Chapter 2504 — Bringing Surprise
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
So Wei Zhao decided to wait until no one was around before returning the items to Yang Qiqi.
After the four of them finished breakfast, they headed for the auction hall. Not many people entered the venue—only about a hundred or so in all. It seemed that many of those who had attended the market earlier had not come to the auction; these people were still keen on the barter trade of setting up stalls.
The items to be auctioned were all listed on the notice board outside the hall. Naturally, some people also gave the auction a miss because nothing on offer suited their tastes.
At that moment, Wei Zhao, Han Xiaohu, and the others were standing beneath the notice board, carefully studying the auction items posted upon it.
This auction, without question, had a vast quantity of pills for sale. Some of them were the ones Wei Zhao had provided; the rest, presumably, were all supplied by the Hidden Right Family. The number was about the same as Wei Zhao's, except that there were a few additional first-grade and second-grade pills with other uses.
Wei Zhao skimmed past the names of these pills, and his gaze finally came to rest on "pure yellow jade." So there really was pure yellow jade up for auction this time—Han Xiaohu's information had not been false! In fact, whenever the Cultivators' Merchant Guild held an auction at a market, they would always let a few rumors slip out beforehand; Han Xiaohu's knowing in advance was no great matter.
Wei Zhao and the others entered the auction hall and found an empty spot to sit down. Han Xiaohu had just been about to sit beside Wei Zhao when she discovered that Yu Xiaoke had already taken the seat on one side of him, while Yang Qiqi was about to sit on the other!
Han Xiaohu gave a wry smile and then sat down beside Yang Qiqi.
At about eight fifty, nearly everyone had arrived. The Heaven Rank vice president whom Wei Zhao had met earlier at the market entrance, together with the pawnshop gentleman, walked onto the stage one after the other.
The Heaven Rank vice president sat down to one side, while the pawnshop gentleman stood upright beside him, picked up the microphone, and addressed the cultivators gathered below: "Welcome, everyone, to the auction held by our Cultivators' Merchant Guild. I am Lu Xiansheng—known in the rivers and lakes as Mr. Lu—and I shall be the auctioneer for today's event."
Clearly, the people below showed no surprise at Lu Xiansheng taking the stage as auctioneer. It was evident that he had presided over all previous auctions. And although this was Wei Zhao's first time attending, he had met the man earlier when consigning his pills, so he found nothing strange about it either.
"Very well, since no one has any objections, let our auction begin!" Lu Xiansheng said. "According to the rules of past years, the first items to be auctioned are the pills from the Hidden Right Family—always a major portion of every auction! Only, today's pills do not come entirely from the Hidden Right Family; another seller has also consigned some pills!"
"Whoa—" The moment Lu Xiansheng's words left his mouth, the whole hall erupted in an uproar. Everyone was shocked. Which sect or family had the strength to supply pills to the Cultivators' Merchant Guild? Could it be the Mystic Pill Sect? But though the Mystic Pill Sect did supply pills to the Guild, what they provided were all high-grade pills, and in scant numbers besides—such goods would never be put up for auction at a low-level market like this; they were all reserved for the larger cultivator auctions.
The low-end pill trade had always been monopolized by the Hidden Right Family. Even when the Mystic Pill Sect refined such low-grade pills, they handed them to the Hidden Right Family to auction on their behalf. As for the other sects and families, no one had ever heard of any that could produce pills in bulk.