Chapter 8: One Cut Brings Poverty, One Cut Brings Wealth

  It wasn't easy to get rid of Jia Siyou's entanglement, and Qiu Qinghe originally planned to go home and tidy up. After all, she had to return to Shanghai tomorrow, and no matter what, she couldn't stay at home forever. As for whether her mother would really sell herself, she was open-minded about it - after all, it was just a matter of money, and everything would be fine once the stocks yielded profits. However, Shen Fang was even more difficult to deal with than Jia Siyou. He dragged her onto the bus, deadpan, saying he'd take her somewhere to "return empty-handed and catch a white wolf". While it wasn't impossible for someone to do that, Qiu Qinghe didn't quite believe Shen Fang had such skills - she just thought he was playful and teasing, probably looking for an excuse to get her to accompany him. Thinking about it, going back home would only mean getting pestered by the matchmakers again, so she might as well follow his lead - at least being with him made her feel good.

  They got off at the first shopping mall on Yanbian Road, and it was almost noon. Qiu Qinghe, who had some tofu pudding in the morning, felt a little hungry, so she said why don't we find a place to have lunch first? Shen Fang shook his head and ran into a store by the road to buy two packs of Huafeng instant noodles, saying that he would chew on them for now, and then invite her to Yipin Building to eat seafood. Then, he pulled her hand and walked forward in a hurry.

  Her right hand was grasped by Shen Fang, while her left hand held a packet of instant noodles. Qiu Qinghe really didn't know what to do first, seeing him looking serious and slightly excited, she joked: "Where are you planning to take me? You're not thinking of selling me to human traffickers for some pocket money, are you?"

  "Look what you're saying, do I have a human face and a beastly heart?" Shen Fang shook his head wildly, as if searching for something, "I'm not that kind of guy who just talks big but doesn't take any real action..."

  "Huh?" Qiu Qinghe didn't understand Shen Fang's meaning, blinking her eyes and turning her head to look at him.

  "Found it, it's here!" Shen let out a sigh of relief and smiled as he pointed to the old neon sign hanging from the hotel - Lover's Suite.

  I thought Qiu Qinghe would misunderstand and even blush with shame, but unexpectedly Qiu Qinghe just snorted and continued to entangle the previous question, "Tell me clearly what you came here for? If you're doing something stupid, I won't care about you!"

  "Qinghe sister, if one day you had to sell yourself, how much would you price yourself?" It's definitely because of her young age that Qiu Qinghe never considered herself as a man, Shen Fang felt somewhat resentful.

  "You wouldn't really sell me out, would you?" Qiu Qinghe muttered suspiciously, but her footsteps didn't falter as she actually followed Shen Fang inside.

  The hotel was empty, and there wasn't even a single service staff member in sight. Shen Fang walked straight up to the second floor while saying: "Everyone has their own price tag, more or less, there's always a number. In the past, I used numbers to measure how important someone was to me, but now, I suddenly want to change and have the opportunity to do so. I want to re-believe in those things that I intentionally forgot and discarded."

  For Shen Fang's sudden outburst of maturity and vicissitudes, Qiu Qinghe was still not quite used to it, didn't know how to respond, and could only sigh: "Really don't understand what kind of messy stuff is inside your little brain..."

  "Do you still remember that day when I told you at the staircase that I would give 500,000 to buy you back as a daughter-in-law? Although I knew it was very disrespectful to you, but if I couldn't get 500,000, how could I put my mind at ease about your mother's thoughts on this side?" Shen stopped in front of a two-panel wooden door on the west side of the corridor, where intermittent noises and the rumbling sound of machinery came from inside, sounding like a gambling den.

  At this point, Qiu Qinghe finally understood what Shen Fang wanted to do. He actually really wanted to come and catch the white wolf with his bare hands. She was stunned, looking at Shen Fang's still slightly immature face, her warm lips moved slightly, and she whispered, "My mom may not be willing to sell me after all, she was just joking with people, don't take it seriously... you shouldn't do anything stupid because of me."

  "Don't worry, for this lifetime, I won't do a single stupid thing!"

  With a confident smile on his face, Shen Fang pushed open the wooden door. In an instant, except for a cutting machine still roaring in the center of the hall, almost everyone fell silent, and dozens of eyes with different emotions shot towards them.

  Qiu Qinghe's beauty stunned the vast majority of men, although she was wearing a simple floral dress and her long hair was casually tied back with a rubber band. Her elegant and quiet temperament burst forth, and despite the hall soon returning to its normal bustle, everyone's mind was still reeling from Qiu Qinghe's stunning looks.

  Following Shen to a corner of the hall, Qiu Qinghe found that there were all sorts of people here, gathered in threes and fives, whispering about something, occasionally someone rushed out hastily, and then ran back with a big sweat, with either a bulging bag or a valuable-looking suitcase in hand. Occasionally, someone would carry a large stone to the cutting machine in the center, and ask Master to cut it open. Every time this happened, everyone would gather around, and the hall would be as quiet as when Qiu Qinghe first appeared.

  "One knife to poverty, one knife to wealth, one knife through the hemp... Before the stone is cut open, no one knows what they have bought at a high price. It could be a piece of jade worth a fortune, or it could be nothing but a rock... Hell and heaven are just a knife's difference away...". Looking around at these somewhat crazy people, Shen Fang grasped Qi Qinghe's bewildered hand and pulled her down to sit on a stool in the corner, "You must have heard about the He Shi Bi jade that Qin Shi Huang used to make his imperial seal? In Chu State, there was a stonemason named Bian He who lost two legs for this very stone. What they're doing now is just like what Bian He did - gambling on stones!"

  "Can stones be used for gambling too?" Qiu Qinghe asked in confusion.

  "What's being gambled on isn't the value of the stone itself, but whether or not the ore contains jadeite... Generally, the outside of a piece of jade is wrapped in a layer of weathered skin, and the inside can't be seen, so you can only infer whether there's jade inside based on the color and pattern of the skin. This kind of ore is actually just rough material. To put it another way, if you spend 10,000 yuan to buy a piece of rough material and when you cut it open, it contains top-quality jadeite, its value will immediately increase to hundreds of thousands or even millions of yuan. Many people have become rich overnight by gambling on stones." Shen Fang explained slowly and clearly.

  "What if there's nothing after cutting it open?"

  Nothing can be done, it's just bad luck, but no one will refund your money, and many people have lost everything because of this. In fact, gambling on stones is a very ancient profession, in Yunnan, many villages have been doing this for generations, through years of experience accumulation, some experts in this field can see many clues from the shell, increasing the success rate of stone gambling, of course, it's not 100%, otherwise how could it be called gambling?

  Qiu Qinghe stared at Shen Fang like a monster, it was hard to imagine that a high school student, with no background in this area, would actually know such things. "How did you know all this?"

  "Oh, I've only read reports about this before." Shen Fang had indeed read such reports, a stone that took four lives, which had caused a sensation in the entire Su Lin province.

  "Listening to you talk like this, buying and selling stones can't be considered gambling anymore. There's still technical content inside, and it's not something that anyone can play with."

  "Vision is important, but character is also very important. If someone has character but no vision, they might suddenly become rich overnight, but if someone has vision but no character, haha, there will always be a time when they'll lose everything." Shen Fang said, his gaze falling on a balding, thin middle-aged man in the arena.

  "You think you have a good character? So you came here to try your luck?" Qiu Qinghe didn't believe that Shen Fang's confidence came from this alone, there must be other reasons behind it that she didn't know.

  "I'm not just a lucky person, I don't necessarily have a grasp on how to come out empty-handed and swindle the white wolf?"

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