The First Interstellar Energy Gambler - Chapter 2.1
Translator: Skull_InA_Rose
Chapter 2: On-Site Jadeite Cutting
Lin Luo laid in bed and rested for a while. When the time was almost up, he went to the next door and knocked on Sun Hong’s door.
“Xiao Luo?” Sun Hong was stunned when he saw Lin Luo, but he soon realized something, and his face instantly showed some joy, “Did someone from the Xing family come to choose a stone?”
Sun Hong and Lin Luo had a good relationship. He knew that Lin Luo would basically not go out at night unless someone came to choose a stone, but if he did go out he would be called to go with him. Lin Luo liked watching the excitement the most. There was no entertainment on such a remote planet full of yellow sand. Fortunately, he could watch other people betting on rocks to have fun.
“Yes.”
“Let’s go!” After that, the two of them walked towards the management center together.
When Lin Luo and Sun Hong arrived at the management center, a lot of people had gathered outside, and almost all the staff from the mining area came to join in the fun.
Normally the management center would not be brightly lit and would have its doors locked at night. He Fei, the head of the mining area, accompanied a group of well-dressed people to select jadeite from the management center warehouse. After miners dug the jadeite from the mine, it would all be stored here.
The Xing family is one of the four major families of the empire. The resource planet Kulta was an industry under the Xing family. The Xing family regularly sent high-paying consultants with rich experience in stone gambling to select stones there.
The reason why it was called stone selection and not stone gambling was because the main business of the Xing family was jadeite trade, not stone gambling. The advisory group would screen the newly dug up jadeite and divide it into five grades: excellent, good, medium, inferior, and poor.
Excellent jadeite usually got very good results, and it was highly possible to get rare jade variants such as glass jade and ice jade. Good jadeite looked slightly worse, but it was still possible to receive good jade better than water jade from them. The probability of medium quality jadeite being able to reveal good jade was very low. Generally, you could only count on getting jade such as water jade and waxy jade at best. Inferior jadeite could only contain jadeite such as bean jade at best. Poor jadeite was basically the same but with lower probability- more often than not it was no different from ordinary stones.
Excellent jadeite was usually left for the Xing family, and the other four grades of jadeite were to be sold.
The price of good jadeite was the highest, and it could often be sold at a high price of seven or eight figures; the price of medium jadeite was about hundreds of thousands; the price of inferior jadeite was usually between several thousand and tens of thousands; and the poor jadeite was generally sold by the catty, and the price was extremely low.
The advisory group held many labels with different colors in their hands, representing different rankings. Big red tags would represent excellent quality, green represented good, yellow represented medium, blue represented inferior, black represented poor, and white represented uncertainty in which quality the stone should fall under. After the gambling consultants applied the labels, there would be people there who would move the jadeite to different areas according to the classification of the labels.
The jadeite with white labels would be left alone and would be identified by all the stone gambling consultants at the end. Both the risk and the reward from these stones were usually very high, as while it was possible to obtain high quality jade from these stones, once an improper sort or wrong cut was made the Xing family might suffer heavy losses.
Although there were not many consultants, the speed of selecting stones was relatively fast. Before Lin Luo and the others arrived they had already screened the new batch of jadeite. After the movers removed the jadeite that had been screened the consultants began to gather around and discuss the small pile of white-labeled gambling stones.
This time, there was an extremely conspicuous man among the consultants who came to Kulta to select stones. He had neat, short hair and a tall stature, and was actually a bit taller than the others around him. His deep facial features looked handsome and compelling, but there was a trace of hostility between his brows which make him seem very unapproachable. While others were talking around the pile of gambling stones, he stood aside and listened silently but didn’t speak.
“Who’s that person? Is there actually such a young stone gambling consultant?” Sun Hong lowered his voice to ask Lin Luo about the man who stuck out from the crowd.
Lin Luo shook his head. It was the first time he saw this man, but seeing He Fei’s respectful attitude when speaking to him, his identity was definitely not ordinary.
“Xiao Luo!” Lin Luo was suddenly patted on the shoulder.
Lin Luo looked back and saw Li Jun standing behind him with a smile.
“Grandpa Li!”
Li Jun smiled and nodded, “Come with me, the consultants should be finished in a while.”
“Okay.” Lin Luo and Sun Hong both said goodbye to each other before Lin Luo followed along to work as an assistant for Li Jun. Although he had a genetic defect in vision, the warehouse was brightly lit and he was only helping out, so there would be no problem.
After a short while, the consultant team in the warehouse finished the discussion. Most of the white-labeled jadeite was replaced with labels of other colors, while the rest were put on the cart by the consultants and pushed out of the warehouse.
The consultants’ views on these controversial jadeite were polarized. Some of them believed that good jade could be found, while other consultants believed that they would fail. Such jadeite would be cut open on the spot to avoid possible losses.
The miners who were waiting outside immediately surrounded them with excitement, and walked towards the cutting machine behind the advisors.