CH 23.1

The people next to An Ge also looked like they had seen a ghost. It was amazing that he was able to get a jadeite to come out like that.

A two-finger-wide cut was revealed beneath the white stone and after rinsing it with water, the flesh of the jadeite inside revealed a light pink color as soft as cherry blossoms, with a moist and delicate texture and an elegant translucency that was fascinating.

“It’s, it’s the pink violet in violet!”

“My goodness, this color is rarely seen, it’s so beautiful–“

The crowd gathered around in a huddle, making a tight circle around him.

The color violet was relatively rare in jadeite and could be subdivided into pinkish violet, aubergine violet and blue violet. Pinkish violet was purple with a slight pinkish tinge, aubergine violet was purple with an aubergine like fuchsia and blue violet was purple with a blue tinge.

Of these, pink violet had the finest texture of the three colors, with no apparent graininess and was the most expensive. [Note 1]

The sight of the cut colored An Ge’s heart with unspeakable joy as he used an abrasive wheel to remove all the debris from around the jadeite bit by bit until he finally unraveled a half fist-sized piece of watery pink-violet jadeite.

The jadeite was translucent, beautifully colored and well hydrated.

A light pink with a hint of purple intertwined in it, like a light pink veil, shaded and elegant, with subtle ripples, it attracted everyone’s attention.

“I bid six hundred thousand starcoins.”

The silence was broken by a bid from an anxious rough stones dealer.

The pinkish-purple color of this piece was so rare and so pure that even if it was only 1.3 kilos, he mentioned a high price.

“Six hundred and fifty thousand!”

“I bid seven hundred thousand!”

One by one, the rough stones dealers, obviously knowing the value started bidding.

In the end, the watery pink violet jadeite was auctioned off for a whopping 900,000 starcoins.

An Ge looked at the number of starcoins displayed on his account and froze in place for a long time. He had never thought that he would ever be this rich!

Five days ago, he had still been worried about his exams results, fearing that he wouldn’t be able to get financial support from the Shen family.

Two days ago, he had been weeping with gratitude and excitement for the 50,000 starcoins transferred from the Shen family, exclaiming that he finally had hope to go on.

And today, looking at the 900,000 starcoins added to his account, he had the surreal feeling that he was in a dream.

“Hey, you this kid, you’ve got a lot of luck!” Jin Mao walked over and patted him on the shoulder with a smile.

An Ge looked back and a light bloomed in his eyes that hadn’t existed before, “Thanks, your luck isn’t bad either.”

The two men looked at each other and burst out laughing at the same time.

Although it was a test of the mind, the unique charm of gambling on rough stones fascinated them and strengthened their resolve to become Stone Gamblers.

Meanwhile, Bai Jing took out the three rough stones from the automatic shopping cart and started to solve the stones.

From the looks of it, the three rough stones he had chosen were all in good condition.

Bai Jing started with a dark ebony skin rough stone.

This rough stone was rounded, only fifteen centimeters in diameter, black as lacquer, covered with a luminous black wax crust, with small flakes of dead ringworm at the base and interwoven with white python bands, typical of the rough stones of the old Planet Pulte’s field openings.

Despite the fact that this rough stone was small, black and unassuming, there was a good chance that it would yield high quality jadeite, and a top quality glass jadeite at that.

However Bai Jing had already looked through this rough stone and saw that it contained nothing.

So he didn’t intend to polish it but made a cut along the course of the python band, dropped another cut on the ringworm section and set it aside when no green came out.

The second rough stone was the mountain rough stone with the water-turned sandy skin crust that he had selected.

Its surface was yellowish grey and the crust had a patch of water-rust colored traces with ribbons of pine and a few thin linear locks spreading along the water-rust colored lines, about half a centimeter deep.

This rough stone was also a gambling collapsed rough stone as the inner flesh of the jadeite itself wasn’t very reactive, and had been damaged by the fine locks, leaving only a small portion of the base.

The blue laser beam sliced through the skeins without hesitation and the rough stone produced green in a single cut, however the cut surface was damaged, much to the regret of those standing by.

Bai Jing was very fast at solving the rough stones and his exceptional learning ability had familiarized him with the automatic stone cutter and he had become increasingly comfortable switching between the laser blade and the grinding wheel.

