My arm was numb. Xiao Hong had been sleeping with her head on my arm, and I didn't dare move. It took a long time for it to recover.
Sleeping all night was more exhausting than working a full day.
I went down to buy some food and brought it up. Xiao Hong said she didn't want to eat. I boiled a kettle of water, poured a cup, and placed it on the bedside table. I told her to eat something if she was hungry and that I was going out.
She hummed in response. I looked down at her. The bruises on her body had faded a little, but her face was still a bit swollen. I tenderly touched her hand. She was about to cry again, so I quickly turned away, grabbed my backpack, and headed downstairs.
I was going to my master's.
It had been many days since I last touched stones, and my hands were itching.
Jing Lei had given me ten thousand yuan. Yesterday, I had given three thousand to Xiao Hong's mother and put two thousand into a small red envelope. After the expenses of the past few days, I had about three thousand five to six hundred yuan left. This was so much better than going to gamble on Nan Hong rough with only fifteen yuan in my pocket. Today, I definitely wasn't going to gamble on Nan Hong again. I was going to gamble on jade, to see if I could find a good stone.
It would also be a warm-up for the public auction.
I hadn't seen my master in over half a year. I bought him two packs of cigarettes on the way, his usual brand.
Although I had become his disciple, I had never spent a single cent on my master. I had learned so much from him for free, and I had never shown any appreciation.
Back then, cigarettes weren't that expensive, but my master's brand was not cheap. It was a famous Yunnan brand, costing over eight yuan a pack, while Hong Mei cigarettes were only a little over a yuan.
When I arrived, my master had no work and was sitting at the entrance, smoking.
He was surprised to see me, not expecting me to show up so suddenly. He said, "I heard you were inside. Are you alright?"
I replied, "Aren't I perfectly fine? I was used by bad people, fined a thousand yuan, and now it's all good."
My master said, "I knew it. How could I misjudge someone?"
I took out the cigarettes and offered them to him. He accepted without hesitation, smiling and saying, "You've grown up in just a few days. What are you doing now? Still thinking about learning to cut stones? This trade of mine is not promising. You should learn something else, something that will let you make a name for yourself."
I said, "My whole life, like yours, I just love dealing with stones. But today, I won't be learning to cut stones from you. I want to pick out a stone and have you cut it for me."
My master agreed, saying, "Alright, it'll be a good chance for me to see if you've improved."
I said, "I'll go take a look. If I don't find anything I like, I won't pick anything."
The shop where my master worked was an old one, with a good selection of rough stones. Although they were mostly small pieces, there wasn't much waste material. They were all purchased through normal channels from the mines, unlike other shops that collected junk.
When old Burmese miners extract stones, they screen most of them and transport them to warehouses, then dump the waste into garbage dumps. Many people with tools wait at these dumps. When trucks unload, hundreds, even more, people rush over, sifting through the refuse.
Of course, there are good stones among them, but the proportion is very low.
Most of it is limestone or granite.
These stones mostly end up in Ruili.
People who don't understand the tricks of the trade can spend tens or hundreds of yuan on them and still make the owner rich.
These stones, when brought here, might only be worth a few cents. No matter how little you pay, they still profit.
I glanced at the stones displayed in the shop. Business had been good recently, so there weren't too many stones. I bypassed the larger stones and looked at the kilogram material.
Knowing how much money I had in my pocket, I didn't even consider the larger stones.
I continued walking inside. In an inconspicuous corner, there was a pile of small pieces, less than a kilogram each. It was quite a large pile, seemingly newly arrived.
I looked at the tag: Houjiang Old Mine.
Houjiang material is rarely seen. Although the pieces are very small, they often yield high-quality jade and exquisite pieces. I squatted down and picked out a piece weighing about half a kilogram. The stone was yellow, looking somewhat like potato skin, very dense, with fine sand and a waxy texture, feeling very smooth to the touch.
Houjiang is known for producing small colored stones. The raw stones are very small, weighed in liang (a unit of weight), with most being under 1 kilogram and only a few over 5 kilograms. There are many types of rough stone skins, such as garlic skin, potato skin, egg green skin, frog skin, and milk fruit skin. The surface of the skin usually has a wax coating, which can be yellow, red, or black, and it peels off easily.
Houjiang stones generally have good texture and color, but they often have fine cracks. Among various skin types, garlic skin and white wax skin have the best texture, especially those with fine sand that reflect light exceptionally well, resulting in very beautiful finished products. A distinct characteristic of Houjiang stones is that "color increases value by three parts." This means that the color of Houjiang stones can shift. What appears to be a 70% color saturation on the stone might become a 100% saturation after polishing. Therefore, when buying Houjiang stones, it's better to "buy lighter, not darker." Never buy stones that are already fully saturated, because if the color is too dark, it will become deep and heavy after polishing, appearing dull and losing its brilliance, making it less attractive.
This piece I have is a typical potato skin.
I shone my flashlight into it. There was color, but it wasn't very obvious. When gambling on color in Houjiang material, one should not gamble on fully saturated color, because if it's fully colored when polished, the water content might be insufficient, affecting its quality.
I took it in my hand and went to the counter to have the owner appraise it.
The old man took it, examined it, and then weighed it. "Eight and a half liang," he said. "Houjiang material, though small, isn't cheap. Have you thought about it?"
I said, "Just give me your price."
He said, "Houjiang material is three times more expensive than other materials. This piece would be two thousand five hundred."
It was indeed quite expensive. Kilogram material sold for about a thousand yuan per jin (about 500 grams) in the market, and he was charging two thousand five hundred for this piece weighing just over eight liang.
I took out the money and counted out two thousand five hundred for him, then picked up the stone and handed it to my master.
My master asked me, "Why are you gambling on this piece of material? What's your basis?"
I knew my master was testing me, so I said, "Houjiang material primarily relies on gambling for color and water content. If there's color, I won't lose money. The color halo in this stone when illuminated is not very strong, so I'm gambling on its water content."
My master looked at me and said, "That sounds somewhat reasonable, but whether it holds true for the stone remains to be seen."
He secured the stone and made a cut on the small side.
Houjiang material has a thin skin, so another cut on top would reveal the color.
My master took a look, but instead of telling me if the stone had color, he asked me, "How much water content are you betting on?"
I figured the color was probably fine, otherwise, my master wouldn't have asked that.
I said, "Seven parts. I'm betting on it having full color with seven parts water."
My master nodded and showed it to me. A cut the size of a thumbnail had been made, revealing full green. I shone my flashlight on it; it was very translucent inside. I couldn't estimate the water content without further cutting.
I said, "Make a cut on the back, one cut to decide its fate."
The key to Houjiang material is gambling on color and impurities. As long as it's full of color and free of impurities, its value can increase tenfold or twentyfold.
Of course, if the water content is good, it's not just tenfold or twentyfold; each point of water content will double the value again.
My master said nothing, like a teacher in an examination hall, grading my paper.
He quickly secured the stone again and made a cut on the large back surface. With this cut, it would be clear whether it contained material or not.
The cutting machine whirred with sparks. I felt very calm, not even as excited as I had been about that ten-yuan Nan Hong. After all, I had seen stones worth over a million yuan. While it wasn't exactly gambling, it was considered a high-quality find. Therefore, this stone didn't stir much emotion within me. It only weighed a little over eight liang, so even if it had water and color, it would at best mean breaking even, not making much profit.