Learned from a Japanese book?

The noodles had long since grown cold, so Wang Qizhi ordered two more servings of cold skin noodles.

Ye Ning left only a tiny portion for herself and pushed the rest over to Lin Sicheng.

Yet she remained utterly absent-minded, taking a long time to pick up a single chopstick full, lifting it to her mouth, and chewing mechanically.

It felt as though she weren’t eating food at all, but rather chewing on wood.

Sitting directly opposite each other, Lin Sicheng couldn't shake the feeling that those eyes were fixed entirely on his face. But upon closer inspection, her eyes were hollow and completely out of focus.

Unnerved by the relentless stare, Lin Sicheng finally couldn't help asking, "Sister Ning, are you feeling unwell?"

"Huh?" Ye Ning snapped out of it as if waking from a dream. "No, not at all."

"Pay her no mind!" Wang Qizhi waved a hand dismissively. "She's been like this since she was a kid..."

Unsurprisingly, this earned him a pair of rolled eyes from Ye Ning.

Since they weren't particularly close yet, Lin Sicheng didn't press further and lowered his head to finish his noodles.

By the time they stepped out of the restaurant, it was already five o'clock in the afternoon. Claiming his nerves were a bit unsettled, Wang Qizhi asked Lin Sicheng to drive on the way back.

Lin Sicheng, of course, had no objections.

Though he had only held his driver's license for three years, he possessed a solid twenty years of actual driving experience.

Driving swiftly and steadily all the way, the three of them returned to the campus just as the sky was turning dark.

Pulling smoothly into the garage and giving a few final reminders for Lin Sicheng not to run around the next day and to rest up for the upcoming test, Wang Qizhi led Ye Ning upstairs.

A cartoon was playing on the television: Gray Wolf was chasing Big-head Sheep and tripped headfirst into a mud pit.

Mother and son sat cross-legged on the sofa, laughing hysterically.

Hearing the door open, Shan Wangshu stood up and asked, "Have you eaten?"

"I ate, I'm quite full actually, but Ning barely touched anything!"

"Must not have been to her taste. What does the little girl want to eat?"

Wang Qizhi grinned broadly. "No need, it's just a mental block for her. A little hunger will do her good!"

Ye Ning shot Wang Qizhi a sideways glance. "Auntie, don't worry about me. I'll just have some milk later!"

After a brief greeting, Ye Ning retreated to her room.

Shan Wangshu was baffled. She had been perfectly fine when she went out in the morning, yet after spending a whole day out, she had returned completely wilted?

"What's wrong with Ning?"

"She's been traumatized!" Wang Qizhi mused. "Just like when the three of you siblings first met me!"

Shan Wangshu experienced a moment of sudden enlightenment.

Back in the day, she had always considered herself exceptional: pretty, well-figured, highly educated, poised, and from a good family.

That was until she met Wang Qizhi.

At the time, she simply couldn't wrap her head around it. Weren't they all born of a mother and raised by a father? Why was he good at everything, and why did he surpass her by such a massive margin in every single aspect?

Her pride had been so high back then that she remained depressed about it for quite a long time.

By comparison, Ye Ning's pride was even greater, and she was even more competitive. Yet correspondingly, her personality was also much more composed and restrained.

So, this shouldn't be happening, right?

Curious, Shan Wangshu asked, "How was she traumatized?"

Wang Qizhi sighed. "Because of an oil painting!"

And it wasn't just Ye Ning; he had been traumatized too.

Ask himself honestly, wasn't he considered exceptional enough already? Exceptional enough that before they were even formally engaged, the younger brother and sister were already calling him brother-in-law. The moment he stepped through the door, his future mother-in-law would beam with joy and whip up a massive table of delicious food and drinks.

Exceptional enough that on the day of their engagement, when he simply changed his form of address to call him Dad, his father-in-law had let out a massive sigh of relief, wearing the expression of "Heaven has mercy, there is finally someone to carry on the mantle."

Even more exceptional was how he had been ostracized by everyone when he first arrived in Baoji, yet three years later when he left, a group of veteran experts had pounded the table in protest at the farewell party because they couldn't bear to see him go.

