Chapter 90: A Human Warmth

“Fifteen thousand. Does anyone wish to raise the bid?”

The female auctioneer asked a second time.

At that moment, Zhang Pu muttered to himself, looking up at her on the stage: Go on, cry then! One tear, and if it drops a few golden eggs, I’ll raise the bid for you!

At last, the auctioneer showed a trace of disappointment. If no one answered this next time, she would have no choice but to bring down that tiny hammer with all the reluctance in the world.

And in that instant, she even felt a little resentment, cursing the people below the stage. For the steel rod her auction house had been so optimistic about, she had never expected its final fate to be even worse than the first lot, the poor young man’s “Beautiful Town.”

That impoverished art student’s “Beautiful Town” had at least the devoted support of the poor youth’s female admirers and that patriotic overseas Chinese elder. But what about this steel rod?

Good heavens, where are your fans? Do I really have to leap off this high auction platform and find them myself? Honestly! You people below the stage, stop being so aloof and hurry up and make a generous move, would you? Because I want the money in your pockets!

At that moment, the auctioneer had a thousand words, a thousand sentiments in her heart, but by the time they reached her lips, they seemed to have become a volcano forever denied eruption.

She could not possibly stand there on the auction stage and cry out to the dark mass below in such passionate, stirring tones. She, too, needed to be reserved, and the auction house had to maintain at least a shred of dignity. They could not be so nakedly shameless!

The auctioneer was truly at her wits’ end, but at the very last instant, just as she was about to bring down the little hammer, a voice suddenly rang out:

“I offer fifteen thousand five hundred!”

Though it was only a miserly raise of five hundred, to the auctioneer, who had already felt herself sinking into endless darkness, it was the most beautiful ray of dawn.

She, along with everyone else, saw a blond young man stand up.

He seemed to be the kind who liked to show off his style and coolness, deliberately dyeing the black hair of a proper Hua person into the fashionable blond of the foreign devils.

And for the auctioneer at that moment, even his freckled face looked like the most handsome face in the world.

“Oh! Handsome man, let me marry you! I’ll be your bride tonight!”

So thrilled was the auctioneer that she was only a hair’s breadth away from crying this shamelessly out loud before the whole crowd, to express her boundless gratitude to the blond youth.

Even if this was only the most insignificant beginning, since there was now this one small step, the auctioneer, with her rich experience, could stubbornly believe that someone would definitely follow that blond youth’s lead next. She was willing to wait.

And indeed, after the blond youth made his offer, and after another long while with no one else bidding, Zhang Pu finally called out, “Sixteen thousand.”

Of course Zhang Pu could not stand by and watch this steel rod fall into someone else’s hands.

As for the auctioneer, she had already switched from her impulsive admiration for the blond youth to Zhang Pu in an instant—ah, how unexpected, this young man is even more handsome!

At that moment, it seemed as though she were shouting with a bloodthirsty maw wide open.

Zhang Pu naturally ignored her exaggerated reaction. Focusing carefully on the blond youth, he sensed a faint hostility in the other man.

Now what was that about? We’ve never met, so why be hostile toward me?

“Twenty thousand!”

No sooner had Zhang Pu thought that than the blond youth raised the bid again, and not by a little, but by several thousand all at once, causing some in the hall to feel inwardly incredulous.

This guy...

Suddenly, Zhang Pu unleashed a minor mind-reading spell he had brought from the cultivation world, a spell he had not yet fully mastered—

He had originally worried that the blond youth might be a fellow connoisseur, and if so, he would be troublesome indeed.

But after the spell was cast, a helpless look also surfaced on Zhang Pu’s face: so this guy was simply acting on youthful impulse after all! Overheated with emotion, he had actually fallen for the sultry and highly provocative auctioneer on the stage.

For a young man, that sort of thing was quite normal. Zhang Pu had seen enough of the world to understand it.

Just look at that auctioneer’s flirtatious allure—who knew how many beastly men below the stage had secretly been stirred into filthy fantasies by her?

Only this blond youth, dressed like some hipster, had finally turned those feelings into actual action, wanting to compete for this steel rod that was about to wound the auctioneer’s heart. He had not expected to bring trouble upon Zhang Pu instead.

You go after your beauty, and I’m the one who has to pay for it! By the end of that thought, Zhang Pu was almost tempted to punch this freckled youth in the face.

But now, if he wanted to obtain the steel rod, he could only do so by bidding. What else could he do? And in front of this crowd, he certainly could not use force against the blond youth.

Should he learn from the purple-clad girl who had purchased the first lot, “Beautiful Town,” and send a note to that hotheaded youth? Or should he simply have Liu Yingde take men to warn him?

Of course, Zhang Pu still did not know that the purple-clad girl’s earlier measures against the elderly overseas Chinese were not a warning, but rather...

Next, when Zhang Pu raised the bid to thirty thousand, that blond youth was still matching him.

The auctioneer, deliberately posing on the stage with all the allure she could muster, watched the two young men bidding as though they were both fallen beneath her pomegranate skirt. Naturally, there were also people in the auction hall secretly cursing the pair as lovesick fools.

Zhang Pu seemed to hear a word or two of those distant insults, but inwardly he only cursed them back as fools with no taste! He truly could not bear to think that if this steel rod were later transformed by his hands into something even more formidable than Sun Wukong’s Golden-Hooped Rod, then just how bitterly those people would cry.

Liu Yingde, too, felt somewhat helpless watching Zhang Pu compete over this thing that looked like an ordinary wooden staff, because he was also one of the people who could not see its worth.

But Zhang Pu was so determined that Liu Yingde knew there must be some reason for it. And because he knew Zhang Pu was an extraordinary expert, he did not dare ask recklessly.

As for the idea that Zhang Pu had taken a fancy to the alluring auctioneer onstage, he found that hard to believe as well. The woman was beautiful, yes, but in Zhang Pu’s eyes she seemed rather old. More to the point, Zhang Pu was a true master; no matter what, that self-important woman was not worthy of him.

But when the two bidders, like fools, drove the price of this apparently ordinary object up to fifty thousand, Liu Yingde finally could no longer bear to watch and could not sit still any longer.