Beauty and the Bodyguard

Something like this would have quite the impact at a regular auction, but the rich in this particular one were evidently rather uninterested in the item. It ended up in the hands of a normal business man with a red invitation card, spending less than 150,000 for the purchase.

The third item was the map remnant that Lin Yi had his eyes on. It had a base price of 150,000, and a brief silence ensued in the auction room as the auctioneer displayed the item.

The description of the map in the catalog was crude and simple, the picture provided blurry and unclear as well. No one understood what it was for.

Was it an antique? There wasn’t a corresponding testimonial that came with it, and they didn’t even know what year it was made.

If it wasn’t an antique, just what use did that piece of paper have? It looked no different from the type of hand drawn maps ancient tribes would make, and this wasn’t even a complete piece!

This sort of thing had no materialistic or practical value. Putting it in an antique market for those less knowledgeable of the field would work better; putting it in an auction hall like this seemed out of place.

But there would always be weird and out of place items in the auction. They were rare, but it did happen a few times every year.

In truth, even the auctioneer had no idea what this map fragment was. He didn’t really introduce the item, simply reading the description from the catalog and describing it as an odd goatskin map, possibly leading to a great treasure.

The word “possibly” wasn’t very convincing because of the sheer number of things that were possible. It was possible to chance upon 1,000,000 yuan on the street too. People naturally didn’t believe in things that were unreliable.

The house representatives and millionaires weren’t idiots. They were here for something they wanted, and something that wasn’t on that list didn’t earn their attention. They never intended on participating.

It wasn’t a market, it was an auction. If they bid for an item they didn’t want, they had to make the purchase. There was no room for refunds! No one made a bid for the useless map fragment.

This sort of situation had precedent, and the auctioneer was no stranger to it. It wouldn’t be the only one left over from this auction. He cleared his throat. “Item number three, goatskin map, is there anyone who’d like to bid?”

“Ha, 110,00!” Fatty Lai said, raising his paddle. “Who knows if that thing might actually be a treasure map? I’ll buy it back and research it a bit.”

Fatty Lai’s words drew the disdain of many people present. Finding treasure with that shitty map fragment? It was complete bullshit. Fatty Lai was acting like someone who’d won the lottery, and the people who knew him recognized him as a smart man. Why would he buy trash like that? Did he want to make a scene, show off? The people who didn’t know him, on the other hand, just assumed that Fatty Lai simply had too much money to spend, that he was an idiot.

“110,000! Number 183’s made a bid of 110,000! Are there any higher bids?” the auctioneer said after a brief pause, thinking that it was good that someone was willing to participate. It may not be a large sum, but twenty percent of the earnings would still go to the auction.

A small piece of meat, but a piece of meat regardless.

“Going once… going twice…” the auctioneer said as he looked at the auction goers, hoping that someone would come increase the bid.

The participants weren’t stupid. They wouldn’t go fight someone for an item as useless as that map fragment, especially when that might piss the current bidder off. The people qualified enough to make it to this auction hall all priotized benefits and profit, and doing something that’d only damage them without benefits was something no one was willing to do.

Might as well leave the item to someone else and not participate altogether, since they had no use for the map in the first place. If they wanted it, then they’d fight it out for sure. Plus, it was rather rare that bidders would fight against each other simply for causing trouble, unless there was some sort of beef between them.

In the corner of the auction hall was a man. His face tightened when he heard someone bid for the map. He spoke into the mic next to his mouth, “Uncle, should I raise the price a little?”

“The man’s being rather careful. I don’t know if he actually wants it or not.” The voice of a middle-aged man came through the earpiece. “Add 10,000 or two and see how it goes.”

“Alright!” the man responded, raising his paddle when the auctioneer said “going three times.” “120,000!”

“Oh? Could this actually be something good? Here we go then!” Fatty Lai stood up after looking at the new bidder, a little surprised. He didn’t wait for the auctioneer to speak. “125,000!”

“Huh?” The auction goers started wondering if the goatskin map might actually be valuable now that two bidders were fighting over it.

But after the initial shock, Fatty Lai’s words made it clear to them that he wasn’t particularly interested in the item. In other words, from the way he was bidding it was clear that he wouldn’t be expending his resources to get the item. Who’d inch the bids up like that otherwise? It looked like he was playing around!

While the bids needed to be raised at least 5,000 yuan each time for an item with a 150,000 yuan base price, very few people actually did that, raising the bids by tens of thousands instead. What Fatty Lai was doing told everyone that he was interested enough to not let the item go if this person was going to fight it for him, that he was just inching the price up a little to test if the opponent actually wanted it.

So no one else was interested in participating. It’d cause them unnecessary trouble if they pissed somebody off. They decided to watch the show.

“What does this mean, Uncle?” the man asked hesitantly.

“I don’t know. Add five thousand more. Give it up if he continues bidding,” the middle-aged man said.

“130,000!” The man raised his paddle again.

“135,000!” Fatty Lai raised his paddle with a twerk of his big ass.

“Concede,” the middle-aged man said. “Have someone check his background!”

“Alright,” the man said, not raising his paddle anymore.

“135,000 going once, going twice, going three times… sold!” the auctioneer said, disappointing the people looking for some entertainment.

The man who was fighting Fatty Lai was obviously doing it for fun himself, not interested in getting the item, the same thing Fatty Lai was doing.

And so no one actually thought the map fragment was good. None of them were interested or impressed when Fatty Lai got the item, convinced that he was doing it for fun, that he wasn’t committed to getting the item.

“Congratulations the Number 183 for taking home this goatskin map for 135,000 yuan! We’ll have our staff contact you for the papers later,” the auctioneer said before continuing the auction.

Fatty Lai bidding for a goatskin map was but a small ripple in today’s auction. Nobody paid him any more attention, save for the one who had bid against him earlier….