Players came swarming toward the July Chamber’s auction floor, and the doorway was jammed solid in no time at all. The receptionist, all smiles, said in her professional voice, “Welcome, everyone. As the time is now past nine o’clock, admission to the auction has risen to 5,000 gold. Please buy your tickets and go in.”

Tickets that nobody had been willing to buy at 200 gold were now snapped up by one unbroken wave of players after another without a moment’s hesitation. In a tearing hurry, you could say — 5,000 gold produced and handed over on the spot. Because every second lost meant a little more chance that those top-grade pieces would be bought by somebody else.

The thinly scattered auction floor began to flash with white light again and again, great swathes of players appearing inside it and then staring, worked up, at the Gold-Patterned Robe on the big screen, still unsold. Ye Tianxie shook his head with a sigh… at 200 gold a ticket they wouldn’t spare it a glance, and now at 5,000 they were fighting to get in. What was there to say about people like that.

“What! The July Chamber is auctioning Gold equipment!?”

A pact boss sitting in the front row at the Shroud-the-Sky No. 1 Chamber took a call and shouted it out with no regard at all for where he was, then swore into his communicator: “Why the fuck didn’t you say so sooner!”

With that, white light flashed where he had been sitting, and the man was simply gone from the auction floor.

More and more talk rose across the Wings That Shroud the Sky auction hall, and what it was about needs no guessing. The noise very nearly drowned out the host, who was left thoroughly embarrassed and had to grit her teeth and carry on.

Word that the July Chamber was auctioning Gold equipment — and that everything still to come looked likely to be Gold as well — tore through the Wings That Shroud the Sky auction at an absurd speed, as though some mysterious power were quietly pushing it along from behind. Before long a strangely awkward situation took shape on their auction floor: people began leaving that packed hall without a break. And they left extraordinarily fast. In no more than a few dozen seconds well over half were already gone, and even the ones who stayed out of deference to the power and the face of Wings That Shroud the Sky were shifting in their seats and glancing about…

They had come to win a top-grade piece that would raise their strength, their standing and their capital. Wings That Shroud the Sky had shown their hand long ago, and shown it off as a boast — two Level 15 Silver pieces — and the overwhelming majority had come for those two. But at the other auction what was going under the hammer was Gold equipment, while here they were fighting over two Silver pieces that had gone dull and lightless by comparison. How could they possibly sit still?

The two auction floors showed the same sharp contrast they had at the start; only the direction had completely reversed. The July Chamber had players pouring in without pause, filling those empty seats at a furious rate, while in the Shroud-the-Sky No. 1 Chamber’s auction hall, under a host whose face went red and then white by turns, the crowd thinned, and thinned again… from full to half, then to a quarter… then to an eighth…

The Son of Heaven’s face was iron-grey, both hands clenched tight as he paced restlessly backstage. Then he brought a fist down hard on the table. “How can the July Chamber possibly have Gold equipment! How is that possible! The drop rate for Gold equipment off low-level monsters is minuscule — the whole of Wings That Shroud the Sky has never had a single one drop. Where did they get it!”

He should have seen it long before. Without capital dazzling enough behind her, why would Liu Qiyue have made a gesture that large, moved the way she had, taken decisions that astonished everyone? And now the answer had been laid bare in a form he could not accept. Before the auction began he had won outright. After it began he lost outright, in an instant.

He could only blame himself for being too confident in everything he had, and for failing to get to the bottom of the July Chamber’s real strength and its real hand. Know yourself and know your enemy, and you need not fear the outcome of a hundred battles. He knew himself. He did not know his enemy.

And the effect of Liu Qiyue’s astonishing decisions, one after another, was frightening. The ticket price had jumped straight to 5,000 gold, and the flow of buyers was so heavy it looked ready to break the July Chamber’s threshold down. Because the July Chamber had deliberately put out that region-wide announcement beforehand, nobody had the smallest grounds for complaint; they could only blame their own poor judgment for not moving earlier. So never mind what the auction’s outcome turned out to be — the ticket revenue alone was going to be an astronomical figure.

“Young Master, what do we do now? If we don’t pull this back… our chamber will never be able to raise its head in front of the July Chamber again.” The masked man in archer’s dress said it from behind him. Nobody could have foreseen the situation they were in.

“Come on. To the July Chamber’s auction floor, right now.” The Son of Heaven turned.

The masked man stopped him at once. “Young Master, better not. Our own auction is still running. If you turn up on the floor of the very chamber we are up against, how will people take it?”

