Li Yi breathed a sigh of relief when he knew that Arnault actually knew the second person in the Holy See. Now, the most important thing is how to get a suitable gift.

After asking Arnault to help contact the big man he knew, Li Yi said goodbye and left. As soon as he got into the car, he picked up the phone and called Luo Guofu.

"A cultural relics related to the Holy See? Is that "The Goddess of the Goldfinch" not good? It's better to be around $20 million? Well, I'll ask you for a look."

Li Yi made this call for two purposes. One was indeed to find something cheaper, and the other, he knew that Luo Guofu would definitely communicate with Adolf. Now, it depends on how much Adolf wanted to get the "Summer Carnival".

After arranging all this, Li Yi finally breathed a sigh of relief. He thought about it again. After finding that there was indeed nothing missing, he patted Hongchen on the shoulder of the driving car.

"Go to the Swiss village."

After staying in Paris for so many days, Li Yi has only been to the Swiss village once and only visited Pat's antique store. This time he only exchanged and exchanged as many as 4 Western cultural relics. Although two of them were new, he has only one landscape painting by Paul Sanderby and a palace-level masterpiece by Titian Vecellio.

He liked these two paintings very much, "The Ancient Beech Tree", and he didn't want to exchange them. If Titian's "Love in Heaven and Love in the World" had no heavyweight cultural relics, he would not have easily lost his hand. Therefore, he urgently needed to replenish his ammunition depot now, and there was only one way to replenish it, that is, picking up bargains, and picking up leaks from Western antiques.

No matter how precious Chinese antiques are, they can only be worth one, but Western antiques are different. If you really catch two big fish, you still don’t know how many precious cultural relics from China can be exchanged for!

But after really starting shopping, Li Yi discovered that this place is completely different from the antique street or antique market he understood, because not only are there antique shops, tourist souvenir shops, casual cafes, restaurants, and the most amazing thing is that there are even several trendy fashion stores, and there is also an Apple store...

Well, although many things can't be attributed to antiques, the antique shop here is indeed slightly denser than other places, so Li Yi is still patient and just look at the one you find. If you really don't have one, just think it's shopping and relaxing. It's good to buy two bags for Lu Ningshuang.

The first antique store is open at the corner of a row of shops, and it is very large in area. However, if you only pay attention to the products displayed in the window, you may miss it because except for five models wearing fashion, jewelry, and carrying knives bags in the window, there is nothing related to antiques. Only by walking into the store and looking carefully, you will find that this is an antique store that mainly sells antique bags and antique jewelry.

The layout of this store is also different from that of ordinary stores. There are almost no counters. All jewelry is placed in separate booths. These booths are all kinds of columns of varying heights, with glass cabinets of varying sizes on the heads of the columns. Some of them have jewelry placed separately in the glass cabinets, while others have a model with half a piece of jewellery, and jewelry is hung around the model's neck.

In addition, the two walls in the store are also very special. On one wall are stretched out arms or slender hands, with different styles hanging on top, and some of them are wearing rings. On the other wall, there are three independent counters about one meter long. On the wall are stretched out models' heads, with necklaces or earrings hanging on top, and a few models wearing wigs with magnificent metal crowns on their heads.

Although the layout in the store is extraordinary, there are few customers. Compared with the endless stream of people in the store where the store operates a lady's bag and has no special decoration, it seems like it is so desolate that it cannot be more desolate. Li Yi said it was very strange that there would be such a deserted store in a downtown area like the Eighth District of Paris, where there would be such a deserted store.

However, after looking at a few items, he realized that if there were crowds of people in this kind of store, it would be a problem, because the things here were too expensive!

Take the antique jewelry it mainly sells for example. After being labeled with antiques, the price will at least quadruple. Moreover, at least half of them have reached or even exceeded the price level of jewelry exhibited at the Paris Biennale. This practice is obviously not open for three years, and it will be eaten for three years. If ordinary customers are interested, they will only see the ghost!

"Hello, can you help me take out this bracelet and take a look?"

Because Li Yi was preparing to make jewelry, he was particularly concerned about jewelry. The first thing he saw was the more than 20 column-shaped independent booths in the store. Soon, he saw something he was interested in.

This is a Chinese-style jade bracelet. The water quality is just ice-glutinous, but the emerald color is very good and close to full green. Although there is a little uneven place, it can barely be regarded as a small top-notch.

However, unlike the popular plain bracelets nowadays, there is also a phoenix flying with wings on the outer surface of this bracelet!

Dragons and phoenixes are exclusively used by the ancient imperial family, so this one must be an old collection of the palace, and most of them are old collections of the Qing palace, and it may even be that Cixi is not surprised.

The reason why we judge this is because of the history of jade in China.

Jade culture has a long history in China and has existed since ancient times. Although Hetian jade has always been the most respected, according to historical records, jade has appeared in the Northern Song Dynasty.

However, the jadeite at that time was not very valuable, not a little worse than Hetian jade. Moreover, this situation did not improve much after the Song, Yuan and Ming dynasties. It was not until the end of the Qing Dynasty, especially after Cixi came to power, that the situation changed significantly.

In the treasures collected by Cixi, jade watermelon and jade melon are both very famous peerless treasures. In addition, jade jade openwork disc dragon head hairpin, jade cabbage, and even jade rings from Prince Gong are all the favorite things of Lord Buddha.

If the superiors have something to do, the subordinates will have the greatest advantage. At that time, there was even a saying that when I went to the palace to do business, the best gift was a set of jade rings and feather tubes. Therefore, during that period, the value of jade had been greatly improved.

