Undercurrents at the Auction!

"Fuck!" Somewhere in the real world. Staring at the two lines of announcement that had popped up on the official website, the trader seated before the monitor couldn't hold back a curse. Catching all his colleagues turning to look at him in unison, he gave a dry cough to cover his embarrassment and spoke in a rapid rush of words. "A temporary suspension... We can't trade anymore." Those words stirred up an instant storm. "Can't trade?!" "What's going on?!" "Is there a problem with the funds?" "How could things fall apart at such a crucial moment!" The office erupted into an uproar. An elderly man sitting at another desk stood up at once, asking anxiously, "How can we not trade? What on earth happened?" The trader pushed his chair back, leaned his head against the cushion, and rubbed the bridge of his nose with a throbbing headache. "The official explanation claims server network fluctuations... In short, we can place or cancel pending orders, but no new transactions can be settled." Everyone went speechless. Network fluctuations, right. Could they have cooked up a lousier excuse?! Even if every server on the planet experienced network fluctuations all at once, the official website for *Wasteland OL* probably wouldn't even flinch. The square-faced man gave a dry cough. "...Well, it's certainly in character for that guy." 'That guy,' of course, referred to Ah Guang. Over the past six months, they had collected and compiled nearly every thread, every sentence, and even every punctuation mark Ah Guang had posted on the forum. All of it was done to ensure they wouldn't miss a single crucial piece of intel. Like this auction, for example. If they had overlooked this lead and allowed their competitors to buy away the technology, the loss would have been devastating! Sitting back up in his office chair, the trader paused for a beat and continued, "However, while the bad news is the suspension, the good news is... the auction's start time has been moved up to right now." Murmurs rippled through the office. The elderly man frowned and asked, "Does that count as good news?" "Of course it does," the trader said as if stating the obvious. "We have the first-mover advantage. While we aren't sure how many rival accounts are out there or how much our competitors managed to buy, our share of the total trading volume gives us a massive edge!" Hearing that, everyone's furrowed brows finally smoothed out. The elderly man who had stood up also breathed a sigh of relief and sat back down. Right after yesterday's meeting, he had immediately reached out to Academician Liu Yiping of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Material Technology and Engineering to consult in detail on technical matters such as lithium batteries and lithium dendrites. In order to grasp all the intricacies, he had taken several pages of notes alone! According to Academician Liu, while the prospect of resolving the lithium dendrite problem in the short term was slim, once solved, its impact on the domestic new energy industry—and even the national energy strategy—would be staggering. This time, even the habitually rigorous Academician Liu had used an exaggerated term like "staggering." The gravity of the matter was obvious! No matter what, they had to secure this auction! The square-faced man gave a light cough. "Let's not jinx oursel—I mean, let's not get ahead of ourselves. What are the rules of the auction?" The trader touched the bridge of his nose, his eyes fixed on the screen. "...The rules are the same as any standard auction: highest bidder wins, with each increment not lower than one percent. However, because the transaction is carried out on their platform and the designated currency is silver coins, bids cannot exceed the account balance." The amount of silver coins held by each account was anonymous to the public, but laid completely bare to the operators of *Wasteland OL*. In other words, placing inflated, empty bids was impossible; the account balance was the hard ceiling for any offer. The square-faced man frowned. "...Meaning you can't just shout a high bid first and scramble to pull the funds together before settlement day." The trader nodded. "Yes. According to the rules, settlement occurs immediately upon the close of the auction... For us, that's actually good news. Our bid only needs to exceed second place by a single 'minimum increment,' and we win." The elderly man followed up, "When does the auction start?" The trader looked at the screen. "It's already begun!" More than just begun—the competition among the various parties had already reached a boiling point! An anonymous account was the first to offer a floor bid of one million silver coins. Immediately after, a second account raised the paddle without hesitation, bumping the price straight to two million silver coins. From there, the different