Chapter 308: Broken
He spoke miserably, but no one present was willing to fill the pit for him.
It was as if a switch had been flipped: since Lu Jingyao was willing to take over, everyone else agreed as well.
Only an elder spoke in a deep voice, “I have always warned you not to act on your personal whims and make decisions you’ll regret later.”
The young buyer lowered his head in shame when he heard this.
In the end, the elder decisively concluded, “We’ll buy this calligraphy piece.”
The young buyer immediately panicked, “Grandpa, that’s 2.1 billion…”
His grandfather shot him a glare. “If it weren’t for this much money, would you even learn your lesson?”
The conversation between the grandfather and grandson was overheard by many present. Whether it was because of these words or because the treasure had already been auctioned off, the next three auction items were sold smoothly without any commotion.
The fourth auction item was the golden nanmu wood box that Xu Youyou had been eyeing.
To avoid being criticized for “buying the box for the pearl” (valuing the container over the contents), this lot was auctioned together with the items inside the box.
Although golden nanmu wood was valuable, to the people present it wasn’t anything special. Together with a few jade pieces inside, the box was eventually sold for 30 million Hong Kong dollars.
Xu Youyou saw that it was someone arranged by Lu Jingyao who successfully won the bid, and she let out a sigh of relief in her heart.
For the rest of the auction, she watched purely for enjoyment — until the Ru kiln sky-blue glazed washer came up for bidding, and the atmosphere at the venue began to heat up.
Clearly, many people were interested in this treasure. The middle-aged man who had previously tried to get a free appraisal from Xu Youyou was now bidding persistently, raising his paddle several times and refusing to back down.
And the person he was competing against wasn’t just anyone — it happened to be Gu Fengchuan.
After several rounds of bidding, Gu Fengchuan started to hesitate.
“Brother, isn’t it a bit inappropriate for us to snatch something Xu Youyou wants? Maybe we should just give up,” Gu Xueying said softly.
She always knew exactly how to provoke Gu Fengchuan.
Sure enough, hearing his sister say this made Gu Fengchuan raise the bid again.
“In the past year or so, our family has been doing poorly, all because of Xu Youyou. If it weren’t for her meddling, Star Diamond wouldn’t have collapsed, and Lu Jingyao and Xie Ran wouldn’t be suppressing us like this. We absolutely can’t let her get her way this time. Don’t feel guilty, we were planning to buy a fine porcelain piece to gift to the Dragon King anyway,” Gu Fengchuan said.
Gu Xueying agreed with a worried look on her face. She looked up and happened to see Xu Youyou, sitting in the front row, whispering something into Lu Jingyao’s ear.
The next moment, Lu Jingyao looked toward the middle-aged man who had been bidding against them.
At the same time, the middle-aged man called out a new price.
Watching the back-and-forth between the two sides, Gu Xueying became even more convinced that the Ru kiln porcelain was what Xu Youyou truly wanted, and that the unfamiliar middle-aged man was Xu Youyou’s planted bidder.
As the two kept bidding, the price for the Ru kiln washer quickly soared to 500 million Hong Kong dollars.
Xu Youyou had only leaned in to ask Lu Jingyao whether he recognized the middle-aged man.
Lu Jingyao, with his excellent memory, said, “That’s President Wang, a real estate businessman from the capital. Years ago, his company had a lot of labor disputes and was considered a risky business. People haven’t been willing to work with him in recent years.”
Xu Youyou recalled President Wang’s business style and found it indeed quite unpleasant.
Normally, Xu Youyou would have enjoyed bidding to drive up the price, but after what had just happened with the Lanting Xu piece, she was worried she might end up the one stuck with the item — and she didn’t actually want the Ru kiln washer.
She didn’t realize, though, that her not bidding was misinterpreted by Gu Xueying.
Xu Youyou even commented to Lu Jingyao, “The Gu family really does love porcelain. Every time we meet them at an auction, they’re desperately buying porcelain.”
In her past life, when the Gu family attended top-tier auctions, they never brought Xu Youyou along. With her marginalized position in the Gu family, she had no way of knowing what treasures they bought, so she couldn’t tell if they were this obsessed with porcelain back then too.
Eventually, the Ru kiln sky-blue glazed washer sold for 780 million Hong Kong dollars, and the buyer was Gu Fengchuan.
Even after winning the bid, Gu Fengchuan felt a little unreal. He muttered to Gu Xueying, “Xu Youyou has plenty of money — why didn’t she keep bidding?”
He refused to admit he had been tricked into taking the fall.
Gu Xueying quickly replied, “Having money doesn’t mean she’s willing to spend it recklessly. A child who grew up in an orphanage is bound to act cautiously. Or maybe she wanted to maintain a good image in front of Lu Jingyao.”
Gu Fengchuan didn’t say anything further.
Until the end of the auction, Xu Youyou and Lu Jingyao didn’t place any more bids. They looked like they were just there to enjoy the show.
Later, when they went to pay and collect their auctioned items, the Gu siblings bumped into Xu Youyou and Lu Jingyao again.
Xu Youyou casually said, “Big spender. Most people wouldn’t be willing to spend so much on a sky-blue glazed washer.”
Hearing this, Gu Fengchuan’s face immediately turned ugly.
“You deliberately had someone bid against me?” Gu Fengchuan questioned angrily.
Although Xu Youyou felt baffled, she deliberately put on a smug expression and said, “You’re still so easy to fool.”
Hearing her say that, Gu Fengchuan was furious enough to want to eat her alive.
Lu Jingyao quickly stepped between them and said, “Mr. Gu, no one forced you to bid.”
Gu Fengchuan’s face twisted with rage as he glared at them for a few moments before spitting out, “Fine! Very well! Xu Youyou, you’re the one who forced us to become enemies!”
Xu Youyou just wanted to laugh when she heard that. The Gu family had threatened her countless times before, but very few of their threats had ever amounted to anything.
At that moment, someone delivered the golden nanmu wood box to Xu Youyou.
As she received her treasure, the system’s mission completion notification sounded in her ear.
Meanwhile, Gu Fengchuan suffered another blow.
He had paid over 700 million Hong Kong dollars for what was supposed to be a pristine Ru kiln porcelain piece. It looked perfectly fine during the on-site inspection.
But when his car reached the hotel and he carefully took the treasure out — with just one glance — he felt like his whole being shattered.
“Impossible! It was perfectly fine before — how could it be broken now?!”
