Cyber Ghosts

After Xiao Hong finished his words, they rushed happily out to pick up three stones optionally and then queued up to buy the stones. Several people around sympathetically looked at Hao Ning and his friends who were so happy. Hao Ning knew that those people must have some methods to see through their own stones. They believed that there was no jade in these stones and laughed at Hao Ning and his friends in their hearts for their ignorance about the stones as outsiders.

“Hah-hah!” Hao Ning felt angry in his mind when he saw the mocking faces of those people. “You will regret it after I cut open those stones and take out the jade in the stones later.”

“Sir, 500,000 yuan in total.” The waiter pointed at POS with a smile. “Please pay by card here. Only by cash card. Credit card is unacceptable.”

“500,000 yuan for only three stones?” Hao Ning was stunned first and then understood immediately on second thought that the stones were transported from other places, so their prices were getting higher. But he did not have a bargaining because he would cut open the stones and take out the violet jadeite with green lines. 500,000 yuan was not a big deal. He held the stones and looked at Xiao Hong, waiting for her to pay by cash card.

Xiao Hong got a little angry by Hao Ning’s stare. “Why are you looking at me? Pay by your cash card!”

“My cash card?” Hao Ning was stunned and thought in his mind that he did not have so much money. He asked Xiao Hong, “Not yours?” Hao Ning added specifically in a low voice since he was afraid that Xiao Hong would not understand after hearing his words. “The jade which will be taken out by cutting open the stones later will pay back the cost of buying those stones. Don’t worry. I’ll give you 1 billion yuan later…”

“Bro, are you insane?” Xiao Hong pulled Hao Ning aside. “I am the Sudhana. I pick these stones and pay by card. Then I take out the jade by cutting open them and make money. But then what’s cause and effect?”

“You, you, you!” Hao Ning understood. He couldn’t use Xiao Hong’s money. He could not help complaining, “You have never told me that!”

“I’ve told you clearly.” Xiao Hong almost cried, “I said that you needed to do it by yourself because I needed to care about the issue of cause and effect. Don’t you believe that you just need to borrow the mana from me and pay by my card? Brother Hao Ning, what can I describe you? Your theology quotient is too low indeed.”

“What is the theology quotient?” Zhou Yuan stepped closer to figure out what these two people were talking about. “What’s that?”

Xiao Hong felt very depressed and explained, “Intelligence quotient, emotional quotient, financial quotient, and theology quotient are your ability of comprehension in theology.” He looked at Hao Ning after saying that, “I think Hao Ning’s martial-arts quotient is 1000 while the theology quotient is negative.”

Hao Ning was speechless. According to Xiao Hong’s explanation, martial-arts quotient was the ability of comprehension in martial arts. Hao Ning had nothing to say under such a circumstance and had to ask how much money Liu Shuai and Zhou Yuan had. Zhou Yuan said that he was the immortal as well and could not help him, waving his hand. Liu Shuai and Hao Ning could not take much money at all since they were very poor. Liu Shuai had just bought so many things for Wen in his house for the surprise given to Wen while Hao Ning had just paid the three-month house rental. However, even if they had not spent their money on these things, they still could not afford the money to buy the stones at this moment.

“Um! Could the price be lower?” Hao Ning felt very embarrassed to tell the waiter, “I have only 30,000 yuan in total. Are there three stones which are worth only 30,000 yuan?”

“30,000 yuan?” The waiter was stunned and pointed to the stones held by Hao Ning and his friends. Then he gesticulated to measure with his hands, “Such big stones? Do you mean the crude stones?” After hearing his words, Hao Ning nodded seriously, but the waiter could not help laughing and said, “Sorry, we don’t sell the concrete.”

“You!” Hao Ning was about to lose his temper, but a voice came from the back, saying, “500,000 yuan! I’ll pay for them! Jienan, go to pay by card and remember to use my money.”

“So strange! Such a similar voice?” Hao Ning and Liu Shuai looked at each other and suddenly thought of it, “Zhang Dalong!”

Looking back, they found that it was him indeed. Zhang Dalong looked at them with a smile.

“Wow! Mr. Zhang!” Xiao Hong turned back to shake hands with him quickly and said with a smile, “Mr. Zhang, are you interested in this as well?”

Xiao Hong knew Zhang Dalong, too? Hao Ning thought about it and felt that it was reasonable. People in a circle would know each other by attending some wine parties. It was not strange but normal.

“It’s because of this kid…” Zhang Dalong looked at Jienan who was about to pay and said with a smile, “He said that stone-gambling was very popular recently so that we came here to have a look. I have not thought that I would meet you and these young friends here. According to the circumstance, you know each other, right?”

“Hey-hey! Mr. Zhang, nice to meet you.” Hao Ning smiled at Zhang Dalong and nodded in response. He quickly pulled Xiao Hong to the side and asked, “He will pay the money, but what about the jade in these stones? Who will get the jade?”

Xiao Hong opened his mouth with a smile. Before he could answer, Zhang Dalong laughed brightly, “It belongs to you. It’s a gift I send you.”

