Chapter 85 International Jewelry Exhibition (3)

  "Afeng, you come over and help pick some out too. According to your opinion, first choose one piece."

  Qu Wen called Zhao Haifeng over, while he himself walked to the other side. He wanted to find a raw stone with stronger spiritual energy and then compare it with the one chosen by Zhao Haifeng. If the jade produced from the raw stone with strong spiritual energy was inferior to that of an experienced person's choice, then they would have to think of another way.

  "Alright." Zhao Haifeng thought Qu Wen wanted to compete with him on who could pick out the best rough stone, and happily agreed.

  Just after talking to Zhao Haifeng, Qu Wen released Ling Jue on the stall and searched carefully. Since Ling Jue's enhancement, its control range has also increased to about three meters. Through the released Ling Jue, Qu Wen walked to the middle stone material pile and flipped out a whole piece of jade material weighing around 20-30 kilograms.

  It's clear that there is a dense spiritual energy gathering above, but it's impossible to use spiritual awareness to see through whether there is jadeite inside.

  "It's indeed a divine work, impossible to discern its value by just looking at it, can only untie and take a look first."

  Relying on intuition, I'm still quite confident about the quality of this piece of jadeite, but I dare not say how good the emerald will be after it's carved out. After all, it's my first time carving such a large piece of rough stone, and for now, I don't have a good sense of it.

  Zhao Haifeng was still searching hard on his side, but Qu Wen only took a short while to fetch a piece of fabric and came back, leaving him stunned for a good while.

  "You've picked it up so quickly, it's almost unbelievable!" Zhao Haifeng could only describe Qu Wen's stone-picking speed as incredible.

  Qu Wen put down the original stone and scratched his head with a silly smile, because he had spiritual awareness on him, so of course the speed of selecting the original stone was fast. If he didn't have only one pair of hands, he would have already taken all the original stones containing spiritual energy from the stall.

  "Try it first and see if you've made your choice?"

  "I picked one that looks like it should produce green on the surface, but you never know with this stuff until you open it up." Zhao Haifeng patted a large boulder next to him, estimating its weight at over 50 kilograms.

  "Let's untie it first." Qu Wen immediately beckoned the boss to come over: "Boss, I want both of these. Give me a price."

  The boss took a look at the two raw stones placed beside Qu Wen's feet and quoted a price: "Four million is fine."

  "Four hundred thousand!"

  Qu Wen was shocked, having previously inquired about the price of jade rough stones and knowing they wouldn't be cheap. He didn't expect them to be this expensive. "Boss, I chose these two pieces which are all full of impurities, you're charging too much. How about 80,000?"

  The boss smiled: "Mr. Qu, you're being too ruthless with this price, it's going to make me lose my shirt. The materials I brought this time were directly taken from the mountains without anyone else's screening, but the quality is quite high. If you really want them, I'll give them to you for 3.5 million."

  Gamability is a trade secret, referring to the probability of a piece of stone appearing as jadeite. As long as it's an insider, most people know that a batch of rough stones from the mountain will go through several rounds of screening. The first round is the mine owner, because the entire mountain is his, and he understands the geological structure better than outsiders. The stones excavated must also pass through his hands first, so he will be the first to select them. Next are the public disk merchants who collect stone materials in the jade stone mountains every day. Generally, the raw stones transported from the mountains will undergo a second round of screening at their place. Then there are the jade stone wholesalers and large and small professional gamblers. After layer by layer selection, when it reaches the market, there are only a few good materials left, and the gamability is greatly reduced.

  To say that the two pieces of wool fabric next to him had never been chosen by anyone, Qu Wen absolutely didn't believe it, at most they just hadn't gone through the jade stone wholesale market. Even if that was the case, the odds were still not high.

  "You've only reduced it by 500,000, boss, you're being too stingy. According to what I said, the price of these two materials should be around what I quoted. Otherwise, I can add some shipping costs for you, how about 1 million?" Since they were in Hong Kong, Qu Wen was referring to Hong Kong dollars.

  "One million is still a big loss for me, otherwise I'll let it go a bit more, how about three million?"

  The two of them haggled over the price at the stall, and soon attracted a crowd of onlookers. Some even took a look at the woolen goods that Qu Wen and Zhao Haifeng had chosen. However, when the stall owner and Qu Wen were discussing the price, these people didn't dare to say anything, but they whispered among themselves, and their words somehow reached Qu Wen's ears without exception.

  "That big piece is okay, the crystal structure is relatively small and dense from the material. If it can produce green, it should be good. However, that small piece has too many cracks and holes, I'm afraid even if it produces green, it will be damaged. These two pieces of wool are just average."

  I don't care how others evaluate Qu Wen's writing, but this can be used as a bargaining chip.

  "After hearing that, Qu Wen almost repeated the original words: 'Boss, look at my piece, the crystal is thick and large, the structure is loose, and there are many cracks. I'm just betting it can produce some small green jade, if it's any bigger then I won't expect it. If there isn't even any green jade then I'll lose big time, how about you take another step back, 1.5 million okay?'"

  You knew the difference and still bought it. The boss wouldn't easily lower the price just because of a few words from Qu Wen, so they negotiated bit by bit. The two of them started with 400,000 yuan and finally settled on 220,000 yuan. It was only because Qu Wen kept hearing negative comments about the product from others that he could use as bargaining chips to get a relatively cheap price.

  After fixing the price, Qu Wen directly transferred the money to the boss's account and then asked him where he could unlock the stone. At this moment, he was eager to know what was inside the original stone he had chosen. Was it really as bad as others said?

  "There's a machine ready in front of the venue, you can take it there to carve." The boss confirmed receipt of the money, his face smiling brighter than flowers in spring, pointing to the front of the original stone trading area, and then asked someone to help send the original stone selected by Qu Wen to the carving machine.

  Arriving at the jade appraisal machine, a circle of people had already gathered around, all stretching their necks to watch the appraisal. If Quwen could really appraise the jade and it was of good quality, perhaps they would also make an offer to buy it.

  "Sir, will you cut it yourself or shall we help you with that?" asked the staff at the venue to Qu Wen.

  Qu Wen had only seen a jade stone being carved once before, and he had never carved such a large piece of raw jade himself. He felt a bit nervous, afraid that if he didn't operate carefully, he might damage the jade inside.

  "It's still troublesome for you all, let's just cut it open from here."

  Qu Wen drew a circle on the original stone he had chosen with his brush, indicating that the staff should cut it open from here.

  The staff heard the power of the stone cutting machine turned on, and the saw blade above rotated rapidly in an instant, directly cutting the saw teeth into the original stone.

  With a sharp "zip zip" sound passing by, a piece of stone skin the size of a bowl was cut off.

  The crowd immediately surrounded and moved forward, simultaneously letting out a sigh or shaking their heads in silence. From the cut-open place, it could be seen that there was nothing inside, only a dull yellowish-gray mass.