Above the mage!

Chapter 659 Broken Watch Dial
There are three main ways to gamble on antiques. The first is to bet on the price of the item.

This is the most common and basic form of gambling, and it's also the game with the most participants.

The stall owner displays a single antique on the table and gives a reserve price based on his preliminary assessment, such as the place of origin, material, and age.

The monks who participate in gambling on antiques can only authenticate them through limited tactile methods, that is, by simply running their fingers over the surface, observing the patterns, or listening to the echo.

The use of any detection spells is strictly prohibited; their true value must be judged solely by sight and knowledge.

Once purchased at the guaranteed price, the buyer is solely responsible for all subsequent research and authentication.

If an antique is found to have hidden value, such as containing lost patterns, hidden knowledge, or extraordinary items that have been lightly preserved by time, its true value far exceeds the guaranteed price, and that is a profit.

But if it turns out that it is just an ordinary old item, a worthless piece of junk, or even a perfectly forged counterfeit, then you will lose everything and have to accept your bad luck.

This type of gameplay tests a mage's visual identification ability and basic knowledge the most.

Relatively speaking, it has the lowest entry barrier but also the greatest uncertainty, making it the most interesting and the most common gambling game for young sorcerers and antique novices.

The second way to play is by opening blind boxes.

This is more challenging and exciting than gambling on goods.

Some chambers of commerce that specialize in the antique business will collect unsorted antiques from ancient tombs, ancient ruins, and abandoned mage towers from various places, classify them in batches according to their place of origin and approximate age, and put them into reinforced magic boxes.

These boxes are engraved with simple anti-magic runes, which can isolate external magical interference and protect the timeless aura of the antiques inside.

The number of items in each box varies, ranging from three to five to more than ten, with varying quality.

It may contain genuine antiques, precious objects containing hidden knowledge, or it may be all worthless fragments and imitations.

The chamber of commerce will only inform buyers of the origin and approximate age of the blind boxes, without conducting any screening or additional authentication, and then give a fixed price.

Whether a buyer can open a blind box and find a treasure depends entirely on luck and their knowledge of the characteristics of antiques in the area.

If you're lucky enough to find a high-level Time-Sealed Treasure, you can become rich overnight.

But if you're unlucky and all you get are junk items, you can only accept the loss.

The third type of gameplay is called "Unlocking the Secret Treasure".

This is the highest level and most difficult way to gamble on antiques, with an extremely high barrier to entry, and is only for high-level mages, antique appraisal experts, and true tycoons.

The targets of these betting games are special antiques that have been preliminarily identified as having hidden value, but whose analysis is currently impossible.

Examples include extraordinary items sealed by advanced time-sealing techniques, stone tablets or scrolls inscribed with unknown ancient scripts, and incomplete books containing undecipherable secret knowledge.

Sellers will set an unlocking price for antiques that is much higher than that for ordinary antiques, based on the material, age, and initial energy fluctuations detected.

This price is both a preliminary valuation of its potential value and a test of the knowledge and ability of the person who unlocks it.

After paying the unlocking price, the monk will obtain the temporary unlocking right for the antique, which usually has a specified time limit.

It could be three days, a week, or even ten years.

During this period, the unlocker needs to use all their knowledge and resources to try to unlock the secrets of time, decipher unknown patterns, interpret hidden knowledge, and awaken the extraordinary value of antiques.

If successful, the antique will belong to the unlocker, and its value will often be dozens or even hundreds of times the unlock price, enough to greatly increase the strength or wealth of any mage.

However, if the antique cannot be deciphered within the specified time, it will be taken back by the seller, and the deciphering fee will not be refunded, which is equivalent to paying a huge price for a failed attempt.

This method of playing is the ultimate test of a mage's knowledge, ability, and patience.

But once successful, one can rise to the top in one step.

Therefore, even with extremely high barriers to entry and immense risks, it still attracts countless high-level mages.

Throughout the tens of thousands of years of the Plantagenet dynasty, there have been countless legendary stories of people who rose to prominence by seizing extraordinary opportunities hidden within antiques through collecting and gambling on them.

For example, Elerson, the founder of Creekwind Trading Company, was just an ordinary fourth-circle mage in his early years, without a powerful background or abundant wealth.

His only expertise lies in his extraordinary fascination and research into plane geometry.
During a gambling session involving rare items, he bought a tattered medieval leather travelogue for three hundred gold coin and discovered the coordinates of a secondary passage to the Shadow Plane within it.

