Autumn sunlight gleamed off the gilded glass facade of the Tianhai Imperial Jade & Ancient Martial Pavilion. Four stories of reinforced bulletproof glass housed the most expensive private collection of historical weapons, jade artifacts, and martial treasures in Jiangnan Province.
Lin Mo stepped through the revolving glass doors. He wore a tailored charcoal overcoat with a dark cashmere scarf. Beside him walked Chu Lingxiao. She wore her washed, faded cyan cotton martial robe—clean and neatly pressed, though its cuffs still showed the honest wear of her ninety days of labor. At her slender waist hung the ancient, cracked pine scabbard, secured with a braided silk cord. Behind them, Tie Niu looked sharp in a dark three-piece suit, his broad shoulders easily parting the crowd of browsing socialites.
Lin Mo glanced around the marble entrance hall. Rows of polished mahogany display cases held Han Dynasty bronze swords, Tang sabers, and exquisite jade rings.
“Nice showroom,” Lin Mo murmured, adjusting his cuffs. “A bit too much velvet, but the lighting is decent for shopping.”
Chu Lingxiao’s gaze swept across the mezzanine floor. Her delicate nose twitched slightly. “I smell refined coal oil and cold iron. There are true forge masters in this building, Chairman Lin. But there is also a great deal of greedy pretension.”
“Pretension is standard corporate decor in Tianhai,” Lin Mo replied with a faint smirk. “It makes the discounts feel more satisfying.”
They walked toward the central velvet rope leading to the VIP auction preview salon.
Before they could step onto the red carpet, a harsh, nasal voice rang out from the VIP lounge.
“Hold it right there!”
A young man in a white silk suit stepped out, holding a glass of vintage champagne. He had greasy slicked-back hair and swollen bags under his eyes. Hanging off his arm was a young woman in heavy makeup, draped in a dyed chinchilla fur wrap.
Above the young man’s head, the system flashed an ugly gray marker:
[Target: Murong Jie. Role: Second Young Master of the Murong Clan.]
[Moral Integrity Score: 7/100 (Extortion, illegal death matches, disaster-relief fraud).]
Beside him, the young woman had an equally shallow tag:
[Target: Lili. Role: C-List Soap Actress & Socialite.]
[Moral Integrity Score: 13/100 (Vanity, tax evasion, exploiting migrant staff).]
Murong Jie stared at Lin Mo with undisguised hatred. His teeth ground together so hard his champagne glass shook.
Only eight hours ago, his top enforcer Scarface Biao had been dumped on the precinct steps in yellow duck underwear, tied up with twenty thugs. The provincial banking bureau had already frozen three of Murong Jie’s usury accounts.
“Lin Mo,” Murong Jie sneered, his lips curling into a vicious grin. “You actually had the gall to show your face in my family’s favorite showroom?”
His eyes slid to Chu Lingxiao, scanning her simple cyan robe and cloth shoes.
“And you brought your little dish-washing street actress with you,” Murong Jie mocked loudly, drawing the attention of dozens of wealthy antique collectors. “Look at those cheap cloth shoes. One brush against the glass cases and she’ll leave grease stains on the Tang mirrors! Security! Who let these country bumpkins past the lobby?”
The chief appraiser of the pavilion, Master Deng, hurried over. He wore a traditional embroidered silk gown and gold-rimmed spectacles on a silver chain.
Above Master Deng’s head hovered an oily gray score:
[Target: Master Deng. Role: Chief Appraiser of Imperial Jade Pavilion.]
[Moral Integrity Score: 11/100 (Appraisal fraud, cheating impoverished artisans, fencing looted relics).]
“Young Master Murong, please calm your temper,” Master Deng said, bowing with practiced obsequiousness. He turned a haughty sneer toward Lin Mo. “Sir, the VIP preview salon is strictly reserved for guests with verified liquid assets exceeding one hundred million yuan. Unregistered guests must remain in the public gift shop on the first floor.”
Lin Mo didn’t even look at Master Deng. His eyes wandered past the velvet rope toward a dimly lit alcove beneath the spiral staircase.
In the alcove sat an elderly man on a low wooden stool.
The old man wore a faded, grease-stained denim jacket and heavy leather work apron. His rough, blistered hands were blackened with coal dust and quench oil. His hair was streaked with gray, tied back with a piece of iron wire. He looked entirely out of place among the glittering glass showcases.
Sitting on a burlap sack between the old man’s boots was an irregular, football-sized rock. The rock was pitch-black, pitted with tiny thumb-sized craters, and flecked with brilliant silver and cobalt crystals.
