Reborn As Super Heiress

Chapter 773: Chapter 769: Means of Fraudulence

The higher the price and potential profit of an item, the more people there are making fakes.

The exorbitant profits of antiques have attracted numerous unscrupulous merchants, who may not be well-educated, but understand human psychology very thoroughly, and their fake-making skills are refined to perfection.

Whatever is popular in the market, they can make a counterfeit equivalent.

These items, whether in terms of materials, workmanship, or patina, can be made to look almost indistinguishable from the real thing.

Not to mention newcomers to the industry, even many veterans who have been rolling and crawling in the antique world for years can be deceived if they are not careful.

For this reason, those who deal with antiques hate these fraudulent merchants the most. With so many methods of deception, and increasingly clever tactics, it’s easy to be fooled in the chaotic market, leaving one constantly on guard. Moreover, transactions in the antique business involve immediate payment with silver, and if someone is defrauded, they can only swallow their losses.

In the jewelry and jade industry, jade and jewels can also be faked. Some people would dye inferior jade and jewels with pigments to make their colors more beautiful, but such colors only adhere to the surface and don’t penetrate inside. In no time, the colors fade, revealing their true nature.

Like antiques, Stone Gambling involves high risks, but the potential profits are also enormous.

Some unscrupulous traders have tasted the sweetness of this and go out of their way to set traps, using unexpected methods to fake the raw stones, tricking those who wish to get rich overnight through Stone Gambling into falling for the scam, even to the point of bankruptcy.

In general situations in Stone Gambling circles, there are a few common scams and counterfeit raw stones.

One method is known as the Pillar-Switching Scam, which involves cutting off a piece of jade of inferior quality and then transplanting a piece of jadeite of similar size but superior quality and vivid color into the cut area to confuse buyers.

Another method, called Fairy Scattering Flowers, involves selecting a piece of good quality raw stone lacking ”Python Bands,” applying glue to the chosen surface, and then smearing ground jadeite powder on top, burying the treated stone underground for several days before retrieving it. The surface of the raw stone, treated in this manner, will be covered with a scattered pattern reminiscent of pine flowers.

The crudest technique is to fool the inexperienced. This involves selecting a part of the raw stone, digging a trough, and then either placing green glass or applying green toothpaste inside it; some even go as far as stuffing a light bulb inside. After careful reworking, it’s ready.

Such raw materials can achieve the deception of mixing the false with the true, but this method can only fool newcomers. For those who have been in the industry for decades, it’s easy to see right through it.

There are many techniques for faking jadeite raw stone, but those methods often only deceive those new to Stone Gambling. If Zhong Zifan went to the trouble of finding an old master to inspect the raw stone, a person who has dealt with jadeite raw stones all their life would not likely miss any trickery.

Yet, these people were precisely the ones who were fooled by this fake raw stone.

This made Huo Sining very curious. She really wanted to know what kind of fake-making technique Mr. Hu had used that managed to deceive so many people.

Without any sign, she pressed her hand on the Heiwusha, activated the Heavenly Eye Skill, and soon the raw stone was laid bare before her eyes.

After seeing the situation inside the raw stone, Huo Sining found it almost amusing.

She knew there was a reason she couldn’t detect any sign of fakery—that’s how it was.

The exterior of this raw stone was indeed black Hei Wusha (Black Oosh), and neither the Python Band nor the pine flowers were faked, but this was actually a piece of raw material that had already been cut open. In the center of this raw stone, there was a fault, indicating that it had been directly cut through the middle.

The person who performed the stone gambling was highly skilled, after opening the raw stone, they directly excavated the jadeite from the center, then found a piece of brick material and ground it to fit perfectly into the hollow center of the opened raw stone, and then inserted the brick material into it. After that, the skin of those two pieces of raw stone were reattached to restore its original appearance.

The sand at the junction of such fraudulent stone gambling is generally tighter, not granular, compared to other places. But because this is a piece of Hei Wusha, the surface of the Hei Wu Sha is an iron rust shell, which coincidentally matches the fine sand at the cut, making it difficult to distinguish.

No wonder that day in the restaurant, when she accidentally knocked over the suitcase carried by the man surnamed Hu, both the man surnamed Hu and Wang Zhongwei were so nervous. It seemed they were afraid that this fake raw stone would reveal the seam from that fall.

Huo Sining couldn’t help but admire the person who had faked this stone, capable of such meticulous thoughts and with such a delicate ability to counterfeit. The brick material implanted inside the fake raw stone fit so perfectly that it was impossible to see any clues. With such skill, it’s no wonder so many people were deceived.

Huo Sining couldn’t help feeling in her heart that if she hadn’t happened upon this incident by chance, Zhong Zifan would have truly fallen for this extremely dangerous scam, with no chance of detecting it.

Having understood the counterfeiting methods, Huo Sining lost interest in the raw stone. She was about to withdraw when her gaze suddenly landed on the piece of brick material inside the stone.

As the raw stone was a counterfeit from the beginning, Huo Sining hadn’t initially taken the implanted brick material to heart. But a casual glance revealed a look of surprise in her eyes.

What is this?

Huo Sining had thought the brick material stuffed inside the fake stone was just raw material, but upon closer observation, she discovered she was wrong.

The brick material appeared smooth like a cobblestone, about the size of two adult fists, with a grayish-white surface color that seemed no different from construction materials found by the road.

But during the brief glimpse with her Heavenly Eye Skill, Huo Sining had seen a red starburst radiating from within the not-so-large piece of brick material.

This made Huo Sining very puzzled, and she instinctively concentrated her consciousness, activated the Heavenly Eye again, and looked straight at the brick material.

After seeing the inside of the brick material clearly, Huo Sining’s eyes suddenly widened, her pupils shrank abruptly, and her heartbeat missed several beats in an instant.

This was just too ridiculous and melodramatic - what they call getting a casket and returning the pearls, this was it.

At this moment, the thoughts in Huo Sining’s mind were only these: to count one’s chickens before they hatch only to lose the rice used to lure them, to lift a rock only to drop it on one’s own feet, to wrought one’s own doom, and to harm oneself in the end...

If Huo Sining’s mood was a mix of tears and laughter after seeing the counterfeiting method of the raw stone before, now she felt an urge to burst into uproarious laughter.

The person who faked it did indeed have a meticulously cunning mind, but what of it?

If he knew what kind of treasure he had stuffed into the fake stone as brick material, Huo Sining guessed that the man would probably vomit three liters of blood and die on the spot from a cerebral hemorrhage.