Old Harden, can you handle having your vision-shifting abilities on all the time?

Xu Xing glanced in the direction she pointed and saw a famille rose vase with figures and stories, the painting was rough and the glaze was too bright.

"New, made to look old."

"oh."

Li Yuting nodded, not disappointed, and pointed to the other side.

"And what about these copper coins? A whole bunch of them."

"Most of them are fake; a few genuine Daoguang Tongbao coins mixed in are worthless."

"Brother Xu, you're amazing! You recognized it right away."

Li Yuting praised him sincerely, and then took out two chocolates from her bag.

"Want some? It's dark chocolate, not too sweet."

Xu Xing almost laughed.

The two of them just looked around and asked questions, with Li Yuting occasionally feeding them some snacks. They ended up shopping for almost two hours.

Xu Xing hadn't strolled through the antique street so simply and without any ulterior motives in a long time; with a lively companion by his side, time flew by.

As it approached five o'clock, the setting sun gilded the green tiles and eaves of the alley with a layer of gold.

Xu Xing stopped in front of a small stall that specialized in selling miscellaneous items.

The stall owner was a middle-aged woman with some old clocks, old fountain pens, old pipes, a few old photo albums, and a few cardboard boxes in front of her.

Xu Xing's gaze fell on one of the thick card albums.

He squatted down and picked up the booklet.

Li Yuting also squatted down. She was wearing a dress, and when she squatted down, the hem of the dress trailed on the ground, and her high breasts rested directly on her knees.

Tilting his head, he asked, "What's this? Playing cards?"

"no."

Xu Xing opened the booklet, his gaze sweeping over the brightly colored hard cards depicting different characters from Water Margin, and the floodgates of memory slowly opened.

Little Raccoon Water Margin Cards.

It was a hard currency that swept through campuses across the country in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

The 108 heroes, plus the six villains and four treacherous ministers, were a dream for many boys back then.

To collect cards, many children saved their breakfast money to buy instant noodles. They would share the leftover noodles everywhere but carefully collect the cards, showing them off, exchanging them, and even playing against each other during breaks.

When Xu Xing was about to graduate from vocational school, this thing was all the rage. Although he was older than the primary and secondary school students, he followed the trend and played with it for a while because many people in his school were playing with it. He even collected more than thirty of them.

After graduating, working, getting married, and having children, those cards were long gone, lost to who knows where.

I never expected to see almost a complete set here today.

"These are Water Margin hero cards from Little Raccoon Crispy Noodles from over twenty years ago."

Xu Xing explained to Li Yuting, "Back then, many kids, even 18 or 19-year-old students, ate a lot of instant noodles to collect these."

Li Yuting asked with great interest, "The paintings are quite detailed. Is this set worth anything now?"

"Depending on its condition and completeness, this set is very complete and in good condition. It could fetch two or three thousand yuan if it finds a collector who likes it."

As Xu Xing spoke, his gaze unconsciously swept over the other items on the stall.

Seeing his interest in the cards, the stall owner enthusiastically said, "Sir, you have a good eye! I spent a long time collecting these cards and I finally have a complete set! If you're serious, I'll give you a fair price of two thousand five!"

Xu Xing did not respond.

He had only been browsing to reminisce and didn't really intend to buy anything, so his gaze fell on the other items on the stall.

The gears inside the old clock were rusted, the pen nib was severely worn, and the pipe was made of ordinary briar wood…

Nothing special.

My gaze shifted to a corner of the stall where several broken magical artifacts lay scattered about: a wooden sword broken in two, a bronze mirror with a missing corner, and a string of loose prayer beads.

Xu Xing's gaze lingered on the broken sword.

The sword, made of peach wood, broke in the middle. The blade was engraved with blurry cloud and thunder patterns and runes, but many details were no longer visible due to the break and the erosion of time.

The silk thread wrapped around the sword hilt had long since rotted away, revealing the original wooden hilt that had split into two pieces.