Above the old blacksmith’s head blazed a glorious, radiant emerald halo:
[Target: Ou Yeheng (Master Ou). Role: Seventh-Generation Descendant of the Ou Sword-Smith Lineage.]
[Moral Integrity Score: 92/100 (Uncompromising artisan virtue, lifelong honest forging).]
[Current Crisis: His nineteen-year-old apprentice suffered third-degree blast burns during a furnace failure. He needs urgent hospital treatment, but lacks ten thousand yuan for emergency medicine.]
Master Deng noticed Lin Mo looking at the old blacksmith. The chief appraiser walked over to the alcove, kicking the burlap sack with his polished leather shoe.
“Old Man Ou, have you made up your mind yet?” Master Deng asked in a harsh, disdainful bark. “I told you already, that ugly black boulder is just an ordinary iron meteor slag. Nobody buys raw scrap stone in a five-star jade pavilion!”
Master Ou looked up, his weathered eyes filled with unshed tears and bitter humiliation. “Master Deng, this is not scrap slag. This is the Star-Fall Meteorite Whetstone passed down through seven generations of my family. It can sharpen divine cold-iron blades that mortal grinding wheels cannot touch. It is worth tens of millions!”
“Tens of millions?” Master Deng threw his head back and laughed mockingly. “You crazy old beggar! Look at your clothes! Your apprentice is choking on lung smoke in the municipal hospital right now! If you don’t pay ten thousand yuan by five o’clock, the doctors will kick him out onto the curb!”
Master Deng reached into his silk gown, pulled out a stack of one hundred crumpled bank notes, and tossed them into the dust at Master Ou’s boots.
“Here is ten thousand yuan cash,” Master Deng sneered. “Take the paper and leave the rock. Consider it a charitable donation from the Imperial Jade Pavilion. Otherwise, watch your boy die of infection.”
Master Ou’s calloused hands trembled violently. Tears carved clean lines through the black soot on his cheeks. He slowly bent down, his pride shattering piece by piece as his fingers reached for the crumpled bills on the floor.
He was about to trade his family’s three-hundred-year-old sacred heirloom for ten thousand yuan just to keep his young student alive.
Behind Master Deng, Lin Mo saw the oily appraiser’s lips twitch with greedy delight. Master Deng had already arranged a private resale of the meteorite whetstone to an overseas buyer for twenty million yuan.
A sudden, sharp shadow fell over the ten thousand yuan on the floor.
Lin Mo stepped right past the red velvet rope. His polished black leather shoe came down firmly onto the stack of hundred-yuan bills, grinding them into the marble dust.
Master Deng blinked in fury. “You insolent brat! What do you think you are doing?”
Lin Mo ignored him completely. He knelt down on one knee in front of Master Ou.
“Ten thousand yuan for a thousand-year celestial meteorite whetstone?” Lin Mo said, his deadpan voice cutting clearly across the hushed hall. “Master Deng must have failed primary school arithmetic. Or perhaps his spectacles are made of frosted bathroom glass.”
Master Ou looked up in utter bewilderment. “Young master... you recognize this stone?”
Chu Lingxiao stepped up beside Lin Mo. Her eyes were fixed on the pitted black surface of the rock. Her breath caught softly.
“Heavenly Star-Iron,” Chu Lingxiao whispered in awe. “Cold as winter ice, dense as granite, flecked with natural star-veins. Only a stone like this can hone ancient divine blades without chipping the steel.”
Lin Mo turned to Su Wan, who was already holding her digital payment tablet ready.
“Master Ou,” Lin Mo said, offering a hand to pull the old blacksmith to his feet. “Taichu Group is establishing an advanced cold-weapons and marine metalwork division. We need a Chief Artisan who understands honest steel.”
Master Ou stood up on trembling legs. “Chief... Artisan?”
“That is correct,” Lin Mo continued smoothly. “And I would like to purchase your family’s Star-Fall Whetstone as an onboarding gift for our Chief Martial Enforcer, Miss Chu Lingxiao. How does fifty million yuan sound?”
The entire VIP salon went dead silent.
The socialites froze with their champagne flutes halfway to their lips. Murong Jie stared with his mouth hanging open. Lili’s dyed chinchilla fur nearly slipped off her bare shoulders.
Master Deng’s face turned the color of raw pork liver. “Fifty million? For that lump of dirty scrap metal? Lin Mo, are you insane? You’re being swindled by a homeless blacksmith!”
