Becoming Rich with Daily Scavenging APP

In West Capital City, not only is it hard to get a taxi.

It's also not easy to find a truck for a half-day hire.

The truck drivers on the platforms all prefer to load up and leave immediately rather than accept a job for half a day from Chen Yiyang.

With no other option, Chen Yiyang had to rent a truck himself and drove to the old goods market.

There is a particularly large and rustic parking lot outside the old goods market, which makes parking quite convenient.

After getting out of the truck, Chen Yiyang walked straight into the old goods market.

After a brief observation of the place, Chen Yiyang felt that it looked more like a giant semi-open warehouse than a trading space.

Items here are consigned and simply placed under a shed. Each item has a label with a brief introduction and price.

If you fancy something, you have to call over the manager to make the transaction.

If you're not satisfied with the price on the label, you can also ask the manager to call the seller to inquire about a discount.

Once the price is negotiated, the manager takes away the label, and you can leave with the item.

This trading process is quite primitive, yet it does have a sense of adventure and treasure hunting.

After some effort, Chen Yiyang found the safe he wanted to buy in a corner where large items are placed.

This safe is a relatively old model, with a rusty appearance.

It was unclear whether it was already rusted before being placed here or if it rusted afterward from sitting unsold for a long time.

Chen Yiyang walked over and looked at the label stuck to the safe.

It contained a long passage.

"An old-fashioned safe that has been at home for a long time. The password was originally written in a notebook, but the notebook was chewed by a dog, leaving only the last two digits, 83. As for the key, it's been lost for a long time now.

The safe was used by an elder in our family, who passed away suddenly without mentioning what's inside. My father saw this safe being opened by the elder and said there was nothing inside.

So we never bothered to have the safe opened, but for those willing to take a chance, they can buy it and break it open to test their luck, maybe there's something good.

Asking price: One thousand yuan.

After reading the label, Chen Yiyang scrutinized the safe closely.

Though the safe isn't very large, it's made of very solid material. It's estimated that even with tools, breaking it open would cost a couple of hundred yuan.

If the original owner checked the safe before closing it and confirmed there's nothing inside,

it's understandable they wouldn't want to spend money to break it open.

So Chen Yiyang directly called the manager and expressed his intention to buy the safe.

"Are you going to haggle? If you'd like to haggle, I can call the owner to see if it can be sold to you for a bit cheaper," the manager, surprised by Chen Yiyang's interest in buying the object, remarked.

Because this broken safe doesn't seem worth a thousand yuan at all.

If it had a key and a password, it might sell for one or two hundred at most.

Currently, it might be worth more sold as scrap metal. But who knows, selling it to a scrap yard might not even cover the gas money.

"No need to negotiate, I'm okay with the original price of one thousand yuan. Can I take it away directly?"

"Yes," the manager nodded.

Only negotiating requires contacting the seller.

But if you're willing to pay the label price, you can buy and take the item directly.

"Then there's no need to call, I'll transfer the payment directly to you."

After speaking, Chen Yiyang transferred one thousand yuan to the manager.

The reason for not negotiating was that Chen Yiyang worried about losing the deal.

This item wasn't worth much to begin with. If you negotiate it down to a few hundred, the seller might become suspicious and not sell it.

After all, it's uncertain if anyone would want it even at a hundred yuan.

The seller probably set the price at one thousand, intending to try their luck.

By leaving it here, they don't have to occupy space at home.

So Chen Yiyang decided not to haggle and bought it outright.

After paying, the manager brought a small cart and together they lifted the safe onto it.

Chen Yiyang pushed the cart to his rented truck and loaded the safe into the compartment.

After securing the purchase, Chen Yiyang locked the vehicle and returned to the old goods market to see if anything else caught his interest.

But it was evident that without some insider tips, Chen Yiyang couldn't spot any hidden treasures.

Anything of interest either couldn't be bargained down, or wasn't easy to resell.

So as dusk approached, Chen Yiyang drove back to his apartment building.

When Chen Yiyang arrived at his building, he coincidentally ran into the concierge, a woman in her thirties.

"Are you planning to store your own items in that safe? It looks so old. Our apartments offer safe rental services; you could rent a safe here directly," she said, intending to help him move the safe.

But after feeling its weight, she decisively gave up.

