Translator: Henyee Translations  Editor: Henyee Translations

“What is that?” Ling Lan asked curiously.

Little Four replied, “An energy block.”

“An energy block? Really? Why didn't anyone find out?” Based on the description of the item, it was only around 200 years old. How could they not recognize an energy block made 200 years ago?

“That is because it is not from your star system. It is from the Mandora star system. With the technology now, there is no way to test the energy stored inside this block. Of course, this might be an energy block that had been used,” Little Four replied immediately.

Ling Lan frowned. She asked Little Four in a serious tone, “How did that energy block appeared here?”

That year, Little Four came to earth for some reason and met her by coincidence. He recognized her as his master during that time. This was already a rare occurrence. However, ten thousand years later, another item from the Mandora star system appeared. Ling Lan was vigilant. How many things had entered this star system after the Mandora star system was destroyed? Was there other intelligent ent.i.ties like Little Four?

If it was only small items like the energy block appearing into their star system, it was fine for them. However, if there was another intelligent ent.i.ty, Little Four and Ling Lan would have to be careful. They might be exposed.

“It might be because of the spatial tear. If I can come out from the spatial tear, other objects could too,” Little Four replied.

“Is there a possibility that another intelligent ent.i.ty entered into our star system?” Ling Lan asked.

Little Four thought about the question seriously. “I don't think so. I can't sense any similar presence in the virtual world.”

Little Four explained again when he saw his boss's serious expression. “We are very sensitive to the presence of other intelligent ent.i.ties. Even if we never met, we can sense each other's presence. I have only found a few ent.i.ties that have been evolving by themselves in the virtual world after so many years. They are very weak compared to me. Ah…” Little Four thought about something. “Does Little Blossom count?”

Although Little Blossom was the Doomsday Flower of the Mandora star system, he was initially just a seedling. He could evolve due to the help of hackers. By right, Little Blossom wasn't from the Mandora star system.

Ling Lan knew where Little Blossom came from so she shook her head firmly. “Little Blossom does not count.”

“Then there are no intelligent ent.i.ties like me.” Little Four said firmly.

Little Four's reply made Ling Lan felt at ease. She looked at Qi Long and the others. They were not looking at her but she felt someone was staring at her intently. Ling Lan knew that it had to be Li Lanfeng.

Her other companions would only look for her when they needed her or had something to tell her. However, Li Lanfeng would stare her all the time. He would be the first person to know if she had any request or needed anything. Ling Lan was puzzled. Li Lanfeng knew her better than her companions who grew up with her…

Ling Lan remembered the time when she trained with Leopard and felt that this might be the reason.

That year, she trained hard together with Li Lanfeng and they improved together. This was a real form of companions.h.i.+p. As compared to her other friends who only viewed her as an almighty boss, Li Lanfeng took her as his close friend. That was why he always paid attention to her.

All these little things cause Ling Lan to view Li Lanfeng differently. Compared to Qi Long and the rest, Li Lanfeng had a special position in her heart.

Ling Lan put away her unhappiness and lowered her hands. She did the series of actions surrept.i.tiously.

Li Lanfeng moved towards Li Yingjie and patted his shoulder. “Ma Rao, you looked at it for a long time already. Can I take a look now?”

Li Yingjie glared at him. “I am still looking.”

Li Lanfeng popped his head over the shoulder and laughed. “You are looking at things which cost more than 10000 credits. Can you even afford it?”

“We can widen our perspective,” Lin Zhong-qing glanced at Li Yingjie and hurriedly replied for him.

Li Yingjie controlled his temper and snorted. He looked back at the screen.

Li Lanfeng didn't care if he offended Li Yingjie. He pushed Li Yingjie away and took over the control of the optical supercomputer. He flipped to the items which had the lowest price. “We should look at things which we could afford. Maybe we can buy one back and boast it to our friends.”

Li Yingjie wanted to yell at Li Lanfeng. However, his eyes lit up at Li Lanfeng's words and his anger dissipated. He said, “That's right. Since we are here, we should buy something back as proof.”

He leaned over and started to discuss with Li Lanfeng about what to buy.

Li Yingjie adapted quickly. Since Li Lanfeng was with Boss Lan just now, he must be acting on Boss Lan's orders. He needed to cooperate with Li Lanfeng.

Finally, after looking through all the items, they chose the three cheapest ones. One of them was a thumb-sized white porcelain piece. It was more then ten thousand years old but since it was broken and so small, no one was sure what it was. Hence, the price was low. The starting bid was 1500 credits and only one person had bidded for it. Li Yingjie thought for a while and pressed 1550. He kicked the other bidder out of the bid.

