"Selling them all at once would be too conspicuous.
It’s better to sell a little bit to subsidize living expenses. However, just in case, I must verify them again."
After all, both items were bought from another world and did not belong to this world. Even though the mermaid pearl looked almost identical to pearls, even more beautiful and flawless than pearls.
Low-grade spirit stones were no less impressive than top-grade jade.
But no one could guarantee that the internal structure and corresponding components of these two items were exactly the same as the pearls and jade of this world. If the difference was not significant, it would be fine.
But what if the difference was too large?
How would she, the seller, explain it?
Or what if others thought she was selling fakes?
Therefore, Ding Yun quickly decided to check the mermaid pearl and spirit stones against the relevant information she could find online to see if they were exactly the same as or merely similar to the pearls and jade of this world.
As for how to check?
The mermaid pearl was relatively convenient.
Ding Yun rummaged around the house and soon found a hammer in the corner. She smashed a mermaid pearl with the hammer and compared the interior of the mermaid pearl with the cross-section of pearls found online.
She conducted a very careful comparison and analysis.
Then, the more she looked, the colder her heart became:
"Something seems wrong. Those pearls online have a large nucleus in the middle, but this mermaid pearl has no nucleus in the middle. Although many natural pearls have no nucleus, the interior of natural pearls shouldn't be transparent, should it? Isn't it all nacre?"
With a single comparison, Ding Yun could clearly see that the internal structure of the mermaid pearl was completely different from that of a pearl, whether it was a natural pearl or a cultured pearl, with or without a nucleus.
It was undeniable that pearls were made of nacre.
And nacre was by no means a transparent substance.
She had never heard of transparent nacre.
Pearls should be opaque inside and out.
But the mermaid pearl that was smashed? Only the outer layer looked similar to a pearl. After being smashed, its interior was a pale blue transparent substance.
It wasn't even solid, more like a liquid gel.
This looked nothing like a pearl.
Fortunately, she didn't sell it directly. If she had sold it directly, she might have been arrested for selling counterfeits. Who would she reason with then!
At the same time, Ding Yun didn't even know if the mermaid who sold her the items had cheated her by selling her fake mermaid pearls, or if mermaid pearls were naturally like this.
Unwilling to give up, she quickly contacted the mermaid seller again to inquire.
And the seller's answer was quite reasonable and convincing.
"Mermaid pearls are formed from the tears of mermaids. Our tears are pale blue, so it's normal for mermaid pearls to have a pale blue substance inside?
The nacre layer on the outside is just a special substance to prevent mermaid tears from evaporating or dissolving into the seawater, used to protect the mermaid tears.
It's similar to the boxes you humans use to hold things.
Moreover, mermaid pearls can not only be used as normal jewelry, they are very beautiful. After being smashed, the mermaid tears inside have the effect of beautifying and rejuvenating the skin. We've tried it on mortals. If all the mermaid tears contained in one mermaid pearl are applied to a mortal's face, it can make an ordinary mortal twenty years younger, lasting for one year.
The effect is even better with long-term use.
Taking it internally can also regulate qi and blood, and prolong life!
In short, it's absolutely a good thing. I do not accept returns, unless you bear the shipping costs yourself."
Faced with such an answer, what could Ding Yun do? It was her fault for not asking clearly or in detail, and just deciding to buy it because it looked like a pearl.
Fortunately, this item also had good medicinal value.
The original owner looked about ten years older than before she had children in the past two years, and she needed it.
After comforting herself in this way, Ding Yun could only place all her hopes on the remaining box of spirit stones, hoping that those spirit stones wouldn't cause any more trouble.
Facing the low-grade spirit stones that only had a wisp of spiritual energy left, Ding Yun first checked them against online information. When she was still unsure, she went online and found several reliable treasure appraisal live streams. After getting the confirmation that they were indeed glass-type jade and were fine to sell, she felt a little more relieved.
And then she started looking for places to sell jade online.
The original owner had no connections in this area, and Ding Yun naturally didn't either. So, she had to search online. For each store she found, she would conduct further searches for reviews or post detailed inquiries on platforms like Zhihu and Weibo to ensure there were no negative reviews about the store being overbearing. Only then would she add it to her shortlist. She spent more than a day searching intermittently while taking care of the child.
She only found three stores that were barely suitable.
And after comparing them on the map, she temporarily chose the closest jewelry store and contacted its official customer service. She took some photos of the jade she wanted to sell and sent them to the other party. After a period of communication and discussion, they determined a location for a face-to-face transaction.
Out of caution, Ding Yun chose the food street.
Although it wasn't a high-end area, it was crowded.
With more people outside, she felt safer.
Because the distance between the two parties was not too short, and the jewelry store also needed to assess the items based on the photos she had sent, they agreed on a meeting time of two days later.
During these two days, Ding Yun was not idle.
She specifically went online and dug up all the recorded information about Zhu Lingyun's life and studied it in depth.
She hoped to understand her life trajectory through this and then consider how to change her mother's life through her childhood self without altering her life trajectory.
As mentioned earlier, the mission she took from Zhu Xin belonged to the same era as the accomplished Zhu Lingyun in her later years. Moreover, Zhu Lingyun was not dead yet, and Ding Yun could even find her if she looked.
Therefore, searching for her life history online was easy.
The encyclopedia stated that she had a difficult childhood but was academically gifted, skipping grades to finish elementary school at the age of nine and graduating from high school at fourteen. However, due to the suspension of the college entrance examination, she failed to successfully enroll in university.
That year was 1966.
After graduating from high school, she successfully passed the assessment and began working in the local steel mill. However, considering her age, she was initially an intern in the administrative department and worked there for a year until she was barely sixteen years old (by East Asian age reckoning) before being officially regularized.
In 1970, her mother passed away.
She initially developed the idea of studying medicine, often using her spare time to study the "Barefoot Doctor's Handbook" and other medical textbooks, and frequently consulting with her friends in the medical field.
After the college entrance examination was reinstated, she resolutely abandoned her years of stable work, despite the objections and persuasion of her family elders, and participated in the college entrance examination. That same year, she successfully enrolled in the Peking Union Medical College to continue her studies.