Just a few minutes earlier, Spade had "accidentally" stumbled across a video circulating on a popular online platform. The clip showed three men in a highly intense encounter, a type of content he had long grown tired of seeing, but this trio was so over-the-top, clearly high out of their minds, that the footage was shockingly visceral.
What he never expected, though, was to spot Wang Jian's face right in the middle of it.
The look of unhinged pleasure and wild abandon on that face made Spade's eyes glue to the screen. He started replaying the few times the two had met, going frame by frame over every expression and tone in Wang Jian's behavior, and to his even greater delight, he realized the man had known all along that he was a man!
Spade's interest spiked instantly. So Wang Jian was actually genuinely attracted to him, not just casually flirting under the assumption he was a girl! Spade immediately shifted his entire perception and attitude toward Wang Jian. Finishing the video left him so heated and restless that he immediately set out to track Wang Jian down.
Through online connections, he easily located Wang Jian just in time to see him roughly shake off a girl clinging to his side, looking clearly annoyed. The sight suited Spade perfectly—sure enough, all those women around Wang Jian were nothing but a pretense he put on for show.
Mu Yue hadn't received her system points yet, but the protagonist's special ability was far more overpowered than it had been in the original story. The look on Wang Jian's face just now didn't seem like an act at all. While he might have been faking his calm demeanor at the start, the Tang family's youngest granddaughter was the most valuable, highest-status female lead by his side right now. He would never dare snap at her like that unless something was very wrong.
Mu Yue quickly thought of the tiny favor she'd asked her system to pull off before leaving the house. She was a little surprised that the effect had kicked in so fast.
It wasn't unheard of for a male-centered harem novel to have a gay side character take an interest in the protagonist, but the protagonist was never supposed to reciprocate those feelings. Spade already knew Wang Jian had hooked up with men before now. If Spade made a direct move on Wang Jian, and Wang Jian rejected him, there was a high chance Spade would stop helping him out, shrinking the protagonist's team by one more member. And if Wang Jian accepted? The chaos would be absolutely delicious.
Back on the cruise ship, Wang Jian had been completely unaware and drugged, but this time around, no one was slipping him any substances.
A harem protagonist who actively chooses to be with a man? That would completely shatter his original character design. And Spade's personality was definitely not the type to hide his feelings and bide his time—Wang Jian would be forced to make a clear choice. No matter which option he picked, his protagonist halo would take a huge hit.
Thinking of this, Mu Yue's smile grew brighter. She was genuinely curious to see what choice Wang Jian would make. She just hoped Spade would make his move soon, otherwise she wouldn't get to watch the two of them tangle with each other after the big trade three days from now.
Wang Jian had no attention to spare for anything else at the moment. Mu Yue had already leisurely walked to a spot two or three hundred meters away from him. Normally, the second any attractive woman came into his field of vision, no matter her age, he would spot her with pinpoint accuracy.
But right now, women couldn't hold a candle to his special ability.
Wang Jian didn't even have the energy to acknowledge the shocked, furious glare Miss Tang was shooting at him. He squeezed his eyes shut hard, pinched the space between his brows a few times quickly, then opened them again, tuning out every sound and person around him to focus all his attention on the pile of rough stones in front of him. This time, his vision finally returned to normal, and he could instantly tell which stones in the pile held value, and which one was the most precious of all.
Wang Jian let out a long, heavy breath, and the angry shouts of the girl beside him finally registered in his ears.
He didn't rush to soothe her right away. Instead, he repeated the action of closing his eyes and opening them again four or five times, making sure his ability was fully functional, before he hurried to chase after Miss Tang, who had already stormed off, stamping her feet in frustration at his total lack of response.
He covered less than a hundred meters before he easily caught up to her.
Meanwhile, right after Wang Jian left, Mu Yue stepped up to the stall he had been standing at just moments before. The event at this gem market had all the tables and tablecloths in a unified color scheme, with only the display signs behind the stalls and the individual vendors themselves looking different.
