Even in the relatively comfortable room at the Blackwater Riverside Inn, Luke slept lightly. Despite his exhaustion, being in a completely unfamiliar alien world kept him on edge.
Any unusual sound in the darkness — footsteps in the corridor, a distant dog barking, even the wind whistling through a window crack — would instantly wake him, his hand instinctively reaching for the fruit knife hidden under the pillow.
This subconscious vigilance made it impossible for him to truly relax.
Besides, staying in Westeros for long periods carried unpredictable risks. Who knew if there might be a room check, a thief, or sothing worse in the middle of the night?
After double-checking that the door was securely bolted and there was nothing strange outside the window, Luke blew out the candle.
He didn't choose to spend his first night after transmigrating on a bed in the other world. Instead, he focused his mind and silently willed his return.
After a brief weightless sensation and familiar darkness, he felt the slightly springy surface of the hard bed in his rental room.
Outside the window was the low, constant humming typical of the city in the early morning hours, occasionally interrupted by a passing night vehicle.
The air carried the familiar "ho" sll of dust and old furniture.
A strong sense of security instantly wrapped around him.
He let out a long, deep sigh. The tension in his nerves finally loosened completely.
Without turning on the light, he used his mind to retrieve all the gains from Westeros that day from his personal storage space and piled them onto the bed.
Clink—
The crisp sound of tal colliding was especially pleasant in the quiet room.
Under the weak glow of the streetlights filtering through the window, Luke saw wealth covering nearly half the bed:
The most dazzling were the gold dragons. Even in the dim light, they gave off an alluring warm golden sheen — exactly three hundred and twenty coins!
Piled together, they felt heavy and emitted a primitive, heart-racing charm.
Beside them were over a hundred silver moons with a cooler luster.
Then ca an even larger pile of jingling silver stags — probably over a thousand.
In the corner were two smaller piles of copper stars and copper pennies. While still nurous, they looked dull next to the gold and silver.
These were real!
Not ga coins, not props — they were genuine, heavy precious tal currency from another world!
Luke lay beside the pile of money, grabbed a handful of gold dragons, and felt their cold tallic weight. He couldn't help but grin silently.
This double impact on his sight and touch was far more shocking than any number on a screen.
Today, he had finally touched real gold for the first ti in his life.
Exhaustion was replaced by excitent. He barely slept all night, his mind constantly calculating how much these coins were worth on Blue Star and how to safely cash them out next.
The next morning, as soon as the sky began to brighten, Luke eagerly went out.
He first went to a nearby hardware store and bought a small iron hamr — heavy and handy.
Back in his rental room, he locked the door.
From the gold dragons, silver moons, silver stags, and copper stars, he randomly selected three coins each of average condition with no obvious special markings.
Then, using a cloth as padding, he picked up the small hamr.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
With several muffled strikes, he flattened and deford all twelve coins until their original patterns and shapes were completely unrecognizable, turning them into a small pile of irregular gold, silver, and copper lumps.
He hamred the gold dragons and silver stags especially hard to ensure that even a professional numismatist couldn't restore or identify them.
After finishing, he carefully cleaned up the scene, stored the hamr and the remaining coins back into his space, and put only the deford tal lumps into an inconspicuous cloth bag.
He went out, used a ride-hailing app to call a car, and headed to a small but long-established legitimate gold shop.
He deliberately chose a weekday morning right after opening, when there were few custors.
Inside the shop, there was only an old shopkeeper wearing glasses, wiping the counter.
Luke directly took out the cloth bag and poured out the three badly deford "gold beans" onto the velvet cloth on the counter.
"Boss, help take a look at these… tal pieces. What's their purity? I found so old stuff at ho that got lted together. Can't tell the quality anymore."
He kept his tone as casual as possible, mixing in just the right amount of curiosity and uncertainty.
The old shopkeeper pushed up his glasses, picked up one "gold bean," weighed it in his hand, pressed it with his fingernail, then took out professional tools — a small blowtorch and a small porcelain bowl.
He scraped off a tiny bit of powder, burned it with the torch, observed the color and changes, and tested it with a reagent.
"Hmm… the purity is a bit mixed. Not pure gold."
The old man said slowly, "Gold content is probably between 50% to 80%. I'd need to lt it for an exact asurent. These other two are silver, right? Average quality too, maybe 60-70% silver."
Luke felt greatly relieved. This matched his estimates and the actual composition of Westerosi coins.
These coins were alloys with relatively low purity, but they were genuine gold and silver.
"So… at this purity, what's the current buyback price?" he asked.
The old shopkeeper carefully weighed the three "gold beans." They totaled exactly 24 grams.
"Taking the middle value, let's say 60% gold. Today's gold buyback price is about… 940 yuan per gram. These three pieces total around 12 grams of pure gold, so… 13,536 yuan. If you want to sell the silver ones too, the price is much lower. These three I'll count as 100 yuan."
"Deal. Just transfer it!" Luke said imdiately.
He only needed startup capital and didn't care if the boss shortchanged him a little.
The transaction went smoothly. The old shopkeeper didn't ask about the origin, probably assuming Luke was just so clueless young man who found old gold at ho and wanted to cash it out.
Soon, his phone chid. 13,636 yuan had been transferred.
Stepping out of the gold shop, the morning sunlight felt a bit blinding.
Luke gripped his phone, staring at the five-figure balance in his banking app. He felt like he was walking on air.
Over ten thousand yuan!
For soone who had been completely broke, surviving on Huabei credit and his last bit of cash, this was real "big money"!
And it had co so easily!
He desperately held back the urge to laugh out loud, his cheek muscles twitching from the effort. He kept his head down and walked quickly toward the bus stop, his shoulders shaking slightly with suppressed laughter.
He held it in the whole way until he returned to his tiny rental room, locked the door, and finally let it out.
"Hahaha… HAHAHAHAHA!!!"
He couldn't hold back anymore! Wild laughter burst from his throat, echoing in the small space. He laughed so hard he bent over, tears streaming down his face. Like a complete idiot, he rolled around on the bed, punching the mattress.
"I've made it! I've really fucking made it! In one day! Just one day! I earned over ten thousand! Pure profit! Hahahaha!"
All the pressure, the frustration of unemploynt, the fear right after transmigrating, the tension while carefully selling goods…
In this mont, everything was washed away by this unrestrained laughter and the real money transfer notification.
After laughing enough, he lay sprawled on the bed, chest heaving, face still flushed with excitent.
But this was only the beginning.
Ten thousand yuan wasn't a huge sum on Blue Star, but as startup capital, it was more than enough.
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