Chapter 80: Auction

“Wow, Big Black would sure like it!” As soon as Long Teng saw the picture, his eyes instantly lit up.

The golden crystal ore between its eyes had long been replaced with a huge natural diamond, and every day when it opened its eyes, it could see the bright light.

Long Teng, because of the flying dragon beast, also paid extra attention to shiny things.

Xie Sen couldn’t help but exclaim, “It’s beautiful.”

He scanned the comments. Almost all of them were screaming with praise, and many of them said that they were going to win. He looked at the comments, and asked, “Do you know anything about the price of jewelry? How much does a pearl this big cost?”

Long Teng shook his head. “I don’t know. My dad prepared all the stuff for Big Black.”

Maine also shook his head. “I rarely pay attention to it.”

Bai Jiao didn’t usually wear jewelry, but because of family reasons, he had attended a variety of banquets since childhood, so he had some understanding. “For the largest pearl, less than one-thirtieth of the diameter of this one, the sale price was three hundred million.”

Xie Sen was dumbfounded. Then this one, according to the diameter, couldn’t be less than nine billion. How could he afford it?

He was so excited that he spoke his mind. Bai Jiao laughed, “It’s not that expensive. This pearl is too big for jewelry, so it’s only decorative. It’s more of a collectible. But, it’s too big and too rare to be cheap.”

Xie Sen thought for a moment. “Let’s do a dual approach. We’ll wait for news of the sale, and see if we can find any potential loopholes.”

Long Teng focused on the latter half of the sentence, and his eyes shone brightly.

Maine asked, “Can you pinpoint its location?”

Xie Sen looked upward. “Above the eightieth floor. The exact location–” he said, ready to call out to Adam in his mind to ask for the distance between Little Silver and his current location.

But with a sweep of his eyes, he realized that the height of each floor was different. Like now, the dining room was obviously taller than the guest rooms. He remembered that the bottom few floors were battle arenas, and for that kind of event, each floor would probably be higher.

So even if he knew the distance, he couldn’t calculate the exact eighty or so floors. When he thought of Adam’s weak voice from before, he decided not to waste Adam’s energy. He mulled it over, then said, “I can’t determine the exact location.”

“Then let’s go floor by floor to find it?” Long Teng said.

Maine’s finger operated on the virtual screen twice, and quickly browsed through it, then turned the screen to the trio again. “The 80th and 81st floors are the auction house. The 82nd floor and the floors above have no public listing for their use, and are forbidden to enter.”

Xie Sen’s eyes lit up, “The auction house must have a lot of treasures. Little Silver is also a treasure, so will it be put on the 80th and 81st floors?”

Maine said, “We can go and take a look.” He clicked into the 81st floor, and pointed to the bottom right corner. “There is an auction at 8pm.”

Xie Sen looked over, and saw that the tickets were 100,000 per person. He couldn’t help but spit out, “This is a money grab, right?”

Maine said, “The 80th floor ticket is 10,000, where the starting bid price is 1 million. The 81st floor starting bid price is 10 million, and the really good stuff is on the 81st floor. The ticket is the threshold.”

Long Teng had no idea about the ticket price, and said immediately, “Let’s go to the 81st floor!”

Bai Jiao took a closer look at the introduction page, and laughed. “It’s early. We still have time to get ready,” he said, and pointed to the middle of the screen. “You have to wear formal wear to enter.”

So after they ate the hot pot, the four of them went straight to the 60th floor to buy formal wear. They had prepared a lot of things for this trip, but hadn’t included formal wear. After all, their destination was a small, unknown planet. No one expected to need such flashy things.

The four looked outstanding, and when the salesman had them reflected in his eyes, he attentively introduced a variety of styles. The four didn’t care what they wore, so except for the color, they didn’t even try anything on, just directly packed it away.

The salesman was shocked, and sorry to have them leave. He still wanted to see these people try on clothes!

Each went back to their room. Xie Sen immediately went to change his clothes in the bathroom. The Phantom of the Sea room had a luxurious atmosphere. The bathroom area was very large, so he was very excited before dinner, and wanted to take a bath.

On Yagi, baths were difficult in the wilderness, while getting clean was another story. Not wanting to take a hot bath was impossible.

Maine came in behind him, and closed the bathroom door with his hand. Xie Sen was about to turn around when he heard the sound, and was hugged by Maine from behind, followed by nibble on his earlobe. His body trembled, and he grabbed Maine’s hand. “Stop it. Take a shower first.”

“I’ll help you.” Maine’s voice was intent.

Xie Sen had an instant reaction. The first few days they spent on the sacred mountain, Long Teng and Bai Jiao were there, and it was also inconvenient in the wilderness. The two of them hadn’t done it for several days. Maine was more reactive than he was, and had endured to the limit.

In the end, the bathroom was a mess. Xie Sen was wrapped in a large towel and carried to the bed by Maine. He lay on Maine’s lap, and reached out to pinch Maine’s waist, but there was no soft flesh on Maine’s waist, so the pinch did nothing at all. He grunted softly, and Maine relaxed his muscles to allow him to feel more. There was satisfaction and doting in his eyes, as he took the hair dryer to blow his hair.

Xie Sen rolled onto his back, looked at the time and lamented, “It’s fifteen minutes to eight. I was going to take a break.”

