Wang Jian had no idea that his true love was having a total meltdown at the restaurant right at that moment. He was still working diligently to appraise that batch of goods for the underground auction house. He knew full well how high the risk was here, but a man under another's roof has to bow his head. If he refused to cooperate, he might not even make it out of the place alive.
After a full day and night of nonstop work, Wang Jian finally walked out of the auction house. The person in charge of the auction house was a woman, a stunningly beautiful one. She slipped a bank card into his pants pocket, telling him it was his payment, her movement so suggestive and intimate.
But in stark contrast to that playful gesture came her threatening words: until the auction was fully concluded, he was not even to think about leaving the city. Otherwise, she had more than enough ways to make him regret it.
Wang Jian did not show a single flicker of fear or timidity. He would never allow himself to look cowardly or flustered in front of this woman. He gave a faint smile, took the card out of his pocket, stared straight into the woman's eyes, and pressed a light kiss to the surface of the card as if he was kissing her face. Then he waved casually and left with unhurried, effortless poise.
Before leaving the underground casino, he even turned back to play a couple more rounds of games, casually winning a million dollars before yawning and sauntering away completely relaxed.
He knew perfectly well that the Witch had been keeping an eye on his every move this whole time. And he was fully confident that his little act of bravado had gone off without a hitch.
Yet when he dragged his exhausted body back to his hotel room, what greeted him was not Xiao Qiu's gentle affection, but a barrage of questions after another. She demanded to know if he thought messing with her was some kind of joke, where the surprise he had promised her earlier was, and where her card was.
Wang Jian had no clue what Xiao Qiu was talking about. He had been busy nonstop for ages, risking his neck the entire time, but the moment he walked through the door, all she did was accuse him left and right, and now she was bringing up a card?
A wave of irritation rose in him. He was fine with giving things to a woman on his own initiative, but he would never stand for a woman demanding things from him, especially since Xiao Qiu had not even bothered to ask if he had run into any danger the second he walked in. Not a single word of concern for him. Wang Jian was overwhelmed with disappointment. "Xiao Qiu," he said, "you've changed."
Xiao Qiu: ......
She almost choked on her own breath. Screw you! How dare you stand there and say I've changed? Who was it that hooked up with some other woman after disappearing for ten days straight? Where did he even get the nerve to say that to her? Did he think she was blind?
Wang Jian had come back in the early morning. He looked completely worn out, as if every last bit of his energy had been drained, and there was a strange, distinct perfume lingering on his clothes. Did he really think she had no idea what he had been doing during the entire time he vanished?
He had accepted some other woman's card, played her for a fool, and then went off to sleep around with someone else. And now he was the one acting upset? Xiao Qiu was so furious she was seeing smoke coming out of her seven orifices. Normally she would have held her temper, but they were in a foreign country far from home. She had not dared to close her eyes once during the entire day and night Wang Jian was gone, all sorts of worst-case scenarios popping up in her head nonstop.
She knew exactly how much Wang Jian loved showing off, and how he was always getting himself into trouble because he could never keep a low profile. That only made it impossible for her not to assume the worst, and the more she thought, the more terrified she got. At that point, all it would have taken was a little bit of comforting from Wang Jian to soothe her frayed emotions, and she would have gone right back to being her usual soft, doting self, the total lovesick fool everyone else knew her to be.
But Wang Jian was dead tired, and all he wanted to do was get some rest. On top of that, he was extremely sensitive to any topic involving money. The second Xiao Qiu brought up material things, he did not even stop to think about why she was acting that way. He only latched onto that one single point: she did not care at all about his safety, and all she could think about was pestering him for money?
Wang Jian was genuinely disappointed. Especially now that he had other women to compare her to, the Tang family's youngest granddaughter, and the Witch who ran the auction house. Which one of them was not far better than Xiao Qiu? Xiao Qiu was long past being good enough for him.
He broke up with Xiao Qiu coldly, and did not give her a single cent. After all, he had already given her more than enough in the past. Maybe it was because he had given her so much that she had turned out this way, so greedy that she felt like a total stranger to him.
Xiao Qiu cursed him out, slapped him twice across the face, and stormed off furiously.
As a result, the very first thing Mu Yue got when she woke up in the morning was 300 points of villain value. It was indeed lower than the points she had gotten from any of the other heroines before, but even a tiny mosquito leg is still meat. Besides, once the male lead abandoned the woman he had been with since the early days of his relationship, the very concept of his "true love" was broken, and his protagonist halo was bound to get weaker.
The womanizer, no matter what his backstory was, had just dumped the first woman he had ever slept with, and the one he had been in an actual serious relationship with. His character had sunk to an all-time low. A proper womanizer is not just a heartless playboy, someone who loves every woman he is with and takes responsibility for all of them.
This messy, unceremonious breakup just proved that the male lead had forgotten his roots.
"Nothing new under the sun, people always prefer the new over the old," Mu Yue mumbled to herself with a grin as she ate her breakfast. Once she finished her meal, she was heading straight for that underground casino, and her main target was the auction house.
The Witch did not have full authority over the auction house yet, she was just running the operation for now. If she pulled this off, the people in charge would value her more, but if she messed it up, she would be in huge trouble. That batch of goods mixed with counterfeits was a trick pulled by their competitors. But that batch of goods was not even the main highlight of this auction. The real centerpiece was a natural gemstone worth over a hundred million, the king of rubies, a pigeon's blood ruby.
This ruby was set up for two separate sales: one genuine piece, and one counterfeit that was so well made it could match the real one in every way.
The genuine and the fake were priced exactly the same, but the difference was that one was selling the actual gem, and the other was selling the top-tier craftsmanship that went into making the fake. The hard part of this whole arrangement was making absolutely sure they could tell the real one apart from the fake.