sides entered a tug-of-war in increments of one hundred thousand. According to public data, before the silver coin trading platform halted, the highest executed price for a single silver coin had approached six hundred! The average transaction price for the day had been dragged up from fifty all the way to eighty! Calculated at that average price, two million silver coins were equivalent to one hundred and sixty million! It was sheer madness! Yet everyone in the room knew very well that compared to the intrinsic value of the auction item itself, a bid of a hundred-odd million wasn't even a drop in the bucket. A single painting could sell for hundreds of millions, let alone a pivotal technology capable of revolutionizing an entire industry. The only reason another zero hadn't been tacked onto the number was simply that the available chips on the market were limited. At present, the game's total player base hovered around three thousand. Assuming an average of ten thousand silver coins in each player's pocket, that came to only thirty million in total. Even factoring in the few high-end players with their own in-game businesses, doubling the 'total circulating currency' to sixty million was already a generous estimate. On top of that, a vast crowd of spectator players had jumped into trading, siphoning off a portion of the silver coins, while rival accounts concealed within the platform were buying aggressively at the same time. Even after shelling out whatever it took to sweep up coins, they had only managed to secure ten percent of the chips in a single day. Ten percent might not sound like much. But for a non-issuing party to hold ten percent of the total circulating volume—nearly six million silver coins—was already an exceptionally aggressive accumulation strategy! Costing hundreds of millions, if all they ended up with was a digital card reading "Thank You for Your Patronage," everyone in this room would be held accountable. In a sense, their destinies were now bound to *Wasteland OL*. Even though the vast majority of them had never set foot inside the game... Staring at the laptop on his knees, the square-faced man clenched his fists, his palms slick with sweat. He was a closed beta tester himself. Brother Guang never screwed his own people over. He believed Brother Guang wouldn't screw him over! Seconds and minutes ticked away. The bidding swiftly reached three million silver coins, and the pace of increases began to taper off. The trader, who had held his ground all this time, suddenly let out a breath of relief. "...Four million should be their limit." "Each bid increase can't be lower than one percent. If we hit them straight with four million, accounting for the forty-thousand increment, victory is practically ours." As he spoke, his index finger tapped against the keyboard, entering a string of numbers. After carefully verifying the row of zeros, he struck the Enter key. It was like a pause button on time itself. The instant the bid was submitted, the entire auction window froze as if suspended, and not a single new bid popped up. Then, the pop-up notification that appeared once every three minutes began to flash. [Four million going once!] [Four million going twice!] [...Sold!] The office, which had stayed dead quiet for a full nine minutes, instantly erupted into cheers of excitement. "We did it!" "Hahaha! We won!" "Brilliant job!" The square-faced man finally relaxed his brow, unclenched his fists, and pumped them again. Even with his usual composed demeanor, he couldn't help joining his colleagues in shouting his approval. The elderly man walked excitedly over to the trader, leaning close to the monitor. "Where's the item? That membrane thing... how are they delivering it to us?" Winning the auction was settled, and there hadn't been much suspense there. The vast majority of players traded in RMB; losing would have been the real anomaly. Yet the pressing question now was: where was the item they had just won? The office fell silent once more. The square-faced man suddenly bounded to his feet, tossed his laptop onto the couch, and strode quickly to the office door, pulling it open. The hallway floor was bare; there was nothing there. And fortunately, there wasn't. Having a helmet delivered right to his doorstep had been eerie enough. If they could deliver something straight here, it would be terrifying! The others reacted differently, crowding around the monitor and staring intently at the screen. Soon, a pop-up window appeared. The trader said excitedly, "...The other party has initiated a data transfer request!" "Quick, click confirm!" the elderly man urged in excitement. "Don't misclick!" "I know!" Misclicking was out of the question. No matter how much the hand holding the mouse trembled, it wouldn't shake all the way to the 'X' in the upper right corner. The ten gigabytes of data took