“My money likes being spent on real craft,” Lin Mo replied, not even turning his head. “It hates being handled by greedy middlemen who rob dying apprentices.”
Lin Mo typed the numbers into Su Wan’s terminal and pressed his black-gold card against the screen.
Ding!
The sharp, crystal-clear payment chime echoed through the four-story pavilion:
[TRANSACTION APPROVED! AMOUNT: ¥50,000,000 RMB.]
[PURPOSE: ANCESTRAL METEORITE WHETSTONE ACQUISITION, APPRENTICE MEDICAL RELIEF, SMITHY UPGRADE.]
[RECIPIENT: OU YEHENG (92/100) & TAICHU WEAPONRY ARTISAN GUILD.]
[MORAL INTEGRITY: 92/100 (TIER-1 MASTER ARTISAN BENEFICIARY).]
In the next heartbeat, the golden system interface surged like molten gold inside Lin Mo’s consciousness:
[DING! 100X BENEVOLENCE REFUND TRIGGERED.]
[SPENT: ¥50,000,000 RMB -> REFUNDED: +¥5,000,000,000 RMB (¥5.00 BILLION)!]
[FUNDS DEPOSITED INTO PERSONAL LIQUID VAULT.]
[CURRENT VAULT BALANCE: ¥490,150,000,000 RMB (¥490.15 BILLION)!]
[GOOD PEOPLE NETWORK: 11,315 -> 11,317 VERIFIED BENEFICIARIES (+2).]
Master Ou’s ancient work phone buzzed loudly in his canvas pocket.
The old man pulled it out with trembling fingers. He squinted at the bank notification. Five followed by seven zeros.
Fifty million yuan.
The hospital bill for his apprentice was forty thousand yuan. The remaining forty-nine million nine hundred and sixty thousand yuan was enough to rebuild his family forge into the most advanced traditional metalwork academy in the nation.
Master Ou’s knees buckled. He dropped to both knees before Lin Mo, pressing his soot-stained forehead against the marble floor.
“Benefactor!” Master Ou wept openly, his tears washing through the coal dust. “You saved my boy! You saved the Ou family’s ancestral forge! From this day forth, every blade and shield forged by my hands belongs to Taichu Group!”
“Please stand up, Master Ou,” Lin Mo said, pulling the old man up with a steady grip. “Go send Dr. Gu’s private ambulance to pick up your apprentice. We have plenty of armored ships to forge next week.”
Tie Niu stepped forward and lifted the heavy two-hundred-pound meteorite whetstone with one arm as if it were a bag of feathers, smiling broadly at the old blacksmith.
Master Deng stood frozen in place. His twenty-million-yuan resale flip had just evaporated into thin air right before his eyes. His throat felt dry as sand.
Beside him, Lili stamped her high-heeled shoe and tugged violently on Murong Jie’s silk jacket.
“Jie!” Lili whined, her high-pitched voice grating on everyone’s ears. “Look at him! He just dropped fifty million on an old beggar right in front of your face! Are you going to let a small-town upstart humiliate the Murong Clan like this?”
Murong Jie’s face turned an ugly, suffocating purple. He felt the eyes of thirty wealthy collectors burning into his back.
He pulled out his black-gold Murong Platinum Card, slamming it onto the glass counter of the VIP salon.
“Lin Mo!” Murong Jie snarled, his eyes bulging with vicious fury. “You think having a few million makes you a king in Tianhai? You’re nothing but a lucky lottery peasant!”
Murong Jie pointed toward the center of the showroom, where a velvet-lined jade pedestal stood beside thirty suits of ancient Song Dynasty gilded iron armor and Tang Dynasty bronze breastplates under crystal spotlights.
“Between that thirty-million-yuan Han Dynasty jade cabinet and the two-hundred-million-yuan central armory behind it, this room costs more than your entire bloodline!” Murong Jie shouted, puffing out his chest and pulling out his Murong Clan charge card. “I dare you to a public credit-verification wager right now! Let my girlfriend Lili pick out a thirty-million-yuan treasure from that center cabinet—and if your card can clear her gift and that armory without declining, I’ll kneel down and crawl out of this showroom! But if your card gets declined, you hand over that little sword fairy to my fighting cage!”
Lin Mo looked at Murong Jie, then at the central jade pedestal and the antique armor collection behind it.
A slow, deadpan smile touched the corner of Lin Mo’s lips.
“A credit-verification wager,” Lin Mo said softly. “You really shouldn’t gamble when you don’t know who owns the bank.”