Just as Mo Mo finished speaking, there was a knock on the door.
"Xiao Shu"
"I understand, Brother Mo."
"Please come in."
Looking at the smiling waiter who walked in, Mo Mo felt helpless.
"Sir, the glamorous general manager would like to invite you to dinner." The waiter smiled, revealing eight pearly white teeth.
"Male or female?", Mo Mo
"Male," the waiter
"No way, what's the point of having dinner with a man?" Mo Mo said with a look of disdain.
"Okay, sir." It was clear that although the waiter was still smiling, it was very forced, and you could see that the corners of his mouth were twitching.
"Xiao Shu, which wave is it?" Mo Mo asked, rubbing his forehead.
"This is the fourth batch, exactly two men and two women, all invited to dinner," Xiao Shu said, tilting her head and staring at Mo Mo.
"Ugh, what a rip-off! I shouldn't have bothered with that stone. Now I'm so annoyed. I'm going to lay low for a while." With that, he disappeared from the room.
Just a second before Mo Mo disappeared, Xiao Shu clearly wanted to say something, but she only managed to utter the word "okay" before Mo Mo vanished.
Then a strange scene unfolded in the room. Mo Mo would appear one second and disappear the next, then reappear and disappear again. And each time he disappeared and reappeared, he was wearing different clothes. Sometimes he was only wearing a short-sleeved shirt and shorts, sometimes he was wearing a trench coat and long pants, sometimes he was wearing a cotton-padded jacket, and sometimes he was even wearing only a pair of shorts.
Appearing and disappearing, appearing and disappearing, Mo Mo continued like this for more than a minute. Fortunately, no one came in to see it, otherwise they would have been scared to death.
"I'm exhausted, but it feels so amazing, hahaha. We just met, and the next second when we meet again, the other person is excitedly telling you that you've lost weight in three months. It feels so amazing! What's even more amazing is that the four seasons change in a second, just like watching TV." Mo Mo said excitedly.
"Xiao Shu, they should all be gone by now. They won't bother me anymore, right?" Mo Mo asked uncertainly, looking towards the door.
"Brother Mo, have you forgotten? Every time you travel to another world and come back, only a second has passed. Even if you traveled to another world more than eighty times this time, only a little over a minute has passed." Xiao Shu covered her mouth and chuckled.
With a "thud," Mo Mo collapsed onto the bed.
"Let's face reality, Brother Mo, they're here," Xiao Shu said with a smile.
As Xiao Shu's voice rang out, a crisp knock came from the door.
"Please come in."
"Kid, I heard you're hard to get a hold of," Li Wenyu said as he walked straight in.
"Um?"
"Uncle Li, what brings you here?" Mo Mo asked in surprise.
Li Wenyu looked around Mo Mo's room and said, "This kid is quite frugal. Someone with over ten million in assets is staying in a place that costs two or three hundred a night."
"Uncle Li, please stop teasing me. Others may not know about my money, but you do, right? It's all luck."
"Come on, luck is also a kind of strength. Whether you're lucky or not, you're a legend in the jade gambling world now. Come with me and let's meet some big shots in the jade industry." After saying that, he stepped forward, took Mo Mo's hand, and walked out.
Mo Mo followed Li Wenyu out of the hotel and got into Li Wenyu's car. The car drove around for almost half an hour before finally stopping.
"We've arrived, get out of the car," he said, opening the door and getting out.
After getting out of the car and looking around, Mo Mo found the place to be surprisingly quiet. The trees stood tall, each as thick as a man's waist, likely at least a hundred years old.
A small path leads through the woods ahead, and although it is not clear, it is brightly lit ahead.
"Come on, this is a great place. I usually don't want to come here, but today I can eat and drink for free thanks to you." Li Wenyu said and walked forward without waiting for Mo Mo's reply.
Following the path forward for about five minutes, a sudden bright light appeared before my eyes. Although it was dark and I couldn't see clearly, the light within the range of the lamps was already quite remarkable.
Looking up, the first thing that catches the eye is a row of covered bridges typical of the water towns of Jiangnan. At the end of the covered bridges is a small wooden house with only two floors. What's even more remarkable is that half of the small wooden house is built on the water.
The shoreline was lined with trees, but it was difficult to tell what kind of trees they were at night.
As if hearing Mo Mo's thoughts, Li Wenyu introduced to Mo Mo, "The trees on the shore are pear, apricot, and peach trees. When they bloom, people are scrambling to come here. Imagine drinking wine and tea under the trees with falling blossoms, how poetic and romantic! If you invite your goddess to sit here, your success rate in confessing your love will increase by at least 60%!"
Mo Mo: "..." Weren't we here to eat? How did we end up talking about confessions again?
