Chapter 19: Everyone Guessed Wrong
Translator: Vicky_ Editor: Vicky_
After Hans's two bids, once the price increased to 4,000 dollars, the rest of the treasure hunters all lost interest.
Seeing this, Lucas anxiously shouted, "Why isn't anyone bidding? Four thousand dollars is still a good price for a Yamaha bike!"
Before he even finished his sentence, a voice in the crowd interrupted, "It's only a second-hand bike. Plus, there's no guarantee that it will sell for 4,000 dollars, even if it's in this unit."
"I don't know anything about the Yamaha bike to begin with," Li Du sneered.
"F*ck, my information is accurate! You are lucky this time. If it wasn't that you two bast*rds set me up, there's no way I would have allowed you to get away with this!" Lucas spat.
After another round of questioning by the auctioneer, Hans successfully won the bid.
Although there was still a few more storage units left, Li Du shook his head. "The rest of them are all worthless. Let's clean up the two we bought."
There were a lot of items in the two storage units, and the pickup truck would not be able to haul away everything at once. Also, since they only had access to the unit for 24 hours, they had to start working earlier.
"No problem, I've got a great network of people," Hans said. "Leave this to me. I'll hire some more trucks to get rid of this stuff."
They made the payment, got the paperwork, opened the storage door and started the treasure hunting.
As they didn't have much time, Hans went to clean unit 140 while Li Du handled unit 141.
"Very good, this baroque style chair should sell for around fifty bucks."
"Hey look, there's a pile of National Geographic magazines. They are, um, 2000 and 2001 editions. Sh*t, they are worthless…"
"What's this? A Christmas tree? F*ck, this thing is rotten!"
Lucas slowly paced over and sat on the baroque chair, watching them work.
"Hey mad cow, go away! I don't want the chair to get infected with your mad cow disease!" Hans angrily shouted.
Seeing the trash that the two were going through, Lucas's mood was excellent.
Pulling out a fifty dollar bill, he purposely tried to bother the two, saying, "I'll buy that chair. How about it?"
Seeing that Hans was on the verge of exploding, Li Du went up and grabbed the money. "The chair is yours. I don't see any reason why I shouldn't do business with you."
As he sat in the comfy chair, watching the two taking out more and more worthless items, Lucas's mood elevated even higher.
In the center of the unit, Hans pulled away a canvas cover. Unexpectedly, five drums of different sizes revealed themselves. Some were bigger, and some were smaller, but they all had stainless-steel frames and dark red maple bodies. Each of the drums looked as good as new.
At the sight of the instruments, Hans was stunned for a moment, and then screamed, "Oh My God! He must love me!"
Lucas, who was waiting and watching at the door, could not hide the hatred and envy from his face. "Dammit, you got f*cking lucky today!"
In the neighboring unit 141, Li Du was sorting through boxes of music books by the door. He picked up several, flipped through them quickly, then put them away once he confirmed that they were not valuable.
Finally, he came to the corner of the storage unit and carefully peeled away the huge dust cover. The dark red grand piano quietly presented itself to the world. No one noticed what was happening in this dark corner as Li Du gently stroked the smooth and shining shell of the piano. He came upon a plaque on the side, which had some more details written on it about this beauty. As the daylight didn't reach this corner of the unit, Li Du had to turn on his flashlight to find out what it said. Then everything clicked.
In the meantime, everyone else still searched for the motorcycle. After all, a Yamaha bike was normally quite large, so even its parts should have been obvious if they were there. After going through all seven units, the bike was still nowhere to be found, not even a tire.
Of course, the result of this was that none of the other treasure hunters were in a good mood.
Hans didn't seem to care either way. Carefully, he took out the drum set and proudly said, "Although I didn't get the motorcycle, this DW drum is pretty good as well."
Several treasure hunters approached Lucas in a bad mood.
"Hey mad cow," someone said, "it must feel great playing everyone here like a bunch of sandbox toys, right?"
Lucas swore earlier that he had special news about the bike, so now he was quite embarrassed. To a treasure hunter, their credibility was the most important thing, and once they lost it, they could forget about having much respect in that profession.
Thankfully, Lucas was quick-witted. He thought of an excuse and calmly refuted, "That's impossible, in these eleven storage units, there must be a Yamaha bike. I swear to God…"
"Who said that there were eleven units? Only seven were sold!" someone said resentfully.
Lucas was waiting for this question. He immediately pretended to be surprised and asked, "Seven? How can that be? My friend told me that there were supposed to be eleven for sale."
Li Du, who was currently leaning against the door of unit 141 interrupted, "Your friend told you that there were eleven storage units being auctioned and also told you that there was a Yamaha somewhere. However, did he tell you that Yamaha doesn't only make motorcycles, but instruments as well?"
After that, he nodded towards Hans, signaling him to follow and check out their unit.
Hans, who was moving the drum set at the time, displayed a look of disbelief, "Oh my goodness. No, no no! I don't believe this. We can't be this lucky. My lord, don't tell me that you also found something good in your storage!"
Saying this, he dashed into unit 141 and roared, "Rooster was right! There really is a Yamaha! A real Yamaha!"
Yamaha bikes were well-known. As a result, when people referred to the brand, most of the time they meant the motorcycle. However, the Yamaha company started with instruments, and the instrument industry remained much of their core business to this day.
Li Du was reminded of this fact when he saw that the piano had the brand name "Yamaha." Rooster's friends must have been talking about the piano.
However, they had been socializing with a group of bikers, therefore, subconsciously, both Hans and Li Du thought they were referring to a Yamaha motorcycle.
Obviously, they were not the only two who made this mistake. Lucas was tricked as well.
Hans almost started shedding tears of happiness when he saw the piano.
On the other hand, Lucas wore an expression of utter disbelief. "F*ck, how can this be?!"
At this moment, Hans came over with a smirk. "Hey buddy, your news was useless. We also knew about this Yamaha, but unlike you, our insider told us that it was a Yamaha piano!"
"Lucas! Give us an explanation!"
"F*ck, didn't you say that there was a Yamaha bike? I bought all this storage because I thought there was a possibility that these boxes contained bike parts!"
"Pay for my losses. Otherwise, I'll change your nickname from Mad Cow to Dead Cow!"
As some stared at Li Du and Hans with looks of envy, the five treasure hunters who got the other storage units at much higher prices wore looks full of anger.