Another item was the cylinder that Ling Lan wanted. It was still at 3280 credits. Li Lanfeng discussed with Li Yingjie and decided to bid 3300 credits for it. Everyone knew that the price was just temporary. The real mind game would start a few minutes later.

The last item was an old tree branch. Visually it was the cheapest and yet, it was the most expensive one. It's starting bid was 4500 credit. It was because the branch was taken from a living plant on the newly discovered Green Sea Planet.

After some research, it was found that the tree was not rare. It could be found almost everywhere on the Green Sea Planet. However, since the planet was not opened to public, Aoqi decided to put this item into the auction list for collectors who liked to collect new breeds of plants or for people who just liked interesting things.

Aoqi predicted people's mind accurately. Among the three items, the tree branch had the most amount of bidders. Its current bid was at 6700 credit. Li Yingjie pressed 6800 credit. He just wanted to have some fun. The other people were stunned. This was almost half the price of their cruise trip.

However, the bidding that happened after that caused them to give up on the tree branch. Within a short time, the bid had skyrocketed to more than 10000 credits. They didn't have that much money. Even if they had, they didn't want to waste it on a normal plant. Hence, everyone focused their attention on the other two items.

It was getting near 2 pm. In the last five minutes, the prices of various items shot up. There was only one bidder for the porcelain piece. After Li Yingjie overbid him, he stopped bidding. Li Yingjie's interest was perked up so he turned his attention to the cylinder.

There were two to three people interested in the cylinder. When the price shot up to 5000 credits, only one person was left bidding against Li Yingjie.

The other party increased his bids by the hundreds. Li Yingjie was irritated. In the last minute, he got angry and pressed an additional 0. The number ‘6200' became ‘62000'. After he pressed enter, Li Yingjie froze. He squatted on the floor with his head between his knees.

He hit his head in despair. He cried, “I entered another zero. I'm so stupid. I'm so stupid…”

Lin Zhong-qing's face turned pale. He pushed Li Lanfeng away and stared intently at the number on the optical supercomputer. He shouted crazily, “Buy it, hurry up and buy it!” He wished that the other party would act rashly and overbid them.

Li Yingjie was enlightened by what Lin Zhong-qing did. He still had some hope. He clamped his hands together and seriously prayed that the other party would overbid him…

In the surveillance room, Brother Xu smiled coldly. The one who bidded against Li Yingjie was him. His anger was vented when he saw the mistake Li Yingjie made. He would take their money as payment for the room.

The bidding time ended. Li Yingjie and Lin Zhong-qing's prayer didn't work. Their bid was the highest and the cylinder was won by Li Yingjie. The porcelain piece was his too.

Li Yingjie was in a daze. He asked, “How much in total?”

“64,300 credits.” Lin Zhong-qing lowered in head.

Li Yingjie gritted his teeth. He calmed down a little and said, “I only have 53,400 credits. Do you guys have extra credits?”

Qi Long took out his communicator and replied, “I have around 2200 credits.”

Zhao Jun scratched his head and said embarra.s.singly, “I used a lot of my credits recently. I only have 2000 credits left.”

Li Lanfeng sighed. “I have 2600 credits.”

“1800,” Ling Lan said. Her appet.i.te was good these past few days so her credits were spent quickly.

“I only have 1100 credits.” Lin Zhong-qing lowered his head in embarra.s.sment. His family was the poorest among the six people. He only took 1500 credits out for this trip and tried to save as much as possible.

“We still lack some credits.” Li Lanfeng smiled bitterly.

Zhao Jun blinked. “Shall we ask the princess to lend us some money?”

They all looked at each other. This was their only choice. They couldn't tell the people at the auction that they didn't want the items anymore, right? They would be killed by the organizers.

Luckily, the items would only be sent to them after the auction. If they were able to help the princess get the Babu scepter, she would probably not reject their request. The people in the booth decided to get the Babu scepter so that they could get out of their predicament.

The live auction started at 2 pm. The huge screen showed the live broadcast of the auction. A handsome young man was the auctioneer of this auction. Before he introduced himself, the crowd started clapping.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I am the auctioneer, Aobu Ruoya. I will be hosting the auction today.” The auctioneer smiled and bowed at the audience. Many people gasped when they heard his name.

Little Four showed Ling Lan data about Aobu Ruoya. Ling Lan understood why everyone was so excited.

