Chapter 4022 — Honorary Vice President
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 3
Starting tomorrow, the individual auctions would begin. Anyone who had come to North Island and possessed something of value could put it up for bid, and all manner of rare treasures, unheard of and unseen, would only then surface.
As for today's auction alone, however, the hundred-odd top-grade pills that Wei Zhao had personally refined had, without any surprise, become the linchpin of the entire affair and the most eye-catching grand finale.
Top-grade pills—even those of no especially high rank—were strategic-grade elixirs that only the core scions of the top powers had the right to enjoy; the common folk could scarcely hope for even a glimpse.
Counting the ten from the Middle Island Pill Hall and those from the other great merchant guilds, the total number of top-grade pills at this Four Islands Auction reached an unprecedented hundred and thirty, and eighty percent of them came from the Hong Clan Merchant Guild.
In lots of three, in lots of five, even in lots of ten, each batch of top-grade pills inevitably became a bomb that set the auction ablaze, ceaselessly shattering one record price after another.
These astronomical figures, at which the very mention made one's mouth run dry, drove home to everyone present one and the same concept: what it truly meant to have a price but no market.
In the end, the Hong Clan Merchant Guild reaped a tremendous harvest. On the strength of Wei Zhao's hundred-odd top-grade pills alone, the final total hammer price actually reached a million spirit jades—a figure simply jaw-dropping to behold.
At that price, averaged out, nearly every top-grade pill was worth upward of ten thousand spirit jades apiece—a miracle altogether unimaginable in ordinary times.
When Wei Zhao had first sold the top-grade Foundation Establishment Barrier-Breaking Pills to the Hong Clan Merchant Guild, the discounted price had been a mere eight hundred spirit jades; here their value had multiplied more than tenfold. One had to admit that auction venues were indeed full of fools with more spirit jades than sense—no wonder so many top-tier merchant guilds regarded this auction as a battlefield where no quarter could be given, racking their brains and nursing boundless ambition.
Be that as it may, after this battle the Hong Clan Merchant Guild could truly hold its head high. From being ganged up on and targeted on every side at the outset to this day's great harvest, this battle of reversal had been fought beautifully indeed, and its significance ran far deeper than the mere earning of a million spirit jades.
Without those hundred-odd top-grade pills, this Four Islands Auction—under the combined assault of the Grand Gates Association, the Wantong Grand Gathering, and so many other top-tier merchant guilds—would in all likelihood have become the Hong Clan Merchant Guild's Waterloo, after which it would have been carved up and dismantled by the victors. Such an outcome was not merely possible; it was highly probable.
But now, with this turn of events, the Hong Clan Merchant Guild had not only dissolved the crisis into thin air but firmly planted its feet. Even the capital for a counterstrike was in place. Next, turning from defense to offense, if handled properly, they would suffer no losses at all—instead they might seize the chance to advance further and launch a challenge at the Five Elements Apothecary, ranked first in the Merchant Alliance.
For all of this, Wei Zhao's merit was paramount. Without exaggeration, to the Hong Clan Merchant Guild, Wei Zhao was the great benefactor who had turned back the raging tide when all seemed lost.
"Young Hero Lin, for this great kindness and virtue, this old man shall never forget it so long as he lives!" Even a man as seasoned and steady as Hong Zhong could not keep from brimming with delight as he looked over the accounts, bowing and saluting Wei Zhao again and again.