Using this coordinate, he ventured deep into the Shadow Plane multiple times, gathering a wealth of dimensional resources and extraordinary materials. He not only used this to break through to the sixth-ring mage level but also established the Streamwind Trading Company.

The murmurs among the crowd continued. Some hesitated, some watched, and many more shook their heads and stepped aside after repeatedly touching and observing the objects.

The boiler-shaped object still lay there quietly, its surface covered in black rust and dirt, showing no signs of anything extraordinary.

After watching for a while, Gao De saw that no one was bidding, and considering that he himself knew nothing about antique appraisal, the ripples in his heart gradually subsided.

He turned and prepared to leave.

But at that moment, Gaode suddenly stopped.

It's Ibrahimovic.

Eevee, who had been following him in a state of astral lurking, was in its infancy and mostly slept, absorbing astral energy to grow rapidly, rarely making a sound.

Even when he occasionally wakes up, he only emits weak mental fluctuations and is never in a hurry.

But just now, it woke up and reacted extremely strongly, with the excitement and restlessness of a young animal, forcefully "pulling" away his intention to leave.

Among the many miscellaneous items at the stall, Eevee sensed a faint but pure astral energy.

It was this astral energy that awakened it from its slumber.

Gode ​​had no doubt about Ibrahimovic's perception.

As an astral fox, it is far more sensitive to astral energy than any spell or instrument.

Even astral energy sealed away by time and covered by thick layers of grime cannot escape its perception.

The astral plane holds countless mysteries, and any object that can be connected to astral energy is anything but simple, no matter how inconspicuous it may appear.

Gao De stopped without making a sound, pretending to still be watching, and his gaze quietly swept towards the corner of the stall following Yi Bu's prompt.

There was a pile of even more inconspicuous miscellaneous items, like scraps picked up casually while clearing ruins, mostly broken metal fragments and broken wooden components.

At the very bottom of these miscellaneous items, a round object was firmly pressed down by meteorite fragments, with only a small edge visible, like a forgotten broken plate.

Gao De's heart raced slightly. Using the crowd as cover, he slowly moved around to the side of the stall and finally saw the item clearly.

It was a round, dial-shaped object, its casing seemingly made of some kind of transparent crystal. The crystal showed no signs of weathering, only a thick layer of dried soil and volcanic ash covering its surface, as if it had just been dug out from deep underground.

Of course, these external objects can be cleaned up.

The problem is that the surface of the crystal shell is covered with fine, spiderweb-like cracks, and in some places it has even broken off, exposing the intricate gear structure inside.

Half of the gears were twisted and deformed, clearly indicating that they had been subjected to severe impacts, causing the transmission structure to completely jam.

The dial, which should have been engraved with patterns, was completely covered by thick black rust and dried dirt, with only a bent and deformed metal hand faintly visible in the center.

The pointer itself was slightly bent, pointing in a meaningless direction. The end of the pointer seemed to be inlaid with something, but it was completely covered by dirt, without any light.

Looking at the back of the dial, there is a smooth indentation. There should have been something in the indentation, but it has long since disappeared.

There are interfaces on the side that look like they are for connecting other components.

However, it also suffered heavy damage. The originally neat card slot was deformed by the impact, and the edges still had metal curled from the impact.

It looks as if it was forcibly ripped off from some complex instrument and then buried by a landslide or war, resulting in its current dilapidated state, now indistinguishable from a pile of junk.

However, the astral energy it contains reveals its extraordinary nature.

"No one's bidding? If no one wants it, I'll move on to the next one!" The stall owner looked disappointed as he reached out to take the boiler-shaped item, which remained untouched.

"Wait!" someone suddenly spoke up from the crowd. It was the old mage who had been uncertain earlier. He hesitated and said, "Let me take another look..."

The old monk stepped forward again, repeatedly stroking the edge of the object, then listened intently to the tapping sound. Finally, he gritted his teeth, as if he had made a tremendous decision:

"Although I really can't figure out what it is, it does contain a certain amount of refined gold. Even if I'm fooled in the end, I can still recover some of the loss by refining the refined gold. I want this thing!"

The old monk's words elicited a low gasp of surprise from the crowd. Some thought he must have misjudged the situation, while others thought he had a unique perspective. The discussion resumed.

The stall owner's face instantly lit up with a smile as he deftly accepted the two hundred golden bird coins handed to him by the old monk.

The gambling on the goods is still ongoing.

Once the vendor received the money, he became even more enthusiastic and laid out the remaining items on his stall one by one.

Some were bought, while others went unnoticed.

