Picking Treasures

Picking Treasures is an urban supernatural-ability novel by Zhu, a contracted author of Qidian Chinese Network and a top author of Yuewen Group. Completed in December 2013, it runs about 3.18 million characters and 1,134 chapters in total. At the beginning, the protagonist Wang Guan is an ordinary worker who has just been fired and is in dire straits; by helping a street vendor, he unexpectedly obtains a "Ruyi Gold Coin," after which his eyes mutate and he can see the aura of treasure emanating from antique objects, using it to judge their authenticity, age, and value. With this ability, Wang Guan enters the antique trade, starting from ancient porcelain shards and hare's-fur bowls at street stalls, and step by step goes through treasure picking, porcelain reassembly, appraisal, and treasure duels, coming into contact with Shang and Zhou bronzes, Qin and Han pottery figurines, Tang and Song porcelains, jade, calligraphy and painting, bamboo, wood, ivory, and horn, red sandalwood and rosewood, and various other collections, eventually growing into a great collector of his generation. The novel's central pleasure is "while others are fooled, he picks up bargains; while others pick up bargains, he picks treasures." Two main lines run in parallel: Wang Guan's growth line, as he keeps learning on the collecting path and builds up his connoisseurship, and his task line of dealing with antique forgery gangs and helping investigate cultural-relic crimes. The book describes many real categories of cultural relics and key points of authentication, with a steady pace and little aggression, and a restrained romantic line.