When Mo Mo arrived at the cottage, he looked up and found it quite nice. Although Mo Mo didn't understand architecture or layout, the cottage gave him a very comfortable feeling, as if he had returned home.
"Linfang Residence?" Mo Mo looked surprised. But after looking at the various trees behind him, he understood.
"Let's go, don't keep them waiting." Li Wenyu took the lead and went inside.
Despite having a lot of questions, Mo Mo followed her inside. After walking about ten meters, Mo Mo followed Li Wenyu to a room.
Upon entering, they found two tables already occupied by over a dozen people. As Mo Mo and his companion walked in, the head of the table near the entrance stood up and greeted them, saying, "Brother Li, we've been waiting for you." Then, looking at Mo Mo, he asked, "This must be Brother Mo, right?" His words seemed questioning, but he was already certain that the person before him was indeed Mo Mo.
“Yes, that’s him.” Li Wenyu replied with a smile, then looked at the man and said, “Zhou Li, General Manager of Pearl & Jewelry.”
This is awkward. You just declined someone's invitation, and now you find yourself sitting next to them having dinner with the same group of people you just rejected.
“Xiao Mo, we know you don’t like trouble or dealing with strangers, so we discussed it and decided to invite you together. Brother Li is familiar with you, so we took the liberty of asking him to bring you along. You won’t blame us, will you?” Zhou Li immediately broke the awkward silence.
"Not at all. It is my honor that you seniors would invite me to dinner. Please introduce me to you," Mo Mo said respectfully.
Sure enough, as soon as Mo Mo was introduced, he found that all four companies he had rejected at the hotel were there. Through Li Wenyu's introduction, Mo Mo discovered that those present were either CEOs of jewelry companies or jade suppliers, and there were even two carving masters, as well as quite a few raw stone suppliers.
After a series of social obligations, the meal took more than an hour to finally end.
After dinner, a raw jade supplier suggested that Mo Mo go to each supplier's warehouse and choose a raw jade stone. The one whose jade stone is the most valuable will be the gift for Mo Mo tonight. Of course, the selected raw jade stones must be in the same price range.
Everyone cheered, and then they drove from house to house, marking the selected stones and transporting them together to the last house to be unearthed.
After the rough stone was cut open, everyone was greatly disappointed because the quality of the jade material was uneven. Some pieces were even completely white with no green at all.
However, this was exactly what Mo Mo wanted. He wanted others to think that he was just lucky and that he didn't actually have any insight into anything. So Mo Mo chose the stone randomly. Although he seemed very serious when choosing, anyone with a discerning eye could tell that Mo Mo was a complete novice.
Ultimately, the jade material that was extracted and valued the most was the one that had initially made the suggestion. In the end, he gave Mo Mo a set of jade ornaments worth around 50,000 yuan.
After getting out of the car at the hotel entrance, I said goodnight to Li Wenyu and was about to go inside when Li Wenyu pulled me aside.
"Xiao Mo, tell me honestly, do you really know how to appraise stones? Were you faking it tonight? If you were, you did it so convincingly that you even fooled me," Li Wenyu said with a sigh.
"Uncle Li, do you want to hear the truth or a lie?" Mo Mo asked helplessly.
"How do you tell the truth, and how do you tell a lie?" Li Wenyu became interested.
"The truth is..." "I really don't know anything about stone appreciation, but the lie is that I can see through it completely." After Mo Mo finished speaking, he stared at Li Wenyu, but Mo Mo was disappointed. Li Wenyu's expression did not change at all, and he was still staring at him steadily.
“Alright, I’ll tell you the truth, but you have to keep it a secret for me and handle any potential consequences of this incident. After all, I don’t want it to disrupt our previous life,” Mo Mo said solemnly to Li Wenyu.
"Okay, I agree." Li Wenyu said this, but in his heart he was already laughing. "What a little novice. Although you cut out more than ten million worth of jade in one go, which will arouse some people's jealousy, it's just jealousy. The higher-level people will just think that this person is not bad and worth winning over. Once they find out that you just got lucky, they will ignore you. And those who want to make a quick buck will not dare to have such thoughts when they see that I came to pick you up and take you to Linfang Residence. Little Momo, I really like you more and more. You are so cute, so innocently cute."
Fortunately, Mo Mo didn't know what Li Wenyu was thinking, otherwise he would definitely have spat and turned around and left, ending their friendship forever. But unfortunately, Mo Mo didn't know.
"I don't really know how to judge jade, but for some reason, I have a strange feeling when I handle raw stones, as if I can sense whether there is jade inside. However, it's not always accurate. The last piece caused so much trouble because I didn't judge it correctly."
Mo Mo still lied, after all, he couldn't let others know about Xiao Shu's existence. In fact, Mo Mo was choosing stones to use Xiao Shu's ability to analyze those raw stones. After all, she was more than forty years ahead of the present, so analyzing whether there was jade in the raw jade stones was not a problem. However, some interference was too great and she could not analyze it.