The most terrifying thing was that he no longer cut the rough stones by using the infrared system to recognize the scribing lines, but instead held the handle of the laser knife directly in his hand, just like a Stone Solver.

His slender white fingers held the black handle firmly in place, the extreme impact of the color accentuating the whiteness of his fingertips which were as beautiful as jade.

But these hands, which looked like fine works of art were quick, fierce and accurate when handling the laser blade, making a single stroke to the end, a clean and crisp movement that was comparable to that of an experienced Stone Solver.

After a few cuts, the cut surface became less and less shattered until the outline of the jadeite was all cut out before the grinding wheel was replaced.

Five minutes later, an egg-sized dry green jadeite was finally unraveled from the rough stone with no bids around due to the poor seed quality.

All this was within Bai Jing’s expectations.

Without the slightest change in expression, he put the dry green jadeite he had solved down together with the ‘thin layer of green skin’ and took out the third rough stone.

This was a prunus-skin crusted rock, the surface of which resembled ripe prunes, with a dark red color and a rough sandy texture. It was pitted and pockmarked, with a strewn distribution of pine flowers and appeared to be of very mediocre performance.

This rough stone, which Bai Jing hadn’t originally thought much of, had been accidentally knocked over on one side while he had been cleaning the rough stone next to it, revealing the wither under it.

The withers on the skin resembled a kind of burnt firewood, was black and dark grey and brown in color and had a banded kidney like stalactite and nodular shape.

Green fragmented rough stones were often seen with withering on them hence people in the trade often said: if there was withering, then there was color and thus more bettable. [Note 2]

Upon seeing this band of greyish-black withering, Bai Jing thought about it and used his sense perception ability to look deeper into the rough stone and about 2 cm into the crust, he felt a certain activity reaction. It wasn’t very strong but not bad either.

He fixed the rough stone to the stone-cutting machine and used the laser knife to cut a two-finger wide crust directly in the direction of the wither.

“One cut and it’s green!”

“That’s a nice green color–“

Just under the glare of a strong light, an extremely bright, brilliant green emerged from the cut, pure and full, of the right consistency and of a uniform color.

“The green color is superb, but unfortunately the seed and water is a little poor. If it were an ice seed or above it, would have been worth a fortune.”

A well-dressed, hale and hearty old man next to him sighed softly.

The color of this piece of jadeite was a little more beautiful than emerald, almost close to full green. How rare was this?

The others were speechless when they heard the old man’s words. Even a full green jadeite was difficult to obtain; could it be that the ones of the ice variety were easier to obtain? How could there be such a good thing?

But when they saw the two tall bodyguards wearing energy guns behind the old man, they swallowed their words back silently.

The blue laser beam in Bai Jing’s hand was like a sharp blade and soon removed all the skin around it, revealing the rough outline of the jadeite.

He replaced the stone cutter with a grinding wheel and wiped away all the debris scattered around, unlocking the 4.3 kg bean seed full green jadeite.

Bean seeds were extremely common species but were also divided into various categories: e.g. sugar beans, ice beans, fine beans, coarse beans, etc.

This rough stone that Bai Jing had was not overtly granular and had a fine texture and high translucency, making it one of the better performing fine bean varieties, which, together with its full green color, was also of good value.

“I offer two hundred thousand starcoins.”

“Two hundred and twenty thousand.”

“Two hundred and fifty thousand!”

“Four hundred thousand starcoins.”

This time it was the old man who had just spoken out, adding 150,000 starcoins directly to the previous bid mentioned, a price that actually exceeded the price of the jadeite itself.

Bai Jing’s estimate for this piece of jadeite was around 300,000 starcoins.

After all, jadeite of the bean variety wasn’t a high grade jadeite and this price was already based on the full green color. He hadn’t expected the old man’s bid to be 100,000 higher than he had expected.

The old man paid the starcoins and put the jadeite away in his space button, but instead of leaving, he walked up to Bai Jing: “Young man, what is your name?”

Bai Jing was a little surprised but replied politely, “Bai Jing.”

The old man nodded and asked with a smile, “Would you be interested in being our Min family’s exclusive Stone Gambler?”

At these words, the expressions of the surrounding crowd changed.