Treasure hunt begins in England

Chapter 179 Tidy up
For the sake of a total cost of 11800 euros, that John helped Liang En find two carts to put the boxes on, and at the same time gave him the purchase order related to the carpet.

Looking at the yellowed list, Liang En finally understood why these broken carpets were sold for 7600 euros, because the list stated that the price of these carpets at that time was 1500 pounds.

Considering the year was 1974, £1500 was a lot of money.If it wasn't for the shabby look of these carpets, Liang En estimated that he would need [-] to [-] euros to get them.

When Liang En and Fan Meng pushed a cart into Fan Meng's restaurant, they happened to meet Fan Meng's father who was going to Liang En's farm to transport them, so they simply took his cart back to the farm.

"I bought these things for more than 1 euros. Sure enough, playing with antiques is not a hobby that ordinary people can afford." On the way, after hearing what Liang En said about buying these things today, Uncle Fan shook his head and said.

"As far as I know, that old Li spent a lot of money on these things. But no one thought that as soon as he passed away, those children in his family were eager to sell these things even if they were cheap. "

Lamenting the impermanence of life all the way, the container truck drove into Liang En's farm. Originally, Liang En was anxious to see the treasures he had collected, but unfortunately, he was caught by his old lady.

"Well, I will definitely come over when I eat." After helping his mother transport the vegetables to the container truck with Fan Meng and saying goodbye to Fan Meng and his father, Liang En waved his mother to promise.

Then he took the wooden box with a cart to the garage of his ranch not far away by himself, and then prepared for the clean-up work.

As a professional, Liang En, who knew how tricky these old carpets were, put on his gas mask and gel coat, and then took out those carpets by himself and laid them on the concrete floor.

After laboriously removing all the rugs from the box and spreading them out on the cleaned garage floor, he found three folded rugs in the box.

The larger one is a 6m×6m square blue carpet, with a golden pattern of five blessings holding longevity in the middle, and a circle of golden flowers around it.

Although it is said that due to the problem of time, these golden patterns look a bit dim.The thick dust accumulated on the carpet also covered up the original color, but you can still see the exquisiteness and gorgeousness of this carpet when you look closely.

The other two carpets are rectangular carpets of 4m x 6m, one with red flowers on yellow ground and the other with blue flowers on yellow ground.From the almost identical pattern, it can be seen that this may be a mass-produced product.The degree of natural refinement is far less than the first one.

However, to Liang En's surprise, there was a ribbon made of bright yellow silk tied to the corners of the three carpets, which did not look like a modern product.

When he stepped forward to check, he was surprised to find that the three bright yellow ribbons were written with a silk woven Wufu holding birthday carpet of Puxiu Palace, a silk woven yellow ground safflower carpet of Lijingxuan and a silk woven carpet of Yanxi Palace. A carpet with yellow ground and blue flowers.

Thanks to the popularity of some Qing palace dramas in his previous life, Liang En immediately understood that these place names were the names of palaces in the Huaxia Forbidden City. Obviously, these carpets should flow out of the Forbidden City.

Just when Liang En recognized the source of these carpets, two [Repair (N)] cards and one [Appraisal (N)] card appeared in his mind.

The number of cards obtained this time exceeded Liang En's most optimistic expectation. After thinking about it, he felt that the reason why he was able to harvest so many cards should be related to the fact that these carpets came from the palace.

"That is to say, the appearance of the card is closely related to the location of the treasure and the degree of protection." Liang En quickly analyzed some interesting things from it. "It seems that if there is a chance in the future, we will try to find as many things that are placed in important positions."

Considering that there is sufficient evidence to prove that these three carpets were purchased directly by Mr. Li from formal channels, they are likely to be part of the antiques exported by Huaxia in exchange for foreign exchange.

Although it sounds a bit far-fetched today, it was a very common thing to export these precious cultural relics in exchange for foreign exchange in those days.

To give the simplest example, that is, one year before these carpets were sold to the UK, the Forbidden City also sold 3000 sets of armor of the Emperor Qianlong’s Imperial Forest Army to employees at a price of [-] cents a set as benefits.

What is even more exaggerated is that at that time, the hospital stipulated that the armor purchased by the employees must not be kept in its original state, but must be disassembled to use the silk floss. As a result, all the 3000 sets of armor were destroyed.

After careful inspection, Liang En found that these carpets were all the most traditional Chinese carpets, with unique manufacturing characteristics and appearance.

Different from the common wool carpets in the West, these carpets use cotton yarns as warp and weft threads, and use colored silk threads as tufting knots. The pattern looks prominent, the surface of the carpet is flat, and it emits a special luster under the light source.

After confirming the specific conditions of these carpets, Liang En focused his attention on another box.And moved out the piece of wooden furniture inside.

These furniture are some old things. Although there is a huge gap with those top-level furniture in terms of craftsmanship and materials, they are at least relatively well preserved, and they should be able to sell for a lot of money after a little tidying up.

After taking out all the things from the two boxes, Liang En started to clean up these things, but considering the difficulty of the cleaning work, Liang En cleaned up the wooden furniture first.

Compared with the carpet that has not been maintained much, these furniture have obviously been under maintenance before, so all he has to do is conduct a comprehensive inspection and clean it up briefly.

It was very easy to clean the first few pieces of furniture, but when Liang En cleaned the last one, which was the largest kang table, he was surprised to find that the bottom of the kang table drawer was uneven to the touch, but the surface was very smooth.

This is not a normal thing, because that kind of feel can only come from wood that has been carved and painted.But under normal circumstances, no one would do this kind of thing with the bottom of the drawer.

After realizing something was wrong, Liang En immediately pulled out the drawer, and was surprised to find that the back panel of the drawer had been hollowed out, and a black inkstone was inlaid on it.

"It seems that this kang table hides some treasures." Liang En thought about taking tools from the side, and then began to disassemble the kang table made of elm wood.

Sure enough, when he disassembled the entire Kang table, he found a black lacquered mother-of-pearl box in the space behind another drawer of the Kang table, and the groove in the middle of the box was just enough to put the inkstone found on the bottom of the drawer.

"Fortunately, ordinary glue is used here, and it can be slowly melted with water." Looking at the inkstone inlaid on the bottom of the drawer, Liang En muttered in a low voice, using warm water to dissolve the glue around the inkstone little by little.

"I think the reason why this kang table was made back then is probably to hide the inkstone."

After spending more than ten minutes, Liang En disassembled the inkstone at night, and the moment the inkstone fell into his hands, he immediately discovered the difference of this inkstone.

(End of this chapter)