Mu Yue had watched the whole scene unfold. Wang Jian's expressions and reactions were easy to read—his special ability was clearly glitching. It wasn't completely gone yet, probably because the trigger event hadn't fully played out, it was just acting up like a bad cell signal, cutting out briefly for a little while.
It was a little disappointing, but Mu Yue wasn't in a rush. The day had barely started, and she had already set up all the little tricks she had prepared. None of those tricks required her to make physical contact with Wang Jian, so he hadn't noticed a single thing out of the ordinary.
The Tang family's youngest granddaughter didn't look easy to appease, but Mu Yue didn't care to overhear whatever the two of them were bickering about. All her attention was on the pile of rough stones in front of her. Wang Jian had been so focused on panicking over whether his special ability still worked that he hadn't given any obvious hints on his face about which stones were the good ones and which were duds.
But Wang Jian had most likely wandered the whole market earlier, so the spot he ended up lingering at had the highest chance of yielding quality jade.
Of course, that wasn't a guarantee. Mu Yue thought for a moment, deciding to test just how much luck she had buffed for herself that day. She picked out a few stones from the nearby stalls that caught her eye, the ones that made her feel an urge to buy them, then activated the bad luck charm she had set up for Wang Jian. Even if she didn't buy the exact stones Wang Jian had picked out, the bad luck would mess things up so he wouldn't be able to get his hands on them either.
And that was exactly how things played out. No sooner had Mu Yue paid for her stones and had them moved aside than the stall workers, taking advantage of the quiet early hour, quickly restocked the empty spots with new rough stones.
Mu Yue watched the scene with satisfaction. The stall owners, all smiles, led her over to the checkout counter with her selected stones.
The stones varied in price, and Mu Yue spent nearly ten million on them in total. A huge crowd of onlookers gathered around the stall in no time, packing the space tight. Wang Jian, in the middle of comforting Miss Tang, glanced over just in time to miss the moment the new stones were laid out on the table.
By the time Mu Yue went to pay and head to the stone-cutting area, all the onlookers had flocked after her in a big rush. When Wang Jian looked back over at the stall, he saw the tables were still occupied by people, so he didn't rush over to buy the stones he wanted, and went back to soothing Miss Tang.
Mu Yue had already arrived at the stone-cutting area, which was packed full of people, most of them just there for the spectacle. The saying "one cut makes you rich, one cut leaves you broke" made even the onlookers feel the thrill of the gamble.
Besides the casual spectators, there were also multiple jade dealers lingering around, ready to snap up any high-quality material that got cut open.
Since cutting open rough stones wasn't like opening a random blind box, Mu Yue didn't bother with any fancy rituals. As soon as she got there, she told the master cutter to start slicing straight into the stones.
Before long, bursts of low gasps rippled through the crowd. The onlookers' eyes were shining, and 80 percent of them were staring at Mu Yue with pure envy, wishing they could trade places with her.
When all the stones were cut open, the total estimated value of the jade inside was over eight hundred million. Even the experienced master cutter running the saw kept exclaiming, "This is more unbelievable than a dream!"
By the time Wang Jian had finally calmed Miss Tang down and headed back to buy the high-quality stones he'd had his eye on, all sorts of random mishaps kept cropping up. That short hundred-meter stretch of road took him forever to get through. But the second he arrived at the stall, he froze—his chosen rough stones had already been bought by someone else.
He was in a rush to find out who had made the purchase, and by the time he had calmed the Tang family's little princess down, she was upset all over again. They had agreed to buy the stones and leave right away, but Wang Jian just would not go. Which one mattered more to him, her or those rocks? He was not short of money at all, couldn't he have come back tomorrow?
Wang Jian could not reason with her at all. By the time he finally arrived at the stone quarry, dripping with sweat, the only thing left at the scene was the talk of a "newbie myth". He did not catch even a glimpse of the stones. All he could piece together from the bits and pieces of chatter from the people around him was that a young girl had splashed a huge sum of money on several raw stones, and the piece that everyone thought was the least likely to yield anything had actually produced an extremely rare, flawless, imperial purple glass-type violet jadeite!
