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Everyone froze at those words.

Fang Zhimiao also realized he had taken the joke too far. He stood there awkwardly, letting the baby-faced girl punch him several times in a row. "Sorry, I didn't mean it."

"Forget it!" The baby-faced girl waved her hand. "I was joking too."

Then she turned to Gu Jiuque. "You don't need to put yourself down just to help me out. Fang Zhimiao has always had such a foul mouth. We're all used to it."

Gu Jiuque explained, "I'm not putting myself down. I really don't like girls."

Yet no one really believed him. Gu Jiuque was so handsome and well-mannered; he was clearly the kind of campus heartthrob girls admired most. It was only natural for someone like him to casually tell a kind-hearted lie to spare a girl embarrassment.

It was all Fang Zhimiao's fault for making things sound so unpleasant! With his awful remark as a lead-in, whether Gu Jiuque said he did not like Cheng Yuan or that he did not want a relationship right now, it would sound like he was looking down on her.

Thinking of that, Cheng Yuan shot Fang Zhimiao another glare.

Gu Jiuque also looked at Fang Zhimiao solemnly. "Your personality really isn't very good. I suggest you change the way you speak. Don't make baseless claims, and try to think carefully before saying things that might hurt people. Trouble comes from the mouth. Being blunt is not some admirable habit."

In the original novel, Fang Zhimiao had been the first to notice that Bai Yuesheng was suspicious, and the first to openly question him. The others had only instinctively closed ranks to trust and defend their companion. Leaving aside whether Bai Yuesheng's participation in the Antique Appraisal Tournament with his appraisal ability counted as cheating, Fang Zhimiao publicly accusing Bai Yuesheng of cheating without any evidence was no different from slander and spreading rumors.

Having lived a second life, Gu Jiuque did not particularly like Bai Yuesheng, but neither did he approve of Fang Zhimiao's habit of speaking without thinking. Since they had met, Gu Jiuque might as well offer a reminder or two. As for whether Fang Zhimiao listened, that was none of his business.

Being seriously lectured by someone several years younger than himself left Fang Zhimiao red-faced and utterly humiliated.

But Gu Jiuque had just crushed him with his talent for learning and drafting, and he had offended a colleague by speaking before thinking. Knowing he was in the wrong, Fang Zhimiao rubbed his nose and wisely changed the subject. "Gu, have you heard of the Antique Appraisal Tournament?"

Chapter 12

Of course Gu Jiuque had heard of the Antique Appraisal Tournament. In his previous life, the beloved, universally adored protagonist Bai Yuesheng and his destined male lead had met at the Antique Appraisal Tournament.

The reason Gu Jiuque was interested in this tournament was because its organizer, the High-End Auction House, was the very auction house that had colluded with a buyer to set a trap and frame Grandpa Gu all those years ago. It was only much later that Gu Jiuque discovered that the auction house had actually been secretly funded by the Jin family.

In the original novel, during the Antique Appraisal Tournament, Fang Zhimiao had seen Bai Yuesheng's strange performance and concluded that Bai Yuesheng could only have advanced so smoothly by some form of cheating—for example, obtaining information in advance about all the antique props used in the competition.

That direction of speculation, entirely unsupported by evidence, was naturally wrong. Gu Jiuque knew very well that Bai Yuesheng's exaggerated performance was due to Jade Celestial Pivot's appraisal ability. The person who had truly obtained firsthand information about the competition from the organizers was the destined male lead, Jin Weixie.

To become famous overnight in the domestic antique-collecting world, the Jin family and Jin Weixie, who had returned from overseas, had meticulously arranged this Antique Appraisal Tournament. They intended to enter as judges and package themselves as the country's youngest genius antique appraiser and cultural relic restorer. At the same time, they wanted the High-End Auction House, as the organizer of the Antique Appraisal Tournament, to appear before their peers in the domestic antique-collecting world with an approachable and impartial image.

Yet they had never expected Bai Yuesheng's sudden emergence, along with Fang Zhimiao and the others' reckless accusations, to nearly ruin the Jin family's plans. If Bai Yuesheng had not relied on the appraisal ability he gained from Jade Celestial Pivot to prove his utterly unreasonable appraisal talent with unstoppable force, completely destroying Fang Zhimiao and the others' accusations of cheating, the organizers of the Antique Appraisal Tournament might truly have been forced by the competitors' outrage and pressure from all sides to bring in a notarial authority to thoroughly investigate the entire competition process.

When that happened, Jin Weixie's connection to the High-End Auction House would certainly have been exposed. The image Jin Weixie wanted to establish as a genius antique appraiser who had appeared out of nowhere would likely have been greatly diminished. The High-End Auction House's image of impartiality would also have suffered.

It was precisely because Bai Yuesheng's unreasonably powerful performance had completely cleared the High-End Auction House of suspicion of colluding with contestants to cheat that the Jin family and Jin Weixie had developed such a favorable impression of Bai Yuesheng.

After learning about Bai Yuesheng's relationship with Gu Jiuque, Jin Weixie and the Jin family behind him immediately came up with the idea of using Bai Yuesheng to steal the Gu family's resources. That led to the later development where Jin Weixie, won over by Bai Yuesheng's appraisal talent, invited Bai Yuesheng to establish an auction house with him.

As for Fang Zhimiao and his group, since they had dared to recklessly accuse Bai Yuesheng of cheating without evidence and had nearly caused enormous trouble for the organizer of the Antique Appraisal Tournament, the Jin family would naturally not swallow their anger. In the original novel, Jin Weixie had played a part in bringing about Fang Zhimiao and his group's miserable fate.

The Jin family had calculated well. They were clearly taking revenge and venting anger for themselves, yet they had Jin Weixie wave the banner of standing up for Bai Yuesheng and hire a huge number of paid online trolls to cyberbully Fang Zhimiao and his group. Because Jin Weixie's actions were hidden among those of Bai Yuesheng's many admirers, Bai Yuesheng, the beloved and universally adored protagonist, never noticed Jin Weixie's ulterior motives. He was only moved. Moved by Jin Weixie's domineering boyfriend material—though they had only just met, Jin Weixie had not only recognized his appraisal talent with a discerning eye, but had also been willing to protect and defend him so thoughtfully. To vent his anger for him, Jin Weixie had directly hired online trolls to curse out those clowns who questioned whether he had cheated.

And the more little schemes Jin Weixie carried out, the more inevitably he had to use the Jin family's channels and resources.

While the mantis stalked the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind it, Jin Weixie presumably never imagined that there was still one member of the Gu family barely hanging on, constantly searching for clues to prove Grandpa Gu's innocence.

Even though everyone insisted that Grandpa Gu had tarnished his reputation in his later years and made a bad judgment, Gu Jiuque did not quite believe it. He always felt that the matter had unfolded too strangely. The timing of the client who had sought out Grandpa Gu by reputation was too perfect—he had approached Grandpa Gu of his own accord precisely when Grandpa Gu needed a large sum of money for cash flow, then traveled all that way to invite Grandpa Gu abroad to attend an antique auction.