Everyone was staring intently at the big screen, quietly waiting for the results of the experiment.
As the close-up shot zoomed in, Huo Sining tossed the few pieces of chair sawdust into a glass filled with alcohol, and the audience widened their eyes.
Time passed quickly, one minute, two minutes, and there was no change in the cup.
It wasn’t until after three minutes that the sawdust began to leach out a bit of red, which then diluted gradually, and the sawdust seemed to revert to its original color, revealing the white of the wood.
"This is fake, obviously, this wood has been dyed!"
Before Huo Sining could speak, an audience member immediately called out loudly.
The person who spoke was the same one who had talked about ’Ziqi Donglai’ earlier. This person had some knowledge of rosewood and had seen the experiment with genuine rosewood before, so upon seeing only a hint of color from the sawdust, he instantly understood what was happening.
On hearing that the stool was fake, there were sighs from the crowd, and some couldn’t help shaking their heads in pity, feeling regret and disappointment at not being able to witness a genuine rosewood ’Ziqi Donglai’.
"This can’t be, I paid fifty thousand for this chair, it must be real, your experiment is flawed! I don’t believe it!"
The middle-aged man’s eyes bulged as he saw the result, his face twisted, and he shouted loudly.
Huo Sining looked coldly at the man and said, "If you don’t believe it, I can provide you with even better evidence to show you what true ’Ziqi Donglai’ is."
Turning around, Huo Sining gestured to Zhao Qingchu in the audience, "Sister Qingchu, could you please bring my backpack up for me?"
Zhao Qingchu was taken aback for a moment. Although she was unclear about Huo Sining’s intent, she still nodded and handed Huo Sining’s backpack to the staff on stage.
After receiving his backpack, Huo Sining unzipped it and reached inside. With the backpack serving as a cover, he retrieved a purplish-brown wooden paperweight from his storage ring.
"This paperweight is an old item I’ve been playing with recently. It just so happened I had it on me. Anyone with a bit of knowledge in this field knows that this is made of genuine Xiao Chen Zitan rosewood."
Huo Sining showcased the rosewood paperweight; it was bar-shaped, with deep and straight grains, exhibiting a purplish red-brown color and strong oiliness. While changing angles to observe it, one could even perceive a reflective shine as if it were coated with glass oil paper, a clear indicator of premium rosewood.
"What a piece! This patina and oiliness, you can tell it’s been polished for several years!"
Xu Shilong from the expert seats could not help but applaud, and even the other few experts looked envious.
Huo Sining smiled faintly: "Since you are eager to deny, unwilling to accept that your item is fake, then I will scrape a bit of sawdust from my rosewood paperweight and let you see what real ’Ziqi Donglai’ is like."
Without waiting for anyone to react, Huo Sining cheerfully used a blade to carefully scrape off some sawdust from the paperweight.
Since it was his own possession, Huo Sining felt no heartache and scraped off a few extra pieces of sawdust from the bottom of the paperweight, placing them in his palm and then taking a new beaker, filling it with alcohol just the same.
The audience below watched Huo Sining on stage with curiosity, and the middle-aged man was also nervously fixating on every single move she made.
However, at this moment, his heart was filled with even greater nervousness because Huo Sining’s fluid actions conveyed confidence and certainty, causing his original steadfast thoughts to waver increasingly. The experiment on Huo Sining’s side hadn’t even started, yet his heart had already become very anxious.
The camera on stage once again focused on the beaker on Huo Sining’s table, and under the close-up shot, Huo Sining threw all the wood shavings in her hand into it.
Because Rosewood is dense, these shavings sank as soon as they hit the water, going straight to the bottom of the cup.
The people around immediately widened their eyes because the wood shavings previously taken from the armchair were floating on the water surface, and this was a very clear difference.
Everyone watched the beaker without blinking, and in less than ten seconds, the alcohol in the beaker began to change.
A wisp of white mist gradually rose from the surface of the alcohol, as if it were being heated, but this mist merely hovered over the surface of the cup and did not escape outward.
Then, a hint of purplish-red color slowly started to seep from the wood shavings in the alcohol. These colors, unlike the dispersed pigments from the armchair’s shavings, coalesced into lines and slowly floated up from the bottom of the cup.
Each piece of shaving formed a thin thread, and there were more than ten shavings hanging from Huo Sining, creating over ten fine threads at the bottom.
Over ten purple threads, instead of dispersing throughout the beaker, swirled and intertwined, giving off a dazzling and captivating effect.
This was truly "the coming of purple qi"!
The people below stared blankly at this scene on the big screen, and even Huo Sining was moved. It was also because the Xiao Chen Zitan paperweight she used had a material that was of sufficient quality, otherwise the color would not have been so vibrant. However, this was good as the result of the experiment was more impactful and could more intuitively demonstrate the issue.
"It’s so beautiful, so this is what ’the coming of purple qi’ looks like!" someone in the audience couldn’t help but exclaim with emotion.
"Exactly, it’s even prettier than what I’ve seen before. This shows that the purple sandalwood paperweight in Teacher Huo’s hands is of very high quality. Such a Xiao Chen Zitan paperweight won’t be cheap!" the knowledgeable middle-aged man also couldn’t help but nod in agreement.
"Just a paperweight the size of a palm, how much can it really be worth?" someone nearby remarked dismissively.
The middle-aged man glanced at the speaker with annoyance. "You know nothing, ’an inch of sandalwood, an inch of gold’—have you ever heard of that? Rosewood is very difficult to grow. Essentially, once you peel off the bark, the usable material inside would be lucky to have a diameter of a foot."
"Ordinary Xiao Chen Zitan takes eight hundred years to reach maturity, let alone thousand-year-old rosewood. The paperweight in Teacher Huo’s hand has patterns filled with ’golden stars’, and whether it’s the grain or the oils, you can tell it’s top-quality among rosewoods. Such a thing can’t be bought even if you have the money!"
Hearing the middle-aged man’s explanation, the audience realized just how precious the purple sandalwood paperweight Huo Sining had casually taken out was.
"The experiment is done," Huo Sining said, "now, do you believe what I said? Your armchair is not made from purple sandalwood, but from ordinary wood that’s been stained. It seems to have been falsified."
Huo Sining placed the two beakers together for comparison. The color difference between them, when seen side by side, was even more striking, making the result blatantly clear to everyone. There was no need for Huo Sining to announce it; everyone knew what it meant.