Chapter 18: Infiltrating the Auction House
When the two emerged from the alley, they had once again changed their appearance. Going by looks alone, probably no one could have recognized them.
"Why are we disguised like this? We can't get in without an invitation, and we can't join the auction without a private room!"
Yangg Yan was puzzled, seeing that Nie Yun had disguised them to the point of being unrecognizable.
If you disguised yourself as one of Luoshui City's celebrities, you might be able to get in on face value alone. But what was the point of a disguise that no one recognized? You wouldn't have an assigned private room!
"Do you happen to remember the auction house's back door... er, I mean, we can go in through the back door!"
The moment he asked if Yangg Yan remembered the back door, Nie Yun realized that sneaking in through there was something from his past life. It hadn't happened yet in this one, so how could Yangg Yan possibly know? He looked instantly embarrassed and quickly changed the subject.
"Go in through the back door? It's useless if we don't have a private room..."
Hearing Nie Yun come up with such a plan, Yangg Yan was exasperated and spoke anxiously.
Inside the auction house, each private room corresponded to a specific identity. Only with that identity could you make a bid and participate in the auction. Otherwise, if just anyone could walk in and buy things, this auction house wouldn't be called the best in Luoshui City!
"I have a plan. Just follow me!" Nie Yun didn't explain. He walked along the street for a bit with Yangg Yan, and the two of them circled around to the back of the auction hall.
"This is the window. Let's sneak in now while no one's around!"
After searching the area, Nie Yun's eyes fell on the very window he had used in his past life.
"I really don't know what you're up to..." Although Yangg Yan didn't understand the young man's goal, he trusted him. Scratching his head, he leaped onto the windowsill and slipped inside.
Behind the window was a hallway of the auction house. Nie Yun had walked through here in his past life without being discovered. He didn't expect his luck to be just as good in this life; when they jumped in, there was no one around.
"Where to now? We can't have gone to all that trouble to swindle over eighty thousand taels of gold just to stand here and watch the show. We have to participate in the auction!" Yangg Yan muttered, standing in the hallway.
"Who said we can't participate? Follow me!" Seeing his expression, Nie Yun chuckled and started walking down the hall. But they hadn't gone far before they ran into a group of guards.
"Who goes there?" a guard shouted upon seeing them.
"Insolence! We are the guests of private room seventeen in the second row. What, you want to block our way? Hmph, do you have a death wish?" Ignoring the guard's shout, Nie Yun's eyebrows shot up.
"Our apologies. We're just following orders. Please, go ahead!" When the guards heard them state a room number, they knew they must be honored guests and stopped questioning them, clearing a path.
Anyone attending the auction had a high status, and since they could state a room number so smoothly, they had to be guests. These guards were of low rank; if they angered a guest and got beaten up, they'd have no recourse. So, they didn't harbor much suspicion.
Nie Yun was perfectly composed, but Yangg Yan was not. They had secretly climbed in through a window, so he was instinctively afraid of the guards. When he heard the young man scare the guards off from checking them with just a single casual sentence, he was once again filled with utter admiration for him.
After walking down the corridor for a while, Nie Yun found private room seventeen in the second row and casually knocked on the door.
The auction house often sold precious items, so to ensure the buyers' safety, the private rooms were designed to be extremely secure. Once the door was closed, no one could get in.
"Who is it?" Nie Yu's wary voice came from inside the room.
"We're from the auction house's guard team. We just ran into two people who claimed to be your companions, so we came to ask you about it." Since there was no one else around, Nie Yun spun a lie.
"My companions? Which ones?" Hearing that it was the guard team, Nie Yu relaxed his guard. He opened the door and glanced outside, only to find that he didn't recognize either of the two people before him.
"It's like this..." Nie Yun's goal was simply to trick him into opening the door. Now that he had succeeded, he strode inside with Yangg Yan and casually shut the door behind them. "We also received an invitation for this room. If you don't believe me, look!"
As he spoke, he reached a hand into his pocket as if to retrieve something.
"You're also in this room? How is that possible? The auction house wouldn't make such a foolish mistake!" Nie Yu was stunned. His eyes followed Nie Yun's hand, wanting to see if his invitation was the same as his own.
"Right here..." Nie Yun's only goal was to distract him. With a small laugh, his fist suddenly shot up and smashed toward Nie Yu's eye!
BAM!
Before Nie Yu could even react, his eye socket reddened and turned into a black eye.
"Ah... Who are you people?! How dare you ambush me! Don't you know I'm an Inner Sect disciple of the Nie Family..." After all, Nie Yu was a cultivator at the Qi Sea Fourth Layer Early Stage. After being suddenly ambushed, he hastily leaped backward and let out a furious roar.
