Almighty painter

Chapter 748 Who Sees the Truth First? (Part )
The ground floor cafe at Raffles Hotel.

"By the way, if we want to complete this 3 million euro deal—" the woman remembered something and added, "In addition to this painting, 'Old Church in a Thunderstorm', there must be another additional purchase. The cross."

Anna tapped her fingers on the table.

"The amount on this check includes the purchase of Carroll's painting and the cross I gave you. You must accept it."

Since you don't need the friendship of the Elena family and since you have given up the opportunity to repent, return my jewelry to me.

Across the table.

Gu Weijing didn't say whether he agreed or refused.

He took a deep breath, then suddenly laughed. When faced with the temptation of a check for one million euros, he showed a sarcastic smile for a moment.

Now he smiled longer.

And laughed even louder.

The bartender who was wearing old-fashioned overalls and wiping wine glasses to the light music behind the bar looked over here. In fact, he had been secretly looking at this side the whole time. There was the only couple of customers in the store right now, a man and a woman who made a very impressive impression on people.

Oh, one of them must have told a great joke.

The bartender thought to himself.

At this moment, in Gu Weijing's heart, the world was like a wonderful joke that made him laugh non-stop until his whole body felt cold, and it seemed as if something in his chest was burning from laughing.

Anger is fire.

Once ignited, something must be burned before it will go out. Gu Weijing's heart was filled with burning flames, and in his loud laughter, all the good feelings and expectations in his heart for Elena's family were licked away.

Miss Elena had no idea about Gu Weijing's experience.

Gu Weijing also had no idea what information Anna had.

He had not seen Kara's tombstone.

He had not seen a single strand of hair left on the canvas.

He also didn't have the diary left by Miss Kara.

Apart from a few yellowed lines of records in the old filing cabinet of the old church, Gu Weijing knew nothing about "Carol"'s life.

Gu Weijing only knew that there was something wrong with the interview organized by Oil Painting magazine.

At this time.

A week before the interview, the manager of Oil Painting magazine found him, privately signed a check for 3 million euros, and then asked him, "Can you confirm that "Carole" - the first female Impressionist painter in history identified in your paper - is actually a member of Irena's family?"
Would he hold the other person's hand with tears in his eyes and say, "What a coincidence"?

Oh, this critical time point is also exactly the decisive moment when the well-known Irina family and the shareholders of "Oil Painting" compete for the right to speak in the art market in the board of directors.

Oh.

and also.

Less than a month ago, Gu Weijing was trapped in a luxurious manor, fighting a life-and-death battle with a master who manipulated the underground art market to hype up all kinds of false concepts, using his life as a chip on the gambling table.

He is still in a state of "anti-Hao Ge PTSD".

What would he be thinking at a time like this?
Psychologists say that humans are animals that make various emotional choices based on habits.

People are path dependent.

They will look for self-evident answers from the experiences they have encountered in life.

Anna has seen many people approaching her with ulterior motives, and has seen many thoughts and calculations in the world of fame and fortune. When she encountered this strange coincidence, she subconsciously thought that the man opposite her was a hypocritical liar.

The other party is trying every trick in the book to sell the work at a good price, trying to squeeze the maximum value out of Carla, and is not satisfied with even 3 million euros.

Her pride and self-defense mentality made her too lazy to ask more questions.

Gu Weijing was used to seeing people with ulterior motives trying to bribe him, and was used to seeing Brother Hao using any means necessary to achieve his goals. When he encountered this strange coincidence, he subconsciously thought that the woman opposite him was a hypocritical liar.

The other party is trying every means to buy a historical position for his family and wants to squeeze the maximum value out of Carol, and is willing to spend 3 million euros for this.

His sensitivity and self-defense mentality made him unwilling to ask more questions.

Brother Hao is a man who holds a shotgun in one hand and candied dates in the other.

He said everyone has a price.

He wrote himself a check for three million dollars. If he accepted it, he would make a friend. If he didn't, he would kidnap his cousin.

Miss Elena is obviously a person who likes to have a shotgun in one hand and a candied date in the other.

She said every work in the art market has a price, whether it's Carol's or "Carla's".

She signed herself a check for 3 million euros. If she accepted it, she would "get to know" her. If she didn't accept it, she would hijack her interview and the other party would "ruin" Gu Weijing in the interview.

Gu Weijing had no doubt that the woman in front of him was qualified to say such words.

