Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
The plump woman was not easy to deceive. She pushed the young man and said angrily, “Do you think I’m a fool? The jade bracelet that cost two million, would it be broken when knocked on the stone? Besides, wouldn’t I know if that had happened? The bracelet didn’t touch the stone!”
A quarrel began, and the young man tried to smile at the beginning. However, when the woman did not let the matter go, he got impatient, shook off the woman’s arm and walked away.
The fat woman ran after him, her voice bleating petulantly, “Do you think I’m easy to bully because I’m in another country? You wait, wait and see…”
Zhong Dapao rubbed his chest at ease, squinted and said, “A silly woman. This is a cheap adhesive bracelet. Two million? We can buy a few for twenty thousand!”
Li Du said, “Are you saying she did not smash it into the stone on purpose? She was tricked?”
Liu Zi sneered and said, “How is it possible? Would a jade bracelet break from slightly scraping against stone, and underwater too? Besides, how hot can this spring water be? Jade is not bean curd residue, it wasn’t supposed to break so easily.”
Li Du shook his head and said, “There are too many cheaters here.”
“A lot,” said Zhong Dapao pursed his lips.
After a moment, three little girls, not more than fifteen years of age, timidly approached, led by a waiter. All four of them were carrying multiple bottles of liquor in their hands, and the waiter had some more wine and beer on a tray.
After the waiter put down the tray, he bowed, bent towards Zhong Dapao and said, “Sir, here are your attendants.”
Li Du was anxious when he saw it. These little girls were young and definitely underage, and the whole thing smacked of something illegal.
He quickly waved his hand and said, “Master Pao, Master Liu, we can’t do something that harms our reputation…”
Liu Zi gave a puzzled look. “Harming our reputation? What are you talking about?”
Zhong Dapao laughed. “Master Li, what are you thinking about? What do you think the girls are doing here? They are here for our jade!”
He carefully opened three storage boxes of jade and passed them to the girls. The little girls took one piece each and plunged the jade into the hot spring.
“This is called raising the jade,” said Zhong Dapao.
Li Du realized that he had misunderstood, and smiled awkwardly. “Haha, is that so?”
“What were you thinking about?” Zhong Dapao was still laughing. He had put Li Du into this situation on purpose to make fun of him.
Instead of going back to the hotel, they spent the night in the hot springs. Li Du brought in some of the little ones in and bathed them. They were moving around with Li Du since they came to Myanmar and their bodies were dusty.
After soaking in the hot spring for some time, they were prepared to go to bed. However, the three little girls would go on soaking the jade in the hot spring all night.
Li Du could not bear to see this, so Zhong Dapao said, “We must keep the jade underwater for at least twelve hours. If it can’t be broken off, it is of good quality. It is these girls’ job. They have to do this for their meals.”
Liu Zi added, “That right, Master Li. They do this to earn a salary to support their families. It’s quite a good source of income in Hpakant. It’s much better than if they were doing what you initially suspected, isn’t it?”
Hpakant was a kind of place that was not friendly to poor people, and the job of raising-jade lady was really very popular.
The little girls kept the pieces of jade immersed in water all night. When they got out of the water the next morning, Li Du thought that the jade really looked crystal clear.
Then there was the deal. Zhong Dapao and the Hong Kong merchants met and verified the authenticity and quality of the jade. The Hong Kong merchants made an offer, and they haggled over the price. At last, the three boxes of jade were sold off at a price of 12.5 million RMB.
The value of the latter two batches of jade was nothing out of the ordinary. It would have looked suspicious if Li Du had only picked high-quality ore, so he had to make this look a bit more natural. Nevertheless, the ability he showed was still uncanny.
He was not involved in the negotiation between Zhong Dapao and the Hong Kong merchants, and when he had time in the morning, he went back to old Hpakant and instructed Godanwei to help him buy a large pile of stones, mainly of seed material, which were small and easy to store.
Li Du did a little cleaning in his black hole. He took out a dozen pistols and some ammunition and hid them in the car, while the empty black hole space was used to store these pieces of jade.
He estimated that even if he did not find any jade lode around Denai Mountain, he would still have earned enough here to justify this visit. All the high-quality seed materials in the old Hpakant market were in his pocket.
The jade was sold and Zhong Dapao got a check. They went to the bank, took the money and split it among themselves, with eighty percent going to Li Du as they had agreed earlier. Zhong Dapao and Liu Zi did not try to be too greedy and were happy with the money they got.
Liu Zi pocketed the bank card, patted his pocket and said, “Ha, it’s a good story. Master Pao, how many times have we bet? This was the first time we made any money from this, right?”
Li Du was shocked. “Really?”
He had heard some people say that Zhong Dapao’s hands are very unlucky, but he had never thought they were that unlucky. It was quite surprising!
Zhong Dapao smiled helplessly at him and said, “We didn’t bet much and bought cheap stones. We had no choice and could only buy stones that were obviously not very good. Of course, later on, we did not dare to buy those either.”
In the afternoon, they moved to Longken.
Hpakant had many people, all of whom liked to talk, and the news spread quickly.
When they arrived in Longken, someone came up to greet Zhong Dapao. “Oh, Sir, I heard that you made a lot of money yesterday? Is it true that your luck has changed?”
Zhong Dapao smiled happily. “This time I hit the jackpot. I finally got to see some yellow and green!”
Longken was almost the same as the previous two field areas, and the environment was very similar. The region was surrounded by rugged mountains and separated into a mining area and residence quarter.
By the afternoon, the housing area was packed with more people than they had seen in the first two mining areas.
Zhong Dapao assumed that Li Du did not know much about the local raw materials of Longken, so he told, “Some time ago, when people came to Hpakant to buy stones, they came for black sand and green water, so the Old Hpakant pits of black sand are all sold out.”
“Longken is very close to Old Hpakant. There is some black sand and grey sand here. However, it is very rare. People came to Longken previously because of them.”
Li Du knew that. The raw jade stone crust had its color system. The Old Hpakant and Longken areas had a layer of soil that was dark, so black sand and other stones would be easily produced here.
However, after years of digging, the surface has been so ravaged that any pits that were still producing were more than ten meters deep. The soil color changed, and the quality of stone with it.
“The black sand of Longken is very good, fine sand, and has thin skin. Their advantages and disadvantages are very prominent. The advantage is that the meat is fine, and the oil and glue feeling is good. Everyone knows that the quality of produce here is much higher than in other fields. If we find ice species or glass species here, it would be really a great profit!” Zhong Dapao said expectantly.
