"How much?" The vendor was slightly surprised that Ye Chen would actually ask for the price, but remained dismissive, not believing for a second that the guy was going to buy. He blurted out, "Fifty thousand!"
Ye Chen paused to think.
Eventually, he decided to test the waters. "Five hundred. Deal?"
You can't blame him for trying. After all, over here in the Antique City, people quoted astronomical figures and haggled right down to the ground!
There were countless instances where items priced in the tens of thousands ended up being snapped up for a mere one or two hundred.
At least in his past life, he had personally managed a few times to spend two or three hundred on trinkets that had originally been tagged at tens of thousands.
However, the vendor simply snatched the string of prayer beads right back out of his hand.
"Get lost!"
Ye Chen let out a self-deprecating chuckle, neither angered nor surprised.
After all, in his previous life, those very same prayer beads had been bought by that gambling buddy for thirty thousand.
Wanting to secure them for five hundred was genuinely unrealistic, even though back then the buddy had surely been fleeced by this same vendor as a total sucker.
Amidst the vendor's low grumbles and curses,
Ye Chen, having locked down the exact location of the prayer beads, did not linger any longer.
After wandering around for the better part of the day, he leisurely took his leave of the Antique City.
He bought a few buns and a bottle of mineral water, making do with that for dinner.
Seven-thirty.
Well-fed and hydrated, Ye Chen appeared at the entrance of the Sports Center.
By this time, the Sports Center was already packed with a sea of people!
Posters of a certain fresh-faced idol were plastered everywhere.
Countless fans moved in swarms to get their tickets checked and enter the venue.
In his past life, although Ye Chen knew that a few fanatical female fans had bought face-value 560 tickets at ten thousand a pop,
he hadn't known which scalper they bought them from.
Still, that didn't affect his ability to lock onto his target—after all, scalpers were just too obvious to miss.
Once the peak period of fans entering the venue had passed,
as the concert inside entered its warm-up phase,
Ye Chen began pacing back and forth around the various ticket checkpoints.
Soon, the time rapidly approached eight o'clock.
Ye Chen, too, was visibly growing anxious.
Right then,
in his field of vision,
one man appeared even more frantic than he was!
"Need tickets? I've got 'em!"
"Zone Seven seats, great view, high value for money. Want one?"
"Beauty, need tickets?"
"Beauty..."
"Handsome..."
The man stopped anyone he could catch, his face etched with desperation.
And he had every right to be desperate!
He had heard that being a scalper was a great way to make money, so he had gritted his teeth, blown a month's salary, and camped in front of his computer to grab six consecutive seats the moment tickets went on sale.
Since this was his first time scalping, he hadn't had a firm grasp of the tactics. Tricked by a random peer he'd met who claimed this concert was a hard-to-get ticket and that the closer it got to showtime, the higher the price would soar, he had refused to sell when someone offered him double earlier. He had set his sights purely on tripling or quadrupling his money!
Little did he know that while he waited and waited, all the other scalpers were packing up with satisfied grins, leaving him still clutching those six tickets. If these things ended up stuck in his hands, not only would his hard work go down the drain, but he'd also lose a whole month's salary!
"Damn it all, those bastards completely played me. What am I supposed 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, completely duped by his first taste of scalping, was spinning around in a panic.
"Those tickets in your hand, you selling?"
Just then, a voice rang out right beside his ear.
The rookie scalper was so thrilled he almost burst into tears.
"Selling, yes, selling!"
However, when he turned his head and saw that the other party was entirely by himself,
the excitement on his face instantly collapsed!
Just one guy?
That meant he'd only be able to sell a single ticket, and the other five would still be stuck in his hands!
"Buddy, how many do you want?"
Despite his deflated hopes, the rookie scalper still clung to the fantasy of meeting his savior.
"Uh, you've got six left, right? I'll take them all. How much?" Ye Chen asked, glancing down at the tickets in the other man's hand.
Hearing Ye Chen say he wanted the lot,
the scalper was first struck with disbelief,
followed by an eager, high-pitched cry of excitement.
He no longer dared to harbor any thoughts of driving up the price; he didn't even dare dream of breaking even. He immediately knocked sixty yuan off the face value, terrified of missing this chance.
"The printed price is 560. If you take them all, I'll let you have them for five hundred each—five hundred flat!"
"Twenty-eight hundred," Ye Chen said.
"My friend, come on..." The scalper panicked.
He was already losing sixty bucks a ticket; at twenty-eight hundred total, he'd be taking a clean loss on one whole ticket.
"If you want to sell, I'll buy the whole batch. 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.
The three thousand he'd earned selling flowers, minus his food and taxi fares, plus buying McDonald's for Youyou and grocery ingredients for Yinuo's breakfast noodles, left him with just a little over twenty-eight hundred.
