"Dad, Mom, I'm back!"
Gu Zhao pushed open the front door and saw his father, Gu Qi, and his mother, Li Man, sitting together all lovey-dovey as they watched TV.
Gu Zhao covered his eyes. "Did I come back at the wrong time?"
Gu Qi turned around and said irritably, "We're watching Xinwen Lianbo!"
Li Man got up and looked behind Gu Zhao. "You really didn't bring some temporary girlfriend home?"
"Wasn't I supposed to accompany you to Sichuan Province?" Gu Zhao replied. "I was planning to find a girlfriend there."
"That won't do!" Li Man immediately refused. "Girls from Yue Province are better. There's no need for you to travel far when what you need is close at hand."
Gu Qi nodded in wholehearted agreement. "Exac—"
He had only gotten out one word when Li Man turned to look at him, and he immediately changed tack. "Ahem, have you eaten yet?"
"If I said I haven't, is there food at home?" Gu Zhao asked.
Gu Qi looked at Li Man. Li Man slapped the table and sprang to her feet. "Looking down on your mother? Tell me, what do you want to eat?"
"Twice-cooked pork, fish-fragrant shredded pork, boiled pork slices," Gu Zhao promptly answered.
Li Man clapped her hands and headed for the kitchen, calling out to the housekeeper resting in the side room as she walked. "Auntie Zhang, time to work!"
Li Man had Gu Qi wrapped tightly around her finger, and her superb cooking was no small part of it. Gu Zhao had grown up eating Sichuan Cuisine, so he had developed quite a talent for handling spicy food.
Meanwhile, Gu Zhao set down his backpack, took off his coat, and sat beside Gu Qi.
"There's an exhibition in Lincheng this weekend. I have to go myself," Gu Qi said.
"Mom told me." Gu Zhao sprawled across the sofa and asked casually, "What kind of exhibition is it? Why is it being held in Lincheng?"
Gu Qi was in the Chinese furniture business. Based around the port area, he owned a furniture factory, importing all kinds of rosewood from abroad and hiring skilled craftsmen to make and sell rosewood furniture.
However, the Gu family's shops were all around Guangzhou, with Pengcheng being the farthest away. Even when they attended exhibitions, they were usually in the Pearl River Delta. Lincheng, on the other hand, was the capital of Wu Province—right in the Yangtze River Delta.
"The Intangible Cultural Heritage Art Furniture Exhibition," Gu Qi said. "There are more rich people in the Wu-Hai region, so it's being held in Lincheng."
"Beijing-style Hardwood, Shanxi-style Furniture, Fujian Province's classical furniture, and Hainan Province's Ming-style Furniture are all going. Being invited means we represent Yue Province's hardwood craftsmanship!" Gu Qi said with considerable pride.
Though the Gu family business was not particularly large, it had an excellent reputation in the industry. Gu Qi had apprenticed under an old master when he was young, and aside from being a businessman, he was also a fine carpenter.
Back then, Li Man had attracted Gu Qi with her excellent Sichuan Cuisine, while the key to Gu Qi winning Li Man over had been personally carving her a lifelike wooden statue of a beauty.
"Dad, you're badass." Gu Zhao gave his father a thumbs-up.
But Gu Qi was clearly not satisfied. He even sounded a little jealous. "Wouldn't it have been great if you'd learned wood carving and furniture making from me? You just had to follow your grandfather and learn Daoist arts. What, your grandfather's legacy counts as a legacy, but your father's doesn't?
"Now look at this. Yours is feudal superstition, while your dad's craft has become Intangible Cultural Heritage that the country is vigorously promoting. If you'd learned from me, maybe you could've even made it onto the Spring Festival Gala. What a pity."
"The things that can be performed onstage are either arts with atmosphere or ones people rarely see. I remember the last Spring Festival Gala showcased a huge wood carving—a miniature world carved directly into a single tree. That was breathtaking."
Gu Zhao pointed around the room. "Our Ming and Qing furniture isn't exactly rare art. Strictly speaking, Mom's Sichuan Cuisine counts as Intangible Cultural Heritage too."
Gu Zhao gave Li Man, who had poked her head out from the kitchen, a thumbs-up. "Mom's an artist too!"
Li Man returned the thumbs-up, then raised her brows at Gu Qi.
Gu Qi, "..."
"You have a point, but since you come from a carpenter's family, you should at least know some basic common sense, right? Yet when you made special effects for a short video, you even got the wood in the background wrong. Aren't you ashamed?" Gu Qi shook his head. "It's like making Sichuan Cuisine without chili peppers and using ketchup instead."
Gu Zhao was baffled. "What short-video special effects?"
"That Palm Thunder video of yours." As Gu Qi spoke, he picked up his phone, opened Doukuai, and found Gu Zhao's video.
It was the very video Gu Zhao had labeled [Special effects production, for entertainment only], though it had actually captured him truly using Palm Thunder in another world.
"How do you know my Doukuai account? I've never even shown my face!" Gu Zhao asked in shock.
Everyone knew that children always blocked their parents from their Moments, and they generally kept their Doukuai accounts from their parents too.
Mom knew his computer password, and Dad had found his short-video account. They weren't really a cook and a carpenter—they were secret agents hiding their identities, weren't they?
"Zhang Hang's dad and I are friends, so I came across Zhang Hang's video. He showed his face," Gu Qi said indifferently. "Then I followed the trail and found you."
Fine, the logic checked out, but...
"How are my special effects wrong?" Gu Zhao could not help asking.
Other people might not know, but didn't he know exactly what had happened in that video?
It could not have been more real!
"Your special effects were pretty well done. Whether it was the lightning strike, the fire, or the details of the broken tree, it all looked very real." Gu Qi commented as he asked, "How much did it cost? Or did you use AI?"
Gu Zhao rolled his eyes. "Just get to the 'but.'"
"Fine, but!" Gu Qi chuckled and emphasized, "Where did you cut out those trees from? If you'd used pines, firs, or even birches and camphor trees, that would've been one thing. Why did you have to choose this particular kind?"
Gu Zhao looked at the small tree struck by lightning in the video, as well as the trees around it.
Though he did not recognize them, they looked like perfectly ordinary trees. What was so special about them?
"What's wrong with these trees?" Gu Zhao asked.
"What's wrong with these trees?" Gu Qi shot back. "A whole forest of Small-leaf Sandalwood, and you snapped one as thick as a thigh with one strike. What do you think is wrong?"
Gu Zhao was dumbfounded. "What? Small-leaf Sandalwood?"
"Mm, Small-leaf Sandalwood." Gu Qi nodded and glanced sideways at Gu Zhao. "The one you split in your video was at least a hundred years old. It was worth three or four hundred thousand, I'd say."
Gu Zhao: _
His family ran a furniture factory, but the timber delivered to the factory was already roughly processed raw material. He had grown up in the city. Aside from distinctive trees like pines, willows, and ginkgoes, how could he possibly tell all kinds of trees apart?
To him, the trees in the forest behind the village were neither thick nor tall, sparse and utterly unremarkable—nothing more than the most common woodland trees.
So they were actually the finest of all timber?
Gu Qi gave his final verdict. "It's only because you don't have many followers. If an expert saw it, they'd expose you in minutes."
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