Beauty and the Bodyguard

The Pill of Life Extension and Toxin Cleansing was the tenth item to appear in the auction. It didn’t have much information on it like the goatskin map from earlier, resulting in the auctioneer just reading off the description since he didn’t know anything about the item or have any experience with it in an auction.

But the auctioneer added something to his description, something Fatty Lai had requested beforehand. Requests like that from the seller were usually fulfilled as long as it wasn’t too much trouble.

“The next item is a Pill of Life Extension and Toxin Cleansing, one of the three provided by the Miracle Doctor Guan Company! Each pill has a starting price of one million yuan, and will be auctioned in three separate instances.” The auctioneer then paused due to the sudden uproar from the crowd.

Very few had heard of this Pill of Life Extension and Toxin Cleansing before, and it was the first time any of them had heard about the Miracle Doctor Guan Company. What sort of company was that? What sort of pill could this Pill of Life Extension and Toxin Cleansing be?

All of them were invested in their health, people who considered their lives precious. If this pill really was good, there was no way they wouldn’t have known about it. But the fact remained that this item was something they’d never heard of before!

And wasn’t the one million starting price a little too high, especially when it was the price for just one pill? Would anyone make a bid?

No one here lacked money, but no one was willing to take that risk either.

Especially when it was a pill with completely unknown origins. No one would go for it.

The uproar died down, seemingly within the auctioneer’s expectations. Similar things would always happen in the annual auctions, and he wasn’t very surprised as he continued his introduction, “The Pill of Life Extension and Toxin Cleansing is capable of expelling all toxins within the body! As we all know, through consumption of food there will inevitably be unwanted toxins that gather in our bodies. Some may be expelled constantly, but some stay inside. The longer we live, the more these toxins pile up. What this pill achieves is a body cleansing effect that expels all those toxins out of the body, renewing and extending it for a longer life!”

The auctioneer himself didn’t have too much faith in the description. It sounded like something from a wuxia novel! If the description were true, and if the pill actually had such magical properties, then one million wouldn’t be expensive at all!

But was it genuine!

“The Pill of Life Extension and Toxin Cleansing, starting price of one million! Bidding is now open!” The auctioneer was prepared for the item to be left out of the auction. If no one was going to bid for the first one then both the second and third ones wouldn’t have any bidders either, and they’d carry on to the next item.

Due to the last item, an antique vase that had quite a competitive bid for it, the auctioneer didn’t think they’d be able to finish the auction on schedule. He wanted to save time wherever he could.

The Pill of Life Extension and Toxin Cleansing might not have been common knowledge among the participants, but some people were aware of what it was. Liu Tianyi knew about it, as did Miracle Doctor Kang!

The only concern was whether or not it was real. Miracle Doctor Kang was worried that it was the same pill that Xiaobo had provided, something that wasn’t genuine.

“Heh, Miracle Doctor Guan? Isn’t that clearly a rip off of your name, Elder Kang?” Xiao Ji said a little mockingly to Miracle Doctor Kang, who wasn’t sitting far from him. “This must be a scam.”

He’d only just received the invitation, but while his father received a golden one every year, they’d only received the red invitation card this year! It was a three day card, but it was clear that the Xiaos didn’t enjoy the prestige they once did.

But there wasn’t much they could do about it. As enraging as it was for Xiao Ben and Xiao Ji, it was nice enough to actually receive the invitation. What more did they want? It only convinced the two brothers that they needed this alliance with the Kangs to stay relevant and in power as a house!

Miracle Doctor Kang frowned, as if he realized something, but was unsure.

Miracle Doctor Guan… This Miracle Doctor Guan wasn’t Guan Xuemin, was it? He remembered that the person with Xiaobo seemed to have a good relationship with Xuemin. Could the real owner of this pill actually be Xuemin himself?

As Miracle Doctor Kang pondered, a man stood up and made his bid.

“100 million!” Fatty Lai raised his bid board.

“Huh?!” All the participants burst into an uproar, including the auctioneer who stared blankly at Fatty Lai. He’d been an auctioneer for the Yus for almost a decade, and never had he seen a situation like the one before him today!

Nobody would do something like this! It was impossible! Bidding 100 million for an item with a starting price of one million? It was just the first bid!

“Can Mr. 183 please repeat your bid for confirmation? I didn’t quite hear it….” It was an embarrassing thing for the auctioneer to say something like that, but he didn’t care anymore. It was simply too absurd, something that absolutely defied logic. He simply didn’t believe that Fatty Lai would bid 100 million, especially right from the get-go. He was convinced he’d heard it wrong.

But Yu Haitian, who was sitting under the auction stage, frowned slightly as the auctioneer struggled in his confusion.

The Yus might be the hosts, but they did attend the auctions. Haitian was currently sitting with a middle-aged man, and if one looked closely they’d see an earpiece in the man’s ear.

The auctioneer didn’t know, but Haitian knew for a fact that Fatty Lai was the one who’d provided the pill!

Buying the pill he provided himself? Could he be trying to raise the price?

It was a real tactic when auctioning, and people did employ that tactic to raise the price of their item. It created a false sense of competition and was a strategy that the host was aware of as well. In order to prevent something like that from happening the host would always get a cut of the profits, and in the case of the Yus, that cut went as high as twenty percent!

Because of that, even if people wanted to carry out that strategy they’d have to take very high risks. If it were a success then it’d be a win-win: the host would receive a hefty profit, and the seller would get the sum they wanted!

But failure would mean a heavy loss on the seller’s part!

Of course, they could still back out of buying the item after completing the bid, but they would still need to pay a twenty percent fee for compensation!

In other words, there was no escaping the twenty percent, and this resulted in a very small amount of people actually raising the price of the item they were trying to sell.

And what Fatty Lai was doing by throwing out 100 million for the first bid looked like a complete joke!

But as perplexed as Haitian was, he kept his silence and didn’t say anything.