Becoming Rich with Daily Scavenging APP-Chapter 492: Forged History

"Uh, didn’t the game succeed? Why are you still so busy?" Chen Yiyang was a bit puzzled.

"The game’s performance exceeded our expectations, so we need to hire more people, speed up subsequent updates, and fix bugs and such. Also, there’s some management and external liaison work. Why don’t you come to the company and help us?"

Cai Wei was genuinely inviting. After the game became a hit, there were not only game-related issues to handle but also many problems outside of the game.

For instance, dealing with the government and handling tax issues. Generally, with such large tax payments, there are usually some incentives.

For example, it’s common policy in Shanghai to offer land discounts to companies that pay large taxes so they can build office buildings.

Such perks are things money can’t usually buy in a place like Shanghai where land is precious.

Also, having so much cash income, having the money just sit in the account is a pure waste. A professional large asset management team needs to be hired to handle this cash.

These tasks are quite challenging for tech geeks like Cai Wei to handle.

If Chen Yiyang could come over to help, that would be great.

However, Chen Yiyang was too busy with his own matters, so he could only promise to introduce some professionals to help Cai Wei.

After finishing the call with Cai Wei,

a cheerful Chen Yiyang invited Danica to a store mentioned in a discrepancy report to pick up an Ancient Roman glass vessel.

"From Huaxia, my friend, you have a good eye," the antique shop owner rubbed his fingers and said, "This is a Renaissance artifact, and for just one thousand euros, you can take it home."

"This glass vessel is from the Renaissance?" Danica had a different opinion while looking at the glass vessel Chen Yiyang was interested in.

"I think this glass vessel’s production time is at most from the 1800s."

Danica had her reasons for saying this.

Because while the shape of this glass vessel isn’t very distinctive, it is double-layered.

Image of Ancient Roman double-layered glass vessel.

This glass vessel has a tiny small vessel inside the larger one.

This is quite in line with the general impression during the First Revolution when, due to technological advances, many craftsmen enjoyed creating seemingly useless but skill-showcasing products.

"Sir, what do you think?" The shop owner realized Danica was a local and didn’t pay much attention to her. He mainly focused on Chen Yiyang, hoping he would decide to buy it.

"Well, Renaissance or Industrial Revolution, who cares?" Chen Yiyang straightforwardly said to the shop owner, "For our friendship, I’ll buy this glass vessel for one thousand euros."

"For our friendship," the shop owner grinned widely, immediately starting to pack the Ancient Roman double-layered glass vessel for Chen Yiyang.

After leaving the store, Danica looked dejectedly at what Chen Yiyang was holding and said, "If this is from the Industrial Revolution, it’s not worth a thousand euros."

"I actually think it’s an Ancient Roman artifact," Chen Yiyang said.

"Really?" Danica’s eyes widened. "You study Western antiques too?"

"Just a bit. But I see your house has so many books on artifacts. How come you’re not familiar with Ancient Roman stuff?" Chen Yiyang curiously asked.

"In a small country like ours, studying Ancient Rome doesn’t make money. Everyone flocks to research religious artifacts," Danica shrugged, then said, "Besides, religious artifacts are easier to forge and sell for good money. Who would study Ancient Rome?"

"What’s the deal with forgery?" Chen Yiyang curiously inquired.

He had come across many cheap religious artifacts being sold in other countries.

But without tips from discrepancy reports, he dared not purchase them rashly.

"Although it’s a bit embarrassing to say, our history of forging religious artifacts in Europe is quite long," Danica provided a detailed explanation of the history of religious artifact forgery in Europe to Chen Yiyang.

There have always been theories about Western pseudo-histories.

Besides some conspiracy theorists, another big reason is that the history of Western artifact forgery is so long and prosperous that it formed an industry chain.

Unlike fake Huaxia artifacts, which mainly mimic already unearthed artifacts or antiques,

Western religious artifact forgery often involves textual artifacts.

After the Industrial Revolution, with major advancements in productivity,

The old nobles and new businessmen controlling society loved to collect religious artifacts to showcase their heritage.

The top echelon even liked building their own museums and collections.

This led to an insufficient supply of genuine items, unable to meet market demands.

Thus began a massive forgery movement.

Initially, it started around various religious sites or ancient city ruins.

People produced fake cross fragments, statue fragments, shrouds, and other hard-to-distinguish genuine items to sell to tourists and antique dealers who came to purchase these renowned items.

It was akin to selling tourism souvenirs as genuine goods.

However, since the prices were cheap, tourists and antique dealers didn’t mind. Among ten fake items brought back to countries like England and France, selling just one was profitable.

But this was too slow for making money.

Once the forgery industry chain formed, forgers soon targeted books, initiating a historic era of massive book forgery.

Among these, hand-copied Bible forgeries were the most severe.

Florence was a notable example.

Being a famous commercial city at the time, Florence gathered a large number of impoverished painters, scholars, foreign merchants, and tourists.

Workers and buyers were fully present.

The forgery masters here produced fake books, so finely crafted that even professional collectors could be misled.

This industry developed to the point that amusing situations arose later.

Many artists and painters who made a living off forgery became famous afterward.

Their originally forged hand-copied Bibles became more valuable than genuine ones, leading many to forge fakes of the fakes.

In other words, people created forgeries of the forged hand-copied Bible allegedly made by the famous painter.

Of course, this wasn’t a big deal.

After all, regardless of how many fakes were made, they couldn’t impact historical research.

However, the forgery industry also needed to evolve. Once there were too many hand-copied Bibles, they lost their value.

So forgery dealers began to completely fabricate books or repair fragmentary books.

The former involves extracting words and phrases from other books and expanding them into whole books to sell as unique materials. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

The latter involves expanding fragmentary books with missing pages into complete books to deceive others.

In later stages, some even bought real complete books, dismantled them into hundreds of pages, and then expanded those pages into hundreds of books.

Bear in mind, for historians, even the most exquisite ceramics are not as valuable as lost texts and sentences.

As a result, Europe’s forgery practices severely damaged Western literary archaeology. Nobody knew whether the book they held, seemingly a unique copy, might just be a padded version made from a few pages.