"Five thousand!" the stall owner blurted out, slightly astonished that Ye Chen would even ask for the price, though still dismissive and convinced the other man wouldn't actually buy it.
Ye Chen thought about it for a moment.
In the end, he decided to test the waters. "Five hundred, will you sell it?"
You couldn't really blame him for wanting to test the waters. After all, business in this Antique City was all about asking sky-high prices and haggling down to the dirt! There were plenty of items initially priced at tens of thousands that ended up selling for one or two hundred. At least in his past life, he had bought items priced at tens of thousands for just two or three hundred on several occasions.
However, the stall owner immediately snatched the strand of prayer beads right out of his hand.
"Get lost!"
Ye Chen let out a self-deprecating chuckle, neither angered nor surprised. After all, in his past life, that gambling friend of his had indeed bought these prayer beads for thirty thousand. Wanting to buy them for five hundred was genuinely unrealistic, even though the gambling friend had undoubtedly been fleeced like a fresh-water fish by the stall owner at the time.
Amidst the stall owner's muttered curses, Ye Chen, having locked down the exact location of the prayer beads, lingered no longer.
After wandering around for most of the day, he leisurely left the Antique City.
He bought a few loaves of bread and a bottle of mineral water, making do with a makeshift dinner.
Seven-thirty.
Having eaten and drunk his fill, Ye Chen appeared at the entrance of the Sports Center.
At that moment, the Sports Center was already packed with people!
Posters of a certain fresh-faced pop idol were plastered everywhere. Countless fans were swarming in groups to get their tickets checked.
In his past life, although Ye Chen knew that a few fanatical female fans had bought tickets with a face value of 560 for ten thousand each, he didn't know which scalper they had bought them from.
Still, this didn't affect his ability to target the right person, as scalpers were far too obvious in their appearance.
Once the peak period of fans entering had passed, and as the concert inside entered its warm-up phase, Ye Chen began pacing back and forth around several ticket checkpoints.
Soon, the time crept close to eight o'clock.
Ye Chen was also growing visibly anxious.
Right then.
Within his field of vision, a man appeared even more anxious than he was!
"Need tickets? I've got them right here!"
"Section Seven seats, great view, high cost-performance. Want one?"
"Beauty, need a ticket?"
"Beauty..."
"Young man..."
The man grabbed anyone he could approach, an anxious look plastered across his face.
And he had every reason to be anxious!
Having heard that being a scalper was lucrative, he had grit his teeth, spent a month's salary, and camped out in front of his computer to grab six consecutive seats the moment the tickets went on sale. Since this was his first time scalping, his grasp of the tricks of the trade wasn't very sharp. Fooled by a chance acquaintance in the industry who claimed that tickets for this concert were virtually impossible to get and that prices would only rise the closer it got to showtime, he had refused to sell when someone offered double the price earlier, stubbornly holding out for a three- or four-fold markup!
Little did he know that while he waited and waited, all the other scalpers had packed up with satisfied grins, leaving him clutching those six tickets. If these ended up unsold in his hands, not only would all his hard work be for nothing, but he'd also blow an entire month's salary!
"Damn it all, those bastards played me! What am I going to do now?!"
He pulled out his phone to check the time—the concert was about to officially start, yet the six tickets in his hand remained unsold.
The novice scalper, having been completely duped during his first venture into scalping, was spinning around in panic.
"Are you selling the tickets you've got?"
At that moment, a voice sounded right by his ear.
The rookie scalper was so excited he nearly burst into tears.
"Selling! I'm selling!"
However, when he turned his head and saw that the other party was entirely alone, the excitement on his face instantly collapsed.
Just one person?
That meant he could only sell one ticket, and the other five would still be stuck in his hands!
"Buddy, how many do you want?"
Though his excitement had faded, the rookie scalper still harbored fantasies of meeting his savior.
"Uh, you've got six left, right? I'll take them all. How much?" Ye Chen asked, glancing down at what the man was holding.
Hearing Ye Chen say he wanted all of them at once, the scalper was initially in disbelief, followed by a rush of excited, breathless urgency. He no longer dared to harbor any thoughts of driving up the price, nor did he even dare to dream of breaking even; he simply offered them at sixty less than face value, terrified of missing this opportunity.
"The printed price is 560. If you take all of them, I'll let you have them for five hundred each—just five hundred!"
"Twenty-eight hundred!" Ye Chen said.
"My friend, you can't..." The scalper panicked. He was already losing sixty yuan per ticket; at twenty-eight hundred total, he would be taking a complete loss on an entire ticket.
"If you want to sell, I'll buy the whole lot. If not, forget it!"
It wasn't that Ye Chen wanted to squeeze him, but this was literally his entire net worth at the moment. Out of the three thousand he'd earned selling flowers, after deducting his own meals and taxi fare, plus buying McDonald's for Youyou and ingredients to cook breakfast noodles for Yinuo, he now had just a little over 2,800 left.
