A seabird flew by from very high up, cried out twice, but didn't fly down.

The sea breeze was still blowing, a bit cooler now than in the morning, carrying a hint of the afternoon.

He sat on the deck for a while, then remembered that Silk-wrapped Documents.

Yuehai Governors Office, preserved by imperial decree, no private reading allowed, violators shall be executed.

The seventh year of Yongzheng Emperor, confidential archives.

What was the name of this ship, where was it originally going, and why did it eventually sink in this patch of sea? He didn't know any of that yet.

But what he did know was that this man, Zhu Bu, had hijacked the ship, packed the goods into iron boxes, and kept them in the hold along with a box of confidential documents issued by the Emperor. Then, for some reason, these things never appeared again until he pried them open box by box today.

Zhu Bu, do you have any idea what you've seized?

He tilted his head slightly and looked at the row of markers in the System Space.

He couldn't rush the matter of the Copper Box and the documents; he had to take it slow. After returning to Binhai, he would find a secure place, take proper preservation measures, and then carefully read through the three documents before deciding how to handle them.

With these two items, he couldn't afford to be impatient, or it would only lead to more trouble.

There were no other ships on the sea, just him. The yacht drifted quietly on the water, the engine off, just floating there. Sunlight hit the deck; the iron boxes were all in the sea, and everything was gone, as if nothing had ever happened.

He slowly stood up, walked into the cockpit, placed his hands on the control console, checked the navigation, and then started the engine. He turned the bow and scanned the area around Donghu Island inch by inch, finding no more treasures. Thus, Hu Tian began to head back.

Only a white trail of water was left on the sea, which was soon covered and flattened by the swells.

It was as if no record had ever been left by anyone on this route.