After each inspection, players will receive 10 minutes of Exemption from Inspection, which is of course to prevent the Anti-Smuggling Team players from using a crowd-tactics strategy.
If three or four Anti-Smuggling Teams took turns guessing, then used the previous player’s data to narrow it down, the Gold Digger players would have no chance of winning at all.
So a rule like this is absolutely necessary.
But from another angle, this also means Cheng Yu is completely safe now.
She no longer paid any attention to Li Haoqiang, who still couldn’t believe what had just happened. Just like before, she silently lowered her head and walked away, carrying the small golden suitcase.
Only her route changed.
At first she was clearly heading toward the trading area, but after the inspection ended she changed course and instead walked toward the central auction area.
Huang Shengjie, who had been observing from not far away, was also a bit surprised, but he quickly figured out what was going on.
"This Cheng Yu... is playing dumb to eat the tiger.
"It’s all acting.
"The regret and sigh at the end of the first game were fake, the scream the second time was probably fake too.
"She guessed that the first batch of Anti-Smuggling Team she ran into would definitely be players like Li Haoqiang.
"Because these players failed to grab positions right from the start, so they weren’t very confident about making money in the Gold Panning Area, and would more easily take on an ’grab one big score to break even’ mentality and choose to become Anti-Smuggling Team right away.
"As long as they catch a lucky one like Cheng Yu, they can instantly make a profit of 26,000. Even if that’s their total income for the whole field it’s acceptable; everything afterwards is basically pure profit.
"And Cheng Yu is precisely exploiting this mentality. She knows it’s not safe for her to be carrying gold sand, with a fluctuation range of plus or minus 20% being very wide. If she’s unlucky, the Anti-Smuggling Team she runs into might just happen to guess right.
"So she planned it from the start: she deliberately misleads the Anti-Smuggling Team into guessing a wrong number.
"That way she not only earns Visa Time from the Anti-Smuggling Team, but also gets 10 minutes of Exemption from Inspection, which is enough for her to cash out the illegal gold sand.
"So her actual earnings are lower than 21,320?
"No, that’s wrong, they should be higher than 31,980...
"Even the route she took right after leaving the Gold Panning Area is part of the act.
"She came out from Zone C, deliberately avoided the auction area, and headed toward the trading area instead, which makes it easy for the Anti-Smuggling Team to think she’s carrying less than 30,000 in gold sand.
"After all, the auction area has a minimum starting lot of at least 30,000 gold sand.
"If she had gone straight to the auction area, the Anti-Smuggling Team would definitely have noticed something and raised their guesses.
"So she waited until she’d been inspected before going to the auction area.
"At this stage of the game, there are very few genuine ’fish’ left. If you see a fish, you’d better be careful—you might be the one being baited...
"And this person not only has strategy, her luck is that good too? Which Community is she from?"
As he thought, Huang Shengjie quietly avoided the few Anti-Smuggling Team players in the field and headed to one of the turnstile entrances of the trading area.
In the early phase, Anti-Smuggling Team players are still relatively few, and the entire venue is huge. They can only catch the occasional unlucky player by lying in wait and camping; they’re nowhere near establishing a tight, impenetrable line of defense.
Huang Shengjie was fairly confident in his physical ability. Even if an Anti-Smuggling Team player charged at him, he was sure he could shake them off by running loops.
Reaching the turnstile now meant that Huang Shengjie was basically safe; he could enter the trading area at any time.
At the same time, a prompt message once again appeared on the big screen.
[First auction begins.]
[Item for this auction: 32,000 gold sand.]
[All players may go to the auction area and freely place bids. The bid Currency can be "legal Gold Coins" or "Visa Time," or any combination of the two, all converted at a default 1:1 rate.]
[This auction is limited to 10 minutes. If someone places a bid in the last 30 seconds, the auction time will be extended by 30 seconds, up to three extensions.]
[The player with the highest bid will win the item, but please note: "The player with the second-highest bid must still pay their bid but will receive nothing."]
[The auction has officially begun. Players who are interested, please bid as soon as possible.]
The big screen continuously displayed the relevant auction information, including the specific quantity of gold sand being auctioned, the current top two bids, and the countdown timer.
Huang Shengjie was a bit surprised: "Is Cheng Yu’s actual amount of gold sand 32,000? Wouldn’t that mean Li Haoqiang was just a hair’s breadth away from guessing right.
"No... it’s not necessarily all of Cheng Yu’s gold sand up for auction. She might also be using this method to protect her information."
"And there’s no starting bid or increment rule for the auction?"
Under conventional auction rules, there should be a minimum starting bid and a minimum increment, either fixed-value or percentage-based. Cases with absolutely no restrictions like this are pretty rare.
In an extreme scenario, if only one player participated in this auction and bid just 1 minute of Visa Time, they could successfully win 32,000 gold sand. That would be the ultimate bargain pickup.
Soon, a player bid 100 minutes of Visa Time.
Within a short period it quickly rose to 500, 1,000, 2,000.
Bidding is not restricted by identity; both Gold Diggers and Anti-Smuggling Team can bid, and everyone has Visa Time, so the bid changes are very fast.
Even Huang Shengjie subconsciously wanted to go bid.
But after thinking it over, he quickly dropped the idea, because he currently still had illegal gold sand on him, and bidding operations had to be done at the consoles around the auction area.
The entire process of walking there and placing a bid could be intercepted by the Anti-Smuggling Team, which would be dangerous.
Besides, judging from Cheng Yu’s earlier performance, she’s definitely not a simple player. Since she chose to auction, she must have her own calculations; the odds of anyone picking up a free bargain weren’t high.
In the end he passed through the turnstile into the trading area, using the safe approach to turn the gold sand in his hand into secure assets.
After he returned to the Gold Panning Area, he could just glance at the auction results.
...
After entering the trading area, Huang Shengjie noticed that its layout was markedly different from the Gold Panning Area.
Although from the floor plan, the trading area and the Gold Panning Area are the same size, there aren’t as many miscellaneous objects here. Instead, there’s a wall in the very center that divides the whole area into two narrower rectangles.
There are two entrances leading to two different sections, each with a different sign at the entrance.
They are "Gold Sand Provider" and "Visa Time Provider," respectively.
In other words, if a player wants to convert gold sand into Visa Time, another player must provide Visa Time for the exchange; you can’t convert it out of thin air.
"Will there be players willing to spend Visa Time to buy gold sand right now?"
Some players had already been going in and out of the trading area, but Huang Shengjie wasn’t sure which section they had entered.
Of course, Huang Shengjie was going to be a "Gold Sand Provider." After passing through the entrance, he found a whole row of cubicles inside. Some cubicle doors were locked, presumably with players inside conducting transactions; most of the cubicles could still be freely opened.
Huang Shengjie casually picked an empty cubicle and went in.
The door behind him clicked shut automatically, and Huang Shengjie first checked the notice board beside him where the rules were written.