That was the manager of the Oil Painting column! The most powerful person in the art world, she had dealt a heavy blow to Van Dorn's reputation. With a speech of less than five minutes, she almost destroyed the ambition and dream that Sir Brown had prepared for half a lifetime.

And then.

The young woman opposite was not even the person in charge of the text column of Oil Painting.

It’s really ridiculous to think about it. It’s human nature to have double standards. He always thought that Miss Elena was so good, so great, and so perfect, just because she was always speaking for "him".

just now.

When he appeared on the opposite side of Elena's family, when this breathtakingly beautiful woman pushed a check to him to buy his soul and did not allow him to refuse, he truly felt the equally suffocating feeling of oppression.

Gu Weijing finally realized——

To destroy someone like the other person, perhaps all you need to do is just move your fingers.

It should have been an obvious thing.

Gu Weijing knew this before, but he had never realized it before.

There is a difference between knowing and being aware.

You know that the sea will dry up, the rocks will rot, and you know that the sun will go out one day, but only the sea water has turned into a Gobi Desert. You found a fossil of a fish in the desert, and you saw the marks made by the flowing water under the waterfall. At the end of time, one day the sun will set in the west and never rise again.

You will then realize that this will happen.

Between knowing and consciousness is the collapse of a beautiful dream.

just now.

All of Gu Weijing's beautiful dreams about Elena's family were truly shattered.

"Mr. Gu, there is no difference between people. Fate has already determined your path. There is no difference between you and me, and there is no difference between me and the Elena family. Why can the Elena family love art? I can love art too."

Brother Hao's voice reappeared in his ears.

Gu Weijing thought he had walked out of the man-eating cage of the Xihe Guild Hall. He left the war-torn and turbulent Myanmar and came to Singapore, a city of tall buildings and bright lights.

Here is the internationally acclaimed art biennial, here are F300 cars at 1 kilometers per hour whizzing across the cross-sea bridge in helicopter shots, here are well-dressed men and women raising their glasses together at dinner parties.

He thought it would be different here.

At this moment.

Gu Weijing finally realized that he had just moved from one cage to another, bigger and brighter cage.

The rules of the game are still the same as before.

The only change was that the tangible cold muzzle pointing at him turned into the indifferent chestnut eyes of the woman in front of him. It was so beautiful. Gu Weijing also felt that it was very beautiful now, like sparkling glass, but equally cold.

The bondage that bound him changed from a tangible bondage to an intangible bondage.

Whether it was a visible rope or an invisible rope, he was still trapped.

I guess the "Detective Cat Museum" is also a similar thing that buys fame, right? Just like the Claire Water Fund he met at the beginning, it looks bright and beautiful on the outside, but in fact, how many cents of a hundred-dollar donation can be used by those who really need it?

The collection valued at 5 billion U.S. dollars was transferred from the Elena family to the asset management library of the Elena Family Charitable Foundation, which won unanimous praise from people all over the world. In fact, what was done was just to transfer the money from one's left pocket to one's right pocket.

Think about it again carefully.

Is it true that her appreciation of Detective Cat and her rebuke and confrontation with Sir Brown are also in line with political logic rather than artistic logic? She helps Detective Cat not because of how good Detective Cat is at drawing, but because she wants to confront Sir Brown.

Gu Weijing thought he was really smart. As long as he got a clue, he could figure out the whole cause and effect of the matter in one go.

This world is really like a ghost town that cannot be escaped!
The wandering scholar had just left the zombie mansion and turned around to see that the magnificent old house with carved beams and painted rafters had turned into a dilapidated house covered with cobwebs, fallen beams and weeds the moment he stepped out of the door.

The scholar sighed and you continued to move forward.

At dusk, you rush to a prosperous big town, and a stunningly beautiful woman invites you to a teahouse for tea. The scholar thinks he is lucky, and sits down in the teahouse. While drinking tea, he feels that the other person is a little strange, and when he looks down, he suddenly sees that in the light of the lanterns on the roof, the flawless beauty's reflection on the ground looks exactly like the eerie ghost of the zombie.

At this moment, the scholar thought of the elegant middle-aged scholar with feather fan and long scarf who had looked into your eyes and said to you before he tore through his skin and turned into a zombie with green face and fangs:

"Child, you are still young, you don't understand yet, everyone in this world is a painted skin ghost."