It's an unremarkable, ordinary peach wood sword that looks like it was used by a Taoist priest. It probably broke during the Republic of China era, so it's even less valuable now.

However, it is rare for a peach wood sword to have two hilt pieces.

Seeing that it was getting late and also out of curiosity, Xu Xing immediately activated his X-ray vision and pierced through the wooden sword hilt.

Inside the hilt, near the base where the hand grips the sword, there is a carefully hollowed-out cylindrical compartment.

The hidden compartment was no more than the thickness of a thumb and about six or seven centimeters deep. It was stuffed with straw paper, and inside the straw paper was a small bronze sword.

The small sword is less than six centimeters long, but its craftsmanship is extremely exquisite.

The sword is extremely thin but has smooth lines, and although the blade is not sharpened, it has a dignified air about it.

The blade is engraved with intricate Zhenwu Dao patterns on both sides with extremely fine intaglio lines. Tortoises and snakes are intertwined, clouds rise, and the Big Dipper pattern is faintly visible in the middle.

Such Taoist patterns are not used lightly by those outside the orthodox Taoist tradition.

The hilt of the sword is engraved with the characters "Kunyang" in even smaller seal script.

Xu Xing narrowed his eyes slightly.

Red copper was a copper alloy commonly used in casting ritual implements during the early and mid-Ming Dynasty. Its dark reddish-purple color is different from that of brass and bronze.

The copper oxide layer on this small sword is thick and natural, a typical antique patina that is black with a hint of purple and red, and it takes at least four or five hundred years to form.

Kunyang...

Xu Xing's mind raced.

The person most closely associated with the name Kunyang in the history of Taoism during the Ming Dynasty was undoubtedly Zhang Sanfeng, a legendary figure in Taoism who was highly praised by successive emperors of the Ming Dynasty.

According to records such as the History of Ming, Zhang Sanfeng once called himself Kunyang Zhenren, and one of his Taoist temples was in Wudang Mountain, Hubei.

Kunyang may also be his Taoist name or related to his birthplace (Note: Zhang Sanfeng had names such as Zhang Lata and Zhang Junbao in history, but Kunyang Zhenren is one of his true honorific titles).

Could this small copper sword hidden in the peach wood sword from the Republic of China era actually be a magic sword from the early Ming Dynasty that may be related to Zhang Sanfeng?

If it really is Zhang Sanfeng's magic sword, its value is far greater than that of the Li Yuanhong commemorative coin!

Xu Xing pointed calmly at the broken peach wood sword and asked, "Boss, how much for this peach wood sword?"

The stall owner glanced at it and casually said, "Although it's a broken sword, it's an old item from the Republic of China era. I'll give you two hundred and you can take it."

Xu Xing shook his head and said, "One hundred."

The stall owner grinned and said, "One hundred is too little, at least it's an old one."

Xu Xing stood up and said, "At most one hundred and fifty."

"Alright, alright, 150 it is, let's be friends."

The stall owner quickly agreed.

Those junk pieces were just trash in her eyes; selling them for 150 yuan was a free profit.

Xu Xing readily paid the money.

Li Yuting was quick-witted and had already unzipped his backpack for him. Xu Xing handed her the broken peach wood sword and asked her to put it inside the backpack.

With the transaction completed, Xu Xing felt a weight lifted off his shoulders.

Li Yuting asked in a low voice, "Brother Xu, why did you buy this piece of junk?"

Xu Xing mumbled, "It looks a bit old. I'll take it back and study it."

Li Yuting simply said "Oh" without asking any further questions. She took out her phone and held it up to Xu Xing, saying, "Brother Xu, it's almost time for dinner. There's a Cantonese restaurant around here with really good reviews; their roast goose and claypot rice are amazing! Shall we go try it? It's on me, you know!"

The picture on the phone screen was of an elegantly decorated Cantonese restaurant that looked quite nice. Xu Xing didn't care much about food, so he just nodded casually.

He said, "Okay, let's go to this place then. I'm sorry to have troubled you."