Yet today, hadn't he still been shaken with a tumult of emotions, feeling deeply stirred and emotionally unsettled to the point where he didn't even dare drive the car back?

The reason was very simple: those seven Kaiyuan Tongbao coins with identical backs.

He had been standing right beside them and had seen it clearly: Lin Sicheng basically picked them up, glanced at them for a second, and put them down, picked up the second one, glanced at it, and put it down... From start to finish, those seven copper coins hadn't spent even a full minute in Lin Sicheng's hands.

As for himself, even though he knew the remaining six coins were problematic, he still looked at them over and over, touched them repeatedly, and pondered them endlessly.

Even the single coin singled out by Lin Sicheng required him to make repeated comparisons for a long time before he could figure out what characteristics distinguished it from the other six.

If this was a comparison, wasn't this a gap?

He was thirty-five while Lin Sicheng was only twenty—wasn't this a gap?

He had spent seventeen years professionally researching copper artifacts, which was almost equal to Lin Sicheng's entire age, whereas Lin Sicheng had only been researching for a few days.

Wasn't this a gap?

Moreover, the feeling of an exceptional person being defeated in their most proficient and proudest field, while being utterly powerless to change it, was truly soul-crushing.

It was fortunate that he was broad-minded and had an open personality, otherwise he wouldn't even be able to eat his meals from sheer depression.

Let alone Ye Ning.

As Wang Qizhi recounted the story step by step, Shan Wangshu's eyes slowly widened, her pupils gradually contracting.

Although Wang Qizhi often teased the three siblings for wasting such an impressive father, Shan Wangshu had still absorbed basic appraisal common sense from an early age through constant exposure.

The magazine from the first time, the iron tally, and the Cloisonné sunflower bowl from the second time...

The porcelain, jade, horn artifacts, woodware, ancient coins, calligraphy and paintings from today... and the dusters and Buddha statues that Wang Qizhi had repeatedly mentioned, where Lin Sicheng used a small capital to leverage massive returns totaling hundreds of thousands—just how many categories was that?

But what stunned Shan Wangshu the most was Lin Sicheng's speed of making money: if those two cups were successfully restored, it meant that from start to finish over the span of a month or so, Lin Sicheng had earned four to five million?

Four to five million could buy an entire building in Xijing.

If they relied solely on their salaries, she and Wang Qizhi wouldn't even be able to save that much in a hundred years, even if they didn't eat or drink...

Wang Qizhi remained unbothered. "Talking about money is so vulgar."

"If you hate vulgarity, why don't you stop eating?"

Snapping back at him, Shan Wangshu stood up and walked toward Ye Ning's bedroom. Her hand was already on the doorknob when she paused for a moment and turned back.

"She's typing away on the keyboard pretty fast. Looks like she's chatting with someone?"

Wang Qizhi shook his head violently. "Impossible!"

Didn't he know what kind of personality Ye Ning had?

She simply didn't possess the hobby of "wanting to vent to someone the moment she's in a bad mood."

After pondering for a moment, Wang Qizhi let out a "ha": Nine times out of ten, she was driving herself to study hard...

...

The screen was intensely bright, its glow reflecting in her pupils as emails arrived and dialogue boxes popped up on the computer from time to time.

There were pictures, textual materials, and answers provided by her advisor to the questions she had raised:

Ordinary scanning technology can only analyze the color values on the surface of an oil painting and cannot analyze the deeper underlying composition...

If one wishes to analyze brushstroke intensity and the chronological sequence of color blending, 3D scanning technology must be applied. However, this technology has not yet been introduced domestically...

If it is a restored work by Li Shutong, there is a high probability it originates from Japan: there are clear reports that a large number of his works were left behind in Japan. The wife and daughter he left behind in Japan survived by selling off his works...

The advisor had explained a great deal, and Ye Ning read through it over and over again, repeatedly.

At the same time, her curiosity grew stronger and stronger: why was Lin Sicheng so clear about high-tech scanning technology that hadn't even been introduced domestically yet?

Thinking back to his catchphrase—"Learned it from books"... surely he couldn't have learned it from Japanese books, could he?

Subconsciously, Ye Ning picked up her phone, but upon checking the time, she hesitated again.

Ten o'clock was simply too late.

Forget it. She would just ask him when they met another day...