However, the room's soundproofing was excellent. Despite his loud shouts, no sound could be heard outside.
"Heh heh, we're beating you up precisely because we know you're an Inner Sect disciple of the Nie Family!" By now, how could Yangg Yan not see Nie Yun's plan? With a sinister chuckle, just as Nie Yu leaped away, he felt a rush of wind behind his head. THWACK! He crashed to the floor.
"Let's just knock him out first!" The two acted at once. Nie Yun dashed up to Nie Yu and unleashed a flurry of punches and kicks!
Yangg Yan was at the Qi Sea Fourth Layer Mid Stage, and in terms of combat strength, he was quite a bit stronger than Nie Yu. As for Nie Yun, having lived two lives, even though his cultivation was the same as Nie Yu's, he could still easily defeat him in a one-on-one fight.
With both of them attacking at once, and on top of that, it being an ambush, how could Nie Yu possibly be their match? In less than the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, the arrogant brat from just moments ago was beaten to a pulp, lying flat on the ground with his eyes swollen shut.
"Who... in the world... are you!"
He struggled to shout one last time before passing out cold.
He never would have dreamed that he would run into two madmen like this at an auction. Even as he lost consciousness, he had no idea what their motive was...
"Alright, since he came to the auction, he must have brought a lot of money. Let's use his for now!" Seeing Nie Yu unconscious, Nie Yun patted him down and, after a moment, pulled out a stack of silver notes.
"Not bad. Worthy of an Inner Sect branch. Our branch couldn't even scrape together ten thousand silver taels, yet he's carrying a full seventy thousand in his pocket!"
Nie Yun's eyes lit up as he looked at the silver notes in his hand.
In terms of both wealth and cultivation conditions, the Outer Sect was far inferior to the Inner Sect. Take the Nie Long Branch, the wealthiest in the Outer Sect, for example. After looting Nie Liu, Nie Yun had only gotten fifteen thousand taels. But here, he had casually found seventy thousand taels on a single Inner Sect disciple. This was the gap between the Inner Sect and the Outer Sect.
Of course, Nie Yun didn't know that to purchase medicinal materials, Nie Yu had already taken all the money from his own branch.
"Alright, put Nie Yu in the corner and hide him so no one finds him. The auction is about to start. Later, after we buy our items, we'll have to interact with the staff, so we can't let anyone see through our act!" With the matter settled, Nie Yun gave his instructions.
"Okay!" Yangg Yan was now thoroughly impressed by the young man before him and followed his words to the letter. With one hand, he picked up the unconscious Nie Yu, folded him in half, and stuffed him under the only table in the room.
"..." Nie Yun was speechless at this action. 'Good thing Nie Yu is a cultivator,' he thought. 'Otherwise, that one fold would have probably crippled him, if not worse!'
Just as they finished their preparations, the auction below began.
At the front of the room was a special window. They could see the items being auctioned outside, but people outside could not see into the room.
Once the auction began, buyers could see the items for sale through the window and then enter their bid on the Price Increase Jade Token on the table.
The Price Increase Jade Token worked much like a Communication Jade Token. You just had to imprint the price you wanted to bid onto it, and your room number and bid would appear on a giant jade stone in the middle of the auction hall.
This way, the auction could proceed based on the highest bid, ensuring both secrecy and fairness.
"...The auction will now officially begin! Our first item is a Shuttle Golden Armor, a Top-Grade Armor of the Mortal Race, capable of withstanding an attack from a True Qi Realm expert! The starting bid is 500 taels of silver!"
After a long and tedious speech, the auctioneer unveiled the first item.
'Shuttle Golden Armor? This kind of Mortal Race armor is fine for ordinary people, but it's far too weak for a Qi Sea Cultivator.' Nie Yun naturally looked down on such goods, shaking his head and not participating in the bidding.
Perhaps the other bidders shared his sentiment. In the end, the Shuttle Golden Armor sold for only seven hundred taels of silver to the guest in room nine of the third row.
The dozen or so items that followed were also unremarkable. The best of them was a Harmony Flower, which Nie Yun ended up buying for one thousand taels of silver.
"A Healing Holy Medicine, the thousand-year Stem Lotus! The starting bid is thirty thousand taels of silver!" Just as Nie Yun was starting to lose interest, the auctioneer suddenly shouted.
"What? A thousand-year Stem Lotus? That's the perfect medicinal material for concocting the most effective medicinal liquid for the Spirit Rhinoceros Body Refining Technique! What is it doing here?"
Hearing the announcement, Nie Yun's eyes went wide, and he shot up from his seat.