"Fine, I'll sell!"
After a brief hesitation, the scalper gritted his teeth and agreed.
Losing the value of one ticket was still far better than having all six crash and burn in his hands.
"Alright, WeChat scan coming up!"
Without bothering to verify whether the tickets were real or fake, Ye Chen took them from the other man's hand and instantly transferred twenty-eight hundred via a QR scan.
By then,
the countdown to the concert was echoing fiercely from inside the Sports Center.
The moment the scalper left,
a group of student-aged young men and women appeared on his heels.
Seeing that Ye Chen had tickets in his hand, they immediately rushed over and asked, "Handsome, are you selling those tickets?"
"Not selling!"
Ye Chen didn't even have to think.
If he guessed correctly, these must be the exact kids who bought from the scalper in his past life.
While they muttered complaints and went off to look for another scalper,
right ahead in Ye Chen's line of sight,
six young women, not yet old enough to be called mature but exuding an aura of wealth, were anxiously blaming one another.
Chapter 009: The God of Wealth?
"It's all your fault! I said let's not go to the hotel yet, let's not go to the hotel, but you guys insisted. Now look, the tickets are gone!"
"Was that what I wanted? If I knew we'd lose the tickets, do you think I still would've gone?!"
"Feng Shen's concert—from junior high all the way to college, I haven't missed a single show! It's over, it's over, we're going to miss it this time!"
"Stop arguing, both of you! Hurry up and figure out how to get tickets!"
"How are we supposed to buy any at this hour when the concert has already started?!"
"At seven o'clock I suggested going straight to the venue to find scalpers, but you insisted on tearing the whole house and streets apart looking everywhere. Now we probably can't find a single scalper even if we tried!"
The girls anxiously scanned their surroundings in search of scalpers while hurling reproaches at one another.
Every bit of this played out right before Ye Chen's eyes and ears.
Yet he didn't proactively step forward to peddle the tickets to them.
Instead, he was going to wait for them to come to him!
Sure enough,
he didn't have to wait long.
As the girls anxiously looked around, they spotted Ye Chen clutching a handful of tickets.
Without a second thought, they rushed straight toward him.
"Handsome, are you selling those tickets? We can buy them from you at a high price!"
"Not selling, I'm meeting friends!" Ye Chen casually blurted out.
However, that wasn't enough to make the girls give up.
Because not only did Ye Chen have tickets, but there were exactly six of them!
Just enough for all six of them!
"A thousand each, six thousand for all six. Deal?"
Normally, for tickets with a face value of 560, they wouldn't even deign to give them a second glance, because only VIP seats were worthy of them.
Right now, though, they couldn't afford to care about seat locations. As long as they could get inside, as long as they could keep their streak of attending every single concert alive, anything went!
"I said not selling! Besides, at a thousand each, do you take me for an idiot? Not only did I go through all sorts of trouble, but I bought them off someone else for nine hundred apiece. Selling them to you for a thousand? You've got to be kidding me!" Ye Chen said.
"Two thousand, two thousand each, how's that?" the girls immediately upped their offer.
"Not selling! They aren't even entirely my tickets; some belong to my friends!" Ye Chen replied without a moment's hesitation, his tone absolute.
By now,
the voice of their idol could already be heard echoing from inside the Sports Center, accompanied by that roaring, wave-like sea of fanatical sound.
That pushed the girls into an even deeper panic!
"Five thousand, five thousand a piece, that's enough, right?! Just sell them to us, please!" One of the girls lost all patience for slow bargaining; she simply couldn't wait another second.
Five thousand?
Six tickets for thirty thousand?
That price was more than enough to make a sale!
Even so, Ye Chen shook his head—not because these girls had paid ten thousand each in his past life,
but because he was afraid of unexpected variables back at the Antique City. Although that gambling buddy in his previous life had bought that string of prayer beads for thirty thousand, what if things didn't go through for thirty thousand when the time came?
If that happened, all his hard work would have been for nothing!
Therefore, he needed absolute insurance 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.
"Are you kidding me?!"
One of the girls finally snapped under the pressure. "Ten thousand! Ten thousand each, yes or no? Let me tell you, you won't find another shop like this after this village!"
"Ten thousand each?" Ye Chen feigned a look of sudden temptation, playing dumb with an expression of disbelief.
"Right! This is the absolute highest price we can offer! We're paying ten thousand each for top-row nosebleed seats with a face value of 560—that's an astronomical price among astronomical prices! If you didn't happen to have exactly six right in your hand, the most we'd offer is three thousand! Last word, are you selling or not? If not, we're leaving!" the exasperated girl demanded.
"Well, alright then. Sold!"
