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Upon hearing this, Grandma Gu immediately asked, "Did you two call the police?"

Bai Yanliang and his wife: "..."

Clearly, the couple had been so focused on causing trouble for the Gu family that it never occurred to them to call the police, even after their child had been missing all night!

Lu Xunmei took a deep breath. She truly could not tell whether the couple genuinely cared about their child or were merely putting on an act!

Some people asked around for information, while others called the police. Even Grandpa Gu and Grandma Gu reached out to acquaintances to inquire everywhere, and sent over the young restoration specialists who had come to help repair the west wing to search for him. In the end, Old Huang was the first to receive word. "Someone said they saw that Bai family boy on West City Antique Street."

West City Antique Street was not as large as the Old City Antique Market. However, it was located at the foot of West Mountain, right beside a famous tourist attraction, and its usual customers were tourists passing through from other places. When it came to making money, it earned no less than the antique market. It was just that there were fewer genuine items there, and the crowd was a mixed bag. The waters there ran even deeper than at the antique market.

"That kid's inexperienced, but he's got a sharp eye. He was wandering all over the street looking for genuine goods and got noticed by someone with bad intentions."

If there had not been a commotion, Old Huang's friend might not have noticed such a person.

"Don't just stand around. Hurry up and go get him!" Old Huang did not even bother setting up his stall. He drove his van, taking Bai Yanliang and his wife, along with a group of neighbors, to West City Antique Street to retrieve Bai Yuesheng.

The moment Gu Jiuque heard Old Huang mention West City Antique Street, his heart stirred. He remembered that in his previous life, after Bai Yuesheng gained Jade Celestial Pivot's treasure-appraisal ability, the first

place he thought to go bargain hunting was the antique market. After that, the second place Bai Yuesheng chose to hunt for bargains was also West City Antique Street.

The order in which he hunted for bargains was the same in both lives, which could perhaps be explained by the fact that Jingzhou City only had so many antique markets. But if, without Jade Celestial Pivot, Bai Yuesheng—who knew nothing about authenticating cultural relics—could still accurately "find" the same bargains he had found in his previous life, then things became interesting.

With that thought in mind, Gu Jiuque also got into Old Huang's van.

By the time the group hurried to West City Antique Street, they saw Bai Yuesheng standing before a stall at the street entrance. He was clutching an armful of antique collectibles with a tense expression, locked in a standoff with several burly men. Several pieces of lightly painted blue-and-white porcelain lay scattered messily on the ground, while a crowd of onlookers gathered nearby.

Before the van had even come to a full stop, Bai Yanliang and his wife yanked open the door and jumped out. As they ran toward Bai Yuesheng, they shouted, "Shengsheng, Shengsheng, Mom and Dad are here! Don't be afraid. We're here to help you!"

The couple ran up to Bai Yuesheng and positioned themselves between him and the burly men. "What are you trying to do?"

"Nothing!" One of the men, a brawny young man with a tattooed sleeve on his shoulder, said gruffly, "He broke our stuff, so he has to pay for it."

"I didn't break their things," Bai Yuesheng retorted loudly. "They deliberately bumped into me!"

"What kind of nonsense is that?" the tattooed man snarled. "My stall was set up right here. You were the one who came barreling into it without looking where you were going. You smashed my lightly painted blue-and-white large bowl from the Jiajing era of the Ming Dynasty, and now you want to deny it?"

Bai Yuesheng refused to accept that. "Who barreled into your stall? Just look at how vicious you are—I would have loved to stay as far away from you as possible. Someone bumped into me from behind. I lost my footing, and that's how I crashed into your stall."

Old Huang parked the van and hurried over with the neighbors. Hearing this, he immediately frowned.

He squeezed through the crowd and went inside. First, he squatted down to carefully inspect the blue-and-white porcelain bowl that had shattered into several pieces, assessing its quality and age. His heart sank.

Old Huang turned to look at Gu Jiuque, who stood outside the crowd with his arms folded, and called, "Come take a look?"

Gu Jiuque did not need to step forward. Just from the faint glow emanating from the porcelain fragments, he could tell that they were all antiques, though their ages varied.

Old Huang sighed, rose to his feet, and looked at the tattooed man. "Brother, the pieces are genuine, but these fragments on the ground didn't come from the same bowl, did they?"

The tattooed man sneered, folding his arms across his chest. "Whether they came from the same bowl or not, my bowl was perfectly intact before he hit it. I spent a fortune and searched everywhere to collect broken porcelain pieces from the same batch of kiln-fired goods. I even hired a master restorer skilled at repairing porcelain, and it took more than three years to restore this bowl. I was just waiting to sell it for a good price on Antique Street. But on the very first day I put it out, this blind fool smashed into it. He broke my property, so it's only right that he pays compensation at full value, isn't it?"

Old Huang could not be bothered listening to the tattooed man's nonsense. He asked in a deep voice, "How much do you want?"

The tattooed man raised a hand. "Five hundred thousand!"

The onlookers gasped. The neighbors who had come with Old Huang could not help speaking up. "Brother, isn't that price a little excessive?"

"Excessive?" The tattooed man gave the neighbors a sullen look. "What, you think you can bully people just because there are so many of you?"

"Who's bullying whom?" Bai Yuesheng could not hold back any longer and shouted, "I was staying far away from you. Someone among you deliberately bumped into me first, and I accidentally crashed into the stall. I haven't even accused you of trying to scam me!"

As soon as he said that, the expressions of the tattooed man and the others changed. "Watch your mouth! Who's scamming you? You broke my things and now you're slandering me? Fine, let's call the police! I refuse to believe..."

Bai Yanliang and his wife shielded their son behind them and shouted at the top of their lungs, "Call the police, then! Who's afraid of whom? Even if the police come, they can't make us pay five hundred thousand for your lousy bowl!"

The steady and composed Old Huang nearly knotted his brows into a twist. He immediately said, "All of you, calm down!"

Then Old Huang gave the tattooed man an ingratiating smile. "Brother, we're from the Old City Antique Market—"

Before he could finish, the tattooed man cut him off. "What, experts from the antique market came to West City to smash our turf?"