Reborn As Super Heiress

Chapter 556: Chapter 553 Bet, Who’s Afraid of Who

Qin Lianshan furrowed his brows, wanting to speak up and stop the proceedings, but it was already too late.

Seeing Huo Sining nodding in agreement, with a nonchalant expression on her face as if she wasn’t worried about losing at all, and with Ouyang Jun and Qin Tian sporting looks of anticipation for the spectacle, Qin Lianshan found it inappropriate to advise further and could only instruct the staff to bring over the contract.

Since it was a bet, a pledge had to be signed, to prevent the loser from reneging in the end.

The staff member fetching the contract clearly knew the Liujia people well and walked straight toward Huo Sining with the contract, as if fearing Huo Sining might have second thoughts.

A hint of mocking amusement flashed in Huo Sining’s eyes. After Ouyang Jun and Qin Tian skimmed the contract to ensure there were no issues, she signed her name without hesitation.

When the contract reached Liu Yuxuan’s hands, however, she hesitated slightly.

Because Liu Yuxuan saw the malicious smile on Huo Sining’s face, a flicker of unease crossed her mind.

But she quickly ridiculed herself. Having been in the jadeite betting circles for so many years, how could she possibly lose to a greenhorn girl? Moreover, her grandfather had personally reviewed this piece of raw stone, so it couldn’t possibly be wrong. What was there to worry about?

With this in mind, Liu Yuxuan stealthily glanced at her grandfather and saw Liu Chongren discreetly nodding at her. She cheerfully wrote her name on the contract.

As soon as Liu Yuxuan finished signing her name, the corners of Huo Sining’s mouth curled up, and she smiled faintly.

This was a fully bet raw stone covered with a white salt sand crust, its outer skin a grayish-yellow in hue.

White salt sand skin is considered high-quality material within the jadeite betting circles, with a very high chance of yielding High Jade, and this stone’s appeal wasn’t just due to its excellent surface, but more importantly, it even bore the markings of a Python Band.

The Python Band, a type of markings similar to that of a python, wraps around the stone’s middle or ends like a twisted rope, commonly referred to as a tight python grip.

Usually, raw stones featuring a Python Band indicate the jadeite within is of good color.

If such a python pattern also has pine flower patterns, it’s an absolute guarantee of color.

However, the color isn’t necessarily green; it could also be red or yellow jadeite or other colored varieties of jadeite.

The piece that Huo Sining and Liu Yuxuan were betting on was precisely this superior grade stone with pine flower patterns on its Python Band.

Although the stone weighed only about forty kilograms, its price was astounding: three million yuan.

In an ordinary jadeite betting shop, if one encountered such a fully bet raw stone, never mind three million yuan, even twice the price would find a buyer, because the stone’s appearance already signaled to everyone that it contained good quality jadeite.

But this was the dark bid section of the jadeite public market, and although the stone’s starting price was marked at three million yuan, bidding for it would require spending several times or even ten to twenty times that amount to secure it.

This meant that the final bidding price for this stone could reach twenty to thirty million yuan or even higher.

However, having heard that Huo Sining was going to gamble against the Gambling King’s granddaughter, the owner of the dark bid stone, in coordination with the organizers of the Ruili betting market, decided to withdraw from the bidding and offer their stone as Huo Sining and Liu Yuxuan’s exclusive betting material.

When Huo Sining first looked at the stone, she didn’t touch it, nor did she use the Heavenly Eye to peer through it. Instead, she observed the raw stone’s exterior with her naked eye. Even though the crust of the stone appeared nearly perfect, she couldn’t shake off a feeling of discomfort for some reason.

At first, she thought it might be due to the pine flower inclusions since she also felt uncomfortable the last time she saw Liu Yuxuan gambling on the stone with moldy pine flower patterns at the square.

But after Huo Sining gave it a careful examination, she realized that there were no issues with either the Python Band or the pine flowers.

Perplexed, Huo Sining had no choice but to take out a magnifying glass and a bright light to inspect it again, but unfortunately, after a thorough check, she still hadn’t found anything.

Left with no alternative, she resorted to her trump card, the Heavenly Eye Cheating Device.

Not long after Huo Sining’s hand touched the Jadeite Raw Stone, its true form was revealed, and upon seeing the internal condition of the stone, she couldn’t help but be stunned.

Through the mesh of the pine flower patterns and the thick layer of stone skin on the exterior, a dense white mist appeared, and the strong color of the Emerald slowly came into Huo Sining’s sight.

The color of the Jadeite inside the stone was a rich green, pleasing to the eye, pure and untainted, and was a typical example of the glass-type texture; moreover, the entire piece of Emerald was at least seven or eight kilograms in size.

However, Huo Sining did not feel elated by this, but instead experienced an indescribable sense of regret and sorrow.

Beneath the patterns of this stone, starting about three to four inches deep, a crack as thin as a strand of hair appeared and slowly extended inside the stone.

It was this fine, nearly invisible crack that became the fatal flaw of this impeccable piece of Emerald, as it ran from the top to the bottom, penetrating the entire internal structure of the Jadeite Raw Stone.

The further the crack extended inwards, the more branches it developed, resembling the dense roots of a tree and eventually forming a network of fine cracks that almost covered the entire piece of Emerald, shattering all the Jadeite within into fragments, leaving not a single intact piece of jade flesh.

This was like a row of dominoes—although only the first one had fallen, the entire structure behind it was destroyed.

Seeing this situation, Huo Sining was stupefied.

Cracks are a very common and devastating feature in Jadeite Raw Stones, the most common being the skin-deep crack, where one can see a deep crevice on the stone with the naked eye.

Such cracks are obviously filled with iron rust or other impurities at the opening, where a light tap with a hammer is enough to split the stone open.

However, typically these types of cracks do not affect the internal structure of the Jadeite.

If the stone’s skin follows the color and grows in an orderly pattern along the colored Python Band, such a crack is known as a ”flower thread”;

when there’s only a water line visible on the stone’s surface, but after cutting, a significant crack is revealed, it is called an ”Invisible Filament”.

These two types of cracks pose a significant risk and greatly increase the uncertainty in gambling on jade quality.

Generally speaking, when people in the Jadeite gambling industry talk about betting on cracks, they are referring to betting on these two types — the ”flower thread” and the ”Invisible Filament”.

Both the flower thread and the Invisible Filament are crack types with gambling potential. There are, however, non-gambling cracks in the betting stones, which are usually visible to the naked eye as widespread and obvious cracks on the surface of the stone, with various impurities infiltrating the interior of the raw stone.

These types of cracks are known as vicious cracks, and they extend like streams; experienced jade gamblers generally avoid betting on them because such cracks almost guarantee loss in gambling.

However, there were no visible signs of any crack on the surface of the Jadeite Raw Stone Huo Sining was currently examining. She had never heard of such cracks before and guessed that this internal crack might also be categorized as a type of Invisible Filament.