little time to finish transferring, downloading as a compressed .rar archive. The storage format hardly mattered; decompression finished swiftly. Looking at the pile of files resting inside the folder, the crowd gathered around the computer held their breath involuntarily. "...Modified artificial SEI film!" "Not just research literature... even the entire manufacturing process is here!" Standing before the computer, the elderly man said with trembling excitement, "Quick! Deliver these materials to the CAS Institute of Material Technology and Engineering immediately!" The man in the green shirt nodded with a solemn expression and answered crisply, "Understood!" Beside him, an assistant pulled out a powered-off phone from his pocket. "I'll step outside and call Academician Liu Yiping!" The elderly man hurriedly interjected, "Let me speak with Academician Liu!" "I just consulted him yesterday about that lithium dendrite issue. If I explain it to him, it'll be far clearer." Because of those ten gigabytes of data, the entire office inside and out swung into high gear. For a technology tied directly to the national energy strategy, sending it via cloud drives or email was out of the question. Before long, specialized vehicles bearing white license plates departed the compound one after another, heading off in different directions. *** Meanwhile, across the ocean. Inside the office of a certain CIA project team. Watching helplessly as the auction item was snapped up by a mystery buyer, Fick cursed under his breath and kicked the desk. "Fuck!" That was already the third time he had done that today. The desk leg was nearly crippled from his kicks, yet it did nothing to vent the rage burning in his chest. Four million silver coins! Where the hell had a bid that massive come from?! "The window was too narrow, and on top of that, we ran right into that damn temporary suspension... With only one day, there was simply no room to maneuver." The trader seated before the computer wore a pained grimace. He had worked overtime for nearly twenty-four hours straight, only to run into such a frustrating disaster. He was utterly drained, body and soul. A colleague sitting beside him shook his head. "...We swept up almost every chip the speculators held. No matter how high we drove the price, without trading volume, it was useless." "The battle ended before we even ran out of ammo... Shit, I've never run such a suffocating trade in my life!" the trader said, scratching his head. "What's even more fucked up is that we weren't the only ones placing bids in US dollars! Someone was competing against us in the exact same pool for those chips!" "Damn it, couldn't those greedy bastards just wait?! If we won it, we'd sell it to them eventually anyway! Why the hell were our own people fighting among themselves!" Complaints echoed across the office. Putting in twenty-four hours of overtime only to end up with this result was something no one could stomach. The trader looked toward Fick, who was the project lead. "What do we do now? The auction's over, and we spent a fortune buying a mountain of waste paper... Should we dump it once trading resumes?" Fick's face was grim. Crossing his arms, he pondered for a long time before suddenly speaking. "No need to rush into dumping... This might not be the only auction." Spending tens of millions of dollars to buy a pile of useless scrap would ruin him; no amount of high-level backing could protect him from that. Failing to win this auction was merely a tactical defeat. Cut his losses and dump the silver coins now, however, and he would essentially be admitting strategic failure. Even if he minimized the financial losses for his patrons and superiors, it wouldn't save his own career. Now he had only one path forward: prove that the string of numbers sitting in their account was far from worthless. How to prove it? Simple. He just needed the buyer who won the auction item to show off their purchase. Whether intentionally or inadvertently, as long as his superiors and financial backers saw that those silver coins could genuinely purchase good things—and that they had failed only because upper management hadn't provided enough backing—not only would he escape demotion over a single tactical setback, but he would also secure even greater support from headquarters! Something of genuine value could never remain hidden. As long as they kept a close eye on industry news, traces were bound to surface. At this thought, Fick gradually calmed down, regaining his confidence. A single failure was nothing. They still had three million silver coins in their account! When the next auction came around, they might still have a shot. "...But when will the next one be? There are no new announcements on that website," the trader whispered. Everyone in the office exchanged glances, murmuring in low voices. "When the next one