Reborn As Super Heiress

Chapter 1342: Chapter 1337: Stepping Stone

It’s been a while since she last touched the stones, and Huo Sining has recently been feeling a bit itchy in her hands. Although she knew the raw materials in this Chinatown wouldn’t be that good, she still wanted to give it a try, just for fun and to pass the time.

However, the teahouse was bustling with many people ahead of her eager to gamble on stones. To gamble on just one piece of raw material, a group had been sitting there for over two hours, refilling several pots of tea before it was finally Huo Sining’s turn with her number card.

The manager was taken aback to see someone as young as Huo Sining playing. After a moment’s pause, he led her into the inner hall.

He had been running this teahouse for years, and plenty of people came to gamble on stones every day, but he had rarely seen a woman doing so.

Under the manager’s guidance, they reached the back hall, and Huo Sining found out that the backyard of the teahouse had a specialized storage warehouse, filled with raw stones.

There must be over a thousand pieces of raw material in there; for a teahouse, having such a large stock was indeed rare.

But a quick glance was all it took for Huo Sining to notice that many of the raw materials were completely bet brick materials or flower plate materials, some of which appeared to be waste materials reprocessed after being cut down. Over a thousand pieces of raw stone, and the appearance of all of them was extremely ordinary. Based on appearance alone, the odds of these raw stones showing a profit from cutting were very low.

But then again, in a place like Chinatown, not many could afford to open a gambling stone store.

Stone gambling is essentially a gamble on vision and luck.

Fifty US dollars could only secure you a piece of cheap brick material in a domestic stone gambling store, so Huo Sining didn’t see anything wrong with the store owner doing this.

Moreover, she was always accustomed to scavenging for undervalued finds, so she held no particular bias against brick materials and waste materials. On the contrary, she saw it as an opportunity; perhaps she could discover a treasure among these thousand pieces of raw material.

However, Huo Sining apparently thought too simply of scavenging; her luck theory seemed to bear no fruit among this pile of raw materials this time.

The internal features of these raw materials were as ordinary as their surfaces. After she used the Heavenly Eye to see through and analyze all the raw materials, the result was nothing but disappointment.

Among the thousand or so pieces of raw material, the best one was a Flower Green Furong Jelly, scarcely a few grades higher than the White Ground Green Type that Mr. Chen had cut out earlier.

Having participated in major gambling events and seen plenty of high-grade jadeite, such low-grade jadeite couldn’t meet Huo Sining’s expectations.

Yet a change of thought made her realize that she was contradicting herself.

She came into the hall thinking it would be fun, so if she was after high-grade jadeite, why waste time in a teahouse? Why not head to a jadeite gambling stone store instead?

After chuckling to herself, Huo Sining let it go.

Since there was nothing of value in these raw materials, she didn’t bother to fret and prepared to walk towards that Flower Green Furong Jelly.

However, just as she stood up, she suddenly noticed a dazzling flash of silver from somewhere behind her.

Huo Sining quickly turned her head and looked at the stone cutting machine in the courtyard outside the warehouse, a glint flickering in her eyes.

“Miss, there are still other guests waiting. Have you made your selection?”

The manager saw Huo Sining squatting in front of a raw material without moving and couldn’t help but urge her, as she didn’t even use a magnifying glass or any other selection tool, appearing quite clueless.

Huo Sining raised her head with a smile and asked the manager, “Mr. Manager, can you select any stone from this backyard?”

The manager nodded, “Yes, any raw material can be chosen.”

“So—”

A cunning look flashed in Huo Sining’s eyes as she pointed to the foundation stones under the stone cutting machine outside and asked the manager, “Can I select those foundation stones as well?”

The manager was taken aback. He turned and glanced at the four foundation stones under that stone cutting machine, then looked at Huo Sining, puzzled:

“Miss, of course. Those stones were picked from these raw materials as well, but I can responsibly tell you that the raw materials in this warehouse show better promise than those four foundation stones.”

Huo Sining smiled. As long as the manager allowed her to choose, it was fine by her. Regarding the outlook, was there a big difference between brick materials and waste materials?

“Thank you for the advice, Mr. Manager, but I’ll go with the foundation stones outside. There are simply too many raw materials here, and they all look alike, making my eyes dizzy.”

Huo Sining playfully stuck out her tongue. Well, there she was pretending to be a novice again.

The manager didn’t object. He didn’t believe what Huo Sining said, but since she was a customer of the teahouse, she had the right to choose.

Moreover, he didn’t think there was much skill needed considering Huo Sining was a woman. Those four raw materials had been appraised by the shop owner, and he trusted his shop owner’s expertise. The chances of finding jadeite in those four foundation stones were very slim; otherwise, they wouldn’t have been used as foundation stones.

Seeing that Huo Sining insisted on choosing the foundation stones, the manager felt a bit helpless and no longer tried to dissuade her. Instead, he randomly picked a stone of similar size to the foundation stones and followed Huo Sining outside.

After Huo Sining selected one of the four foundation stones, he replaced it by inserting the stone he had brought with him under the stone cutting machine, swapping it for the one Huo Sining had just pulled out.

Unlike Mr. Chen earlier, Huo Sining didn’t draw any lines on the raw material upon receiving it, as if she truly didn’t even know the basics of stone cutting. She simply started randomly cutting the raw material on the stone cutting machine.

The manager was initially worried that Huo Sining might not know how to operate the stone cutting machine and thought of offering help, but seeing how she was enjoying herself, he swallowed back what he was going to say.

In just a few cuts, Huo Sining had trimmed about two or three inches off the surface of the raw material.

The raw material wasn’t large, weighing about seven or eight pounds. After Huo Sining made those cuts, the thick outer layer was left with only a thin layer of white sand skin, revealing the green mist inside. Within that green mist, there were faint silver bright spots scattered throughout.

Seeing the reveal of the raw material, eagerness surfaced in Huo Sining’s eyes.

She carefully rubbed away the layer of white cotton on the frictive wheel, and as the axle rotated swiftly, an oval jadeite, no larger than an adult’s fist, revealed its true form.

The vibrant, brilliant emerald hue shimmered with a mystical green light, dazzling to the point of leaving one squinting.

What was most striking was that this piece of jadeite contained mineral inclusions—the silver dots were densely dotted within the jadeite, distributed evenly, making it look like stars twinkling with silvery light!