Robert stood rooted to the ground as he carefully recalled what Sam said.
Indeed, Sam is a tea connoisseur. Since he said those tea leaves are authentic, it should more likely than not be the case. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have offered so much money for a lousy bag of tea leaves.
If the tea leaves are authentic, the young man who gifted them to Eddie shouldn’t be an ordinary person. But both Eddie and Nikki called him a good-for-nothing who freeloads off his wife, and they clearly sounded contemptuous just now. They even threw the tea leaves he gave Eddie into the trash. That just goes to show that they detest him a lot.
In that case, Sam is right. The Turners are indeed too ignorant and improvident.
Eddie walked toward Robert and looked at the car in the distance that had long left. He said in displeasure, “Robert, what’s wrong with Mr. Morgan? I didn’t offend him just now. I chose not to sell him those tea leaves because they’re terrible and I was afraid that he might get food poisoning from them! Why did he suddenly storm off in a huff?”
While feeling displeased, Eddie also felt rather aggrieved.
He had already given up earning the one million dollars and just wanted to make sure that Sam wouldn’t risk drinking something harmful to his body. Yet Sam didn’t appreciate his thoughtfulness and instead got upset with him. Even though he has a higher status than me, he shouldn’t have lost his temper and snapped at me so unceremoniously.
Robert let out a long sigh and looked at Eddie with a complicated expression. “Eddie, I’m afraid you’ve really made a wrong judgment this time.”
“Wrong judgment? What do you mean?” Eddie asked in puzzlement.
Robert said with a strange expression, “Sam is a tea connoisseur. He has done due research into tea leaves and has a sharp sense of smell that allows him to accurately guess the grade and type of tea leaves just based on their aroma. The tea leaves you threw out and even instructed Nikki to flush down the sewer were genuine Da Hong Pao tea leaves of the finest quality. They are the best of the best, according to Sam.
“You really shouldn’t have ruined those tea leaves just now!” Robert said helplessly.
At this moment, even he felt that the Turners were indeed very foolish.
The Turners assumed that that bag of beautifully packaged tea leaves was lousy and tossed it into the trash without even opening it.
The thought of those top-grade tea leaves worth millions being flushed into the sewer made even Robert, who didn’t quite have a penchant for tea, find it a huge pity.
Sam, the tea connoisseur, would undeniably feel worse.
In particular, Sam had already offered to pay a high price for the tea leaves, but the Turners would actually rather flush them down the sewer than sell them to him. Anyone in Sam’s place would be furious.
The Turners and their relatives started crowding over here and were all in disbelief after hearing what Robert said.
Eddie gaped a little with astonishment written all over his face, but he couldn’t bring himself to say a single word.
At the time, he flew into a rage as soon as he heard that the tea leaves were a gift from Lucas. So he self-righteously assumed the tea leaves were fake and immediately tossed them into the trash.
Even though Robert just told him that those tea leaves were authentic, he was still apprehensive and in disbelief.
Nikki felt incredibly disgruntled when she thought of the fact that she was the one who had flushed those tea leaves down the sewer with her very own hands. It was akin to tearing apart a winning lottery ticket.
“Impossible! He’s just a penniless good-for-nothing. How can he possibly be able to afford such an expensive bag of tea leaves? He must have been lying!” Nikki was frustrated and refused to believe it.
Smack!
To everyone’s surprise, Robert slapped Nikki on her face! “Shut up! That was the judgment made by Mr. Morgan himself. Are you doubting the credibility of his words? Sam and I have been friends for decades, and it’s not up to you to doubt him!”
“Grampa, you… you slapped me!” Nikki covered her face, feeling aggrieved and exasperated.
She thought she was an honored guest here. Yet her paternal grandfather slapped her mercilessly in front of everyone, making her feel extremely ashamed and embarrassed.
Nikki was so ashamed and angry that she covered her face and ran away while weeping.
“Hmph, the older you get, the more insensible you are!” Robert said indignantly. Ignoring his granddaughter, he said to Eddie, “Since we’ve delivered the gifts, I’ll take my leave now, Eddie. I have something to do.”
With that, Robert left in his car without waiting for Eddie to ask him to stay.
Eddie was dumbfounded for a long time, but he still couldn’t recover from the shock as he continued to stand in the same spot.
The Turners used to be countryside villagers, and they basically had no family background or assets. They had even asked Karen for money to build these two villas that they were living in. Usually, they would rejoice for a long time whenever Karen gave them thousands of dollars.
If not for the fact that Eddie’s youngest daughter, Gretchen, had married a wealthy husband, Robert and Sam wouldn’t have bothered to come all the way here to visit them.
But just a few minutes ago, they actually flushed away a bag of tea leaves worth more than a million dollars into the sewer.
Eddie suddenly felt like he was in a dream, as he found it hard to come to terms with the reality that someone had offered so much money for some tea leaves.
Eddie thought of something and suddenly turned around to walk to the courtyard. He went up to Cheyenne, who was inside a room of the other villa, and asked anxiously, “Cheyenne, are the tea leaves you gave me just now really authentic?”
Cheyenne nodded firmly. “Lucas will never give counterfeit goods as gifts.”
Although she didn’t know anything about tea, she was very certain that Lucas would never try to fool anyone by passing counterfeit goods off as authentic, especially since it was a gift.
Eddie suddenly took two steps backward with a despondent expression, seemingly having suffered a huge blow.
He suddenly raised his head again to look at his wife and asked anxiously, “Where’s that Buddha statue? The one Lucas gave you just now, where is it?”
Mrs. Turner pursed her lips. “Didn’t you say it was fake? When I was throwing it away just now, the kids happened to see it, so they took it away and treated it as a toy.”
“What?! How could you give that Buddha statue to the kids? Quick, hurry up and get it back!” Eddie urged anxiously and asked everyone present to help find the Buddha statue quickly.
Soon, a few of the Turners walked over fearfully with a few unlucky children.
“Eddie, these kids didn’t know what the statue was worth, and they started smashing some walnuts against it for fun. In the end… it…” They couldn’t bring themselves to continue and instead handed the jade fragments of the broken Buddha statue to Eddie with trembling hands.
“You…! Wastrels… a bunch of wastrels!” Eddie’s expression turned incredibly gloomy as he looked up in the sky to wail in agony before clutching his chest and falling backward.
“Dad! What’s wrong with you?”
“Uncle! Hang in there!”
“Grandpa, nothing must happen to you!”
…
All of a sudden, the Turners panicked and broke into chaos.