"Fine, I'll sell!" the scalper gritted his teeth after a brief hesitation. Taking a loss on one ticket was still better than getting stuck with all six.
"Great, I'll scan your WeChat!"
Without even checking if the tickets were real or fake, Ye Chen took the tickets from the man's hand and immediately transferred twenty-eight hundred via WeChat scan.
By then, the countdown for the concert was roaring from inside the Sports Center.
The moment the scalper left, a group of young men and women looking like students appeared right behind him.
Seeing that Ye Chen had tickets in his hand, they immediately rushed over to ask, "Handsome, are you selling those tickets?"
"Not selling!" Ye Chen replied without a second thought.
If he guessed correctly, these were probably the exact folks who had bought tickets from the scalper in his past life.
As they muttered complaints and tried to hunt down another scalper, right ahead in Ye Chen's line of sight, six young women who didn't look very old, yet exuded an aura of wealth, were anxiously blaming each other.
"It's all your fault! I said let's not go to the hotel first, but you insisted. Now look, the tickets are gone!"
"Was that what I wanted? If I knew we'd lose the tickets, do you think I would've gone?!"
"Feng Shen's concert! I haven't missed a single show since junior high through college. It's over, it's really over, I'm going to miss out!"
"Stop arguing, hurry up and figure out a way to get tickets!"
"At this time of night, the concert has already started, how are we supposed to buy any?!"
"At seven o'clock I suggested going straight to the venue to buy from a scalper, but you guys insisted on tearing apart every box and combing the whole house and streets for tickets. Now I bet you can't even find a scalper!"
The girls anxiously scanned their surroundings looking for a scalper while trading mutual recriminations.
Every bit of this played out before Ye Chen's eyes and ears.
Yet he didn't take the initiative to approach them and pitch a sale.
Instead, he was waiting for them to come to him!
Sure enough, it didn't take long.
While anxiously looking around in all directions, those girls spotted Ye Chen clutching several tickets in his hand and rushed straight over to him in a flurry.
"Handsome, are you selling your tickets? We can pay a high price for them!"
"Not selling, I'm meeting a friend!" Ye Chen dropped the words casually.
However, this was nowhere near enough to make those girls give up.
Because Ye Chen not only had tickets in his hand, but exactly six of them!
Just enough for all six of them!
"A thousand each! Six thousand for all six, deal?"
Under normal circumstances, tickets with a face value of 560 like these wouldn't even catch a passing glance from them, because only VIP seats were worthy of their status. But right now, they couldn't care less about the seats; as long as they could get inside, as long as they could keep their streak of attending every single concert unbroken, anything would do!
"I said not selling! Besides, a thousand each? Do you think I'm an idiot? Not only did I go through a massive hassle, but I bought them from someone else for nine hundred each. Selling them to you for a thousand? Are you kidding me?" Ye Chen said.
"Two thousand! Two thousand each, how about that?" the other party immediately upped the offer.
"Not selling! These aren't even my tickets, some belong to my friend!" Ye Chen cut them off decisively without a moment's hesitation.
By now, the voice of their idol could already be heard echoing from inside the Sports Center, accompanied by the roaring, fanatical waves of sound.
That sent the girls into an even deeper panic.
"Five thousand! Five thousand a piece, that has to be enough! Just sell them to us, please!" One of the girls had lost the patience to slowly bid him up; she couldn't wait any longer.
Five thousand?
Thirty thousand for six?
This price was definitely more than enough to sell!
Yet Ye Chen still shook his head. It wasn't because in his past life these girls had bought them for ten thousand each, but rather because he was afraid of variables over at the Antique City. Although that gambling friend had bought the strand of prayer beads for thirty thousand in his past life, he worried: what if the transaction couldn't be closed at thirty thousand for some reason?
If that happened, all his hard work would go down the drain!
Therefore, he needed absolute security to guarantee he could secure that string of prayer beads.
"I told you I'm not selling. If I sell these, how am I supposed to explain it to my friends?" Ye Chen said.
"I don't believe this crap!" one of the girls finally snapped, her eyes turning red with anxiety. "Ten thousand! Ten thousand a piece, are you selling or not? Let me tell you, you won't find another shop like this after this village!"
"Ten thousand each?" Ye Chen feigned a look of temptation, asking back in seemingly disbelieving hesitation.
"Right! This is the absolute highest price we can offer! We're paying ten thousand apiece for mountain-top seats with a face value of 560—that is an astronomical price among astronomical prices. If you didn't happen to have exactly six tickets in your hand, the most we'd offer is three thousand! Last word, are you selling or not? If not, we're leaving!" the agitated girl declared.
"W-well, alright then, I'll sell!"