Putting on a performance of intense struggle and reluctance, Ye Chen gritted his teeth and agreed.
Once they had his consent,
the girls didn't bother wasting another breath on him.
QRs scanned, money transferred, tickets grabbed,
they immediately bolted toward the ticket checkpoint without a single second to spare.
If only that rookie scalper had known that Ye Chen had flipped those tickets for a twentyfold markup on the resale,
his mental state would genuinely have collapsed!
Looking at the balance of sixty thousand yuan sitting in his WeChat wallet,
Ye Chen let out a long breath of relief, a faint smile creeping onto his face.
Thank goodness everything that happened in his past life hadn't changed because of his intervention.
Otherwise, that string of prayer beads really might have ended up in the hands of that gambling buddy.
Glancing back one last time at the Sports Center, where waves of screams kept rolling outward,
Ye Chen—who in both past and present lives felt utterly indifferent toward concerts—strode away with his harvest of sixty thousand yuan!
Back at the rented apartment,
unsurprisingly,
Chen Yinuo and Ye Youyou were nowhere to be found.
On the dining table, the McDonald's meal was gone.
Yet that bowl of breakfast noodles remained untouched, not a single bite taken!
Clearly, Chen Yinuo was intent on drawing a hard, permanent line between them.
Looking at the bowl of breakfast noodles that had long since congealed into a soggy clump, Ye Chen let out a deeply bitter, self-mocking laugh.
He leaned in to sniff them—they hadn't spoiled yet.
Without hesitation, he picked up the bowl. Instead of dumping it, he shoveled mouthful after mouthful into his mouth.
A mist of guilt-ridden tears welled up in his eyes.
"Yinuo, wait for me. I will prove it to you. I will prove that you didn't marry the wrong man, I swear I will!"
The next day,
Ye Chen's figure appeared once again within the Antique City.
This time, however, he didn't wander around aimlessly.
Instead, he walked straight up to the stall with the prayer beads.
Seeing that the string of beads was still there, he finally let out a sigh of relief.
"Why is it you again?"
The moment he saw Ye Chen stopping at his stall,
the vendor—who had been chatting and laughing with a neighboring merchant just a second prior—instantly let his face drop.
"That string of prayer beads, how much to take it off your hands?"
Ye Chen didn't mind the attitude at all, asking with a smile.
"Are you just here to mess with me for fun? Five hundred won't cut it, go find somewhere cool to hang out!" The vendor waved him away impatiently.
Even though everything in the Antique City was subject to wild asking prices and harsh counter-offers,
that string of prayer beads had still cost him close to a thousand yuan to acquire.
Five hundred yuan? It made his liver ache with anger!
"Then why don't you name a price yourself? Spare me the fifty thousand nonsense—it's not like this is my first time at the Antique City. Give me a price that shows some actual sincerity in doing business!" Ye Chen laughed.
"Fine, a sincere price, is it?!"
Noticing that quite a few passing prospective clients were glancing over their way,
the vendor couldn't afford to throw another tantrum. He said, "The look, the texture, the tactile feel of this string of beads, plus that patina smoked in by temple incense—one glance tells you it came straight out of a monastery. Especially the carving of the eighteen arhats on them—have you ever seen anything like that on the open market? This piece came straight from the hands of an eminent, high-ranking monk! If you want it... three... no, twenty thousand! Twenty thousand and it's yours! Not a single cent less, and I'll find a new owner for it!"
As for the look, texture, and feel, they were indeed quite decent.
Otherwise, he wouldn't have spent close to a thousand yuan to buy it in the first place.
But all that nonsense about a patina smoked by temple incense and coming from the hands of an eminent monk?
That was pure hogwash, completely made up on the spot!
When it came to making up such tall tales, vendors in the Antique City were absolute masters of the trade.
The only reason he dropped his asking price from fifty thousand to twenty thousand was because he figured Ye Chen couldn't possibly afford it anyway,
and he just wanted to chase this pest away quickly!
"Twenty thousand? Alright, hand it over, I'll take it!"
Twenty thousand—that actually came as a bit of a surprise to Ye Chen.
After all, the gambling buddy in his previous life had shelled out a full thirty thousand.
He didn't bother wasting time haggling any further.
"What the hell? You're actually buying it?"
The vendor was dumbfounded.
Not just the vendor—his neighboring colleagues were equally stunned.
Just moments ago, they had been discussing whether yesterday's idiot would come back to wander around again.
Who would have thought that not only would Cao Cao appear the moment he was mentioned, but this guy was actually going to fork 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 another word, Ye Chen whipped out his phone and scanned the QR code on the counter.
After punching in the sum of twenty thousand, he didn't rush to pay immediately. Instead, he turned the phone screen toward the vendor. "Right amount?"
