On the airport runway.
It was Sunday, and there were many people returning home.
Passengers streamed onto the flight, and the overhead bins were crammed full in the blink of an eye. Dong Xuebin was among the last to board. Seeing this, he did not dare put his cloth bag overhead. Instead, he carefully held it in his arms, found his seat, and sat by the window in one of the rear rows. After fastening his seat belt, he gently set the bags containing the Bodhisattva Statue and the landscape painting beside his thigh.
Suddenly, the seat sank as someone sat down beside him.
The seats here were rather narrow, and the cloth bag took up some space. As the man sat down, his knee unexpectedly bumped Dong Xuebin's leg.
Pain shot through Dong Xuebin's leg, and he instinctively sucked in a breath.
"Oh, sorry, sorry." The middle-aged man hurriedly apologized. "Sorry about that, young man."
Hearing a Beijing accent, Dong Xuebin smiled. "It's fine, no big deal."
Mu Zhengzhong shifted his leg inward and smiled. "You're from Beijing? An international student?"
"Study abroad? I've been working for two years already. I just came over to handle something." Dong Xuebin looked at him and blinked. "Did you come here sightseeing? You look a little familiar."
"Not sightseeing. I came to buy an antique, but I didn't manage to get it."
"Antiques? Heh, I like them too."
The middle-aged man who looked so familiar to Dong Xuebin was around forty, perhaps not yet fifty. He had a square face and thick eyebrows, and he seemed polite and modest, with the straightforward temperament of an Old Beijing native. Since they were fellow townsmen sitting together and Dong Xuebin had nothing better to do, he began talking antiques with him. But once they