HRPM – Chapter 180 The Heartless Master and Servant (2)

Jin Luoluo widened her eyes. “How did you know?”

“I’m a man too. How could I not understand the mentality of men in general? And for princes with such noble status, you must have some leverage over them, otherwise they’d never agree to do it.”

This Dongfang Hong was pretty smart too—just too stubborn about his principles, refusing to submit no matter what.

“So you didn’t change your mind after all. Then why did you come looking for me?” Jin Luoluo was puzzled. Last time he came because of a painting, so what was it this time?

At the mention of this, Dongfang Hong’s expression turned serious, with a hint of reproach in his tone.

“Miss Luoluo, last time you said you were giving me the painting Fishing Alone in the Cold River Snow.”

“Yeah, I did give it to you!”

Dongfang Hong picked up the scroll from the pearwood table, opened it, and spread it out before Jin Luoluo.

“What you gave me is a forgery. Don’t you think this is going too far?”

“A forgery?”

Jin Luoluo hopped over, leaned close to the painting, and examined it several times back and forth with a grave expression. Then she dipped her finger in water, dabbed it onto the painting, and finally declared solemnly:

“I can’t tell.”

Seeing her gestures and serious expression just now, Dongfang Hong had thought she was an expert.

Who would’ve expected her to suddenly say she couldn’t tell? She nearly made him die of anger.

“Miss Luoluo, the genuine painting was bought by your Jin family. My information can’t be wrong. Even if you didn’t want to give it to me, you shouldn’t have tried to fool me with a fake.”

“I’m innocent here~~ Handsome guy, I really didn’t know it was fake. Seeing so many people wanting to buy that painting, my old man simply had painters make a whole bunch of copies to sell cheaply. When the old geezer brought them back, he tossed the genuine piece in together with the copies. In the end, nobody knew which one was the real one anymore. When I went to the study, my intuition told me this painting looked the most authentic, so I took it.”

“You relied on intuition to determine whether it was real or fake?”

Dongfang Hong suddenly felt powerless all over. He had seen experts use every possible method to authenticate paintings, but he had never heard of anyone identifying originals and forgeries by intuition.

Yet Jin Luoluo showed not the slightest embarrassment.

“I already treated you pretty well. At least I seriously tried to take a look. When my old man sells them to other people, he just grabs one at random. Whatever gets picked is what they get. He doesn’t even care whether the imitation is good or not.”

“Whatever gets picked is what they get…” Could it be that the genuine painting had already been accidentally sold off in all the confusion?

Dongfang Hong immediately panicked.