“That’s a big cost.” Hao Ning laughed and held three crude stones in his hands. He rubbed his head happily as if he was really holding a precious thing. People around him could not help laughing at him, and even someone made a sound of laughing.

“We can’t accept this.” Xiao Hong laughed as well and said, “Mr. Zhang, we have no reason to receive your 500,000 yuan. When the jade is taken out from the stones bought by your money, we will give your money back after we sell them out for a good price.”

After hearing the words of Xiao Hong, Hao Ning understood now that Xiao Hong meant that he should only pay back 500,000 yuan to Zhang Dalong after they sold the jade out. Stone-gambling was risky. That was enough. Xiao Hong was giving him a reason to accept the money. “Yes, Mr. Zhang. We could not accept your money for no reason, but we will pay back the money to you after we sell the jade out.”

“OK, okay!” Zhang Dalong laughed brightly and said, “Pay back 500,000 yuan to me if there is jade in these stones, and otherwise, no need to pay the money back.”

It was not that he did not care about the money. Hao Ning and his friends helped him out before, and it seemed that Hao Ning needed help this time since they fell into trouble. There were two reasons why he did so. One was that he wanted to pay back the kindness of Zhang Dalong. The other one was that he had something to discuss with Hao Ning. Therefore, he used the gift to show his goodwill.

“Three idiots…” Several voices came over, saying with sarcasm, “Those are useless stones. They treat them like treasures!”

“Yes, they are like beggars looking at the wild geese flying in the sky.” Another voice laughed to echo, “They are discussing how to eat those wild geese after hitting them down. But those wild geese just fly away before they can come to an agreement.”

“Ha-ha!” The voice became louder and louder, and then a large group of people could not help laughing.

One of the people who were gossiping continued to satirize, “You are wrong. Beggars will negotiate after they see those wild geese fly away, but these people just sit on the ground and look at the sky. Then they begin to dream and say, ‘If there are some wild geese flying by later, should we steam or braise them?'”

“Ha-ha!” The laugh became much louder.

“You guys want to die, right?” A big voice came out. With several sounds of banging, those people fell to the ground with their hands covering their eyes. They just screamed out of pain. So painful! Hao Ning found that Jienan stood in the front with her angry face after seeing this.

He had the reason to be angry. When Jienan finished the payment and came back, he found that a large group of people were making fun of Zhang Dalong and Hao Ning. One of them was his boss, and the other one was the master of martial arts who he thought highly of. Besides, his boss came here because of his proposal, but now, his boss suffered sarcasm here. He had no reason to let them go.

Hao Ning knew that Jienan had great martial arts and was comparable to Zhe in his prime. The painful faces of those people showed that Jienan was really angry. He quickly came up and persuaded, “Jienan, calm down! They will cry later.”

“You just got us beaten. You can’t leave!” Someone shouted, and it became noisy here at once. Then many people followed him since there was someone taking the lead. They all shouted at once.

“Who said that we were going to leave?” Hao Ning sneered in his mind and pointed at those people, shouting, “It is clear that they made fun of us first. The old man is my friend’s elder family. You are not polite to make fun of him since he knows little about stone-gambling. Is this your politeness to an elder? Your bad behaviors are getting more and more worse, apart from laughing. In this way, you are telling that only people who know more about stone-gambling can enter this place, right? Laymen who don’t know anything should be excluded, right?”

Hearing these words, Zhou Yuan and Liu Shuai looked at each other. Hao Ning was talking rubbish. The core problem was obviously hurting people, but Hao Ning transferred the focus to the classification of qualification that people came to the stone-gambling field.

“Right!” Zhou Yuan came up and echoed, “We all know nothing about stone-gambling, so we can’t play in this place, right? If so, you should put up a slogan at the gate of this place. Stone-gambler and Dog, No Entry! Ignorant people like us who know nothing about stone-gambling will not come here and get satirized by you who think they know well about stone-gambling in the future.”

No wonder Zhou Yuan was a person who liked reading some ancient books. The slogan “Stone-gambling and Dog, No Entry” was adapted from the sentence “People of Celestial Empire and Dog, No Entry” on the doors of some places, which was used by westerners to bully people of Celestial Empire in those days. Zhou Yuan’s adaption here could easily stimulate people’s anger.

“They are right.” A heavy and deep voice came from the back of the crowd. All the people turned back and found that the voice was from a little old man, who was not too old but very energetic, with a little girl holding him aside. The old man walked to the front and said in a chipper voice, “Everyone has the right to come here, and no one can laugh at others just because of their ignorance of stones.”

“Old man!” There were still some people shouting, but their voices become lower a lot. “The one who knows nothing about stone-gambling should be laughed at when coming here. Isn’t it normal?”

“Oh?” The old man raised his eyebrows and did not express an opinion. He asked with a smile, “In this way, people who know nothing about medicine should not go to hospital but be beaten on the hands by doctors, right?”

“You… This is sophistry!” Someone said, “Who are you, old man? We are right!”

“Shush! Bro, watch out your mouth!” The man’s mouth was covered by others the moment he was about to speak, “You can’t afford to offend this old man!”

“Brother Hu!” Zhang Dalong shook hands with a smile after seeing this. He said, “Why did you come here today? Not busy in your clinic?”

