Chapter 21: Damn it, I really owe you! Not planning to walk in…
The introducer was a woman of about thirty or forty, with a figure that was slightly plump and well-to-do. She wore a purple qipao with a slanted placket, embroidered with violet flower patterns along the collar and hem.
However, the most eye-catching things were the yajin—a lapel pendant—hanging from the second coil button on her chest, and the pair of bangles on her wrist.
The natural violet jadeite bangles and the butterfly-shaped lapel pendant not only complemented her outfit for the day but also displayed the introducer’s extraordinary wealth and taste.
At the very first glance, Le Can couldn’t help but sigh inwardly; the saying “purple denotes nobility” really hit the nail on the head.
However, if this wealthy lady could restrain her gossipy little glances just a bit, he would certainly be even happier.
As they walked closer, that scorching gaze had already swept back and forth over Le Can several times. The area receiving the most attention was where he and Xi Yun were still in contact—their linked arms.
Le Can wanted to retract his paw a little.
The introducer seemed to know Xi Yun; her tone carried the intimacy and teasing banter that only acquaintances share.
“Little Yun, I didn’t expect a kid like you, who usually does big things in silence, to keep the matter of finding a partner so tightly under wraps too.”
Xi Yun lowered his eyes to look at the hand shifting sneakily on his arm. When he raised his eyes again, his face wore the polite, faint smile suitable for a junior:
“Aunt Tan, you’re joking. This is Le Can.”
He paused for a moment, then added, “My fiancé.”
Tan Man was genuinely surprised this time.
When she spoke earlier, there was indeed a hint of probing in her words. She hadn’t expected Xi Yun to confirm it so decisively.
Tan Man looked earnestly at the young man standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Xi Yun.
Le Can, with only half a palm resting on the male lead: “…”
He quickly squeezed out a decent smile, then, with lightning speed, grabbed Xi Yun’s hand, interlacing their ten fingers.
Witnessing the sticky sweetness of a couple in the heat of passion, Tan Man couldn’t help but let out a laugh.
Before long, the laughter faded. Those brows and eyes, still gentle and beautiful after being washed by time, took on a trace of nostalgia. “You found a good partner, truly good.”
“Knowing someone protects you… if Furou knew, she could rest assured…”
Nian Furou, Xi Yun’s biological mother, had passed away years ago.
She was Old Master Nian’s only daughter. After these two passed away one after another, there were no blood relatives left in this world who genuinely cared for Xi Yun…
The moment he heard the mother’s name, Le Can felt Xi Yun’s hand, held within his own palm, suddenly tighten, then slowly relax.
Adjusting his smiling expression to one of shyness, Le Can also avoided Tan Man’s gaze, which was filled with gratified affection.
A partner is indeed the most intimate relationship in this world, aside from family. But Tan Man was wrong; she, and everyone around Xi Yun, had it wrong.
From the very beginning,
The status of fiancés was fake.
Even as a transmigrator, Le Can understood one thing better than anyone else in this world—from the lowest valley to the pinnacle of the world, there was never another figure by Xi Yun’s side.
This “person” didn’t just refer to a partner.
Even Yuan Cheng, who grew up with him, or Xie Jun, who was now pitting her grandfather for him—these two sole friends would eventually drift apart from Xi Yun.
One became disabled and lived in seclusion among the mountains; the other lost her spirit and supported the Xie family alone…
Perhaps later, new people would follow behind Xi Yun, but Le Can and all the readers knew it wasn’t the same.
If he were just outside the book, watching the protagonist sit at the pinnacle of power, lonely at the top, without suffering persecution from the scum men, Le Can might have been like everyone else, writing a thousand-word essay denouncing the author for being inhumane.
But by a twist of fate, he had entered the book and become familiar with Xi Yun, Yuan Cheng, and Xie Jun.
Everything in the book’s world was so vivid that Le Can couldn’t help but be drawn in. Moreover, having the capacity to act, he couldn’t just stand by and watch forever.
Fine… since he couldn’t fulfill Aunt Tan and the male lead’s mother’s wish to accompany the male lead to the end, he would return two physically and mentally healthy companions to him…
Le Can slowly turned his head.
