Richest Rag-picker

"This item is indeed valuable, but only to me. You should understand what I mean—no one else has any real use for it.

That’s why I’m offering you such a generous trade. I’m being this frank with you because I genuinely consider you a friend. That’s the only reason I’d say all this.

Otherwise, I have a hundred, even a thousand ways to get it from you with ease. I’m sure you understand what I mean."

Fang Chenyi watched Brother Xiaoma, a faint smile on his lips.

’As he said this, Fang Chenyi was thinking the exact same thing. Although they hadn’t known each other long, Brother Xiaoma was one of the Huaxia People—a fellow countryman. That was why he had offered to trade the Planet Tower for it.’

’And he certainly didn’t think Brother Xiaoma was getting a bad deal. After all, any single building in the Planet Tower was something money couldn’t buy.’

’If not, he could just hit him with Celestial Gods. After brainwashing him, forget just this Rune Stone—making him hand over the entire Penguin Group would be a simple matter, wouldn’t it?’

The reason Fang Chenyi had laid all this out was that he had seen through Brother Xiaoma’s intentions and knew the man might try to negotiate for more.

Across from him, Brother Xiaoma’s gaze was fixed on Fang Chenyi’s eyes.

He could tell that Fang Chenyi was speaking from the heart and had no intention of deceiving him.

Especially when the man said he had a hundred, a thousand ways to easily take this metal plate from him, the confidence in his eyes was definitely not an act.

At the same time, he also believed the man could do it. After weighing the pros and cons in his mind, Brother Xiaoma nodded decisively:

"Alright. The Earth Tower. That should be no problem, brother."

’Fang Chenyi let out a long sigh of relief in his heart upon hearing Brother Xiaoma’s words. He had to admire Brother Xiaoma’s pragmatism.’

’If the man hadn’t agreed, he would have had no choice but to use Celestial Gods. After all, this item was simply too important to him; he had to get it, no matter what.’

With that, Fang Chenyi chuckled and extended his hand to shake Brother Xiaoma’s.

"A pleasure doing business with you."

Brother Xiaoma also gripped Fang Chenyi’s hand firmly, smiling and echoing, "A pleasure doing business with you."

And just like that, the second Rune Stone fell easily into Fang Chenyi’s hands.

Having acquired the Rune Stone, Fang Chenyi once again took out his small leather pouch.

He gently opened it, took the Rune Stone out of the small box, and casually tossed it into the pouch.

Only after doing all this did Fang Chenyi let out a long sigh of relief.

At the same time, Brother Xiaoma’s voice rang out again:

"Haha. Now that our deal is done, I wonder if you could tell me, brother, what exactly is the use of this metal plate to you?"

Fang Chenyi smiled upon hearing this and began to explain:

"To be honest with you, I happened to come across a stone box a while back, and on the outside of the box is a round mechanism lock."

Fang Chenyi stopped there and said no more. In a way, he wasn’t deceiving Brother Xiaoma. Just as he was implying, wasn’t that small planet just a very large stone box?

After hearing this, a puzzled Brother Xiaoma asked:

"Is this thing a key to that stone box?"

Fang Chenyi nodded lightly.

"Heh, that’s why I said this thing is only useful to me, and useless to anyone else. In your hands, it’s just a decoration. It won’t bring you any value."

At this point, something seemed to occur to Fang Chenyi. He changed the subject and continued to ask:

"Oh, that’s right, Brother Ma. You mentioned before that these metal plates have always been in the hands of the top ten of the world’s Baida Clans. Do you know which families those are?"

’Since the other man thought it was a metal plate, Fang Chenyi didn’t bother explaining what it really was.’

’What he wanted to know now was who held the remaining pieces so he could retrieve them one by one.’

However, hearing this question, Brother Xiaoma frowned slightly:

"Whose hands are they in specifically? That’s actually not easy to say now... As I told you before, these things were apparently used back in my grandfather’s generation.

And the top ten of the Baida Clans from that era are not necessarily still in the top ten today. What’s more, some of those families have completely vanished into the river of history.

On top of that, our family was ranked in the top 50 back then, yet we acquired this piece. That suggests it’s very possible they weren’t all in the hands of the top ten families even then. You know that era was filled with the flames of war; the whole world was in chaos. Perhaps something happened during those years that I’m not aware of."

Fang Chenyi nodded upon hearing this. It was just as Brother Xiaoma said: the items weren’t considered important anymore, so no one was paying much attention to them.

But Fang Chenyi was determined to find them, no matter what.

Seeing Fang Chenyi frowning in thought, Brother Xiaoma continued speaking:

"How about this: I’ll write down the names of all the Baida Clans that I know. Although I don’t know who has the pieces specifically, there’s still a high probability that they’re within the Baida Clans."

’There were ten scattered Rune Stones in total. Now that one had been found, only nine were left.’

’And with Brother Xiaoma’s family excluded from the Baida Clans, that left 99. The chances were about one in ten.’

’Having a target was better than searching blindly. When Fang Chenyi had first returned, he didn’t know the Rune Stones were in the hands of the Baida Clans. Back then, he was truly like a chicken with its head cut off, searching for a needle in a haystack.’

Brother Xiaoma was a man of action. He stood up, went to his desk, picked up a pen, and began writing furiously.

A moment later, a large sheet of paper, densely covered in writing, was handed to Fang Chenyi.

"These are the current Baida Clans of the world. There have been some changes from the old list, but it shouldn’t be too different overall..."

After taking the paper, Fang Chenyi’s eyes scanned it carefully. The writing on the sheet was very clear, even including the families’ rankings, which were marked plainly.

And soon, he saw a few familiar names:

The Demo Did Clan, currently ranked seventh.

The Poseidon Clan, currently ranked 13th.

The Huaxia Ma Family, ranked 33rd.

’Fang Chenyi was a bit surprised to see this. He hadn’t expected that under Brother Xiaoma’s leadership, the Ma Family had climbed to the 33rd position among the world’s Baida Clans.’

’Based on what he’d said, this was probably the highest their family had ever ranked.’

Looking further down the list, his eyes suddenly caught another familiar family name...