At this moment, Li Wenyu no longer felt that Mo Mo was naive. He now looked at Mo Mo with the eyes of a miser eyeing a mountain of gold, his eyes gleaming.
"You haven't told anyone else, have you?" Li Wenyu looked around suspiciously and whispered.
"No, I only just found out I have this ability," Mo Mo said somewhat guiltily.
"Xiao Mo, do you like our Xiao Xue'er or Xiao Jingzi? Don't be nervous, I won't stop you. Don't worry, wait for my good news." With that, he got into his car and drove off without looking back.
"Hey, hey, it's not... it's not what you think," Mo Mo said in a softer voice. Watching the car disappear in the blink of an eye, Mo Mo helplessly turned back to the hotel.
(End of this chapter)
Chapter 12 The Promise of Standing Side by Side
Lying in bed, staring at the ceiling above his head, Mo Mo's mind was in turmoil, but the smile that occasionally appeared on his lips must have put him in a good mood.
"Xiaoxue is really pretty, and her personality is exactly what I'm looking for. She would be a great wife. Anyway, my mom keeps urging me to find someone soon."
"Xiao Jing is not bad either. Although she has a strong personality and is still young, she'll be fine in a few years."
"Damn, wait a minute, I should be thinking about how to explain to them that it's not what they think, although that wouldn't be bad either."
"Should we explain this? Otherwise, what if we can't even be friends anymore?"
"Forget it, let nature take its course. Let's go see how the harvest is. Hopefully it's a bumper crop!" With that, he disappeared from the bed.
In Mo Mo's room, a person suddenly appeared, but unfortunately no one saw this amazing scene. Or perhaps not.
"Ah, home is so comfortable. Carefree, no worries, and no social obligations," Mo Mo said contentedly.
"Let's go visit Uncle Ye. Ye Fan will be back soon. Although Uncle Ye and his family have been doing well these past few years, often traveling, and I often accompany them, I can still tell that they really miss Ye Fan. They just suppress it and don't show it." Mo Mo sighed and walked outside.
"Uncle Ye, I'm here. Are you home?" His voice preceded his arrival.
"Xiao Mo, you're back! We haven't been able to contact you all these years. Where have you been?" she said, hugging Mo Mo tightly.
Mo Mo: (⊙o⊙)
"Hey, wait a minute, what's wrong with Uncle Ye? Wait, how many years?" Mo Mo was completely confused.
"That shouldn't be the case. How could the time I traveled to be wrong? Never mind, it's good that nothing happened." Mo Mo breathed a sigh of relief.
With a smile on his face, Ye's father held Mo Mo's hand and said, "It's good that you're back, it's good that you're back. I'm so happy that you're all back." As he spoke, tears streamed down his face.
"Uncle Ye, don't cry, we're back, aren't we?" Mo Mo's expression changed. "No, we're all back." "Could it be..."
"Uncle Ye, Brother Fan is back?" Mo Mo asked in surprise.
"Yes, I came back a few days ago, but unfortunately I couldn't get in touch with you," Ye's father sighed. "Come on, come on, let's go inside. I'll call Xiao Fan back."
"Dad, I'm back." A young man with an extraordinary temperament and handsome appearance walked in.
"It's good that you're back. Come on in. These past few years, I've been so grateful to Xiao Mo and Xiao Qiong. Otherwise, I really don't know if we would ever see you again. Thanks to Xiao Mo, we've been doing quite well these past few years. We play chess, travel, and wander around. We've been living a good life. I just miss you a little."
Ye Fan's eyes were filled with tears, but he didn't let them fall. He turned around, took Mo Mo's hand, and said, "Thank you, thank you for being there for my parents all these years."
"It's nothing, this was agreed upon beforehand, and I haven't taken good care of Uncle Ye and Auntie. I haven't visited them for several years," Mo Mo said, feeling both guilty and excited.
"Brother Fan, Brother Fan who has returned after completing his studies, Brother Fan who has returned from Beidou with a wealth of treasures and unique skills, and most importantly, some of them are his own."
"It's nothing. You've been with my parents for over ten years. Everyone has their own life. It's okay that you've been too busy to come these past few years. Besides, my parents have been living quite well with Xu Qiong and the others these past few years."
Mo Mo was astonished to hear "Xu Qiong." She was the woman who took Ye's parents in and cared for them in the original story. He never expected that fate would be so strange. Even though Mo Mo had changed so much, Ye's parents still met Xu Qiong.
"You know Xu Qiong?" Then, as if realizing something, he said, "That's right, it's not surprising that you have the ability to know these things. Let's talk this over carefully, brother." Ye Fan pulled Mo Mo into the room.