After all the "real antiques" on the stall had gone through the process, the stall owner's gaze fell on the pile of things next to him.

These were odds and ends he casually dug out from the ruins of the Morrison County craftsmen's workshop. He hadn't paid them any attention and had just left them piled up in a corner taking up space.

"Last batch! Clearance sale!" the stall owner shouted, trying to attract the attention of the crowd that was about to leave.

"You're selling this stuff? Are you crazy for money? It looks like a scrap you pulled out of a pile of rubble," someone in the crowd grumbled.

"Don't just talk nonsense," the stall owner retorted stubbornly, picking up a few meteorite fragments at random. "These things, for example, are meteorite iron. Even if they're not perfect, they can be refined into magical materials. Do you understand?"

As he spoke, he bent down again and pulled the dial out from underneath, holding it up by the edge.

Sunlight shone on the shattered crystal case of the watch face, refracting chaotic spots of light, and the twisted gears inside were vaguely visible.

"And this too!" the stall owner raised his voice, trying to sound self-righteous.

"Look at the craftsmanship! How intricate the gears are! Although it's badly damaged, it's clearly the work of an ancient artisan. Who knows, maybe it holds some lost alchemical technique? Buy it and study it; you might just find a treasure!"

"Give me a break!" someone immediately retorted, pointing to the spiderweb-like cracks on the dial.

"This crystal is cracked like a spider web, and the gears are crooked. Even if it was made by ancient craftsmen, the core structure is destroyed. What's the difference between it and scrap metal?"

The stall owner, of course, wouldn't back down verbally and continued, "What do you know? You're just talking nonsense if you're not buying anything."

He paused, and seeing that no one responded, his tone softened, "Business is good today, so I won't waste time with you. Take all of this stuff for 100 gold coins, consider it clearing out inventory!"

One hundred goldfinch coins is neither a lot nor a little.

When asked to use the money to buy a bunch of worthless junk, most people shook their heads and stepped back.

Some people muttered that only a madman would buy it, while others watched the spectacle with their arms crossed.

Some people are even calculating the value of the meteorite.

Meteorite iron is worth some money, but refining it requires specialized craftsmen and additional labor costs. In the end, the refined iron is worth less than half the price, so no one is willing to sell it.

Gao De stood at the edge of the crowd, secretly pleased, but his face remained calm. After waiting a while and seeing that no one was bidding, he slowly moved forward two steps.

His voice was neither too loud nor too soft, just enough for the stall owner and those around him to hear clearly:
"One hundred gold coin? That's too much." Gao De deliberately hesitated for a moment, his eyes sweeping over the pile of miscellaneous items before finally landing on the watch face in the stall owner's hand, and he shook his head.

"These junk pieces aren't even worth twenty coins. Look at this watch face, the crystal is shattered like this, and the gears are crooked. It'll only be good for decoration. The meteorite fragments look big, but refining them will be very costly, and we might not even break even."

"Here's fifty gold coin coins. I'll take them back and study them. Maybe I can dismantle some useful parts. Otherwise, they're just taking up space for you."

"Fifty?" The stall owner frowned, his face looking rather grim, as if he were carefully calculating the costs.

He didn't actually spend much money digging up these miscellaneous items, but he still felt he was losing out by cutting the price down from one hundred gold coin to fifty.

But after looking at the pile of things that no one cared about, and then at the amused looks on the faces of the people around him, he finally gave up and didn't bother to do anything more.

He waved his hand, his tone tinged with impatience: "Fine, fine, fifty it is! I'll sell it to you at a loss, stop haggling!"

Most of the people around who heard this conversation showed a sneer.

The old mage who had just spent two hundred gold coins to buy the antique boiler shook his head and reminded him, "Young man, you must be a novice in this field, right?"

"It's good to try your luck, but in our line of work, while luck is important, knowledge and experience are even more important."

"Putting everything else aside, he didn't even try to negotiate with you. You're definitely losing out on this deal. But it's alright, it's only fifty gold coins. Consider it a lesson learned."

The people around nodded in agreement.

Gao De smiled shyly, as if his thoughts had been exposed. He scratched his head and said, "I just think the dial is finely crafted and I want to go back and study it. Even if I don't find anything in the end, fifty gold coins isn't much. I'll just consider it tuition."

The stall owner deftly dumped the pile of miscellaneous items, including the broken watch face, into a coarse cloth bag and handed it to him, as if afraid that if he was too slow, Gao De would change his mind: "Place your order now."

Gao De took the bag, paid the money, and calmly turned around to squeeze out of the crowd.

(End of this chapter)