After asking, Ma Jiacheng told me the name and address of the antique shop.
Without staying in the police station for long, under the escort of a policeman, my master Zhang Chu, the young monk Yuquan and I took a police car to the cross street of the county town.
Cross Street is the center of Dongling County, where there are many shops selling everything. The antique shop named "Santai" is located on a street in the northwest corner of Cross Street.
There are many shops selling antiques on that street.
The decoration of Santai Antique Shop is very simple and exudes a sense of cultural heritage. In such a small city, it is already very good to be decorated like this. The doors and windows are all glass, and you can see the stone statues and half-human-high vases through the glass.
I have no expertise in antiques, so naturally I don't know whether the antiques inside are fakes or authentic. Anyway, they look nice from a distance.
After parking the police car, the young policeman took us into the Santai Antique Shop.
The owner of the antique shop was a middle-aged man, a little fat, with beads on his hands and neck. The way he walked was very interesting, like a stupid duck.
The middle-aged man was stunned when he saw the policeman coming in, but then he came forward to greet them.
He greeted with a smile: "Hello, officer! Hello, officer! What can I do for you?"
He looked as if he knew the young policeman.
The young policeman looked at the middle-aged man, then stepped aside and turned back to me and said, "Master Yang, you want to know something, so why don't you ask this boss?"
I nodded to the young policeman to express my gratitude.
Then I went to the middle-aged man and asked about the "Taiyin Pearl". But the middle-aged man had many guests, and he didn't remember Ma Jiacheng and the woman at all.
Perhaps because there were police officers present, the middle-aged man retrieved the video as I requested.
The recording was made two days ago, and Ma Jiacheng told me that he came to Santai Antiques Shop two days ago in the afternoon. So the time was adjusted to the afternoon.
You know what, after a while, I actually found Ma Jiacheng’s shadow in the surveillance footage.
Ma Jiacheng first wandered around the antique shop alone. After a while, a woman wearing a white dress, with long hair and a fair face came in.
The woman quickly started a conversation with Ma Jiacheng, and the two chatted for a few minutes before walking out of the Santai Antique Shop.
I guess after they left, they went to do a deal just as Ma Jiacheng said.
I asked the antique shop owner to freeze the picture in a position where the female customer was relatively clear. Then I took a photo of the woman in the picture with my mobile phone.
After taking the photo, I showed it to the middle-aged man: "Boss, look at this woman, do you still remember her? Do you know who she is and what her name is?"
But the middle-aged boss looked at it for a long time, but still shook his head and said: "The picture is very clear, but I really have no impression of this woman. I think this is her first time in my store."
At this point, the middle-aged boss looked past me, glanced at the young policeman on the side and asked: "Officer, is there something wrong with this woman?"
The young policeman looked cautious and said to the middle-aged boss: "This is a matter of our police station. We cannot disclose it casually."
After hearing what the police said, the middle-aged boss smiled awkwardly and said nothing more.
If you don't know the woman's identity, it will be difficult to find her.
If I can't find the woman, it will be hard to determine the whereabouts of the Taiyin Pearl. I started to get anxious again.
But I don't want to give up. Su Su's soul is inside the Taiyin Pearl.
Looking for her would mean abandoning Susu, which is not my style. It is also not something a person with feelings can do.
After that, I asked the middle-aged boss some more questions, but seeing that he knew nothing about them, I didn’t ask any more.
I thought to myself, I can only look somewhere else. Since the woman came to the antique shop, it means that she is interested in antiques, and maybe she has also been to other antique shops.
So, a few of us left Santai Antique Shop.
After leaving here, the young policeman said he had something else to do and left first. He also asked me to send him the photo of the woman and he would help me check this person in the police station to see if he could find her.
Now there are only three of us left here.
I walked around the street again and asked several antique shops, but the owners were busy with their own business and didn't want to pay attention to the three of us.
This is human nature and is understandable.
Seeing that it was getting late, I called my master Zhang Chu and the young monk Yuquan and said, "Master, Yuquan, let's go. We have been looking for a long time and haven't eaten properly. It happens that this place is quite lively and there are many restaurants. Let's find a restaurant to eat something."
Yuquan is a foodie, so he nodded and said, "Okay, okay!"
Really heartless. But Yuquan's heartlessness, in other words, is called "open-mindedness."
After dinner, the three of us returned to the guesthouse near the police station.
Nothing happened overnight.
The next morning, I was awakened from my sleep in a daze.
In my dream, I dreamed of Susu.
Susu was inside the Taiyin Pearl, calling out to me, asking for help. She seemed to have encountered something.