"Ah... y-yes, right!" the vendor stammered in disbelief.
He had just set up his stall for the day and already bumped into such a God of Wealth?
A twenty-thousand-yuan deal meant a net profit of nineteen thousand!
Ye Chen said, "Alright, sending the payment over now!"
A few seconds later,
the chime announcing a WeChat transfer of twenty thousand yuan rang out from the vendor's phone!
In an instant,
the expressions of all the surrounding vendors shifted as they looked at Ye Chen.
Yesterday, they had taken him for an idiot who practically had "please fleece me" stamped across his forehead, but in the blink of an eye, he had turned into the fat, gullible sucker they prayed for every day?
Had they... had they missed out?
"Boss, payment received! Let me wrap it up for you right now, right this second!"
Gone was the previous annoyance and urge to chase him off; the vendor beamed with delight, eagerly buttering him up.
"No need to wrap it!"
Ye Chen picked up the string of prayer beads directly.
At that exact moment,
a middle-aged man and another man in his early 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—don't tell me you're having me pick out his birthday gift 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 it really necessary?"
As they walked, the younger man grumbled.
"Jingshan, you still don't understand the old leader. He loves antiquities, especially pieces you can handle and play with in your hands, but he hates expensive stuff. In his own words, it corrupts the mind. The old leader has lived a life of integrity; if you actually bought him something ridiculously pricey, believe it or not, he'd turn right around and chew you out! So, it's better to pick out a piece with decent character here in the Antique City. The main thing is that it looks pleasing and is fun to handle. And hey, if we happen to stumble upon a hidden treasure by luck, wouldn't that be even more wonderful?"
The middle-aged man, already past fifty, chuckled as he spoke.
The younger man, however, curled his lip dismissively.
Though unconvinced, he didn't argue any further.
Chapter 010: The Origin of the Prayer Beads
"Huh?"
Suddenly,
as they brushed past Ye Chen,
the middle-aged man addressed as Uncle Lu came to a halt.
The younger man paused in surprise. "What is it, Uncle Lu?"
Lu Cheng didn't reply.
His eyes were locked firmly onto the string 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?"
Huh?
Ye Chen turned his head.
Seeing that the speaker was a middle-aged man,
he couldn't help but be startled!
Could this really be the middle-aged man mentioned by the gambling buddy from his past life?
No...
When the gambling buddy described that middle-aged man in his previous life, he said the guy was wearing a white Tai Chi uniform.
Yet this person in front of him wasn't wearing any white Tai Chi uniform, but rather simple, ordinary clothing.
"Are you talking about these?" Ye Chen asked, still somewhat taken aback as he raised the string of beads.
"Yes, exactly. May I have a look?"
Clearly, Ye Chen caught the grave look on the man's face.
After a brief calculation, Ye Chen handed them over anyway.
"Uh, sure, go ahead!"
"Thank you!"
Taking the prayer beads, Lu Cheng instantly widened his eyes.
At the same time, the vendor who had just sold the beads to Ye Chen for twenty thousand frowned, as did several nearby merchants.
Could that string of prayer beads actually have some kind of background? Was it a genuine hidden treasure after all?
How was that possible?
"Uncle Lu, what's wrong with this string of beads?" Zhang Jingshan curiously stepped closer.
Little did he know, the middle-aged man's throat was so dry his voice began to tremble.
"Arhat beads from Vajra Temple... they're truly the Arhat beads from Vajra Temple!"
Hearing Lu Cheng say this,
Ye Chen raised an eyebrow.
He knew of Vajra Temple; it was Jiangzhou's most renowned temple and also the one with the most flourishing incense offerings in the entire city.
But what was the deal with these Arhat beads?
Even though he had lived to eighty-nine in his past life, he had never once heard of them.
"Uncle Lu, what's their origin and significance? Are they very valuable?" Zhang Jingshan asked in bewilderment.
"Legend has it that sixty years ago, High Monk Hongyi of Vajra Temple commemorated the eighteen arhats by taking the branches of the century-old sandalwood tree in the temple's backyard and crafting eighteen prayer beads. It took him three full years just to carve the likeness of the eighteen arhats onto those eighteen beads. Over the decades that followed, this string of prayer beads accompanied him like a shadow, immersed daily in incense smoke while he chanted scriptures and meditated, until he passed away in sitting meditation twenty years ago!"
"Ten years ago, when I accompanied the old leader to Vajra Temple to discuss Zen with the abbot, the abbot casually mentioned this string of prayer beads. He said that a few years after High Monk Hongyi passed away, the prayer beads were stolen by thieves. The old leader even offered to have people help track them down back then, but the abbot simply shook his head!"