SIATOWITF Chapter 9

Chapter 9 I Think It Should Belong to You – A Traveler’s Gift

“Brother.”

What was coming was still coming. Ji Mo An even had a sliver of hope that Special Assistant Lin would return.

But it was only a sliver.

At the fourth intersection after leaving City Number One High School, Lin Mo answered a client’s call and rushed back to work overtime.

As soon as the “walking refrigerator” left, the frozen atmosphere in the car instantly thawed.

“Brothhher…” Ji Mo Xin drawled, grabbing onto Ji Mo An’s clothes, her eyes quick to snatch her phone.

“Being with Lin Mo makes me feel like I’m going to live a few years less. Assistant Bai, I really admire you.” The girl, overwhelmed by studying, slumped in her seat and turned on her phone.

Actually, Assistant Bai thought the same thing.

But he was an assistant, and could only vehemently agree in his heart with his boss’s sister’s lament.

“Brother… where’s Snakey?” Ji Mo Xin searched around with wide eyes.

“Hao took it. He got some new snakes and said he wanted to get rid of parasites in all of them. He took ours along with them and will bring it back next week.” Ji Mo An fabricated without batting an eye.

“Okay…” Ji Mo Xin was a little disappointed.

“I came up with several names for Snakey.” She pulled out a small slip of paper.

“I already named it.” Ji Mo An pinched his thumb and middle finger and flicked the slip of paper away.

“What is it?” Ji Mo Xin looked expectant.

“Black… White Two-Flower.” Ji Mo An changed Black Two-Flower’s last name.

“…” Ji Mo Xin pouted. “Brother, you’re so corny… Wow, my phone’s exploding!”

“It’s your Vice Guild Leader.” Ji Mo An looked at the familiar avatar flashing repeatedly and twitched his lips. What was coming was finally here.

“Why is he sending me so many…” Ji Mo Xin sensed something was wrong, looking at the 99+ red notification.

“Oh, maybe I forgot to reply to him.” Ji Mo An tried to gloss over the matter with a light tone.

“Hmm?” Ji Mo Xin keenly noticed something amiss.

“When did you start forgetting to reply to him? Tell me, confess and be lenient, resist and be severely punished!”

“Tuesday, maybe… but I saw the files he sent me.” Ji Mo An tried to remedy the situation.

“Guild Leader! You have to stand up for me! My head has been exploding all week. I sent Grand Overseer Brother N messages, and he didn’t reply to a single one!” At the same time, a male voice with a croaking duck’s voice flowed out of the voice message, sounding miserable.

“…”

Under the horrifying “background music,” the awkward atmosphere began to spread again.

“Assistant Bai, are you taking me back to Grandpa’s next weekend?” Ji Mo Xin turned off her phone, suddenly changing the subject.

“Lin will probably take you. President Ji and I are going to an auction in Xuan An,” Assistant Bai sighed.

“No wayyy.” Ji Mo Xin clasped her hands in front of her chest with a look of grief. “Brother, can I go to the auction with you? I don’t want to sit with Lin Mo! Last time he stared at me while I was doing homework, making me feel like I was in an icy snowfield under the bright sun.”

“…” Ji Mo An looked at her with some sympathy.

His sister was a good sister, but there was nothing he could do to help.

“Want to go to the suburbs to play tomorrow?” Ji Mo An rubbed his sister’s head.

“But I want to sleep. What’s fun in the suburbs? Brother, aren’t you going on a business trip?” Ji Mo Xin opened the game and started harvesting the gold coins she had accumulated for a week, the sound of money filling the car.

“I let someone else go. Old Master Wei collected a batch of rough stones and invited me to take a look. Originally, I was going in the middle of the week, but something came up.”

“Okay. Brother, I want to go skiing in Switzerland during the holidays. The teacher showed a video, and it was so cool.” Ji Mo Xin’s thoughts jumped around a lot.

“Go if you want to. Tang’s daughter invited you to afternoon tea again.”

“I’m not going. I can’t get along with them.” Ji Mo Xin made a pained expression.

“Brother, you don’t know, as soon as I go, all those men and women, old and young, ask me about you.”

“Assistant Bai, are you suffering too?”

“It is my honor to defend our boss against foreign enemies,” Assistant Bai recited his special assistant’s lines in a cold, ruthless tone.

“Cut it out.” Ji Mo An rolled his eyes, and his hand unconsciously went to adjust the surveillance camera at home again.

This time, the little camera seemed to have been placed on the ground. He controlled the little thing to run around, and a slender figure entered the frame as the picture turned.

“…”

With just one glance, Ji Mo An slammed his phone onto the seat.

“Brother?” Ji Mo Xin, who was chatting with Assistant Bai during the red light, turned back, a little confused.

“It’s nothing.” Ji Mo An waved his hand, turned his head, and pulled out his phone to type several lines.

Perverted snake, he’s wandering around the living room without a shirt again!

……

“Get up.”

The next morning, Ji Mo An dug the groggy Ji Mo Xin out of the quilt.

“Brother, you know, my phone and I have been separated for one hundred and twenty hours.” Ji Mo Xin yawned and curled herself back into a cocoon.

“You can be separated for one hundred and sixty-eight hours.” Ji Mo An skillfully pulled out her phone from under the pillow and pressed it.

Great, thirty-two degrees of electricity. It was obvious that she had fallen asleep playing on her phone last night.

“Get up, we’re leaving at ten o’clock.” Ji Mo An decisively handed the phone to the Auntie outside the door to take it downstairs to charge.