“I hope I can free from work!” The smiley old man shook hands with Zhang Dalong. “I hope there will no disease in the world so that people will no longer need medication. But there are a lot of patients in my clinic recently. I do not want to stay there to make trouble for those young doctors because they feel uneasy to put their medical skills to good use as I idle about there. So, I could only expel myself to come here.”

“Ha-ha!” Zhang Dalong answered with a smile, “Brother Hu, you are so humorous. You have great medical skills. Once you see a patient, he will be cured soon. But it is right to give the young doctors more opportunities to practice. No matter how capable we are, our business will belong to them in the future, right?”

These two people had a small talk, and Zhang Dalong quickly came over to introduce, “This is Mr. Hu from Clinic Hu. He is skillful in medicine, and he is my lifetime buddy, so I call him Brother Hu brazenly, too. Brother Hu, they are some of the talents I know in my industry…”

When these people were rambling on about the introduction, the people who just now took up their refrain became speechless when they heard the Clinic Hu. They not only kept silent but also all disappeared. Clinic Hu was top-rated in the whole G province, even in the whole country. It could be said to be a clinic. But it had countless branches a long time ago. From the old man’s family name and the attitude of Zhang Dalong, it was so clear that this old man was the founder of Clinic Hu indeed today. Hao Ning and his friends did not know what to say and just nodded with a giggle when they heard the introduction of Zhang Dalong.

Clinic Hu was famous for its persistence in the traditional medicine of Celestial Empire, which could cure many tough diseases that were hard to treat by western medicine. Today, western medicine was more popular than traditional medicine of Celestial Empire. Clinic Hu was absolutely a bright pearl as well as a totem from all aspects. It was not quite appropriate to criticize Clinic Hu both in morality as well as justice and reality. The most practical point was that no one could promise that he would not be sick in the future, so he could not offend the Clinic Hu and its founder Mr. Hu if he needed traditional medicine of Celestial Empire to cure his disease which could not be cured by western medicine.

“Grandpa, these several people?” A delicate and pretty girl looked down at the guys beaten down to the ground by Jienan and asked.

“Go ahead.” Mr. Hu nodded.

“Ha-ha! OK!” The girl seemed to be very happy. Just in a flash, she seemed to have touched the face of everyone gently and went back to the side of the old man immediately.

“Good job!” Hao Ning and Jienan both praised her simultaneously.

Those guys just felt cold on their faces before they could come to their senses, and the pains vanished suddenly. They then looked at each other and found that the bruises on their faces vanished now, too.

“Holy doctor!” The situation converted at once. Those guys said thank you to her one by one, and Jienan did not know what to say.

“Shameful!” Another voice came from a middle-aged man who walked out smilingly with a young man behind him. The young man with cold eyes lowered his head and did not look at them. The girl without saying a word frowned when looking at the young man.

“Our company has been hiring you guys only for being laughed at?” Those people were too nervous to speak, and the man continued to say, “You guys really disgrace Wang Family!”

After saying that, he held the fist in the other hand towards these several people and said with a smile, “I am sorry to amuse you. My name is Wang Jun, in charge of the business of Wang Real Estate in the southern part of Celestial Empire.

Hao Ning and Xiao Hong looked at each other and laughed helplessly. So many people were here, and it became noisy here today. Zhang Dalong came here, so did these doctors. Even people of Wang Family came here as well.

“Wang Real Estate?” Xiao Hong asked on purpose, “Wang Real Estate of Mister Wang Shiming?”

“Exactly!” Wang Jun laughed with much respect, “I have a deep relationship with Mister Wang Shiming. Do you also know the Mister of our family?”

Hao Ning felt a little disgusted when he heard about the word “Mister”. They were in the new times, and it was so wired to say this word. When the above behaved wrongly, the below would do the same. Was it necessary to flatter him so much? Hao Ning laughed and said, “I don’t know Wang Shiming, but I have a good relationship with Wang Shizhe.”

As expected, Wang Jun’s eyes got cold when he heard the name “Wang Shizhe”, but he still kept his smile. Hao Ning guessed at once that what Zhe said was right. People below knew much about the identity of Zhe indeed, but they did not want to speak it out.

“Sir, you must be joking.” Wang Jun did not express an opinion, but he changed his attitude which was good just now. He stood straight and said, “Our people just made fun of this… Mr. Zhang. That’s our fault, but your suite…”

“Suite?” Jienan became angry when hearing these words. They were in a new era, and this man still said the word “suite”. He felt a gloomy and cold wind coming straight to his face when he was about to lose his temper. And when he was about to resist the wind, Hao Ning had already stood in front of him. With two sounds of bang, Hao Ning’s body shook, but he still looked at Wang Jun with a smile and said, “Mr. Wang, as I know, a friend of mine is the colleague of Mr. Zhang. In this age, we are all labors. Please withdraw the word ‘suite’.”

“You…” Wang Jun’s face suddenly got changed. When the young man said something to him in his year behind, Wang Jun laughed at once and said, “Okay! Fine! But your friend got my people beaten. Anyway, it is his fault, right?”