CH 35.3

The Gambling Street was still as busy as it had always been and the three went to the first shop as usual.

Wang Ping, the shop owner of greeted them in a familiar manner, “Young Master Jin and friends are here again to pick up rough stones at the Gambling Street. Welcome, welcome!”

Then he looked over at Bai Jing and smiled, “Oh, little young master you’re here as well. Really a rare guest, a rare guest– you definitely have to choose a few more pieces of rough stones, and it’s still 20% off!”

He had a very deep impression of this little young master who had solved the great gain jadeite of the hibiscus variety from scraps that had collapsed in bet and then Old Man Min took a fancy to him. He had so much luck.

On that day, the income of his shop increased by four, five times and the shop was almost emptied by the people who came to pick out rough stones, so it wasn’t too much to say that he was a god of wealth.

Wang Ping’s eyes glowed as he looked at Bai Jing, hoping that this little young master would also be lucky this time and bet on a rise or two to bring more business to his shop.

The first pile of rough stones in the shop was cheaper and there were more people picking them up, so Bai Jing went straight to the second pile.

Now that the limit of his sense perception ability had been raised to the point where he could detect thirty rough stones at once, he would definitely find the right rough stone today.

Through the frequent betting wars and the tens of thousands of rough stones he had come into contact with in the underground warehouse of the Gu Conglomerate, Bai Jing’s judgement of raw rough stones was now much faster than before, and he could basically make an estimate after a few glances, and each rough stone took less than half a minute.

As for the ones that wouldn’t perform well, Bai Jing didn’t intend to waste time on them so he skipped them after a quick glance.

Even if there was jadeite in those rough stones, they wouldn’t be his choice.

It took Bai Jing about half an hour to finish going through the pile of rough stones, from which he picked out ten that barely caught his eye, then he explored them using his sense perception ability.

His sense perception ability touched his fingertips affectionately before splitting into two strands and entering each of the two rough stones along the skin crust.

As Bai Jing absorbed more and more energy fluid, his ability grew, and the amount, speed and activity of his sense perception ability were no longer what they used to be.

Now, not only could he identify the seed and water of a jadeite by its activity and reaction, he could also perceive the color and structure of the jadeite, which was almost equivalent to a rough 3D model in his mind.

Two minutes later, he sensed that three of the ten rough stones had jadeite in them.

Apart from a larger piece of jadeite of the luminous green variety, the other two pieces were of the coarse bean variety and the dry green variety, which weren’t at all attractive to the current Bai Jing.

He put the rough stone that produced the luminous green variety into his shopping cart, picked out two other rough stones and went straight to the place where the half-bet rough stones were kept.

Fatty Jin Mao and An Ge were still struggling with the rough stones in the first pile.

Both of them had seven or eight rough stones in their shopping carts and from the look of things, it seemed that they wouldn’t stop until they had picked a few more.

They were now only one point away from being level 1 Stone Gamblers, so they were both determined to get their hands on high rough stones today!

Anyways, the rough stones here weren’t expensive and the quality wasn’t good, so they would just use quantity to win!

Bai Jing arrived at the table where the half-bet rough stones had been placed.

There were about seven or eight half-bet rough stones here, all of which had been rubbed open.

The openings varied in size, some only two fingers wide, others about the size of an adult’s hand, and all were showing green without exception.

A middle-aged man was holding a magnifying glass and a strong light against the opening of one of the half-bet rough stones, examining the quality of the jadeite inside.

To avoid disputes, there was a rule in the normal gambling world that if someone was looking at a rough stone, the others could only come forward after that person had finished looking at it, in the order of first come, first served.

Because if two people were looking at the same rough stone at the same time, who would it be sold to first?

This wasn’t an auction house where each rough stone was priced, moreover using the highest bidder’s route would be very damaging to the reputation of the shop.

Bai Jing glanced over at the side and saw that the rough stone that the middle-aged man was looking at was about thirty centimeters long and fifteen centimeters high, flat and irregularly polygonal, with sharp angles all around.

The rough stone was a typical white salt skin rough stone with a fine crust and a few clusters of greyish-white pine flowers on the surface, with a two-finger wide ‘opening’ on the right side, with a light greenish tinge coming through, it’s texture surprisingly of ice variety!

‘The price of this rough stone must be very high.’ Bai Jing judged secretly.

The white sandpaper skin was the best of the white sandpaper skins and was prone to producing high quality jadeite, what’s more the opening of this one was of the ice variety and the color wasn’t bad at all, so it probably wasn’t less than five million starcoins.

Bai Jing was also very optimistic about this white sandpaper skin and so using the cover of another rough stone, unobtrusively used his sense perception ability to look into the insides of the rough stone and after a few seconds, his pupils shrunk!

The more reactive ice seeds were concentrated only four to five centimeters from the opening while further down there was a dense packing of damaged jadeite with no signs of any kind– invisible locks!

This was the most indistinguishable type of lock and unlike other locks such as cross locks, chicken claw locks and others which were clearly visible on the skin of the rough stone, these ones were cunningly hidden.

Invisible locks, as the name implied, weren’t visible on the skin of a raw rough stone, and even if they were, they were just a water line which would be revealed when the raw rough stone was cut. Something that was very difficult to guard against. [Note]

Bai Jing sighed softly in his heart. Even the most skilled Stone Gambler wouldn’t be able to detect such invisible locks. If he didn’t have his ability, he would have bought this rough stone which was very good in both skin and opening.

Unfortunately, whoever would purchase it….. would only have to recognize his or her bad luck.

Bai Jing looked up at the middle-aged man then lowered his eyes again. He couldn’t warn him, so it was better to continue looking at the other rough stones.

Each of these half-bet rough stones had its own distinctive character, and from the openings they were basically above the luminous green variety, with the exception of the white salt sand skin that had jadeite of the ice variety and other two half-bet rough stones that had jadeite of the glutinous variety.

However, this didn’t include the very large rough stone in the middle.

This rough stone was more than half a meter long, flattened and oval in shape, lying across the stone platform and roughly estimated to be at least a hundred kilograms in weight.

It was simply covered with large and small locks, the longest being a dozen centimeters and the shortest three or four centimeters.

The longest locks were large open locks, known as vicious cracks which, unlike the skin locks, had no weathering layer and were interspersed with a large amount of greyish-white scale that sunk deep into the rough stone, as if a huge axe had been used to cut the center of the rough stone, splitting it in two, which showed that it wouldn’t perform well.

Furthermore, the top right-hand side of this rough stone showed clear cut marks which had smoothed out the angles and it seemed that the position of the opening had been misjudged as several cuts had been made into the white stone before the opening was shifted to the left.

This rough stone would never have been placed in the half-bet rough stone section if the later opening hadn’t produced a green color.

Bai Jing, looking in from the opening, saw a very coarse bean with a very grainy texture and an uneven grey-green color which wasn’t comparable to the other half-bet rough stones.

However for some reason, he was attracted to this rough stone and his sense perception ability also became restless.

A minute later, Bai Jing withdrew his sense perception ability, and there was a flash of shock in his teal eyes before it disappeared.