Chapter 140: The Rogue Merchant (Third Update)

  It's updated for the third time now

  It was when Zhao Tiezhu was a child, his family also had such a bone card. At that time, it was always hung around the neck by Zhao Tiezhu's father, no matter what he did, the bone card never left his side. When Zhao Tiezhu was young and curious, he wanted to play with it, but his father, who had always been very accommodating to Zhao Tiezhu's requests, was surprisingly firm on this matter and absolutely refused to let him play with it. For this reason, Zhao Tiezhu even cried several times.

  The two dominoes in front of me are very similar to the one my father had at that time. The dominoes have turned a bit yellow, and it can be seen that these two dominoes have been around for some years.

  Zhao Tiezhu picked up the dominoes, and a chill ran down his hand. He put them in front of his eyes to take a closer look. Zhao Tiezhu found that these two dominoes were not exactly the same. One had a coiled snake carved on it, while the other had a jumping rabbit painted on it.

  "Young man, good eyesight." The old man raised his head, and his eyes were already a mess of confusion. The passage of time had covered the old man's skin with wrinkles, but that ethnic minority costume also gave him an air of mystery.

  "What did you say?" Zhao Tiezhu directly pulled over a wooden chair and sat down beside the old man.

  "These two pieces of bone, I found them when I was young, in a forest. After so many years of carving bones, it's the first time I've come across bones that I've never seen before. These bones aren't human bones, nor are they from any existing animals. I'm guessing they're from some ancient creature." The old man took the bone pieces from Zhao Tiezhu's hand and continued, "Look at the patterns on these bones. Although there's a rabbit drawn on this bone, have you noticed that it's different from today's rabbits?"

  Zhao Tiezhu focused his attention and indeed found a difference, the rabbit's body was longer than that of modern rabbits, but this could also be understood as the artist's poor craftsmanship. Zhao Tiezhu was slightly puzzled again.

  "Just looking at the carving skills of this piece of bone, I've been playing with bone carving for decades, and I have to ask myself if I haven't reached such a state of being immersed in it." The old man's words contained a hint of sighs and admiration.

  Zhao Tiezhu nodded and thought back to the bone tile his father had, he always felt that there must be some connection between these bone tiles, so he asked, "How much does this sell for?"

  "20,000." The old man murmured and said.

  "So expensive?" Zhao Tiezhu furrowed his brow.

  "First of all, the material itself is worth this much money. The ancient animal bones may be even older than the oracle bones, and have not fossilized, yet are still preserved today, which is extremely rare." The old man's face was stern.

  Zhao Tiezhu played with the bones in his hand, and it seemed like there was a voice in his heart that kept telling him to buy them, to buy them. Zhao Tiezhu steeled himself, thinking that 20,000 yuan wasn't much, just two blocks of 40,000 yuan, what's the big deal? He's a rich man, would he care about such a small amount of money? Zhao Tiezhu took out his bank card and was about to withdraw the cash.

  "We can swipe cards here." The old man suddenly smiled and pulled out a card reader.

  Zhao Tiezhu looked at the card machine, then at the old man's smiling face. Suddenly, he felt that the old man seemed to be sneering, but when he took a closer look, the old man's eyes were full of confusion.

  Zhao Tiezhu didn't think much and directly swiped his card, entered the password, put the two bone tiles into his pocket, and left the store.

  Not long after Zhao Tiezhu left, a young man walked into the store and saw the old man with a smile on his face. He frowned and said, "You're cheating people again?"

  The old man's face was stern, "How could that be? One is willing to fight and the other is willing to suffer."

  "What's gotten out of hand this time?" The young man sighed and asked.

  "As for those two mysterious dominoes, I didn't deceive him, everything I said was true. Although I don't know if the bones on those dominoes are really ancient or not, but I've never seen such bones before, this shouldn't be deceiving people, right?" The old man's eyes had lost their confusion and were replaced with a sharp glint.

  "How much did it sell for?" the young man asked.

  "A total of 40,000, haha, in this day and age, there are still foolish kids who would spend such a large sum of money." The old man said with a laugh.

  The young man shook his head helplessly.

  Zhao Tiezhu smiled with a look of satisfaction, "You're still too young to try to swindle me." As the old man talked about the history of the bone tiles, Zhao Tiezhu had a premonition that he was being deceived. Later, he saw the old man's cunning for an instant and understood even more clearly. Although these two bone tiles might not be what the old man said they were, they must have some connection to his father's tile from back then. To avoid letting the old man see through his plan, Zhao Tiezhu pretended to be a fool and spent 40,000 yuan buying the tiles. If he let the old man know that he had already seen through him but still wanted to buy the tiles, the old man would have taken advantage of him even more.

  Zhao Tiezhu wandered around for a while, passing by a jade store, thinking that he could buy some jade for the two women. As the saying goes, "jade can nourish people, and people can also nourish jade." The two women and the jade would mutually nourish each other, and in the future, they would all be miserable beyond human endurance.

  The boss of the Jade Point was a stout woman wearing loose clothing, and as she walked, her chest would shake up and down with two lumps of flesh, but no matter how Zhao Tiezhu looked at it, he felt nauseous.

  Zhao Tiezhu set his sights on a necklace, and the boss quoted 2800 yuan directly. Zhao Tiezhu remained silent, so the boss gritted his teeth and said, "You're young, you've just started working, I'll give it to you for 2600." Zhao Tiezhu still didn't say anything, so the boss said, "Fine, fine, one price, 2500." Zhao Tiezhu continued to be silent. "2300, can't go any lower!!!" "2000," this is just breaking even!!! "1800, losing money, losing money."

  Finally, Zhao Tiezhu didn't say a word and directly spent 600 yuan to buy two of them. Before he came, he had looked it up online, on KM, where you can buy local specialties at a discount of up to 40% off. With a sense of accomplishment, Zhao Tiezhu whistled all the way back, and when he passed by another jade store, he saw the same two necklaces he had just bought, with a price tag that read "400 yuan, buy two get one free!!!" What a rip-off!!!

  Zhao Tiezhu arrived at Su Yanni and Lucy's resting place with a very depressed mood. Su Yanni looked at Zhao Tiezhu in confusion and said, "Why did you go for so long? Didn't you go to flirt with girls?"

  "Cut, I've told you all along, it's always been a girl's bubble." Zhao Tiezhu said, taking out two pieces of jade from his pocket and handing them to the two women, "This is what my landlord brother gave me, hoping you can take good care of it!"

  Su Yanni's face lit up with surprise as she accepted the necklace, while Lucy looked a bit curious. In their place, jade was not as popular as it was in China, so this jade necklace was something she rarely saw.

  "Huh, isn't this the necklace we saw today?" Su Yanni said, holding up the necklace and looking at Lucy.

  Lucy nodded too, "Same here."

  Zhao Tiezhu said, "Then why didn't I see anything when I was with you all today?"

  Su Yan Ni gave Zhao Tiezhu a disdainful look, "On the way here, you were either looking at beautiful women or daydreaming, how could you have seen anything."

  "Alright." Zhao Tiezhu said: "If you don't want it, I'll take it back for a refund."

  "Hey, you're not a gentleman at all! You want to take back something that's already been given away? Although this thing isn't expensive, it's still worth over a hundred bucks." Su Yanni said with glee, grasping the necklace.

  "Over a hundred yuan? How much was it when you saw it today?" Zhao Tiezhu asked in puzzlement.

  "Buy two and get one free, plus a ring."

  "I'm done for! Today I've run into nothing but scoundrels!" Zhao Tiezhu wailed in despair.