Reborn As Super Heiress

Chapter 500: Chapter 496: Something Inside the Chessboard Stone

Thinking of the last time Zhou Shitao used a strange reagent to treat her enamel bowls, Huo Sining came up with an idea, which was to seek help from her master.

When she made the call, Zhou Shitao picked up and, upon hearing it was Huo Sining, immediately asked with a laugh, ”I heard from your Senior Brother that you nearly got into trouble in Taicheng?”

Huo Sining felt a bit embarrassed upon hearing this, not expecting that Zhou Shitao would be aware of the incident with the Secret Color Porcelain.

”Well, almost doesn’t count, right? Senior Brother Ji Kun reacted quickly, and Gu Xu was also there, so the Secret Color Porcelain didn’t break.”

Zhou Shitao was laughing, but his words were anything but polite, ”You act without caution and forget lessons, next time you come to the Imperial Capital you’ll receive your punishment.”

”Yes,” Huo Sining replied helplessly, not daring to argue and simply accepting it.

”By the way, the Forbidden City is very interested in your pair of enamel bowls, they asked me to inquire whether you would be willing to sell?” Suddenly remembering something, Zhou Shitao asked.

Huo Sining frowned. Enamel was rare, especially a pair of porcelain bowls, which even the Forbidden City did not possess. She definitely did not want to part with them, ”I have no plans to sell them at the moment.”

”Alright then, I’ll just reject their inquiry. But, the old director of the Forbidden City has a good relationship with me, so if he comes to me about this again, it wouldn’t be good for me to refuse again, I’ll redirect them to you.”

Huo Sining couldn’t help but give a wry smile at Zhou Shitao’s bachelor way of handling things. After chatting for a bit more, Zhou Shitao finally asked, ”What’s the reason for your call, do you have something you need?”

Only then did Huo Sining remember the matter of the porcelain pillow and Opal Glaze, and quickly told Zhou Shitao about it. Zhou Shitao immediately nodded with no hesitation,

”Alright, that’s an easy task. When you come to the Imperial Capital, just bring those two items, and I’ll take a look for you.”

After receiving an affirmative response from Zhou Shitao, Huo Sining finally breathed a sigh of relief and turned to walk out of the basement when her gaze suddenly swept over a huge stone, causing her to pause.

In the basement lay a square-shaped colossal stone, the very one she had bought from Aunt Mei’s House during her trip to Hetian, along with the piece of Mutton Fat Jade she had given to Ouyang Jun, costing a total of two hundred thousand yuan.

Back then, after she returned, she had been preoccupied with stone gambling and crafting jade, neglecting the Chessboard Stone and nearly forgetting about it altogether. Now, seeing the Chessboard Stone brought the memory back of how the Azure Pearl had flickered when she touched it, indicating there must be something amiss with the stone.

Su Qingqing had been extremely curious about the Chessboard Stone, and in order to hide its secret, Huo Sining had even deliberately misled Qingqing by mentioning that wear on the stone’s edges exposed the jade inside.

In fact, Huo Sining had made the same guess. She had previously extracted jadeite from granite in Pingzhou, so she believed that since the Chessboard Stone could make the Azure Pearl flicker, it might very well conceal Hetian Jade within.

Eager to confirm her guess, Huo Sining couldn’t help but walk over and stretch out her hand to touch the massive Chessboard Stone.

Her Heavenly Eye opened, looking through the interior of the stone.

To Huo Sining’s surprise, inside the half-ton granite rock, instead of the expected Hetian Jade, she saw a strange cloth bundle, which even contained a dark, inconspicuous stone!

Yes, indeed, a stone! It wasn’t large, shaped like a long bar, and seemed very unremarkable.

Huo Sining was dumbfounded and took quite a while to come back to her senses.

What made it even stranger for Huo Sining was that such an unremarkable stone of unknown origin actually contained a substantial amount of purple energy.

How exactly was the stone hidden inside this Chessboard Stone? Huo Sining was very puzzled.

As she inspected with her Heavenly Eye and felt around the Chessboard Stone with her hands, she circled it a few times but found no clue to its mystery.

She simply couldn’t understand how a cloth-wrapped object could be inserted into a completely intact Chessboard Stone.

Logically speaking, if this stone was naturally formed, then it certainly shouldn’t be possible for a piece of cloth to be hidden inside it, let alone a cloth that held a nondescript stone. It could have only been placed there by someone’s hand.

But why couldn’t even her Heavenly Eye detect any trace of it? How could the fabric be so seamlessly hidden within the Chessboard Stone?

Huo Sining refused to believe in such an eerie occurrence. She carefully inspected it again, resolute in her skepticism, yet she still came up empty-handed.

This was strange. She had previously solved the mechanism of an Ebony Box. Although the box appeared flawless on the surface and had its secrecies, one could always find some evidence of its workings.

If there was a mechanism, there should always be a breakthrough point, so why did this rock seem like a perfectly whole entity?

Unable to find the mechanism, Huo Sining stared at the chessboard, becoming distracted, then suddenly her thoughts stirred as she intently gazed at the lines of the chessboard on the stone’s surface, contemplative.

Huo Sining was not skilled in Go, but she knew the rules of the game like the back of her hand.

The board had nineteen equally spaced, perpendicular intersecting lines, and several small dots marked on the surface, known as ”star points.”

There were a total of nine star points on the chessboard. The central star point was also known as the ”Tian Yuan,” and the board was further divided into ”corners,” ”edges,” and the ”central belly.”

In a game, each move of a piece is critically important, much like a battle. Sometimes advancing a single step could lead to ruin or a misstep; other times, retreating could turn the tides from certain death to a chance at survival.

However, the chessboard in front of Huo Sining did not have nineteen lines; rather, it was the less common nine-by-nine grid.

The workmanship of the board was exquisite; aside from the four corners, there were no unnecessary patterns or decorations.

The lines carved on the surface were clear cut, and it was unclear what kind of coloring was used on them. After Huo Sining poured a basin of clean water and washed it lightly, the black lines on the chessboard surface became even more striking, as if they had just been applied.

Huo Sining grew somewhat curious. The other faces of the stone looked very rough, both in terms of the gloss of their surfaces and their overall appearance, as if having weathered many years, indicating that the rock had endured countless seasons.

Yet the chessboard surface positioned on top was entirely different in presentation compared to the stone’s other faces.

A board that had been in use for at least several decades was still very well preserved. Even though the exposed parts of the stone had suffered from wind and sun, it did not appear rough but felt incredibly smooth to the touch.

Huo Sining initially thought that this was due to the chessboard’s fine craftsmanship, but after pondering for a moment, she felt that there was something amiss with this chessboard.

If the chessboard and stone were a single entity, then their material should be the same.

Moreover, as the chessboard was placed on top, it should have sustained the most damage from erosion by harsh rain and sun. So why was the chessboard the only face without any signs of wear and tear?