Chapter 12: The Reliquary's Deception
The taxi's crimson taillights dissolved into Lakeheart Sanctuary's aureate haze. Chen Liang traversed the wrought-iron portal, the sentinel's nod acknowledging their unspoken pact forged during that pivotal nocturnal redemption.
"Advance, patron," the guard intoned with ceremonial deference. "The pavilion of illusions awaits."
**Pastoral Charade**
Kinsmen metamorphosed into agog provincials amidst Versaillesque splendour. Camera shutters chattered at jade-inlaid colonnades and topiary labyrinths. Zhao Yi's amateur cinematography incurred Tang Mengru's Gorgonian censure.
"Must you achieve each pebble?" Her sibilant rebuke stilled the chamber.
The menu became her blade of retribution—Hokkaido uni adorned with gold leaf, Almas caviar nested in Swarovski crystal, Pétrus '61 decanted into Baccarat carafes—each selection a calibrated salvo against ancestral scorn.
**Pretender's Entrance**
The banquet hall's atmosphere congealed with Tang Jun's belated advent—a nicotine-ravaged scion exuding mahjong den musk and pawnshop desperation.
"Dearest Aunt's indulgence!" The reprobate's grin revealed absinthe-stained dentition. "These antiquities demanded meticulous curation for your celebration!"
Twin reliquaries materialized—West Street hovel trinkets masquerading as imperial treasures. Zhao Bao'er's vermilion talons breached the counterfeit sanctum.
**Pseudo-Historic Revelations**
The first casket disgorged a "Qing" bangle—an acrylic impostor glowing with radioactive green. The second harboured a "Yuan" inkstone—dried epoxy betraying its factory birthright.
"A king's ransom!" Zhao Yi's histrionic exclamation caromed off gilded corbels. "Ten thousand taels of purest silver!"
Kinsmen inhaled collective awe. Tang Jun's progenitor concealed a rictus of complicity, privy to his progeny's vanished "budget" amidst mahjong tile clatter.
**Ocular Epiphany**
Chen Liang's sardonic arch of brow dissected the farce. The "artifacts" exuded West Street's hallmark stench of despair—fifty renminbi fakes swathed in ersatz damask.
"Cousin finds humour in ancestral tribute?" Tang Jun's tar-stained digits performed a theatrical flourish. "Perhaps your own offering merits exhibition?"
The chamber's oxygen crystallized. Zhao Wan'er's knuckles blanched against her Hermès clutch. Tang Mengru's jadeite pendant refracted the chandelier's glow into a venomous prism.
Chen Liang's fingers grazed the endocrine saboteurs in his bespoke lining—his true oblations to this carnival of mendacity. The chronometer above the lacquered double doors pulsed toward biochemical reckoning.
The Consort's Vindication
The banquet hall plunged into crypt-like silence, ancestral whispers fossilized in amber. Tang Mengru's coterie of social vultures gawped at Chen Liang—an anthropological oddity dissected beneath crystal chandeliers.
"Since when do uxorilocal paramours warrant kinship honorifics?"
"A leech glutting on matrimonial largesse!"
Their asp-tongued murmurs coiled through Baccarat flutes until Zhao Wan'er rose like Themis wielding scales of retribution.
**Matriarchal Aegis**
Her palms bloomed carmine from mahogany impact—stigmata of domestic rebellion. "Cease your jejune prattling!" The damascene-edged rebuke froze Pétrus' droplets mid-descent.
"Chen Liang commands seven-figure contracts as a digital gladiator—his exploits are televised nationally. Which mongrel among your brood scales such Olympian heights?"
The rhetorical falchion swung wider. "The Huracán you slavered over? His munificence. This lacquered pantomime of opulence? His coffers fuel it. Mockery becomes jackals"?
**Dynastic Rift**
Tang Jun's resin-riddled "heirlooms" trembled on the Ming-dynasty lazy Susan. Zhao Bao'er's applause ricocheted like broken clockwork, demolishing residual decorum.