“I feel like a donkey being led by a carrot…” Ji Mo Xin finally deigned to take her head out of the quilt, looking at her beloved phone receding into the distance with a look of grief.

“…”

“Brother.”

A few hours later, Ji Mo Xin quickly straightened her slightly wrinkled clothes.

“Brother, why are there so many people? Why didn’t you tell me earlier? I just threw on whatever clothes I had on today!” She refused to get out of the car, looking at the dense array of luxury cars parked in the distance.

“That’s why we changed cars today. We’re not going through the front hall.” Ji Mo An signaled the driver to stop early, and led Ji Mo Xin around the main entrance, taking a small path leading to a bamboo forest.

“Assistant Bai wasn’t with us, how would I know that changing cars meant we were coming to a formal occasion?” Ji Mo Xin muttered quietly, looking around curiously.

Old Master Wei used to come to her house for banquets, this was the first time she had come to Old Master Wei’s house.

“Brother, this road looks weird.” Ji Mo Xin tapped the smoothed red stones on the road with her toe, feeling that the pebble road made of gravel was out of place with the surrounding carefully designed forest scenery.

“The paving material for this road is rough stones. They look a little dull because they haven’t been processed.” Ji Mo An picked open the hanging wisteria at the end of the road, revealing an exquisite white building.

“Rubies?” Ji Mo Xin rubbed her foot against the stones again.

“Materials from Mozambique. I bought a lot on a whim when I was traveling, it was a pity to throw them away, so I simply paved the road.” An old man in a black Tang suit walked out of the forest, smiling as he stroked the silver-white hair draped over his shoulders.

“Grandpa Wei.” Ji Mo Xin called out obediently.

“Xin Xin is here too. Is schoolwork heavy?” Old Master Wei had always liked Ji Mo Xin, and would usually ask Ji Mo An to bring her interesting things he happened to find.

“It’s pretty good, I’m only in the first year of high school.” Ji Mo Xin was afraid that others would ask her about her exam rankings and other messy questions, so she quickly stuffed the tea her brother had given her into Old Master Wei’s hands.

“Good, good, good.” Old Master Wei smiled and accepted the tea leaves, bowed slightly, making a gesture of invitation, then shook his head slightly with some regret.

“It’s such a pity, I brought back a lot of good materials from my trip to Myanmar this time, but I let them see them first.”

‘They’ referred to the first group of people to visit Old Master Wei, who had the qualifications to view the rough stones in advance before the official exhibition opened.

The people currently appearing in the front hall were only invited to view those polished gemstones.

The real treasures were quietly placed in the white house in the backyard.

Wealthy people always had some quirks.

The elderly man, who was over sixty years old, spent two hundred out of three hundred and sixty-five days a year traveling around the world, able to walk through countless auctions and jewelry exhibitions, and able to bend down and walk into the mines, just to touch the rough stones mixed in the sand.

“Wow~” Ji Mo Xin’s eyes widened, staring intently at the sapphire placed under the spotlight.

The gemstone was the size of a thumb, half of it was polished to be crystal clear, as mysterious and dazzling as the ocean.

The other half was much duller, not only was the shape uneven, but it also had some brown impurities.

Old Master Wei also had a quirk, he liked to only process half of the rough stones.

Rough stones that satisfied him would have half of the waste material left and placed in the white house.

Those that didn’t catch his eye would either be fully polished and thrown into the display case in the front hall, or directly thrown into the fountain in the garden to accompany the gem path.

“So pretty~” As the group’s little princess, Ji Mo Xin had seen all kinds of gemstones.

She could naturally tell that all the gemstones placed here were priceless.

Truly good luxury goods were not circulated, and good gemstones were among them.

The idea that a unique gemstone would only have its only owner made all holders proud.

“I remember that Dragon Travel is opening an auction in Xuan An next week.” Ji Mo Xin hopped around the living room looking at the gemstones, while Old Master Wei and Ji Mo An chatted behind her.

“Yes.” Ji Mo An nodded. “Are you going?”

“I heard that a new mine has opened in Sri Lanka, and I plan to go take a look next week.” Old Master Wei stroked his hair with a smile. “However, I heard that many people are eyeing this auction, do you need me to take care of things?”

“Thank you for your kindness, the finale of this auction is indeed highly anticipated, but it is not priceless.” Ji Mo An smiled slightly. The people who could be taken care of were no match for him.

“It’s good to have a price in mind.” Old Master Wei didn’t say anything more. He turned around, took a palm-sized black box from the cabinet, and handed it to Ji Mo An.

“This is…” Ji Mo An opened the box, inside lay an oval black stone.

“A little trinket I obtained by chance during my travels. At that time, I was in a foreign country but it was the Chinese New Year. I had nothing to do, so I went to a tea house to drink alone.”

“I didn’t expect to meet a kindred spirit in a foreign land. I chatted with a traveler I met by chance all night long, and when it was over, I gave him a rough stone that I had personally polished as a gift. As a return gift, he gave me this stone.”

Speaking of this, Old Master Wei shook his head slightly. “The traveler said that this stone has been passed down in countless hands, and if the time is right, I can also give it away.”

“However, from the first day I got this stone, I vaguely felt that this stone should belong to a little friend of mine.”

The old man’s eyes curved, and a trace of love flashed in his black eyes.

“Some people say that the core of this stone is a beautiful jade, some say it is a gemstone, and some say it is just an ordinary stone. But before it is cut open, it contains everything.”

“Thank you for your generosity.” Ji Mo An gently stroked the surface of the black stone, his fingertip paused.

That cold, smooth, firm yet gentle touch… instantly reminded him of a certain snake’s scales.