However, judging from some of the cultural relics unearthed at present, people of that era paid more attention to the color of emeralds, and they did not care about the quality of water as modern people. This point can be seen from this bracelet that the royal family is definitely not without the strength to find glass jade, but they value color more. In their eyes, this green ice glutinous type is definitely better than the glass type with no outstanding color.

After taking the bracelet to his hand, Li Yi noticed that the carving on it was not a phoenix, but two connected to the end! Moreover, the engraving technique was not simple to carve. Some bas-relief techniques were used in the body and tail feathers of the phoenix to make the phoenix look more lifelike.

Li Yi shook his head with his fingers. This kind of bracelet with carved is not practical, mainly because of cleaning. If you wear this kind of bracelet on your hand for a day, the carved lines may be stained with dirt. If you clean frequently, polishing the surface of the jade is also a kind of damage, or only if you have a special jade carver service like the Royal Family can you not be afraid of this trouble. Ordinary people should not wear this kind of bracelet.

However, as a cultural relic, its value is obviously higher than that of the bracelets used by ordinary wealthy families. Especially after watching the carvings, Li Yi couldn't help but start to guess how likely this bracelet belongs to Cixi.

In fact, it doesn't mean that it belongs to Cixi. Because according to normalcy, even if you know that a jade bracelet should belong to a celebrity, it is useless if there is no clear inheritance as evidence, because there will definitely be no inscriptions on ordinary jade bracelets.

But this one is a bit different, because the outer surface of this one is carved, so it is very normal to leave an inscription somewhere on the bracelet.

If you can find the inscription and prove which royal member of the bracelet was once owned by this royal family, then the value of this bracelet will definitely be much more expensive than it is now.

With this idea in mind, Li Yi carefully checked the inner and outer surfaces of the bracelet. Not only did he not find the ink style, but he found another defect. Somewhere on the inner surface of the bracelet, there was a black spot the size of a sesame grain!

It’s just strange that this color spot is not the ringworm of jade, and as a royal product, it should not have such obvious defects, but this one…

Li Yi pondered and rubbed the spot repeatedly with his fingers. He suspected that this might be the place where the inscribed style was, but the engraver used the micro-carving technique and was later invaded by dirt. The owner of the bracelet did not know the secret, so he did not clean it in time, or was unable to enter the door, so he had to treat it as a black spot.

However, he rubbed it for a long time without feeling any unsmooth or carved traces. Moreover, even with a magnifying glass, he still did not find anything. He couldn't help but smile and activate the soul-scoring card.

A gust of cool air flowed by, and the discerning card gave an identification result that stunned him. The texture and color of this piece were not particularly prominent. The outer surface was rarely carved with a phoenix, and the inner surface was also a jewelry that led Britain into the "Empire of the Sun" period, the great Queen Victoria!

How is this possible? In terms of style and engraving techniques, this bracelet is definitely a product of China in the late Qing Dynasty. How could it be a jewelry of Queen Victoria?

However, there will be no mistakes in the discerning card, so Li Yi can only look for the reason from himself. If he hadn't read it wrong, then there are often only two possibilities for this situation. That is, this bracelet was given to the queen as a state gift by the Qing government at that time, or the queen's subordinates who invaded the East were asked to make someone to offer it to the queen!

However, considering the social situation at that time, the latter possibility should be relatively small, but it cannot be ruled out that some jade carvers who were protected or forced by foreigners made this banned jewelry at the request of foreigners.

After gently knocking on his chin, Li Yi was a little grateful that this bracelet belonged to Queen Victoria, because no matter where he got the bracelet, most of the British royal family had related records of this bracelet. These records in the UK were definitely far better than those of the Qingting in terms of storage, so this was definitely a peerless and good treasure!

In his mind, the image of the Victorian jewelry box he bought from Dean suddenly flashed through his mind. Li Yi was suddenly stunned. Is it possible that the bracelet was placed in the jewelry box at that time, and both were lost?

It is possible, there is really such a possibility! Just think about the security forces of the British royal family and their attitude towards their ancestors' treasures, and you should know that how difficult it is for such a level to flow out of Buckingham Palace, how could it be lost again and again?

Perhaps, after receiving the island rewarded by the Holy See, we should also talk to the British royal family. These two things, coupled with the influence of the Holy See, may also add a double insurance to his island!

"How much does this one cost? Is there a discount?"

Li Yi looked down at the price tag and asked with his head up.

"Oh sir, I'm very sorry, there is no discount on everything in our store."

After taking out the bracelet, the clerk who had been standing by watching Li Yi inspect the goods shook his head, and then said:

"Sir, the bracelet you are holding in your hand should be owned by the former royal family of China, and it is still so unique. Don't you think that the price is already very cheap at present? If I were you, I might buy it without saying a word and then take it to my girlfriend, because in my heart, only the former royal jewelry is worthy of her! Oh, what a wonderful scene it would be..."

Hearing the clerk's aria tone, Li Yi shook his head with a wry smile. The royal jewelry used to be worthy. Does that mean that ordinary jewelry cannot be bought? You kid might as well just say that you don't want to buy jewelry for others!

"Okay, 220,000 euros are not very expensive anyway, so please help me wrap it up!"

"Ok! Sir, I think your girlfriend must be the happiest person in the world, because you are willing to spend so much money to give her a piece of royal jewelry..."

"Wait! Let me see what royal jewelry is too!"

Before the clerk finished speaking, he was interrupted by a somewhat rude female voice. Li Yi turned his head and glanced at the other side indifferently, then frowned. (To be continued.)

...
Chapter completed!