Will you suddenly feel the chill that is so deep that no matter how many layers of clothes you wrap yourself in, you cannot resist it?
Gu Weijing felt very cold.

So he has to laugh.

So he had to laugh.

Laugh out loud.

You are nothing. When you stand on the embankment and watch the tide rushing towards you, how can you not laugh out loud?

What else can you do except laugh?
Apart from laughing, what else can you do to express your disdain for the almighty gods like Prometheus on the top of the mountain!

……

Miss Anna put on a serious expression.

She didn't expect that the young man who had been quiet throughout the conversation suddenly laughed so loudly and uncontrollably.

The smile doesn’t look like that of an artist at all, but the smile looks very much like that of an artist.

She did not mistake this smile as an agreement with her proposal. Of course not. People who were satisfied and got what they wanted would not smile like this. She had rarely seen a smile with such a complex meaning, mixed with ridicule, contempt, relief, liberation, carefreeness... many emotions.

It was as if he released all his resentment, all his anger, all his absurdity and his powerlessness towards the world through this smile.

His smile was like Goethe's poem, his smile was like Prometheus on the top of the mountain.

Anna suddenly felt a little uneasy.

She didn't understand why the other person was laughing like that?

Is it to express the unhappiness of being looked down upon when three million euros are not enough to satisfy one's inner desires, or is it to express something else?
This conversation was indeed a rare experience for Anna.

The woman was first unusually happy, and then unusually upset.

just now.

Laugh in the face of this.

Miss Elena was rarely a little overwhelmed.

"Have you heard of Brother Hao, or Chen Shenglin? He is a very powerful counterfeiter in the underground art world. It is said that he has handled many extremely large transactions of fake artworks. He also often appears in art exhibitions around the world as a generous buyer and senior collector." Gu Weijing stopped smiling.

Read the error-free version at 69shuba! 6=9+shu_ba is the first to publish this novel.

His voice was deep.

"Go on."

Anna's eyes turned serious.

"You know him?"

The lair of the counterfeiting tycoon Hao Ge is in the same place as the place where "The Old Church on a Thunderstorm" was discovered. This is the main reason why Miss Elena has doubts about the authenticity of Gu Weijing's thesis.

Even though this is no longer the era where great nobles can easily decide life and death.

But in the art world, to dare to set up a scam for Elena's family, one must be ambitious enough, courageous enough, and capable enough.

Brother Hao is one of the few big players in the underground art market who meets all these criteria.

She even heard that there might be "something" going on between the other party and Gu Weijing.

There is even a rumor that the reason why the young man in front of him was late for the Lion City Biennale was because he had some unclear relationship with Brother Hao.

She wanted to fly to Yangon, on the one hand because she wanted to see with her own eyes the old church described by Carroll, and on the other hand, she wanted to personally confirm the cause and effect of the incident.

did not expect.

She did not mention such a sensitive matter, but Gu Weijing was the first to bring up the topic.

"More than knowing each other."

Gu Weijing smiled, "I have met him. He once told me in the study that, apart from the fact that the Elena family had become wealthy centuries earlier than him and was more powerful than him, they were no different from him in essence. They were exactly the same people. He told me not to have any beautiful imaginations about the Elena family. You have done all the bad things he has done."

Anna had a blank expression.

It's not easy to irritate her.

One thing is true, her family has indeed been sitting at the center of the European stage for too long, their opponents were once Bismarck or Richelieu, she would not bother with a counterfeiter.

"Do you know how I answered? At that time, Brother Hao and I were face to face, and the distance between him and me was almost exactly the same as the distance between us now."

Gu Weijing looked at Anna.

"I told him that he should go to hell. If there is a hell on earth, he should go to hell. If there are eighteen levels of hell, then he should go to the eighteenth level. If hell is Eastern, he should go to the oil pan. If hell is Western, he should go to the bubbling sulfur spring."

"I told him to be brave and he should always face himself bravely."

Anna's waist seemed to be straighter. She was always very straight, and now, the elegant leisurely feeling on her disappeared a little.

She wondered if such a conversation had actually taken place.

She also didn't know how much courage it took to say such words face to face with a gangster tycoon.

But the calmness and firmness in Gu Weijing's words, just like the smile just now, made Miss Elena subconsciously take it seriously.

She respected such calmness and toughness.

