CH 76

Chapter 76: Convinced

Lin Luo’s first knife cut was against the edge of the black tinea scabs, directly cutting his piece of jadeite into one large and one small piece. He threw away the larger piece, picked up the smaller one, and put it on the stone cutting machine.

He aligned the grinding wheel with the black tinea scabs, then began to grind the stone. As he had said, the black tinea scabs stayed on the surface of the skin and hadn’t eaten in far, so it was quickly buffed off by the grinding wheel.

After being splashed with water, they saw a small piece of green jade showing from the window that was ground out. As the revealed jade became larger and larger, the direction of the jade inside could be roughly guessed. White salt sand skin jadeite rarely has the situation of superficial jade, so if there was no accident there should be a lot of jade inside the jadeite.

In the end, a piece of hibiscus jade with excellent crystal structure and color was cut from the stone, which weighed almost 3 or 4 kilograms. It was estimated to be quite valuable.

After the bet went up twice in a row, Andre’s subordinates couldn’t help whispering. They probably didn’t expect this young Imperial man to be so powerful.

Ollie was stunned when he watched from the side. The interior of the piece of jadeite was exactly as described by Lin Luo, and he actually pulled out such a large piece of jade!

Seeing that Lin Luo was ready to move on to the third piece of jadeite, Ollie hurriedly pointed to the remaining half of jadeite and asked, “Is the remaining half going to be cut?”

Lin Luo shook his head, “The tinea scabs and seedlings were only concentrated on the half that I just cut, which means that only that part had jade. The remaining half doesn’t need to be cut.”

Ollie nodded in a daze. He was already somewhat convinced of Lin Luo at this point, so he didn’t ask any more questions, and just watched other people move the remaining half of the jadeite away.

The last piece of jadeite that Lin Luo wanted to solve could be said to have been the worst looking piece. It was a gray rock mountain stone jadeite. The skin was gray, and the sanding was average, but because it was a mountain rock the skin was thin, so they could faintly see that there was color inside. However in the middle there was an ugly and nauseating scab-like growth of dry ringworm.

If the problem was just this piece of tinea, it’s likely that someone would still be willing to gamble on it. After all, not all scabs are harmful to the stone, and there was still a certain degree of luck to be had.

Except the problematic thing was that in addition to the tinea, there were many cracks in the piece of jadeite, one of which was a very obvious cluster of chicken feet cracks.

As the saying goes, ‘don’t be afraid of big cracks, be afraid of small fissures’ because small fissures are small and inconsistent. Big or small, deep or shallow, they are too hard to predict. Thats why gambling on fissures is a very dangerous behavior. If one is not careful, the jade may be worthless.

Only a master stone gambler would be able to observe and analyze the minutiae of the jadeite’s fissures.

This piece of jadeite that seemed extremely risky was also the fundamental reason why Ollie was not optimistic about Lin Luo at the beginning, but now Ollie doesn’t dare to look down upon Lin Luo anymore. He had come to think that Lin Luo might be a kind of legendary stone gambler.

The reason why Lin Luo chose this piece of jadeite was actually not as complicated as Ollie imagined. After looking at the details of the skin, this piece of jadeite had been removed from the shortlist by Lin Luo at the beginning. After all, there were so many people waiting beside him that he didn’t want to spend too much time slowly observing and studying so many tiny fissures. After observing it once he rechecked it with special abilities, and found that there was something inside this piece of jadeite. Only then did he pick it out.

For fear of damaging the jade inside, Lin Luo first chose to grind the stone. He pointed the grinding wheel at the position of the scab and slowly ground a window open.

Because of the thin skin, the jade inside was ground out at once, and it turned out to be a reddish brown.

“Ah! It’s red jade!” Someone couldn’t help but exclaimed.

Among colored jadeite, purple and gold are the rarest, followed by red, then blue and yellow, with green being the most common.

So it’s no wonder they were so surprised when they saw the red jade appear from this unremarkable jadeite.

But precisely because of the emergence of the red jade that everyone became more nervous, worried that the chicken feet would have an impact on the jade inside. The main object of damage caused by fissures is color, and many excellent quality jade reduced their value due to fissure caused color loss.

Under everyone’s eyes, Lin Luo changed to a chrome knife and dropped the knife from the place where he ground out the window.

After the cut, Ollie immediately rushed to help clean the cut surface, then froze on the spot.

The reddish-brown jade was exposed on the cut surface, but this jade was completely destroyed by small cracks. When he was washing with a water gun, a lot of red jade was also washed away…

Once jade is destroyed, the energy contained in it would also largely dissipate. No matter what color it is, it would have no value.

