Chapter 207 - Stone-gambling Turned into Buying Train Tickets (1/2)

“It’s not confusing.” Liu Shuai watched people come and go, mainly to see the pretty girls. “How could it be possible that the players in each round of stone-gambling stayed the same?”

“Xiao Hong shouldn’t mean that.” Zhou Yuan also looked around and seemed to find something suspicious. “The scent here is a little odd.”

“The scent?” Xiao Hong didn’t seem to be on Zhou Yuan’s side. “What I meant before is that every rich man here has a follower by his side. Do you notice it?”

“Eh…” Liu Shuai opened his eyes wide to have a look, and he found such was the case. Every dressed-up man had a normal person near him. “Anything odd? It’s not strange that the rich people have several servants around him.”

“The problem is that they have only one person beside them. And almost every person has only one by his side.” Xiao Hong squinted his eyes and said, “Generally speaking, when the rich people come here for stone-gambling, they have several adepts as their companions, or they just come alone, or they’ll gather their friends. Surely, there are some people who only ask one man to help. But I’ve never seen a case like today that everybody has only one person with him.”

“Never?” Liu Shuai teased him and said, “So, how many times have you been here? But it seems that the helpers here are very stressed. You see! They all wear a gloomy face.”

“Eh?” Hao Ning didn’t set his eyes on them or looked through one by one until he heard Liu Shuai’s words. “Yes, exactly. It seems that each of them owes their employers a large amount of money. No! Not only the servants but also the rich people beside them seem to be unhappy.”

“There must be something wrong.” Xiao Hong pondered for a while and then said, “You stay here and do not move. I’ll be back soon.”

After saying that, Xiao Hong rushed out, leaving these three people inside the field.

“Sir, would you like to have a look at the stones?” Not long after Xiao Hong left, a waiter came over with a big basket in his hand. There were three stones in the basket. He said politely to Hao Ning, “These are our well-selected rough stones. Would you like to look through them?”

“How much?” Hao Ning, gazing at Xiao Hong’s back, asked unconsciously without much consideration. Liu Shuai and Zhou Yuan, holding their mobile phones, were discussing the cars which they were going to buy with their heads lowered. They totally ignored the waiter.

“Ten thousand yuan each stone.” The waiter smiled and said, “It’s a low price. You can see the green on it.” Saying that, he pointed at the three stones. There was indeed a green spot on each stone. Hao Ning didn’t keep a clear memory, but he remembered vaguely that in some fictions of stone-gambling, anything with green was supreme.

“Ah! You two guys, just share your opinions!” Hao Ning was a little tempted, so he asked these two people. Unexpectedly, they answered without raising their heads, “We are busy. Leave us alone!”

“Yuck!” Hao Ning showed his disapproval. He thought in his heart that these two people might know about the cars worse than him. They looked through the models probably in vain. So, he grumbled, “Wait and see how I’m going to pick on you when you’re buying a car at that time.”

Thinking of this, Hao Ning did not intend to buy the stone anymore. But he thought it improper to refuse the waiter directly, so he said, “It’s not worth such an expensive price. 500 yuan in total will be good.”

“It’s a deal.” The waiter said with a smile and took out a QR code. “Scan it, please.”

“Ugh…” Hao Ning was near a breakdown when hearing this. He meant to make the waiter freak out by beating a bargain like this, while the waiter was so responsive that he couldn’t make it. Was the waiter a nut? Thinking of this, he looked around and then glimpsed at the smile on the waiter’s face. Considering his words, he was about to say that he didn’t really want it and he was just joking. But the waiter whispered stealthily, “Sir, if you break your words here, you’ll be lavishing your good luck on it.”

“Fuck you! Well! I’ll take it!” Though he knew that the waiter was talking nonsense, Hao Ning didn’t want to point it out for some reason. He bit the teeth to take out the mobile phone and scanned the QR code. The waiter, seeing that he had received the payment, threw the basket on the ground and fled happily.

“We’re done. We’re done. I miscalculated it.” Xiao Hong came back with a complex face. He shook the head as he walked. When seeing that Hao Ning stared blankly into the distance with a basket in his hands, he asked strangely, “What are you up to, holding these several pieces of concrete? Are you working for a construction team to finance your study?”

“Concrete?” Hao Ning was about to cry when hearing that. Obviously, he was cheated. He told Xiao Hong what happened before quickly. After he finished his words, Xiao Hong was both angry and hilarious. “Big bro, I’ve told you not to move, haven’t I?”

“I didn’t move!” Hao Ning said with a bitter face, “I just stayed here, and he came to me himself.”

Speaking of this, Hao Ning wanted to maintain his dignity, so he pointed at the stones in the basket and said, “It doesn’t look like concrete at all. You see! There are some green spots on them.”

“Good, good! Green spots.” Xiao Hong turned mute for a while and put Hao Ning’s hand on his forehead. He said with a bitter smile, “Have a look at yourself.”

It was probably the first time for Hao Ning to feel so hopeless when borrowing the mana. He said perfunctorily in frustration, “Lend Me Your Mana.”

As expected, the stones in the basket were not stones anymore but concrete filled with voids when he saw them again. Not to mention other things, it was even mixed with a kind of small stone which could be seen commonly on the road inside. And the so-called green spots were actually the fragments of beer bottles. Moreover, perhaps because Hao Ning was in a very bad mood at this time, he couldn’t look further into the stones after two glimpses. Obviously, the mana which he borrowed was used up. It was the first time for Hao Ning to borrow such a short duration of mana. But in this way, Hao Ning became more disappointed.

“Such tricks can be played to deceive some outsiders like you.” Xiao Hong didn’t know about this, so he just sighed and said, “I can tell this kind of thing without using my mana. You… Let it be. How much did you cost in total?”

“500…” Hao Ning said gloomily, “My 500 yuan…”

“Not too bad.” Xiao Hong gave out a relieved smile and waved his hand. Then he said, “Take it as a lesson. It seems that the deceiver also knows that things are not going well today in the market. He didn’t want a higher amount of money, and he just escaped.”

After saying that, Xiao Hong noticed that Zhou Yuan and Liu Shuai were still looking through the deluxe cars on the mobile phone. He got mad and patted on the back of their heads. “It is useless to watch. There are no deluxe cars anymore. Let’s go back!”

“Eh?” Then Liu Shuai and Zhou Yuan raised their heads and peered at the rough stones in Hao Ning’s basket, saying, “Ah? What are you going to do with these blocks of concrete?”

“You all reach to tell it?” Hao Ning was so upset that he went compromised and turned back to Xiao Hong. Then he said, “Didn’t you say that it was designed for our outsiders? But why could Liu Shuai and Zhou Yuan tell it as two outsiders?”

“I’m afraid it’s not for the outsiders like us, but the outsiders like you.” Liu Shuai grinned and pointed at the green on the stones. “Isn’t this from beer bottles? Oh, yes! I forget that you can’t drink. So, I suppose you’ve never got into such an occasion where broken beer bottles are scattered everywhere. This is ordinary glass from beer bottles. You can get as much as you want from the scrapheap. You have it for what?”

“No, nothing.” Hao Ning bit his teeth and said, “I take it as a souvenir.”

“Good, good, nice.” Liu Shuai grinned and patted on Hao Ning’s shoulder. “You should keep it as a souvenir, in memory of your IQ which has gone with the wind.”