Ye Chen put on a struggling, conflicted expression and grit his teeth.
Once they got his agreement, the girls didn't bother wasting any more breath on him.
Scan the QR code, transfer the funds, grab the tickets.
Without a second to lose, they sprinted toward the ticket checkpoint.
If only the rookie scalper from earlier had known that Ye Chen had flipped those tickets for a twentyfold profit upon reselling them, his mental state would truly have collapsed.
Looking at the 60,000 yuan balance on his WeChat, Ye Chen let out a long sigh of relief, a faint smile spreading across his face.
Thank goodness the events of his past life hadn't changed because of this.
Otherwise, that strand of prayer beads would probably have genuinely ended up in the hands of that gambling friend.
Glancing back at the Sports Center where the screams rolled in wave after wave, Ye Chen—who remained utterly indifferent to concerts in both his past and present lives—strode away with his 60,000 yuan haul.
When he returned to the rented apartment, as expected, Chen Yinuo and Ye Youyou were not there.
On the dining table, the container of McDonald's was gone.
However, that bowl of breakfast noodles was still sitting there, completely untouched!
It was obvious that Chen Yinuo wanted to draw a definitive line between them.
Gazing at the breakfast noodles that had long since congealed into a clump, Ye Chen let out a bitter, self-deprecating laugh.
He leaned in and sniffed them—they hadn't spoiled yet.
Without hesitation, he picked up the bowl. Instead of dumping it out, he began shoveling the noodles into his mouth in huge mouthfuls.
Tears of remorse welled up and swirled in his eyes.
"Yinuo, wait for me. I will definitely prove it to you. I will prove to you that you didn't marry the wrong man, I swear I will!"
The next day.
Ye Chen's figure appeared once again in the Antique City.
This time, however, he didn't wander around.
He walked straight up to the stall with the prayer beads.
Seeing that the prayer beads were still there, he finally let out a breath of relief.
"Why is it you again?"
The moment he saw Ye Chen stopping at his stall, the stall owner—who had been laughing and chatting with a neighboring vendor just a second before—let his face drop.
"That string of prayer beads, how much to sell?" Ye Chen asked with a smile, unbothered.
"Are you intentionally coming here to bust my balls, kid? I can't sell it for five hundred, so go hang out wherever it's cool!" The stall owner waved him away impatiently.
Even though business in the Antique City was all about asking sky-high prices and haggling down, that string of beads had cost him close to a thousand yuan to acquire. Five hundred yuan was enough to make his liver ache with anger!
"Well, why don't you name a price then? Spare me the five-thousanth stuff—it's not my first time coming to this Antique City. Give me a price with some genuine intent to sell!" Ye Chen chuckled.
"Fine, you want a serious price, do you?!"
Seeing several potential passing customers glancing over their way, the stall owner couldn't afford to throw another tantrum. He said, "Just look at the craftsmanship, texture, and feel of this string of beads, not to mention the patina stained into them by incense smoke. One glance tells you they came straight out of a temple, especially the carving of the eighteen arhats on them—have you ever seen anything like that on the market? This piece came straight from the hands of an eminent, high-ranking monk! If you really want it... three—no, twenty thousand! Take it for twenty thousand, not a penny less, and you're the new owner!"
The so-called appearance, texture, and feel were indeed quite good; otherwise, he wouldn't have spent nearly a thousand yuan to acquire it. But all that nonsense about an incense-smoked patina and coming from the hands of an eminent monk in a temple? That was pure hogwash, completely fabricated out of thin air!
Such fabrications were second nature to stall owners in the Antique City.
Yet the only reason he lowered the price from fifty thousand to twenty thousand was because he figured Ye Chen couldn't possibly afford it anyway, so he just wanted to shake the pest off quickly.
"Twenty thousand? Alright, hand it over, I'll take it!"
Twenty thousand was actually a bit lower than Ye Chen expected, considering his gambling friend in his past life had paid a full thirty thousand. Not wanting to waste time haggling further, he agreed on the spot.
"What the hell? You're actually buying it?"
The stall owner was dumbfounded.
Not just the stall owner—the neighboring vendors around him were dumbfounded too. Just moments ago, they had been discussing whether yesterday's idiot would come back to wander around again. Never mind that Cao Cao arrives when you speak of him; this guy actually wanted to shell out twenty thousand for that string of prayer beads?
That piece was worth one or two thousand at the absolute most!
"Twenty thousand, right? I'll scan you!"
Without wasting words, Ye Chen pulled out his phone and scanned the QR code on the stall.
After typing in the sum of twenty thousand, he didn't rush to pay immediately. Instead, he turned the phone screen toward the other man and asked, "Is this right?"
"Ah, y-yes, right!" the stall owner stammered in disbelief.
He had just set up his stall, and he runs straight into a God of Wealth like this?
