Chapter 487 — The Auction Opens

Fatty Lai's invitation was a red one — only he had somehow laid his hands on tickets for all three days. The card sent to Guan Xuemin, on the other hand, was gold, which was proof enough that Guan Xuemin stood on equal footing with those great families.

The goods on offer grew ever more precious with each passing day. The first day's items, though rare enough in their own right, carried reserve prices that generally ran from several hundred thousand to two million, and never rose above two million.

Different invitations though they were, the auction hall assigned no fixed seats; once inside, guests simply sat wherever chance placed them, families and friends who knew one another tending to drift together. The hall held so many seats that the crowd filled barely a third of them, so no one need ever worry about finding a place to sit.

Wei Zhao, Guan Xuemin and Fatty Lai, for their part, merely found a quiet corner where few people were about and sat themselves down.

Before long the hall was filling up, stream by stream, and every clan had sent representatives — though as a rule the heads of the great houses did not put in an appearance.

The lights gradually dimmed. Spotlights flared over the podium at the front, and a man of about thirty stepped out from behind the curtain. The hall fell silent at once.

"I welcome you all to the annual auction held by the Yu family!" The man finished speaking, bowed politely, and thunderous applause shook the room.

"The Yu family?" Wei Zhao started slightly; a flicker of excitement flashed across his usually unruffled face before it returned to normal.

"Boss, this Yu family is one of the largest — and the most mysterious — of all the clans. They rose up only within the last ten years, yet in one leap they became the foremost of every great house!" Fatty Lai explained in a low voice. "Never offend the Yu family if you can help it. Though with your standing, Boss, heh heh — even the Yu family would fawn over you, wouldn't they?"

"Oh? Is that so?" Wei Zhao smiled faintly. "Who is that man at the front?"

"His name is Yu Haitian. He isn't Yu family core — only a branch member. Even so, he's already the sort of man outsiders court, the kind who can hold his own out there and run the family's auctions on its behalf." Fatty Lai said.

Wei Zhao drew a deep breath, nodded in silence, and said with a smile, "I shouldn't have much to do with them, then."

"True, the Yu family are all very mysterious. No one really knows what it is they do, though they have a hand in a great many businesses — only the men they send to manage them are never from the inner circle." Fatty Lai shook his head with a laugh. "Let's keep watching the auction. To think they've scheduled our Life-Prolonging Detox Pill for today's sale — these people are blind, they can't tell a treasure from a rock!"

When he thought that the Life-Prolonging Detox Pill had been given a reserve of a mere one million, Fatty Lai was more than a little miffed. Something this good, worth only a million? Wasn't that a swindle?

"Heh, it's nothing." Wei Zhao shook his head. "The fact that they've priced it at a million already exceeds my expectations. After all, no one knows about it yet, and its effects can only be judged by trying it."

"True enough." Hearing this, Fatty Lai stopped brooding over it. "By the way, Boss — if you take a fancy to anything, just say the word and I'll win it for you."

"All right." Wei Zhao didn't stand on ceremony. Who knew, he might well find something to his liking at this auction; at the very least there was one item today that he was determined to have.

Wei Zhao had already been through today's auction catalogue. The third item up for bid was a cracked piece of parchment — a torn map. To an ordinary eye it would look like nothing more than a shabby old map; even as an antique it would be worth very little, merely a curiosity.

The crucial point was that the map was plainly only a small fragment, not a complete map at all, which made it little better than a piece of scrap — of no great value either as a collectible or in actual use.

Had Wei Zhao not already possessed the fragment he had cut from a shark's belly, he would never have given such useless trash a second glance. But from the thumbnail in the catalogue, this map — in its material, its workmanship, even in the stroke of the brush — was identical to the piece he had taken from the shark's belly, and so it naturally caught his interest.

"Will there be many people fighting over this one?" Wei Zhao knew next to nothing about auctions and had no idea what sort of thing might prove popular, so he pointed at the fragment and put the question to Fatty Lai.

"Huh..." Fatty Lai glanced at the item Wei Zhao had indicated and could not help but gape. "You're not serious, Boss — you've taken a fancy to this?"

"What? Is there a problem?" Wei Zhao frowned, at a loss to read Fatty Lai's expression.

Fatty Lai realized he had rather overdone it and hurried to explain, a little embarrassed. "Boss, at this auction, the earlier an item comes up, the less it's worth and the fewer people bid on it — though of course you can never rule out a dark horse. But honestly, I don't see what use this piece of junk is..."

"Heh, then win it for me." Wei Zhao, for his part, breathed a sigh of relief — if there were going to be a crowd of bidders, it would have been awkward. In the catalogue the fragment carried a reserve of a hundred thousand, which seemed to confirm what Fatty Lai had said: not exactly a hot item.

The jadeite with a reserve of one million finally went to a businessman holding a red invitation for one point two million, without provoking any notice or uproar.

The second item, remarkably, was a date with a celebrity, carrying a reserve of a hundred thousand — an invitation to a date issued by a minor star, entitling the winning bidder to go out with her.

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