Part 2
After finishing up at the hotel, he immediately headed for the largest jade market in the city.
This time, Louis had learned from experience. He would no longer jump in before understanding the business.
He would first find out how the business worked—how jade gambling was done, and once a rough stone was in his hands, what had to be done to extract the jade inside it. Finally, he needed to learn how to sell the jade he acquired.
This was the basic process for making a profit through jade gambling. As luck would have it, there were plenty of people gambling on rough stones at the jade market right now. Louis only needed to observe them carefully.
He walked into a jade shop.
Nearly half the shop was filled with jade being sold on consignment, while the other half was reserved for rough stones—stones whose contents had yet to be confirmed.
The stones came in all shapes and colors. From the outside, there was no way to tell whether jade lay within them, except in the case of rough stones with a small section of jade already visible on the surface.
Or if, like Louis, one possessed magical pupils capable of seeing an item's value.
At that moment, under the guidance of an auctioneer, dozens of jade gamblers crowded around a table.
Displayed on the table was a rough stone nearly the size of a basketball. Its texture was smooth and glossy, and its color leaned toward yellowish green. A large stone like this seemed as though it could be found anywhere.
But in reality, it was not an ordinary stone.
What people really wanted in jade gambling was not the stone itself, but the jade inside it. Jade was also a type of gemstone. Soft jade was also called nephrite. Its colors were divided into white jade, yellow jade, green jade, and others.
Jadeite, meanwhile, was a type of hard jade. Because of its solidity and brilliant color, it was nicknamed the "King of Stones."
Jadeite was already quite expensive to begin with. Add a craftsman's hand-carved design, and the price of this treasure would soar even higher.
The stone before the crowd had actually formed when the outer stone skin surrounding jade deposits weathered until it looked like an ordinary stone. Only after it was cut could the quality of the jade inside be determined.
The thickness of the outer skin depended on the degree to which the rock had weathered. No matter how thick or thin the stone skin was, even with modern technology, it was still impossible to see the jade inside from the stone's surface.
As a result, far too many factors affected the quality of jade. Even when scanned with laser light, all jade looked the same to those machines. In reality, jade was appraised by the human eye. Machines could not capture its color, quality, and other characteristics.
Louis's eyes, however, could do exactly that. Based on his observation, the rough stone displayed on the table for gambling was worth Rp 600,000,000.
Meanwhile, bidding opened at Rp 200,000,000. In terms of profit, if Louis had enough money to buy the stone, he could earn Rp 400,000,000.
Right now, Louis only had Rp 20,000,000. There was no way he could buy a stone like this. Besides, he had never planned to buy it in the first place. He was only in the shop to observe how other people gambled on rough stones.
But once the auctioneer announced the opening price, the people surrounding the stone immediately broke into an uproar. Some discussed it with their friends, while others muttered to themselves as they examined it.
The stone could be picked up and felt, but everyone was required to wear gloves. So people took turns checking its texture. Of course, the most important thing was determining whether the stone was green. If any part of it was green, that meant it contained jade.
To show that there was green inside the stone, the shop owner had deliberately made a crack in its surface so the jade gamblers could see the color within.
The problem was that there might only be a single green section inside the stone. Worse, stones could also be faked. Workers might add a little artificial coloring to enhance the green on the surface. Aside from its weight and shape, no one could know what was inside a rough stone. The requirement was that the stone had to be a genuine jade-bearing rough stone, not something manufactured by humans.
It was clear that jade gambling truly involved betting everything. They were not merely gambling—the risks were even more terrifying than ordinary gambling. A person could become rich or poor in an instant. If Louis did not possess his magical ability, he would never have entered this world either.
To fulfill his promise to his girlfriend, Louis would not give up, even with countless trials waiting ahead.