happens doesn't matter!" Fick raised his voice, cutting off their hushed chatter. "...What matters is that we establish a normalized acquisition mechanism for silver coins." "Not only can we not dump our chips, but we must also continue buying whenever the price is right to ensure our account maintains an adequate reserve of silver coins." "That way, when another opportunity like this arrives, we won't be caught scrambling like we were today!" Here, he shifted his tone. "So when it comes down to it... the reason for this failure wasn't a lack of effort on our part, but insufficient support from headquarters!" "If they had listened to our recommendation and begun purchasing silver coins a month ago, today's outcome would never have happened!" Scanning the room, his voice grew resolute, bordering on fanatical. "Gentlemen, this is a gift from an extraterrestrial civilization. Those frantic bids are proof enough, and the value behind it goes far beyond what money can measure! And we aren't the only ones who have realized this!" "I will draft a report immediately, submit a proposal to our headquarters, and lobby Congress for support so they increase our budget!" "Whatever happens, in this race, we cannot afford to fall behind!" The office buzzed with noisy debate, the expressions on people's faces varied. Some nodded in agreement, while others thought he had lost his mind. Betting his career—his entire professional future—on something so completely uncertain. Forget them; even Fick himself felt that he must have gone mad! Similar scenes were playing out across the globe. It wasn't just intelligence agencies watching this auction; industry giants with vested interests were watching as well. Among them were darlings of the new energy sector, alongside titans dealing in oil and natural gas. Although the winning bid for that auction item was worth less than a single piece of art hanging in their homes, it had the potential to leverage a market worth hundreds of billions—or even trillions. It could fundamentally transform an entire industry! At the very least, they had to figure out what that auction item actually was. And who had bought it? How would they use it? Intelligence agencies across nations worked around the clock, scurrying like ants on a hot pan. Everyone wracked their brains trying to uncover the mystery buyer's identity. And that mystery buyer wasn't resting either, equally burning the midnight oil to reproduce that mysterious membrane inside a laboratory... *** Meanwhile, in the wasteland world. Dawn City's festival-lit plaza had fully sunk into the embrace of night. As the midnight bell chimed, the stalls serving beer and delicacies began closing one by one. Those who had drunk their fill walked home arm-in-arm, while those who had passed out simply lay by the roadside, waiting for the guards to haul them to the station to sober up. Looking at this scene alone, where was there any trace of a wasteland? It was practically paradise! Not far from the plaza, inside the banquet hall, the clinking of glasses had also drifted toward its close. Gazing at the long banquet tables, which looked as though a typhoon had swept through them, Chu Guang softly hummed a tune he had picked up from who-knows-where, savoring the lingering warmth of the banquet's finale. Along with that last bit of pleasant downtime. Just looking at his relaxed, lazy posture, no one could possibly connect him to the 'mastermind' who had stirred up winds and clouds in another world. "Master, the auction is over," Xiao Qi said softly beside his ear. Chu Guang replied casually, "Oh, got it." After waiting a while with no follow-up, Xiao Qi asked curiously, "Huh? Master isn't curious about who ended up buying that item?" Chu Guang smiled. "What's there to be curious about? I know how many silver coins they have in their pockets better than they do." What a joke. Ever since the Alpha 0.1 version, he had developed the fine habit of digging through players' inventories to 'audit their accounts.' Now in the Beta version, the New Alliance's digital management had grown even more sophisticated; there was no reason to abandon such a stellar tradition. This wave had not only directly reclaimed four million silver coins, but it had also indirectly locked up at least thirty million silver coins' worth of liquidity. Only by locking up a portion of excess liquidity could one release more liquidity to the industries that needed the capital. Otherwise, it would trigger inflation. For those who struggled to grasp the concept, the silver coins sitting in the spectator players' pockets could be viewed as zero-interest certificates of deposit. The New Alliance's treasury gained four million silver coins, while the Alliance Central Bank secured thirty million silver coins in credit reserves. The former could be invested into public works, used to build new settlements, or