At 9 PM sharp, Cupid's voice cut through the Breaking Bad episode with unmistakable urgency.
"Get out of the house. Now. You need to leave right now or you're going to be late."
"Five more minutes—"
"You said that at eight-thirty. And eight-forty-five. And eight-fifty. I'm not playing this game anymore. Get. Up."
Tòumíng sighed dramatically but complied, pausing the episode mid-scene and rolling off the bed. His suit was moderately wrinkled from lying down, but nothing too catastrophic. He smoothed it out as best he could, grabbed his phone and wallet, and headed for the door.
The villa had two entrances due to its hillside construction, a feature the previous tenant had apparently loved and Háo Héng had emphasized during the terror-fueled tour. The main entrance on the second floor opened to the road-level driveway and the front lawn. But there was also a lower entrance accessed by an exterior staircase that led down to the ground floor, where the infinity pool and a personal living room overlooked the lake.
Tòumíng locked the second-floor door carefully, testing it twice to make sure it was secure. The azurite pebble was still in the safe with its embarrassingly simple password, but at least the house itself was locked.
He descended the outside staircase, his dress shoes clicking against the stone steps in a way his usual sneakers never did. The evening air was pleasant, temperature dropping as the sun finished setting, the lake beyond reflecting the first stars beginning to appear.
Walking out through the front gate took another ten minutes. The Guanlan Lake community was designed for people with cars, not pedestrians. The distances between houses, the winding roads, the gated security, all of it assumed residents would drive everywhere.
But Tòumíng didn't have a car. That was probably something he should fix eventually, but for now, walking worked fine.
Twenty minutes of steady walking brought him deep into Huángjīn zhī Lù Road territory. The street lived up to its name, Golden Road. Every building was impressive, either historical architecture preserved with meticulous care or ultra-modern constructions of glass and steel that caught the streetlights in dazzling displays.
Luxury hotels. High-end restaurants where a single meal probably cost more than Tòumíng's old monthly rent. Art galleries. Designer boutiques that weren't even open to the public without appointments.
And then, impossible to miss, the venue.
A three-story building that was both tall and wide, taking up an entire block. The exterior was brilliant white stone that seemed to glow under the strategic lighting, making the whole structure look almost ethereal against the night sky. Every window blazed with warm interior light.
A large sign hung above the main entrance, elegant script in both Chinese and English:
32nd Annual Gentlemen's Mining Club Event
Tòumíng stared at the name, something prickling at the back of his mind. Gentlemen's Mining Club. That was... a weird name. Very specific. Very exclusive-sounding. The kind of name that implied membership, hierarchy, old money networks.
He wasn't exactly a conspiracy theorist, but something about it gave him Bohemian Grove vibes. Or Epstein Island energy. Secret societies of wealthy men gathering under innocuous pretenses to do... whatever wealthy men did when they thought nobody was watching.
Probably just his imagination running wild from too many true crime documentaries between Breaking Bad episodes.
He approached the main entrance, the massive double doors opened wide to reveal the interior. The moment he stepped inside, his breath caught.
Luxury. Pure, concentrated luxury.
The entrance hall was enormous, had to be at least fifty feet wide and extending back what looked like a hundred feet to a receptionist desk at the far end. The ceiling soared above, probably twenty feet high, decorated with an intricate chandelier that looked like it cost more than Tòumíng's entire villa.
But what really caught his attention were the display cases.
On each side of the hallway, built into the walls, were floor-to-ceiling glass boxes showcasing gemstones. Not small gemstones. GIANT gemstones. The kind of specimens that belonged in museums or private collections worth more than small countries.
To his left, a massive amethyst geode, easily six feet tall, its purple crystals catching the light and throwing colored reflections across the polished marble floor.
To his right, an emerald cluster the size of a microwave, deep green and flawless.
Further down, a piece of raw ruby embedded in matrix stone, the red so vivid it looked almost artificial.
And then the True Price skill activated automatically, triggered by his focus on the displays.
Information flooded his vision.
Amethyst Geode: ¥2,000,000
Emerald Cluster: ¥18,000,000
Ruby Matrix: ¥125,000,000
He kept walking, unable to look away, and the numbers kept climbing.
Tanzanite Crystal Formation: ¥340,000,000
Alexandrite Specimen: ¥890,000,000
Imperial Topaz Collection: ¥1,000,000,000
One billion yuan. There was a gemstone display case worth ONE BILLION YUAN just sitting in the entrance hallway like decoration.
The skill kept firing, processing each display case, each specimen, the values piling up in his mind faster than he could consciously process them. Hundreds of millions. Billions. The combined value of just this entrance hall was probably more than the GDP of a small nation.
His brain started to hurt. Too much information.. The True Price skill wasn't designed to handle this volume of valuable items all at once. It was like trying to drink from a fire hose of financial data.
Tòumíng stumbled slightly, his vision swimming with overlapping price tags and purity percentages, his processing power completely overwhelmed.
"Welcome to the Gentlemen's Mining Club event."
The voice cut through the information overload, professional, polished, clearly trained for hospitality at the highest level. Female, probably mid-thirties based on the vocal maturity.
Tòumíng blinked, forcing himself to focus on the present instead of the billion-yuan gemstones surrounding him. The receptionist desk had materialized in front of him—or rather, he'd walked all the way down the hall while distracted by True Price going haywire.
The woman behind the desk wore an immaculate suit, her hair pulled back severely, her expression pleasant but neutral. Everything about her screamed "I work for people who could buy and sell you without noticing the expense." (yes I mean that in the sus way)
She smiled professionally. "Are you a past guest, or will you be buying in for tonight's event?"