Chapter 629: Evaluating Jade
The old master just wanted to live with his grandson and granddaughter-in-law. There was no way he wanted to live with Leng Jinpeng, that single old man. The house would be filled with the smell of single men, eww!
Although Zhong Nuannuan had no problem driving, her age was an issue. Therefore, the old master got one of the guards to drive them while another two followed them in the same car. The remaining five drove another car and followed behind.
When they reached the antique street, the old master and Zhong Nuannuan started window shopping in antic.i.p.ation.
However, after browsing for less than 20 minutes, the old master started to lose interest.
Regardless of whether it was a shop or a peddler, the goods sold were all imitation goods. Some larger shops displayed high-quality imitation goods, but in the hands of those peddlers, almost all of them became inferior imitation goods.
To the picky old master, they were too unbearable even to look at.
“I heard that the Ling family received a new batch of raw stones from Cloud District. In the morning, there were already two people who managed to cut out something from their home. Even though they were both waxy-type, they managed to cut out two stones in the morning. This shows that they are profiting quite a lot.”
“Really?”
“Why would I lie to you? Many people are cutting stones at the Ling family’s shop. If we can get one cut, we’ll be rich.”
“Go, go, go. Let’s go take a look.”
The old master was about to leave when he suddenly heard two people chatting by the roadside. His eyes lit up.
Zhong Nuannuan said, “Grandpa, let’s go take a look too!”
“Alright, let’s go!”
After asking around, Zhong Nuannuan brought the old man to the Ling family’s shop—Soaring Clouds Pavilion.
This was the largest raw stone shop in the entire antique street.
It was divided into three stores: inside, middle, and outside.
The raw stones inside sold high-grade raw stones, the middle was middle-grade, while the outer store sold low-grade raw stones.
They were all seed materials.
The so-called seed material was the raw material that was formed on the riverbed. Due to the weathering on the surface, the outer sh.e.l.l prevented anyone from seeing what was inside. If one wanted to know whether there was anything inside, they could only rely on experience to judge. Therefore, this was also called stone gambling.
However, even the G.o.ds could not evaluate jade. and stone gambling was like gambling with one’s life. Since no one could determine whether there were actually any goods inside judging on the outside, and there was no machinery that could detect the situation inside the raw stones, people normally lost in stone gambling nine out of ten times, causing bankruptcy even.
However, once the bet was won, they would earn a hundred or even a thousand times more.
Therefore, even though everyone accepted the fact that they would lose nine out of ten bets, they could not resist the temptation of winning, no matter how minute their chances were.
Due to this, the stone gambling industry had never declined.
After entering Soaring Clouds Pavilion, Zhong Nuannuan and the old master walked into the exhibition hall.
When they pa.s.sed the exhibition hall, Zhong Nuannuan activated her X-ray vision to scan the raw stones as she pa.s.sed by.
At a sweep, she realized that the largest stone in the exhibition hall was actually filled with a whole imperial jade.
Imperial jade, as its name suggested, was the royalty among all jades.
The emerald green imperial jade crescent pendant around Zhong Qianqian’s neck was only the size of two fingertips. Yet, it could be sold for tens of millions or even hundreds of millions on the market. One could imagine how rare and valuable imperial jade was.
It was rare enough to see imperial jade on the market nowadays. Although this large piece of imperial jade was not quite the color of emerald, it was worth at least three to four billion. That evaluation was made while it was still an uncut jade. Once it was carved into a work of art and sold, it could be sold for at least four to six billion.