applied to patch up the fiscal deficit caused by the war; the latter could be loaned out to businesses in need of capital, aiding supply-side expansion. Whether those businesses were run by players or NPCs. As for the ordinary players whose pockets had been emptied, they hadn't lost out either. They could take the RMB or US dollars to spend in the real world, and then grind quests even harder to earn silver coins. Whether it was the New Alliance, the active players, or the spectator players who hadn't even set foot inside the game, everyone walked away with benefits. Because nobody had lost. So this wave was, of course, a win-win all around! As for how many times he had won, Chu Guang couldn't be bothered to calculate it for now; he just wanted to focus on enjoying the banquet. It had been a long time since he felt this relaxed. Ever since the Northern Expedition was announced two months ago, he hadn't had a single moment of rest. Now, the tightly strung cord in his mind could finally slacken a little. As for troublesome matters... Those could wait until tomorrow. Watching the last player sway unsteadily out of the banquet hall, Chu Guang raised his glass toward the departing figure. "Enjoy yourselves to the fullest!" "Honor belongs to you!" "This is your well-deserved reward!" Don't blame me for pausing the silver coin trading platform. I'm doing it to protect you. Taking a light sip of the fine wine in his cup, Chu Guang set it aside. If today hadn't been a special occasion, he wouldn't have touched alcohol at all. Boss Xia, who loved drinking despite having zero tolerance, was already sprawled across the table, grinning foolishly with her mouth slightly open. Xiaoyu stared at the cake on her plate, taking tiny, blissful bites. Pai, sitting beside her, was far less ladylike. Tasting such luxurious delicacies for the first time, she had gotten whipped cream and chocolate crumbs all over her mouth. Before even swallowing what she was chewing, she began exclaiming in excitement. "Whoa, whoa, whoa! What is this! Damn it, this is way too good!" Xiaoyu curled the corners of her mouth with a tiny hint of pride. "Whipped cream! And chocolate! Desserts are a specialty of Dawn City!" "What about that one? That one?" Fork in hand, Pai looked with shining eyes toward another platter on the table. "That's charcoal-grilled venison leg... But it's best not to eat roast meat and cake together, or it gets too greasy!" Even though Xiaoyu was earnestly sharing her gourmet wisdom, Pai didn't listen at all, already stuffing a large chunk of sliced roast meat into her mouth. She swallowed the food with an effort. Patting her slightly rounded belly, perhaps finally unable to pack anything else in, Pai at last put down the cutlery in her hand and leaned back against her chair. "Uuuugh, I don't get it. Why do you guys have so much good food!" Xiaoyu asked curiously, "Don't you have food like this where you're from?" During their earlier chat, she had learned that Camp 101 was a place similar to Bet Street. Except there was no old mayor exploiting them; instead, there were many people far more knowledgeable than Grandpa Charlie. They invented lots of useful things and lived a life apart from worldly strife. To be honest, Xiaoyu felt a twinge of envy in her heart. Especially when Pai mentioned that when they were very small, people taught them how to read, write, and do arithmetic, and as they grew a bit older, they learned even more amazing knowledge. That was an experience she had never had. If it hadn't been for Big Brother Chu, she would probably still be worrying about how to haul a heavy iron pot onto the stove, and she never would have learned so many fascinating things. "Sigh," Pai sighed at the mention of her home. "I mean, synthesized food isn't inedible... but as for the taste, I'd advise you not to get your hopes up." "Is it like nutrient paste?" Xiaoyu asked curiously. "It's not quite that bad... We live a bit better than the average survivor settlement, but neither energy nor materials could be called abundant." At this point, Pai suddenly remembered the generous gift the Administrator had given them earlier. That truck seemed to be loaded with a lot of delicious food! The thought that everyone back at the camp would get to share these wonderful flavors filled Pai's heart with sweetness, bringing a joy she couldn't put into words. Her mentor had been right after all. When shared with others, even monotonous food became delicious. Let alone delicacies like these! Stealing a glance at the Administrator, who was leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed, seemingly on the verge of falling asleep, Pai made up her mind. As the representative of the visiting delegation, she was determined to sign a splendid agreement to bring home! That way, everyone at the camp could eat such incredible food at every meal!