Chapter 16 – Frustration
…
…
…
The auction house had an extremely strict review process, in particular concerning the goods they sold; otherwise fakes and replicas would be manage to get through and the reputation of the auction house would suffer a loss. To an auction house, reputation was everything.
A middle-aged man greeted Lin Min; to be more exact, blocked him, and asked .”Sir, is there anything I can help you with?”
Lin Ming was wearing a clean and crisp robe and he looked like any other well-to-do citizen. However his height was shorter than an adult male by several inches. In addition, his voice had not yet fully matured, so it wasn’t possible to cover up the fact that he was a young boy of only 15 or 16 years.
Therefore Lin Ming simply said with his own voice, “I’m here for an appraisal of inscription runes.”
‘Oh?” The middle aged man looked at Lin Ming somewhat suspiciously. “Can I see your inscription?” In fact, this man’s manners were already very polite. A 15-16 year old coming into the auction house to appraise some inscriptions was already strange. The price frequently rose to over a thousand taels of gold. Most people would have well founded suspicions that this was a practical joke.
After Lin Ming pulled out the symbol paper, the middle aged man frowned as he noticed the shoddy quality of it. This was the most basic and cheap symbol paper that was available on the market at one or two taels of gold for a dozen. Although the cost of the symbol paper did not affect the quality of the inscription, it was still a sign of the inscription master’s status. Naturally they would never use this kind of symbol paper! They would normally use high quality symbol paper that cost several taels of gold each, to show off the results of their inscription.
However there was a faint energy which emitted from the symbol paper and the middle aged man was able to determine that this was a complete and real product, not a practical joke. He looked at Lin Ming and asked, “Do you have some sort of certificate stating which inscription master created this?”
Lin Ming shook his head.
“Well alright, come with me.”
The middle aged man led Lin Ming through the hallway to an appraisal room at the back of the auction house. The man in the appraisal chamber wore an unlined black garment, and looked to be a harsh grandfather in his 50’s or 60’s. Lin Ming also noted the sign in front of the man that wrote “Advanced Appraiser.”
The black robed man took this symbol paper in hand and noted that the inscription was placed on inferior paper, but he didn’t reveal any expression that indicated he was disgusted or skeptical. Instead, he maintained a tranquil and calm demeanor, and quietly slipped on a pair of white gloves and invested his full attention towards an earnest and practical appraisal of the work. This demonstrated that he was a true professional!
However the appraiser only just began when he raised his head, his face slightly more serious, and looked at Lin Ming. “If I’m not wrong, the one who created this inscription symbol, his strength should not exceed the third level of the body transformation stage?”
The inscription symbol would always carry a slight hint of the makers soul force. It was possible for an appraiser to judge the creators martial arts cultivation level through these traces. Since Lin Ming created the inscription paper, the soul force trace would naturally be weak, but since he practiced the overwhelming ‘True Primal Chaos Formula,’ the soul force was much thicker than the average martial artists. If the appraiser knew that the inscription was created by a mere boy at the first level of the body transformation stage, his chin would surely drop to the ground.
Lin Ming knew that there was no way to deny this, so he nodded.
The only man sharply inhaled, and then sighed, “To think there was such a talent within the young generation. A trivial little third level body transformation cultivation can draw an insc