"I'll go on--"

"And if the Elena family is the same kind of people as him and did exactly the same thing as him, then the Elena family should also go to hell to accompany him."

Gu Weijing looked into Miss Elena's eyes with the same expression as when he looked into Brother Hao's eyes many days ago.

"sorry."

"I should apologize to Brother Hao. At that time, I felt that the words of a dying gangster like him were not convincing. I was somewhat disdainful of his statement. Now I realize that I was wrong. Even if he is a dying gangster, his words do make sense in some aspects."

“I shouldn’t say if.”

Gu Weijing became stubborn, with the tenacity of a bull.

He could respond to Brother Hao's threat with an expressionless face and say that the other party should go to hell.

He could also say to Anna's delicate face expressionlessly:

"The Elena family should go to hell. I don't know if you have done all the evil things like Brother Hao, but I know that you are just as hypocritical and arrogant as Brother Hao, and you dare not face your true self. No matter how you got your reputation in the art world, it is all fake."

Snapped!
Anna slammed her hand on the table.

Damn it!

How could this guy be so vicious! This honorable and indifferent iceberg princess in the art world could always be magically blown up by the man opposite her in just a few words.

unacceptable!

It’s really too much!
How could he say such outrageous words?
Anna just thought she was calm and composed enough not to care about other people's opinions, but now she almost bit her teeth to pieces.

Miss Elena had never been so angry with anyone in her life, and she had never met such a disgusting person in her life!
In a moment.

Anna's mood changed from being at a loss to being filled with anger. She wanted to stretch out her finger and knock the vicious dog head off the opponent.

"I refuse your deal. NO, shake my head, and walk out of this cafe... I will use every way I can to express my refusal."

Who knows.

Gu Weijing seemed to be getting more excited. He stood there adding firewood to the little stove that was burning in Anna's chest without caring about his own life.

"I hope I have made it clear enough. I hope the door of the Elena family will be closed to me. I will not set foot inside. I also hope that you can keep your promise and stop pestering me."

"I don't like you, I don't want to know you, and I don't want to accept the friendship or money of the Elena family."

"That's all I have to say, Ms. Anna Elena."

Gu Weijing paused.

He remembered something and added, "Oh, yes, but it doesn't matter. I will return the cross to you. It's free."

Anna turned pale.

She pursed her lips tightly, and she even felt like a hydrogen balloon that was about to fly up due to the stuffiness in her chest!

She must have lost her mind to find this person with good intentions to chat.

How abominable!

"Very good, you don't have to go, I'll go." Miss Elena turned her wheelchair and waved, "Waiter, please come over, we need to pay the bill."

She handed over her bank card.

"There's no need for her to pay the bill. We'll pay for our own things. She pays for her coffee and I pay for my tea. I have nothing to do with her." Gu Weijing also took out his wallet from his pocket.

"A down-and-out artist is not qualified to pretend to be a rich man and treat guests."

“I’m not a down-and-out artist.”

"That's not what your shirt says." Anna finally found a chance to stab back, and she said a classic joke about artists wearing torn clothes, saying sarcastically, "There's something I wanted to tell you when we first met. If you want to pretend to be Van Gogh, you'd better pretend to be Van Gogh. If you want to show off and pretend to be rich, you can use the money to buy a better shirt instead of a diamond-studded gold watch! Little painter!"

Anna, who never loses when it comes to sharp-tongued words, finally got back on track.

She didn't even wait for the waiter next to her to swipe her card. She didn't exchange the money for Singapore dollars. Instead, she took out a 50-euro bill from her wallet and handed it to the other party.

"No need to change, the extra is tip."

Say it.

She drove her small wheelchair, turned around and walked away.

Gu Weijing looked at the woman's back as she left. He was silent for a moment, then raised his wrist and looked at the golden Rolex watch that Lao Yang had stuffed into his hand.

His face was distorted by the reflection on the shiny gold case.

"It is a symbol of a successful man." Lao Yang said.

Is this all you have to go through to succeed?

Gu Weijing thought to himself.

He took off his gold watch and put it in his pocket -

Then I'd rather not have it.
-
five minutes later.

In the penthouse suite of the Raffles Hotel, the sound of a door opening was heard.

The big spotted dog that was sleeping on the floor suddenly opened its eyes, raised its chin, and swayed its pink nose in the darkness.

Huh?
This smell.

This smell.

Something is wrong.

"Wang!"

(End of this chapter)