"I still can't wrap my head around it. A violet jadeite of that caliber actually exists!"
"Tell me about it. I used to think imperial green was the prettiest, but seeing this today, I realize violet jadeite can be this breathtaking too."
"Good heavens, I can't even imagine how high the final transaction price would be!"
"That's a real fortune right there! Why couldn't that person be me?"
"Pfft, get real. That young girl clearly has money to burn herself. Those raw stones alone add up to tens of millions, no ordinary person can afford that."
"Exactly! I spotted her in the shops up front too. She's a real rich woman who spent tens of millions on goods earlier. I think she wandered over here just to mess around, and who would've thought this would happen, tsk!"
"Stop talking, the more you say the more annoyed I get. I'm heading back..."
Wang Jian listened to the non-stop chatter of the crowd, his heart burning like it was on fire, and he was this close to roaring out loud: That damn thing was mine! It was supposed to be mine!
It felt like his internal organs were being torn apart, and his soul was about to leave his body. His money! His billion yuan! Someone else had beaten him to it! Why hadn't he bought that stone the second he saw it? He had clearly spotted it already! What on earth was he thinking back then?
It was all that bitch's fault! If she hadn't pestered and thrown a fit, that stone would've been in his hands already, and no one else could have taken it!
Miss Tang had stormed off long before that too. Wang Jian had ignored her wishes again and again that day, stubbornly insisting on chasing after the stones, and she had run out of patience ages ago. Luckily she was not around at the moment, otherwise with Wang Jian seething with rage, he might have lashed out at her or even hit her.
With no one to vent his frustration on, and too reluctant to hurt himself, Wang Jian went mad questioning every person around him. The onlookers did not find his behavior odd at all — this was how stone gambling went, people went crazy over it all the time, and this guy was clearly just another one of those cases.
He had to know exactly who had bought his stones. That was the most valuable piece he had found ever since he got his special golden finger! Losing it hurt worse than having his heart ripped out.
Mu Yue pulled her gaze away from the live scene of the playboy male lead completely losing his mind, took a light sip of tea, and looked at Shi Yu sitting across from her. "I never expected to run into you here."
Shi Yu looked just as surprised, and smiled. "Neither did I. It seems we're really fated. And let me say this first, I didn't ask anyone to track you down."
Mu Yue kept her gentle smile, and chatted with Shi Yu about the finished jadeite pieces she had bought that day.
Shi Yu would not have come to this place, and showed up at the jadeite market at this exact time, just by coincidence. Mu Yue almost wanted to sneer. The plot force of that lousy original novel was unbelievably strong.
Even without the chubby little guy Shi Le playing middleman to set them up, Shi Yu still managed to show up right when the male lead was supposed to have his big shining moment.
If Mu Yue hadn't snatched the male lead's stones away, the number one female lead would have run into the male lead right about now. Mu Yue was certain that Shi Yu had not seen the video of the male lead fighting with another man yet. Maybe the video had already popped up on her electronic devices, but some inexplicable force was stopping her from noticing it.
Without having seen that cringey, eye-searing footage, Mu Yue had no idea how Shi Yu would get manipulated. Her emotions and thoughts might end up following the original novel's path, getting slowly worn down by the male lead, until she eventually became another of his trophies, devoting everything she had to fuel his career.
It turned out that coming here on this vacation to derail the male lead's plans was the right call.
If Mu Yue had not come to mess things up, the male lead's protagonist halo would have definitely grown stronger. All her previous efforts would not exactly go to waste, but taking the male lead down would have become so much more troublesome.
But right now, she was the one who had mined the billion-yuan jadeite. She was the one sitting face to face with the number one female lead. And she was the one that the female lead wanted to get to know better and do more jadeite business with.
Things you snatch away from the protagonist just taste so much better.