"Brava! Brava!"
Tang Mengru's lacquer mask fissured—pride and shame duelling beneath rice-powder veneer. Zhao Yi's frantic plate-juggling ("Observe this...remarkable nephrite!") dissolved into a commedia dell'arte farce.
**Ocular Apotheosis**
Chen Liang's neural upgrade manifested—Ashe's Hawk Shot piercing temporal veils. The "jade" bangle's polymer lattice and the brush washer's factory patina materialized through spectral chromatics.
His smirk deepened as Tang Jun's tar-stained digit thrust accusatorially. "Let the concubine unveil his tribute!"
**Biochemical Exposé**
From the Brioni lining emerged twin ampoules—leuprorelin and triptorelin. The endocrine saboteurs gleamed like Nuremberg evidence beneath candelabra glare.
"My oblations?" Chen Liang's baritone verdict carried coroner's precision. "Chemical neutering filters from our matriarch's nocturnal sacraments. Let us decant truth's vintage."
The Patek Philippe moonphase above arched portals froze at 19:83—chronos itself recoiling from impending androcidal reckoning.
The Relic's Retribution (Denouement)
The banquet hall's atmosphere congealed into Arctic stillness. Chen Liang's ocular augurs dissected counterfeit nephrite's polymer lattice, his upgraded vision refracting temporal planes.
"No tribute proffered," he declared, igniting fresh derision.
Tang Jun's hyena laughter caromed off cloisonné partitions. "The charlatan's facade crumbles!"
Zhao Wan'er ascended like a wrathful Guanyin, jade bangles clashing thunderously. "Redemption shall be fifteenfold!"
**Hematologic Reckoning**
Chen Liang's titanium card traced a balletic arc—a monetary javelin skewering doubt. The POS terminal's emerald glow validated seventeen myriad, silencing cynics mid-sneer.
"These relics are consigned to me." His fingers closed around ceramic fragments, Hawk Shot vision decoding the Northern Song bowl's Jurchen siege provenance.
**Monsoon Catharsis**
Torrents scourged lantern-lit courtyards. Tang Jun's tar-stained confession ("Fifty-coin dross!") dissolved into hemorrhagic spasms as Chen Liang's verdict thundered:
"Your vessel's patina murmurs of Jingkang's tragedy. Valuation multiplies twentyfold."
The charlatan's lifeblood baptized peony motifs crimson. Patriarch Ma's chuckle resonated with dynastic sagacity: "The prey becomes predator."
**Chthonic Requiem**
Tang Mengru's Huracán fled through deluge draperies. The lurking truck—oxidized Fury incarnate—accelerated with a pneumatic hiss.
Radial screams harmonized with Zhao Wan'er's wail: "Matriarch!"
Collision's cacophony—carbon monocoque versus Corten steel—resounded with karmic symmetry. Chen Liang's augmented retinas captured license plate ciphers through aqueous veils—a hexagram of impending doom.
**Epilogue: Phoenix Ascent**
In the ER's actinic glare, Tang Mengru's kohl-streaked visage twisted. "Sever the marital bond!"
Chen Liang's palm cradled Zhao Wan'er's pluvial-dampened cheek. "From forgery's pyre, our rebirth ignites."
Beyond the observation glass, the Northern Song vessel's celadon lustre pulsed—artefactual truth amidst ancestral ruin. The typhoon's death rattle carried biochemical equilibrium's whisper, dynastic wheels recommencing their eternal revolution.
The End...
Author's Valediction
This narrative voyage, by its original charting, promised leagues of uncharted waters yet to sail.
Yet the austere tides of reality dictate otherwise.
The phoenix of creation stirs anew in shadowed ashes.
To you, cherished voyagers who weathered these turbulent literary seas alongside me, this quill dips low in profound reverence.
Farewell.
The inkwell now lies still. Until our paths converge again in some future story's gilded dawn, may your own narratives blaze with undimmed wonder.