A twenty-thousand transaction with a net profit of nineteen thousand!
Ye Chen said, "Alright, sending the payment over now!"
Seconds later, the sound of WeChat receiving twenty thousand yuan rang out from the stall owner's phone!
In an instant, the expressions of the surrounding stall owners looking at Ye Chen shifted completely.
Yesterday they had thought this was just some idiot practically wearing a sign that said *'I'm here to be fleeced'*, but in the blink of an eye, he had turned into the fat-wallet sucker they all dreamed of hooking?
Did... did they just miss out?
"Boss, payment received! I'll wrap it up for you right now, wrapping it up right away!"
Gone was the previous impatient, brush-off attitude. The stall owner beamed, becoming exceptionally attentive and eager.
"No need to wrap it!"
Ye Chen picked up the string of prayer beads directly.
At the same time, a middle-aged man and another man in his thirties walked over toward Ye Chen's spot.
"Uncle Lu, do we really need to come to a dump like this? It's the old man's birthday—are you seriously making me pick out a birthday gift for him here? How tacky is that? If word gets out, what will people say about me? It's not like I don't have the money, is this really necessary?" the younger man muttered as they walked.
"Jingshan, you still don't understand the old leader. He likes antiques, especially pieces you can handle and rub smooth, but he hates expensive stuff. In the old man's own words, that corrupts one's ideology. The old leader has lived a life of integrity; if you actually bought him something outrageously expensive, he'd turn around and scold you, believe it or not! That's why we're coming to the Antique City to pick out a piece with decent features—mainly something pleasant to look at and nice to handle. Who knows, if we happen to stumble upon a hidden treasure, wouldn't that be even better?"
The middle-aged man, who looked well past fifty, chuckled as he spoke.
The younger man, however, curled his lip dismissively. Though unimpressed, he didn't argue back.
"Huh?"
Abruptly, as they passed by Ye Chen, the middle-aged man addressed as Uncle Lu stopped in his tracks.
The younger man paused in curiosity. "What is it, Uncle Lu?"
Lu Cheng didn't answer. His eyes were locked firmly onto the strand of prayer beads in Ye Chen's hand.
"Young man, would you mind letting me take a look at the prayer beads in your hand?"
Hm?
Ye Chen turned his head.
Seeing that the other man had a middle-aged appearance, he couldn't help but be startled!
Could this be running into the middle-aged man mentioned by the gambling friend in his past life?
No...
When describing that middle-aged man in his past life, the gambling friend had mentioned he was wearing a white Tai Chi uniform.
Yet the person before him was not wearing a white Tai Chi uniform at all, but rather simple, ordinary clothing.
"Are you talking about this?" Surprised as he was, Ye Chen still lifted up the strand of prayer beads.
"Yes, exactly. May I take a look?"
Clearly, Ye Chen caught the look of heavy solemnity on the other man's face.
After a brief thought, Ye Chen handed them over anyway.
"Uh, sure, go ahead!"
"Thank you!"
Taking the prayer beads, Lu Cheng immediately widened his eyes.
In that instant, the stall owner who had just sold the beads to Ye Chen for twenty thousand frowned, as did several nearby vendors.
Could this string of prayer beads actually have some kind of background? Was it really a hidden treasure?
How could that be possible?
"Uncle Lu, what's up with this string of prayer beads?" Zhang Jingshan asked curiously, leaning in.
Little did he know, the middle-aged man's voice was trembling with dry-mouthed awe.
"Vajra Temple's arhat beads... it's truly Vajra Temple's arhat beads!"
Hearing Lu Cheng say this, Ye Chen raised an eyebrow.
He knew about Vajra Temple; it was Jiangzhou's most prestigious temple and also the one with the most flourishing incense offerings in the city.
But what was the deal with these arhat beads?
Even having lived to eighty-nine in his past life, he had never once heard of them.
"Uncle Lu, what's the background and significance here? Is it very valuable?" Zhang Jingshan asked in astonishment.
"Legend has it that sixty years ago, Eminent Monk Hongyi of Vajra Temple, in order to commemorate the eighteen arhats, crafted eighteen prayer beads from the branches of the century-old sandalwood tree in the back courtyard of Vajra Temple. It took him three full years just to carve the likeness of the eighteen arhats onto those eighteen beads. In the decades that followed, this string of prayer beads stayed by his side like a shadow, immersed in incense smoke daily as he chanted scriptures and sought Zen enlightenment, right up until he passed away in meditation twenty years ago!"
"Ten years ago, I accompanied the old leader to Vajra Temple to discuss Zen with the abbot. It was only during an offhand remark by the abbot that this string of prayer beads was brought up. He mentioned that a few years after Eminent Monk Hongyi's passing, the string of prayer beads had been stolen by thieves. At the time, the old leader even asked if he should have someone track them down, but the abbot simply shook his head!"