Aobu Ruoya was actually Aoqi Aobu. He was the only son of President Feila. President Feila was the person who made Aoqi from a poor country into a rich business and tourist utopia within 30 years. He was well-liked by the citizens of Aoqi and was even requested to make the Aobu family into a royal family. They are the representative of the Aoqi Kingdom.

This suggestion was rejected by President Feila. However, the Aoqi citizens got more pa.s.sionate about this suggestion. This request would be brought up at the parliament. Once it went through, Aoqi would become Aoqi Kingdom and Aoqi family would become the royal family of the Aoqi kingdom. That would mean that Aobu Ruoya would be the next king.

Of course, Aobu Ruoya was not popular just because he was the son of President Feila. He was also an impressive explorer and a top-tier auctioneer. When he didn't reveal his true ident.i.ty, he had already auctioned off many luxurious items and became the most popular auctioneer in Aoqi. Since this underground auction was able to hire him as the auctioneer, it meant that the organizer had a rich and powerful background. They must also have a close relations.h.i.+p with the government of Aoqi.

Aobu Ruoya calmly auctioned off the items. Ling Lan and her friends waited for the Babu scepter to appear. They ignore all the other items.

However, when the ace mecha appeared, the six of them were tempted. The only thing that was stopping them was the price. They could only look at the mecha with greedy eyes. Of course, even if they had the money, it would be useless if they bought it.

There were many people who wanted the ace mecha. There were four main bidders. One came from the Southstar Galaxy, one came from Aoya Alliance, one came from the Chaotic Lands, and the last came from the Ye family.

The Southstar Galaxy was situated in the most southern part of the human world. The people there were all brave and skillful in warfare. However, they had a simple mind. This caused the development of mechas in that galaxy to be slower than other powerful countries. The Southstar Galaxy wanted to get this mecha so that they could research it.

In a battle, the mecha operator of an ace mecha would choose to self-destruct if they lost. This was to protect the secrets of the ace mecha. Hence, no one was able to scavenge any ace mechas back from battlefields.

This was why the Southstar Galaxy went all out and wanted to get the ace mecha.

The other two parties wanted the ace mecha for similar reasons. The Ye family, on the other hand, received orders from the Federation to bring back the ace mecha.

In the end, the Ye family managed to get the ace mecha. During the bidding, the Ye family disappeared for a while. Little Four went to take a look and realized that the Ye family was contacting the Li family. The Ye family received the order quite late so they didn't prepare enough credits. The price of the mecha exceeded the amount of credits they brought so they had to borrow some from the Li family.

Although the ace mecha returned to the Federation, the Ye family, or rather the military, paid a huge price for it. The amount of credits spent on this ace mecha was enough to build 40 more ace mechas. However, this was a necessary sacrifice. If other countries discovered the secret of their ace mecha, the Federation would suffer more loses. Then it would not be an issue about credits anymore.

Of course, this was not the end. The military would definitely find the culprit who smuggled the ace mecha out. This would cause a huge commotion in the military. The betrayer would definitely be tortured.

Since this had nothing to do with Ling Lan, she just threw it to the back of her head. She had more important things to attend to. The Babu scepter was the next item in line.

When Aobu Ruoya described the Babu scepter, everyone turned silent. They all knew that the Babu scepter was only useful to the people of the Balaya Kingdom. To other people, it could only be a collector's item. However, it was not worth provoking a huge country to get this item.

“Babu scepter. Starting bid: 1,000,000 credits.” Aobu Ruoya said calmly. The ace mecha was already sold for a huge sum of credits so he was not shocked by this amount.

“1,100,000.” Booth#103 started bidding. Ling Lan looked at the booth number and knew that it was Princess Gulibaduo. As expected, she was unable to control herself and was the first one to bid.

After Gulibaduo bidded, no one continued. Gulibaduo was elated. She might be able to take back the sceptre easily.

“Booth#103 calling once! Although the Babu scepter is just an antique, it represented the royalty of the Balaya Kingdom. The Balaya Kingdom once made a promise. They will fulfil one wish to the person who brings back the Babu scepter for them. Credits is one thing but with the scepter, you will have a chance. You might even have another chance of living. I think that everyone here knows how important this item is. Let me ask again. Is there anyone who wants to bid?”

Princess Gulibaduo gritted her teeth in anger when she heard Aobu Ruoya telling everyone the secret of the Babu scepter. She knew that getting the Babu sceptre back would not be an easy task now.

“1,500,000!” The moment Aobu Ruoya finished speaking, the person in Booth#7 bidded.