Maine put the hair dryer away, took off the towel he had casually wrapped around himself and threw it on the side of the bed. Xie Sen tilted his head to watch him, swallowed silently, then simply lay back on the bed with his chin propped up and stared.

Maine buttoned up his black shirt. His eyes swept over to him, and his voice was low and dark as he unbuttoned one button, “Don’t you want to go?”

Xie Sen hurriedly averted his eyes, and got up from the bed. But his back was too sore, and he collapsed. The bed sank down. “Hss! Go, go, go…get dressed.”

Maine picked him up, put him on the edge of the bed and let him sit down. He rubbed his waist with his hand, and frowned. “Does it hurt?”

“No,” Xie Sen pushed him, and jumped off the bed. “It’s sore.”

Maine laughed lightly, and quickly put his clothes on. Then he then gave Xie Sen, who was sitting on the couch with his pants on, a hand with getting dressed. However, it was obviously a favor that backfired. As he half-kneeled in front of Xie Sen, and looked down to button Xie Sen’s buttons, he could see the marks he left on Xie Sen’s body, and kissed him uncontrollably.

Xie Sen rolled his eyes, and kicked him with his bare foot. “Go away, I’ll do it myself. I’ll be late if I keep messing around.”

Maine grabbed his foot, and kissed it.

Xie Sen’s toes immediately curled up. He was about to get angry when Maine let go of him, and moved back to sit on the couch across from him.

Maine looked at Xie Sen’s red face, “Sen, do you have a fever?”

“Ahem… No.” Xie Sen spoke quickly, “Let’s hurry up. Our tickets for the 81st floor will expire once eight o’clock arrives.”

Tickets for the 81st floor auction were for the door only. After they were purchased, a person’s personal bracelet would open access to the 81st floor from the initial entry to the auction until the official start, but once that time had passed, the access would disappear. The four of them entered the venue thirty seconds before the start of the auction. The venue wasn’t too crowded. 

Xie Sen didn’t want to attract attention, so he immediately sat near the door, but Bai Jiao pulled on him, “Our position is in front. The tickets correspond to the numbers of the seats, so these empty seats are occupied. This isn’t that same as remote bidding.”

Xie Sen realized that it was no wonder there were so few people at the venue. However there was an advantage to having fewer people, since he hadn’t come here for the auction. After he came to the 81st floor, it was clear to him that he was very close to Little Silver.

He had tried to communicate with Little Silver in the guest room before and failed. After taking his seat, he didn’t bother to listen to the auction host. The first thing he did was call out to Little Silver in his mind, “Little Silver, are you there? Can you hear me?”

“Oooooh, I thought you were gone! When will you come to save me, ah? They have been prying at my mouth, and changed to a lot of strange things. So scary!” Little Silver was still crying, his voice soft and pitiful.

Xie Sen breathed in a sigh of relief. It seemed that the failure to connect before was because the distance between the guest room and Little Silver was too far. He’d been worried that Little Silver had an accident!

When he heard Little Silver’s words, he hurriedly asked, “Are you all right?”

“I didn’t open my mouth, and my shell wasn’t broken, but I’m so scared. I heard them say that they’re going to change something very powerful to drill my shell. It’s so scary! Oooooooo…”

Xie Sen could imagine what the scene was like when he heard its description. The Phantom of the Sea people must have wanted to take the pearl out, but with the energy in place, they couldn’t do anything to Little Silver’s shell.

He thought that even if he instantly turned into adamantine iron bone, someone cutting him with a sharp weapon would definitely be scary, even if it didn’t hurt. He hurriedly reassured Little Silver, “I am trying to save you. Since you can understand human speech, do you know which floor you are on?”

“I do know. The eighty-second floor,” Little Silver choked out. “They say the eighty-second floor is full of big treasures. There are two big boxes of bars near me, with two big monsters inside that keep drooling at me. They want to eat me! I don’t even dare to talk. Oooooooo… They don’t look like treasures at all!”

Xie Sen was shocked. Could they be some kind of beast?

Little Silver cried out in panic, “Oooooooooo… The big flat monster is telling the fat monster that I’m delicious again. Woo, woo, woo. I’m not good at all!”

Xie Sen froze. “You can understand them?”

“Well, I can…eh?” Little Silver was stunned. “Oh. I couldn’t understand it before. I saw this big flat monster not long ago, and I couldn’t understand it!”

Xie Sen couldn’t help but speculate. Could it be that the monster Little Silver was talking about was a contract beast? The contract beasts could communicate with each other, but not with beasts. Although Little Silver wasn’t a contract beast, it was affected by the energy, so it’s IQ had increased a lot.

He asked, “Have you ever spoken to them?”

“I don’t dare…” Little Silver whispered.

Xie Sen said, “Try to communicate with them. If they know you can talk to them, they won’t want to eat you.”

“Really? Then I’ll try.”

Xie Sen’s mind went silent for a moment, and before long Little Silver said, “Great! They’re not drooling on me.”

Xie Sen thought about it, and had it ask why the two were captured. Little Silver did so, then replied, “They said they were contract beasts. The humans wanted to improve their combat power by bonding with them, but didn’t have the ability to make them submit, so they used this despicable tactic.”

Sure enough, they were contract beasts!