Any guest wealthy and powerful enough to bid on the genuine piece at the underground casino must never be handed the fake one by mistake, otherwise they would ruin their own reputation. This underground casino had been running for so many years, and had built a spotless, well-respected name for itself. If any mistake slipped up, their losses would go far beyond just a hundred million.
Mu Yue's target was that very gemstone.
The male lead had already caught the Witch's eye. Now that he had dumped his first girlfriend, and the Tang family's youngest granddaughter was still too young, the male lead's attention would most likely shift fully to the Witch. It would be perfect if the two of them could get all tangled up in a steamy, passionate affair. Once people get hot-headed and carried away, their judgment gets clouded, and that would make it so much easier for Mu Yue to make her move.
She actually had a hundred million in her savings right now. Some of it was from the daily check-in rewards, and the rest was from the blind boxes she had drawn. Her God of Wealth system had leveled up, so the quality of the blind boxes she opened had improved a lot.
But she had no intention of spending a hundred million just to buy a single rock. All she needed to do was successfully bid on the gem. What if the final bid ends up going over a hundred million? No big deal, she still had her points, which she could use to buy a Super Double Card. The Super Double Card had a maximum limit of a hundred million, though that would cost her points equivalent to directly exchanging points for cash, so there would be no profit margin at all. But compared to the boring, straightforward plan of just buying the double card, the far more cost-effective move was to buy a luck item. After all, wasn't this place an underground casino?
And what exactly was she planning to do?
Hey, don't you remember her original goal? Of course, she was there to mess with the male lead!
The Tang family's project hadn't even started yet, but Mu Yue had traveled all this way, and she had no intention of walking away with just a few hundred points for all that trouble. The male lead and the Witch had only just gotten to know each other, and no matter how infatuated they might be, they could not possibly have reached a point of total, unshakable trust. That left plenty of room for her to stir up some trouble.
Mu Yue dressed up carefully, then headed to the underground auction house with Heidi. When they arrived, she found the auction house was not actually built underground at all, but situated in a well-concealed location. Its interior was decked out in gilded, opulent luxury, and every guest was given an ornate mask before entering to protect their privacy.
Of course, that privacy only extended to the other guests. The auction house itself knew practically everything about its visitors. From the moment a person set foot in this city, every single one of their movements and records was already in the auction house's files.
The auction house was open on a regular basis, but those usual sessions never featured any truly rare, exceptional items. The grand, main auction event was scheduled to kick off the next evening. After confirming the timing, Mu Yue booked a private VIP suite.
The auction house was very close to a casino, so Mu Yue popped in just to see what it was like. The casino was a true den of hedonism, every table thrumming with the heart-stopping, life-or-death thrill that constantly spiked people's nerves and adrenaline. It was a place where you could see the most unhinged, irrational side of human nature on full display.
Every single person who stepped through the doors thought they were staying perfectly sober and in control, but it never took long before they sank into the same reckless obsession as everyone else around them.
Mu Yue hated that stifling, chaotic atmosphere, so she had no plans to linger there for long. She spent 200 points from her system shop to buy two luck-boosting items, then withdrew ten million RMB from her personal savings to exchange for casino chips.
Her mask hid her exact age, but her calm, indifferent expression, paired with Heidi trailing right behind her, made it obvious to everyone that she was no ordinary wealthy patron. The luck items only boosted her odds, they didn't guarantee she would win every single round. By the time the effect of the luck items wore off, her ten million had multiplied six times to sixty million - a solidly lucky sum, but not an outrageous win that would draw unwanted, excessive attention.
Mu Yue never showed the slightest flicker of emotion the entire time she was playing, which actually made her stand out sharply in the crowded casino even behind her mask. Everyone who watched her play, or followed her bets, could feel one thing clearly: she did not see ten million as real money, and she did not see sixty million as real money. To her, it was all just a game, and one that was growing more and more tedious by the second.
Mu Yue really did find it more and more boring as time passed. The place was so noisy it made her head spin. As soon as the luck items' effects expired, she cashed out her chips and left immediately.
The casino had already noted that Mu Yue had a reservation at the auction house, and that she was clearly there for that famous gem the auction was featuring. They knew she was a high-value, important client, so they treated her with full respect, and never made the short-sighted, stupid mistake of attacking her the second she walked out with her winnings to steal her money. That sort of dirty trick was something they might turn on random small-time guests, but the casino itself could never be tied to anything like that. If word got out that no one could leave their casino with the money they won, no one would ever dare come back.
Mu Yue spent the whole next day wandering around the city, waiting for the official auction to start. All that day, she kept a close eye on the male lead's movements, and she almost burst out laughing at what she saw. The Witch really had grown extremely close to the male lead. She was impressed by him, wanted to recruit him to her side, and had even taken him to see the two real and fake gems in person.
That was when the male lead's x-ray vision ability came into play. With one single glance, he could tell the real gem apart from the fake, a feat that made the Witch even more infatuated with him. Little did the two of them know, that impulsive little move would be the very thing Mu Yue turned into the source of their deepest regret.
When the auction began, Mu Yue made her way to her reserved private suite, and waited patiently for the star ruby that was the auction's grand finale to come out. To pass the time, she even played a couple rounds of mobile games out of boredom.
The moment the ruby was presented, Mu Yue outbid every single other participant, and claimed the title of King of Rubies for a final price of 130 million. But the second she had the gem in her hands, she gave a faint, cold smile, and said to the auction house staff, "Are you kidding me? I paid that much money, and you hand me a fake?"
The second her words landed, every single member of the auction house staff standing there went deathly pale.