Gazing at Xi Yun’s superior profile, he sighed silently in his heart.
Showing weakness when in decline, hitting bottom and rebounding when the enemy’s guard is lowest—this was something he had learned from Xi Yun.
Consider it repayment for the support you gave me during my most wretched days…
Damn it, I really owe you!
The only crappy part was that he, a transmigrator in name only, merely knew the plot of the original one hundred thousand words.
The information beyond those hundred thousand words came from what Little Wu in the office had casually howled about while Le Can was being suppressed by the scumbags.
After all, the author wasn’t human.
It was normal for readers to have a lot of resentment.
Although the information Little Wu howled was crucial, the even more critical cause and effect were completely missing!
Another day of wanting to dig up the corpses of Lu Zhangping and Dan Man to whip them.
The consequence of having too many distracting thoughts was that Le Can didn’t realize what he had done until he had been dragged by the hand by Xi Yun all the way into the seller’s territory.
Facing acquaintances whose eyes were either ambiguous or filled with deep meaning, he withdrew his hand from Xi Yun’s palm with bitterness in his heart, casually taking the item the other party handed over.
—A strong light flashlight.
An essential tool for stone gambling; everyone entering the venue had one. Although Le Can knew nothing about stone gambling, he had frantically crammed some knowledge points.
The palm-sized flashlight could switch between three different colors of light. Le Can tried them all one by one: white light, yellow light, and purple light.
The layman expressed a bit of panic.
He was familiar with the purple light; it was commonly used for gem identification. When setting gems, the purple light could also make the whole process clearer.
But how to use the purple light here, and the remaining white and yellow lights?
It’s over. During his cram session, he had focused entirely on the jadeite itself and paid zero attention to the small tool light!
Although Le Can vowed to follow behind Xi Yun and pick up scraps, applying the crammed knowledge points to practice could only be described as “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
Not to mention the knowledge that hadn’t even entered his brain!
Seeming to notice Le Can’s embarrassment, Yuan Cheng, who wasn’t proficient in stone gambling but knew a bit about flashlights, enthusiastically prepared to step forward.
But before he could take a step, a hand grabbed his collar, practically lifting Yuan Cheng into the air and tossing him to the side.
Before the puppy-eyed young man could glare at Yin Wuyu, who had committed the “atrocity,” Xie Jun pounced and gagged him.
The master and servant combined forces to tie up the biggest “third wheel,” quickly following behind the smiling Tan Man to greet the host.
Xi Yun glanced at the backs of Xie Jun and the others, turning slightly sideways toward Le Can, whose face wore a tangled expression.
“White light is for looking at finished jadeite products, yellow light is for looking at raw stones and semi-finished goods, and purple light can detect Grade B jadeite.”
The private venue they came to this time was introduced by an acquaintance, so reliability was almost guaranteed. Moreover, most of the items displayed in the venue were raw jadeite stones, so the only light really needed was the second gear, the yellow light.
Le Can was also very smart.
With one brief sentence, the young man, whose eyes trailed with worry, relaxed his beautiful brows. He clicked the yellow light on and off a couple of times, blinking silently at the man to express his gratitude.
Xi Yun, whose mood had been cast with a haze after his deceased relatives were mentioned, felt as if a trickling stream had suddenly been injected into his heart.
Although the stream was small, it was extremely cool and refreshing; the mist it raised when crashing into his heart was enough to wash away all the gloom.
Looking at Le Can, he inexplicably recalled Tan Man’s earlier words. Protecting, huh…
Le Can: ?
Having figured out how to use the tools, the next step was to look at the raw stones.
Le Can was no stranger to finished jadeite products; high-end, mid-range, low-end, no matter which kind, they were at least displayed in glass cabinets.
But what he hadn’t expected was that the display of raw jadeite stones could be so casual!
Even though they were brought out as goods for sale, piles here and there placed directly on the ground, with a handwritten price tag stuck in a pile, looked almost no different from entering a vegetable market.
No! Even the vegetables in the market had the mud removed and were stacked neatly on tables.
