CH 7.2

As Zone E was the most crowded, Bai Jing had to wait in line for several minutes before he could enter.

The vast space was lined with several long rows of stone tables, each divided into hundreds of compartments, both large and small, separated in the middle by a special transparent material.

In each compartment were pieces of rough stones on display, next to which were placed small buckets of water and the necessary tools for gambling, such as a strong light, underneath which were written numbers. Roughly speaking, there were several thousand pieces of rough stones.

There were many people in Zone E, some in groups, observing the pieces in the same compartment together, some by themselves, each looking very carefully.

Bai Jing planned to stay here all day today in order to observe the properties of the stones up close.

He had learnt a lot about gambling on stones on Starnet this week, and had also used holographic technology to touch the rough stones, but none of that was as effective as practicing in the gambling house.

When gambling on stones, the most important thing to look at was the crystallization on the surface of the skin.

Generally speaking, coarse skin materials with large crystallizations on them along with structures that were soft, hard and with poor transparency meant that that particular rough stone wasn’t suitable for gambling on.

And fine skin materials with small crystallizations on them along with structures that were close, fine textured, highly hard and had good transparency, if it had jadeite inside, was generally of good quality.

The crystallization of a sandy skin material was somewhere in between the first two. The quality was more variable, but there was no lack of good material among them. It was highly bettable. [Note 1]

After understanding the initial criteria, Bai Jing didn’t use his sense perception ability but observed the rough stones in turn along the stone platform.

As far as his current sense perception ability was concerned, he had only ten chances to inspect the rough stones, so he couldn’t afford to waste it.

The first piece he observed was number E1.

The piece was about the size of a basketball, irregularly oval in shape, with a greyish-white surface, covered with sand-like material, a white sandy skin crust.

When he touched it with his hand, it was a little coarse to the touch, and the surface dried quickly after he sprinkled water on it, indicating that it might or might not produce jadeite. He withdrew his gaze quickly.

In the next while, he looked along the numbers one by one.

He began by observing the surface of the crusts and touching the texture of the skin with his hand, using it to judge the degree of coarseness of crystallization.

When he wasn’t sure, he would scoop up a little water, pour it on the surface of the rough stone and observe how quickly the water would dry on the rough stone. [Note 2]

Because Bai Jing’s supernatural ability was perception, his five senses were also much stronger than others, hence his sense of perception when it came to judging the surface of the rough stones was more accurate.

By observing the surface of a whole row of materials, he could already accurately determine the degree of crystallization of the skin.

After eliminating all the coarse skinned material, only a dozen or so of the best performing fine skinned and sandy skinned material were selected, and the number was noted down for further observation.

The second step was to look at the green color of the rough stone, also known as turquoise.

The term ‘turquoise’ referred to the accumulation of green that could play an analytical role in judging which stone to bet on.

As the saying went, ‘rather buy a line, than a mass.’ Meaning that, instead of having a large area of green on the surface which showed that there was no jadeite inside, it was better to choose one that had just a thin line of green on the surface or a small cluster, which showed that the rough stone was more likely to produce jadeite. [Note 3]

In this way, half of the ten or so rough materials were ruled out again, leaving only seven.

Based on various other criteria, such as the orientation of the python band, the distribution of ringworm, and the presence of locks and cracks, Bai Jing left the last three rough stones that largely matched these characteristics.

Looking at the three final selections, Bai Jing took a deep breath, placed his hand on the first one and pretended to be looking at it carefully while he manipulated his senses to slowly penetrate deep inside the stone.

After a minute, he withdrew his hand. The activity inside of the rough stone was dead, there was no jadeite.

He went back to the second piece not far away and did the same thing. He pushed his senses deeper into the material, but still no reaction at all.

Bai Jing looked at the third piece of material which wasn’t as outwardly impressive as the two he had just looked at, but for some reason, he had felt an affinity for it the moment he saw it.

His senses condensing into a thin line that ran deep along the surface of the material, he felt an active reaction just as it penetrated the skin. The reaction wasn’t very strong, but it stretched all the way to the bottom, and Bai Jing roughly estimated that it should have jadeite that was about six or seven kilograms.

He immediately scanned the code below with his light brain and bought it for 5,000 starcoins.

The moment the material entered his hand, Bai Jing felt a sense of satisfaction that he hadn’t felt for a long time, and a small smile unconsciously appeared on his lips.

He finally understood why so many people liked to gamble on stones. The thrill of betting on the right piece of material was truly fascinating!

An automatic white shopping cart moved to his side just then, and holding the piece of rough stone with both hands, Bai Jing placed it inside carefully.

Then, he looked carefully at nearly fifty more pieces, before selecting five that looked like they would perform relatively well. His speed was much faster than just now and it took less than two hours this time.

After he had probed deep inside the five pieces with his sense perception ability, he discovered that all but one of them showed a very weak reaction of activity– the others were all dead.

The jadeite inside the weakly reacting piece was only the size of a ping pong ball. Afraid it wasn’t even half the cost.

Throughout the morning, Bai Jing examined more than a hundred pieces of rough stones in total and after detecting eight pieces with his senses, he only found one piece of rough stone that could produce jadeite.

Needless to say, the probability of materials here producing anything was terribly low.

Zone E was worthy of being known as the scrap zone. It was rare to find best performing pieces here, but the prices were cheap enough.

Looking at the endless flow of people in Zone E, Bai Jing planned to visit Zone D, hoping that that Zone would give him a different experience.