Henry Brooks didn’t know if the others felt the same strange sensation of being watched by the Azure Dragon, but judging from how focused everyone looked, one thing was certain: by now, no one else suspected that this ding was a fake, deliberately aged and planted by the other party.

Otherwise, seeing a freshly unearthed ding that was as bright as new, without a trace of rust, everyone would have already walked away.

Of the dozen or so people present, although none had studied archaeology as formally as Henry Brooks, they were all half-experts in this circle. Even if someone wanted to set a trap, they should have put more effort into artificially aging the piece. Henry Brooks was more inclined to believe that this small ding really looked like this the moment it was unearthed.

What kind of bronze artifact could remain underground for thousands of years without a hint of corrosion?

“Can you tell what period this ding is from?” Fatty Goodwin asked Henry Brooks in a low voice.

Even the always cautious and slippery Fatty Goodwin didn’t suspect this ding was a forgery.

Henry Brooks shook his head, unable to say anything.

Henry Brooks had majored in history as an undergraduate, then entered Northeastern University for graduate studies in archaeology, focusing mainly on pre-Qin bronzes and was extremely familiar with the inscriptions of the Shang and Zhou periods.

In fact, the bronze inscriptions and stylistic features of the Shang and Zhou dynasties differ significantly across periods. Later generations mainly deduced the age of bronzes based on these stylistic differences.

Henry Brooks could be considered an expert in this field; otherwise, with a net worth far below Fatty Goodwin’s, he wouldn’t have been invited by Fatty Goodwin to participate in this secret transaction.

But this black square ding, whether it was the dragon head and tail as handles, the dragon claws as four legs, or the ancient seal script inscriptions cast on it, all felt unfamiliar to Henry Brooks. In his memory, among all the Shang and Zhou bronzes unearthed in China, there was nothing like it.

And the thousands of ancient seal script inscriptions around the body of the ding—he didn’t recognize any of them. Yet each tiny, fly-head-sized character was so vivid and lively, as if imbued with some strange power.

The middle-aged man then took out a jade ring. Calling it a ring was mainly due to its shape, but in terms of size, it was more like a jade bracelet—whose finger could possibly be as thick as a wrist?

Compared to the black ding, the grayish, somewhat damaged jade ring looked much more ordinary, and indeed seemed like an ancient artifact buried underground for thousands of years.

“The tomb is sealed and can’t be visited, but you must have taken more photos of the site, right?” Grace Sutton asked.

Everyone had seen some photos before, but only one was of the actual site, and the angle was poor. From the collapsed muddy pit in the photo, nothing could really be discerned.

Now that Grace Sutton wanted to see more site photos, the others felt the same and all stared at the middle-aged man.

“There are some…”

The middle-aged man took out a domestic-brand phone and pulled up a dozen or so site photos, enough to piece together a panoramic view of the scene, and passed the phone around for everyone to see.

Henry Brooks stood next to Grace Sutton, and saw her, after taking the phone, casually exit out for a moment, seemingly checking other photos to confirm the time and location of the site pictures. But Henry Brooks was quickly drawn in by the photos on the phone.

This was definitely not an ordinary Shang or Zhou noble’s tomb. The scene in the photos looked more like a giant palace—or rather, a corner of one—with only two black, right-angled, ruined walls buried deep beneath a mountain.

These two ruined walls looked as if they had been sliced off by some sharp tool, reflecting a metallic sheen under the phone’s flash. The entire wall was actually cast from some kind of black metal, and judging by the excavator in the photo, each wall was at least seventeen or eighteen meters high.

From the remnants of the giant bas-reliefs attached to the walls, it could be inferred that these two walls were only a small part of the entire palace. It was hard to imagine how magnificent the complete structure must have been.

The ruined walls looked unremarkable, and the small corner of bas-relief gave little clue to their appearance, but the cut surfaces were incredibly smooth, with extremely strange yet obviously regular patterns—like countless ancient seal script characters joined together.

How could a solid cast metal block have such regular, seal-script-like patterns at the cut?

If these two ruined walls had been buried underground for thousands of years, what could possibly have existed in the Shang and Zhou or even earlier times that could cut such massive metal walls so neatly?

Even in modern times, Earth doesn’t have the capability to cast such enormous metal components in one piece!

If this place were ever made public, it would undoubtedly be an archaeological discovery that would shock the world. But as an antique dealer, Henry Brooks didn’t care about any of that.

Henry Brooks believed everyone else had their own questions, but the middle-aged man then asked everyone to hand over their phones. No one refused, and they all followed him out the back door of the courtyard, through a narrower alley, where a large bus was waiting at the entrance.

The middle-aged man had everyone sit in the rear half of the bus, where all the windows were covered with blackout film, blocking their view so they couldn’t see where the bus was going.

It was clear the other party had planned this transaction very thoroughly, more like a professional tomb-raiding gang than the construction crew who claimed to have accidentally discovered a Shang or Zhou tomb.

Of course, everyone only cared whether the other party had genuine artifacts in hand, not whether they were tomb raiders or a construction crew.