Looking at the jadeite raw materials that looked completely like rocks, with only a coded label attached, Le Can held up the strong light flashlight for a long time without seeing anything useful.
Stone gambling, stone gambling; this name really wasn’t chosen in vain, nor was it called that for nothing.
Actually, not everything in this basketball-court-sized venue was these rough-surfaced “full gamble” materials.
Le Can followed behind Xi Yun and looked around, discovering two small areas that were different.
He had just complained that there weren’t even tables here, and the jadeite in these two places occupied the only two square tables in the venue.
Similarly, these two places were surrounded by the most people.
Honestly, this boss had quite a few “VIP” users getting a sneak peek. Looking around, there were about seven or eight groups of people, big and small, totaling nearly fifty people.
His previous guess about the unscrupulous merchant wasn’t roasting the wrong person.
Of these two tables, the one with the most people displayed “fully exposed materials” (Ming Liao) that were also strangely shaped but had the stone skin completely removed.
Colorful jadeite raw stones, mostly green, occasionally interspersed with other colors. Le Can took one look at the price and was scared back.
With just the ten million he had knocked out of his cheap uncle, he didn’t know if he could buy back a hand’s worth of numbers there.
Probably not.
Fully exposed materials had the lowest risk and similarly suppressed profits to the lowest; Le Can knew very well that wasn’t Xi Yun’s choice.
The other area was the zone for “semi-exposed materials” (Ban Ming Liao).
Semi-exposed materials, as the name suggests, are raw stones where a part of the interior jadeite is visible. Usually, a small window is opened, or a whole slice is cut off.
Don’t assume what you see is what you get. Sometimes, not only do eyes deceive, but these semi-exposed materials can also deceive people to death without paying for their lives. “One cut poor, one cut rich, one cut wear sackcloth”—that’s exactly how it comes about.
The jadeite in this area had undergone preliminary screening. Safer than full gambling, cheaper than fully exposed, it was the choice of most conservatives.
In the early stages, Xi Yun’s X-ray vision was limited. Originally, this should have been his best choice, but playing it safe had never been the male lead’s first option.
Le Can let out a faint sigh.
He was just wondering why Yuan Cheng asked them to bring the wheelchair from home when they went out.
So, Xi Yun didn’t intend to walk in here today and walk out…
However, with that fleeting glance just now, Le Can spotted a football-sized Ice Species Blue Water jadeite in the fully exposed material area that was attracting the most attention. Certain plot points that had almost been completely forgotten suddenly jumped into his mind.
He secretly glanced at Xi Yun, who was seriously examining the raw materials, and stealthily huddled closer to him.
The plot was right before his eyes.
The money-making opportunity he was waiting for wasn’t far off either.
If he remembered correctly, Xi Yun’s ability was also about to welcome its first upgrade…
Wheelchair, upgrade, squeeze hard.
A line suddenly connected in Le Can’s mind. He gasped as if electrified.
The young man, like a headless fly, abruptly looked down and scanned around—big ones, small ones, long ones, flat ones…
Until he met a round-ish square raw stone. Le Can quickly picked it up, weighed it in his hands, and patted it twice like a watermelon to listen to the sound.
Confirming it was the stone he had fallen in love with at first sight, the youth with peach-blossom eyes beamed as he held the stone and came to Xi Yun’s side.
“Do you think it’s good if I buy this piece?”
That’s right, he wasn’t here to squeeze Xi Yun, but to contribute bricks and tiles to his ability upgrade!
“Tch—”
Unexpectedly, before Xi Yun could speak, a contemptuous sneer came from behind the two of them.
“These days, can any ghosts and snakes come to gamble stones?”
Le·Ghost and Snake·Can: ?!
As someone who swore upon rebirth never to suffer a loss again, he immediately retorted with a longer sentence:
“Hubby, these days, can any random screwball bark a couple of times in public?”
It felt good to clap back.
But after clapping back, Le Can froze in tragic joy.
It’s over! The “Hubby” that was originally brewing in his heart, prepared as a secret weapon to grind Xi Yun into looking at the stone, slipped out of his mouth before passing through his brain!
Recommended Reads