"No, I brought this safe from my old home. It seems to have things inside, but I've lost the keys and forgotten the password. I can't open it, so I thought I'd move it into the apartment for now and find some people later to drill it open," Chen Yiyang explained.

"That's so much trouble. These old safes are not hard to open. I know a locksmith with excellent skills, let her open it for you."

"A locksmith can easily open safes too?" Chen Yiyang had thought such skills were only seen in movies with master thieves.

"It's much easier to open than you think," the apartment manager said enthusiastically. "Whenever tenants forget their passwords, lose their door keys, or lock the safe key inside the safe, we just call the locksmith to open it."

Since that's the case.

Chen Yiyang got the locksmith's phone number from the apartment manager and then called.

"This is a locksmith service. Unlocked doors are fifty, locked doors are eighty. Car unlocking is one hundred sixty, other types of locks are priced differently depending on the situation."

A lazy woman's voice came through the phone.

Chen Yiyang didn't expect the locksmith to be a woman.

But since the apartment manager said she was skilled, Chen Yiyang didn't underestimate her and said, "I have an old-fashioned safe here, and I've forgotten both the key and the combination."

"Unlocking the key lock is eighty, the combination lock is one hundred sixty, totaling two hundred forty. Pay after it's open, the price may increase depending on the situation, no bargaining."

"Okay, no problem," Chen Yiyang agreed.

Spending two hundred forty to open the lock is better than getting a few people to forcibly break open the safe with tools.

Chen Yiyang waited downstairs for less than half an hour.

Soon, he saw a familiar motorcycle approaching from a distance.

A girl got off the motorcycle.

When the girl took off her short hair helmet and walked over with her tool bag, Chen Yiyang looked carefully.

Isn't this the ghost lady?

No, she must be a real person. What ghost dares to show up so brazenly in broad daylight?

But this ghost lady seemed not to have woken up today, she lazily walked over without looking closely at Chen Yiyang, her eyes directly focused on the safe.

"Is this it?"

"Yes," Chen Yiyang nodded.

Getting the job done was the priority, so he didn't ask her why she had driven him to the Ghost Market the other day.

"Let me take a look," the ghost lady casually threw her tool bag on the ground, then took out a specially made key from it.

She inserted the key into the safe's keyhole, then lightly tapped it with a screwdriver, forcing the key into the keyhole.

Then she twisted the key with one hand and worked the safe's handle with the other.

After just three or four seconds, she said, "The lock is open. You don't remember the combination at all, do you?"

"I can only remember the last two digits being 83," Chen Yiyang replied.

"Let me see." The ghost lady glanced at the safe's model, then took out her phone and entered a string of numbers into her contacts.

Immediately, a bunch of numbers that didn't look like phone numbers popped up on her phone.

"You can open the safe like that?" Chen Yiyang asked, full of curiosity.

It was his first time seeing someone open a safe combination lock this way.

Isn't it supposed to be like in the movies, where you slowly listen for the clicking sounds?

"Yeah, I just give the safe a call and it opens itself," the ghost lady said, with a sense of humor.

After ten seconds, she put down her phone and began to turn the dial of the combination lock.

After a few turns.

With a click.

The safe opened.

"Wow," Chen Yiyang was amazed.

He wanted to learn this too.

If he learned this skill, wouldn't he be able to sneak into other people's homes and find hidden treasures?

"Transfer the money," the ghost lady pulled out her phone and tapped it, bringing up a payment code.

After Chen Yiyang transferred the money, he barely had a chance to speak further with her.

Before he knew it, the ghost lady had packed up her tools and left.

She seemed very busy today.

But since he had her phone number now, they'd have plenty of opportunities to discuss the previous misunderstanding in detail.

So Chen Yiyang went to check the newly opened safe first.

As it said on the label of the safe earlier.

The safe looked empty upon opening.

But since the intel suggested there might be hidden treasures, maybe this safe had a hidden compartment?

Chen Yiyang reached up into the safe with his hand.

Though he didn't find a hidden compartment, he did find a package.

It turned out that the top of the safe had a recessed layer. This layer couldn't be seen from the outside, but when reaching inside, you could feel it.

Chen Yiyang pulled the package down.

It was a cloth package.

The cloth package had been taped to the top of the safe. When Chen Yiyang opened one corner, he discovered there were vintage gold jewelry inside.

So he put the package in his arms, planning to return the rented car first, then find someone later to appraise how much the gold jewelry was worth.