“It’s a pity…” Someone couldn’t help but shook his head.

“But it’s already pretty good.”

“Yes, worthy of His Excellency’s guest.” People said comforting words, hoping that Andre’s guests would not be depressed by a small failure.

However, Lin Luo didn’t show any disappointed look, he just calmly drew another line on the jadeite, ready to continue with a second cut.

“It’s already like this… Is it necessary to cut it?” Someone in the crowd muttered to themselves.

Ollie suddenly raised his head, glared in the direction of the speaker, and then fixed his gaze again on Lin Luo’s hand holding the chrome knife.

He felt that since Lin Luo chose to continue cutting the stone, it must be for a reason. Maybe the crack was shallow, and some of the jade was intact…

Although this possibility was small, it wasn’t without merit.

The second cut was still broken jade. Then came the third cut, then the fourth cut…

Finally, at the time of the fifth cut, the broken jade disappeared, and a complete and smooth surface of red jade appeared.

Ollie looked at the remaining part of this piece of jadeite, and it seemed that at least half of this piece of red jade was intact!

He suppressed his excitement and watched Lin Luo slowly cut out the piece of red jade. Although part of it was damaged, the remaining part was about 3 kilograms.

Lin Luo handed all three pieces of jade to Andre, “Fortunately I wasn’t humiliated.”

What a pity. Among dozens of pieces of jadeite, there were only these three of value.

“Thank you. I’ll transfer the money to you right away.” Andre said gratefully. Lin Luo helped them save a lot of time and trouble .

“Don’t worry.” Lin Luo wiped the sweat leaking from his forehead, “I’ll go back to rest first. If you need help, you can call me any time.”

Ollie was now convinced of Lin Luo’s ability to bet on rocks, He followed behind Lin Luo with bright eyes, chattering non-stop, “Mr. Lin, are you hungry? Shall I get you something to eat? You’re so amazing, can you teach me…”

Andre looked at Ollie’s back and smiled helplessly.

“Your Excellency, Mr. Lin Luo is really good. Why don’t we ask him to stay and help us bet on more jade?” a subordinate suggested.

“Yeah, when fighting the interstellar pirates our jade was almost used up. If we don’t prepare more, if there are other people waiting in the shadows or those interstellar pirates come back, we won’t have the power to fight back.” Although the interstellar pirates were rampant in the Federation, they have never came to provoke the Tobys. This time the attack was really strange. Someone was behind it, and that person would definitely not stop there.

“No, I’ve caused enough trouble for them. This time I’ll buy some jade from the market first. Please contact the main planet and ask when the starship will arrive.” Andre paused and then said about Lin Luo and Xing Mo, “I feel very sorry that they were involved in this incident, and I don’t want to cause them any more trouble. What can be solved with money should be solved with money.”

“Yes, sir.”

After a while, the person who used the terminal to contact the main planet showed a solemn expression.

“Your Excellency.”

“Yes?”

“The main planet did not respond…” The communication that could be connected yesterday went unanswered today. This situation was absolutely abnormal.

“What?!” Andre’s voice was suddenly much higher.

The main planet didn’t respond, indicating that the situation there had become more serious.

In the Federation, stone gambling wasn’t as popular as in the Empire, but was done as a profession by some people. As the Federation was a federal state, the energy of its affiliated countries was usually self-produced and and self-sufficient, while the central government was in charge of the main energy ore veins, and the mined jade from that was used for military and commercial consumption.

Andre’s country was even more special. Their country was a unitary state and a constitutional monarchy with a king that was only a ceremonial national symbol and had no real power. The real power was in the hands of nobleman like Andre.

Andre was the highest-ranking Grand Duke among the lords. He had a large number of private mineral resources, maintained trade relations with many confederates, and had accumulated a lot of wealth. His could be described as a wealthy country. At the same time, he also had a private fleet, which could be said to give him the absolute right to speak in his country.

The loss of contact with the main planet showed that the problem is inside his country.

But Andre wasn’t too surprised by this. The big tree attracts the wind, but there were not many people at a similar rank as him who wanted to get rid of him quickly. His recent trip to the Empire was to open up trade channels. In order to keep a low profile, he didn’t bring his entire fleet, so he was taken advantage of. For him though, this is actually a good opportunity to clean things up.

It’s just a little troublesome to deal with…

===========Translator’s Corner===========

Previously when the Tobys were talking to Imperials I removed contractions because author indicated that the speech was being run through a translator. Then I realized that the pirates’ speech was too  but I translated in contractions to keep the original intent from the way it was written in raws (impolite/informal gangster speech). I’ll be going back and correcting that over the next few days!