I ran towards the Taiyin Pearl desperately, but the Taiyin Pearl flew up. Every time I approached it, the Taiyin Pearl seemed to teleport and appeared far away again.
SuSu's cries were like needles that pierced my nerves. I ran until I was exhausted and finally collapsed to the ground.
At this time, it started to rain. The color of the rain was not transparent, but red, just like the color of blood, thick.
I lay in the bloody rain, feeling dizzy.
The Taiyin Pearl was still floating in front, and Susu was still crying sadly.
Just as I managed to support my body and stand up, a person slowly walked towards me in the blood-red rain.
That person was wearing red clothes. It should be red clothes. That's what I thought at the time. But when that person walked in, I found that it was not red clothes. He was not wearing any clothes at all.
The man slowly walked in front of me, and I found that he had no skin. The skin on his body had been peeled off, revealing red, prickly flesh and blue blood vessels.
When he saw me looking at him, he laughed at me. Then his mouth started to grow bigger, until it reached his ears, and he opened his bloody mouth towards me and bit me fiercely.
SuSu behind him was still shouting, "No, no, no"...
My eyes were bloodshot and I was awakened.
I got out of bed and looked in the mirror, and I found that my eyes were full of red bloodshot. It seems that I didn't sleep well last night.
I looked at my watch and it was about seven in the morning, and the sky was already bright. But perhaps because I was too tired these days and didn't get a good night's sleep, my master Zhang Chu and Yuquan were still in their rooms and hadn't come out yet.
I thought about it and decided to go alone
Take a walk around the antique street on the other side of the cross.
I went downstairs, took a taxi, and soon arrived at Antique Street again.
The antique shops on that street were indeed open, but at this time, they didn't have many customers.
I thought about it and started looking for the remaining antique shops on that street again to inquire about the woman in the white dress.
After searching for more than an hour, I still didn't find anything.
I thought to myself that maybe the woman was just here to hang out. But she was able to identify the Taiyin Pearl and buy it from Ma Jiacheng, so she must be quite extraordinary.
Just as I was daydreaming, I came to the last antique shop.
This antique shop is close to the road and its name is Longxiang Antique Shop.
The decoration of Longxiang Antique Shop is very ordinary, and its area is not as big as Santai Antique Shop.
When I came here, the owner of the antique shop was chewing on a roujiamo in his hand.
The boss is very young, about thirty years old, and doesn't dress fancy. He looks like a very serious person.
Seeing me coming over, he wrapped up his roujiamo and greeted me with a smile: "Brother, do you want to see antiques? Although my shop is small, the antiques are all top-quality goods. Why don't you come in and take a look."
I nodded and walked into the antique shop.
When the young boss was about to introduce antiques to me, I interrupted him with a smile: "I'm sorry, boss, I'm not here to buy antiques. In fact, I want to find out something. I want to find someone, so I came over here to see if you have seen this person."
When the young boss heard what I said, there was no expression of disgust on his face.
He asked me directly: "Can you describe what that person looks like? If you have a photo, you can also show it to me."
I quickly took out my cell phone, opened the photo and showed it to the young boss.
The young boss looked at the woman in the white dress in the photo, then looked at me and asked, "Brother, what do you do and why do you choose this girl?"
I was afraid that the young boss would misunderstand me, so I said, "Boss, I don't mean anything else. I'm just interested in this girl."
When the young boss heard me say that I was interested in the girl in the photo on his phone, he gave him an expression that said "I understand you".
Then he patted my shoulder and said with a smile: "I didn't expect that you are such a romantic. But, you must have found the right person by coming to me. I have seen this girl before!"
After hearing this, I was overjoyed and asked, "What's the boss' name and where does she live?"
The young boss thought for a moment and said to me, "Don't worry. She came to me to buy antiques. I forgot her name. But she left her name and phone number on the signed receipt. I'll go look for it now. There should be a copy."
I hurriedly said, "Thank you! Thank you!"
Then the young boss searched through the bills and said, "Here it is! This is the bill from half a year ago. This girl came to me to sell a bronze mirror half a year ago. I remember she was very generous at the time and directly took out 200,000 yuan, so I still have some impression of it."
I took the ticket and looked at it. There was a name and phone number on it. The woman in the white dress was named Guan Xintong.
I quickly wrote down the phone number on the ticket on a piece of paper.
"Boss, thank you so much. You helped me a lot." I thanked him with a smile.
The young boss smiled and said, "This is all trivial. If you can really win over that girl, I will be acting as a matchmaker!"
I thought to myself, this young boss seems to have misunderstood. But he is very interesting.
After chatting for a few minutes, I left.
(to be continued)
(End of this chapter) (End of this chapter)