Shadows moved across the Son of Heaven’s face. He bitterly regretted the decision he had made today in a moment of muddled thinking, so pleased with his own cleverness at the time. Thinking back to his sister’s warning, he suddenly felt that in front of Liu Qiyue he really was nothing but a child who had not finished growing. His decision had not brought him the effect he wanted. Instead Liu Qiyue had turned it around and used it, made it one more step in the staircase lifting the July Chamber’s name and the shock it delivered.

“Send people into the July Chamber’s auction at once. If there is Gold equipment for a Warrior, buy it back for me at any cost!”

The masked man: “……”

The Son of Heaven wanted to get onto the July Chamber’s auction floor not to scout the situation, but because… not even he could hold out against the lure of Gold equipment.

The July Chamber’s auction floor…

“Nine hundred thousand!”

A man in a Bronze magic robe, tiger-backed and bear-waisted, with a fierce air to him, stood and called out a price that made the players outside suck in cold breaths. Having called it, he swept a hard, tiger-eyed look around him, with every air of a man ready to charge out and fight three hundred rounds with anyone who dared contest it.

The Gold-Patterned Robe was a Level 15 Gold piece. Fifteen was not far from twenty; with a little effort, perhaps ten days or so would cover the gap. And a Gold piece for what was only a way station was going for a price like this.

An ordinary person simply could not understand why they would pay a sky-high price like that for one piece of equipment in a virtual world — equipment that would not stay useful very long.

The world of the rich is not one the poor understand until they become rich themselves. When money is only a number to a man, what he wants most is the glory of standing at the summit, the pleasure of treading on other people, and the outward ornament that sets off his own worth as far as it can be set off. For those, he will throw ten thousand gold without hesitating. Gold equipment’s powerful attributes set a man’s heart pounding wildly, and its rarity drives him mad enough to lose his reason.

“Three million!” A flat voice came quietly out of a corner at the back of the auction floor.

Haaa!!

Everyone on the auction floor turned toward the source of the voice, and a few players who had only just come bustling in were knocked witless on the spot by the price. Outside, an uproar went up like thunder.

Th… three million!?

Had they heard wrong, or had the man shouted the wrong number in a moment of excitement?

The man who had named the price lowered his paddle slowly. Facing the stares of countless people, his expression stayed as flat as ever, his eyes lowered, not sparing anyone a glance.

He had hidden his own information, but that face, indifferent and cold, was one people would remember. Ye Tianxie, looking at him too, took his information in with the Eye of the Evil Dragon — and at the same time saw a strange kind of gloom in those lowered eyes.

This man’s name — Cang Chen!

The man who had once surprised Ye Tianxie by breaking into the top ten of the level ranking as a Summoner. And, in Zuo Pojun’s words, the eldest son of the Cang family — the esper family among the Three Forbidden Grounds — whose real name was Cang Chen.

Zuo Pojun leaned his head over. “Second Brother, that man…”

“I know who he is,” Ye Tianxie answered, and fixed the face in his mind. This was no simple figure. And beyond that… what lay hidden deep in Cang Chen’s eyes, and the dangerous air coming off the man, both told Ye Tianxie the same thing. This was not a good man.

“This friend has bid three million. Frankly, that price is well past what I expected. So — is there any friend willing to bid higher? Three million, going once…”

There was plain excitement in September’s voice now. Watching the crowd still pouring in, close to filling a hall that could hold twenty thousand and more, she was entirely certain: after today the name of the July Chamber would truly ring across Huaxia — and this time, not because of Liu Qiyue.

Going straight from nine hundred thousand to three million was something only a man who genuinely treated money as no object would dare do, and the way he had called it made his determination to have it perfectly plain. For the moment nobody else put in a bid. By the July Chamber’s own account there was a good deal more than one piece of Gold equipment; since this one had been marked, why not save their money for the piece that suited them.

“Three million, going twice…”

“Three million, third and final call…”

The gold gavel came down, and that one stroke settled it. September said with a smile, “Congratulations, sir. The ‘Gold-Patterned Robe’ is yours!”

As her voice fell, the Gold-Patterned Robe laid out on the auction stand faded slowly away and was teleported straight into Cang Chen’s pack; at the same moment, three million gold in auction money was drawn automatically off Cang Chen’s funds card and passed to the July Chamber.

At an auction in the World of Fate, the moment the hammer settled it was the moment the trade completed. And a player bidding at an auction could not call out a price above the gold he actually held. That is to say, if he had ten million gold on him he could call out any figure below ten million he liked; if he had only 100 gold, he could not so much as get out 101.

The trade done, Cang Chen did not so much as move an eyebrow.

And by now, in the time it took to sell a single piece of equipment, the July Chamber’s auction had gone from cold and deserted to not a seat left empty… not one empty seat anywhere.

(End of Chapter 227)