Reborn As Super Heiress

Chapter 523: Chapter 520: Arriving at Ruili

This wasn’t the end of it, as the saying goes, ”Misfortune never comes singly.” When a person is down on their luck, even drinking cold water might choke them. Shortly after Zhu Xingwang’s embezzlement of public funds was exposed, his computer was hacked.

The hacker retrieved a massive amount of evidence from Zhu Xingwang’s computer, revealing not only his patronage of underage girls but also his coercion of female students to sleep with him. Once this came to light, it immediate caused an uproar.

In just a few short days, he went from a respected professor to a criminal who everyone wanted to bring to justice.

Huo Sining of course knew what was going on. The person who hacked Zhu Xingwang’s computer was probably none other than Jin Chenyu. But having sorted out such scum, Huo Sining only felt it served him right.

She had visited Gan Lijun many times, quietly treating her every time. Although each session wasn’t long, the effects of the treatment were quite remarkable. Healing the ruptured blood vessels and clearing the hematoma inside the skull, Gan Lijun’s body recovered swiftly.

In the late spring of March, as the orioles flew and the grass grew lush, Huo Sining traveled to the beautiful border city of Ruili, accompanied by Bai Yishan and Su Qingqing, as well as Wu Jun.

The Jade Public Plate in Ruili was to be held at the end of April in the Gregorian calendar, and the end of March in the lunar calendar.

Though jade public plates often take place across the country, three places are most famous: the Pingzhou Public Plate, the Hotan Market Opening, and finally the Ruili Gambling Event.

These three plates are hailed as the jade industry’s three grand events, notorious for the huge trading volumes of raw jade materials.

The Hotan Market Opening naturally refers to Hetian Jade, while the Pingzhou Public Plate and the Ruili Gambling Event involve Jadeite from Myanmar.

Unlike the open and secret bidding of the Pingzhou Public Plate, the Ruili Gambling Event fully embraces the ”gambling” aspect, bringing the characteristic nature of stone gambling to its fullest expression.

Huo Sining learned about all this through research. At the Ruili Jade Gambling Event, tens of thousands of open and secret bids would be available. But unlike the Pingzhou Public Plate, in addition to open and secret bids, there was another kind of bidding termed stone betting.

Stone betting basically means gambling on the jade’s quality, color, and flaws before the stone is cut. It uses odds to calculate the bet, and when the stone is cut open, those who guessed correctly in the bidding could win significant prize money without any cost.

This particular method of stone gambling attracts not only professional gamblers but also those who hope to strike it rich overnight based on luck.

Those who know nothing about jade gambling simply place their bets, guessing whether the lot will yield high-quality Jadeite or other types of jade. If they guess correctly, they can win a prize. The higher the odds they bet on, the more money those who guess correctly could earn.

It’s for this reason that the people attending the Ruili Gambling Event aren’t just seasoned professionals from the jade or stone gambling circles like at the Pingzhou Public Plate, but more often gamblers who know nothing about Jadeite but want to get rich from it.

The Ruili Gambling Event offered gamblers a path, but whether that path led to heaven or hell, no one knew.

This kind of gambling in Ruili earned the organizers of the Ruili Gambling Event handsome profits each year. According to reliable sources, last year’s gambling event made a clean profit of seven or eight billion yuan just from stone betting, with the earnings from open and secret betting not even comparable. Facing such astronomical figures, even Huo Sining was astonished.

In Huaxia, there were always gamblers aplenty, and Ruili had grasped this fact well, luring these gamblers into a maze they found hard to escape. The more they gambled, the more they lost; the more they lost, the more they yearned to turn things around, and that yearning only led to heavier losses.

Betting on jade was like betting on lottery tickets; some people persistently buy lottery tickets without ever winning, while others might win the jackpot on their first attempt—a not so surprising occurrence.

The Ruili betting rings taught people what it meant to be penniless with one cut and rich with another, to experience heaven with one cut and hell with the next.

Many people, after participating in the Ruili rings, became overnight millionaires, while many others were driven to desperation by the jade, losing everything and never making it back.

Ruili was located in the western part of Yun Province, bordering Myanmar; it was a treasure hunter’s paradise, not just for the betting rings with their fine raw materials but also for the specialized gambling stone shops on Gambling Stone Street. The raw jade traders of Ruili were also a distinctive feature; these gambling stone dealers and local hawkers generally had good items in stock.

Locally, almost every household had a collection of jadeite raw materials. They themselves might not understand stone gambling, but they made a living from it; in many families, these raw materials were their livelihood.

Unlike the ordinary raw material stores elsewhere in the country, Ruili’s raw material merchants had special procurement channels, and they rarely worried about their sources of goods.

It was said that half of the country’s raw material merchants hailed from Ruili. They often took their families with them to sell their wares wherever they were needed and would return to fetch more once they had sold out.

The plane landed at Dehong Airport, and Huo Sining and her companions exited the terminal only to hear many people discussing jadeite gambling stones—likely here to participate in the Ruili betting ring, just like them.

Because of her previous experience in Pingzhou, Huo Sining fully understood that these few days, the Ruili betting ring would be crowded with people; securing a place to stay required acting quickly.

Therefore, long before arriving in Ruili, Huo Sining had already booked a room in advance and had arranged a rental car.

However, the cost of renting a car was indeed steep. Since Huo Sining and her friends had arrived in Ruili a week early, booking rooms was still manageable, but the rental agencies were in dark practice, demanding a thousand per day. Think it’s too expensive? Sorry, we won’t rent then. Please feel free to find someone else.

Huo Sining asked several car rental agencies, and the situation was the same everywhere. These agencies probably knew what these gambling stone clients needed the cars for and assumed that most people coming to Ruili to gamble on stones were wealthy.

The rental agencies had a clear understanding of the gamblers’ mindset—those who came to Ruili to gamble on stones could easily spend hundreds of thousands, even millions; a few thousand for a rental car wouldn’t faze them.

Huo Sining felt helpless about the situation. It wasn’t that she was unwilling to spend the money, but that the rental prices were truly unreasonable.

But what could be done? If you don’t rent, someone else will. Even if the rental agency charges more, as long as there’s no intervention from the relevant authorities, their practice of fleecing customers would not be curbed.

Huo Sining needed only think with her toes to realize that the Ruili government was boosting economic income through the Ruili betting ring, and the local protective policy had the regulatory authorities turning a blind eye.

A single Ruili betting event could benefit countless people, swiftly improving local government performance—of course they would wish for nothing else. Why would they waste time meddling in such trifles?