Glass-Type Jadeite

After dinner, Shen Jingchuan told the three girls he was going into seclusion to cultivate.

Xiao Yue'er immediately patted her small chest and promised, "Don't worry, young master. The three of us will definitely keep watch for you."

Shen Jingchuan nodded and returned to his room. With a thought, he went back to his house in the modern world. The wall clock read 8:10. It was still early.

He walked over to the table and picked up his phone. Ever since learning that he couldn't take it to the other world, he had kept it at home in case anyone tried to reach him.

He lit up the screen. There was plenty of battery left and not a single missed call. There was only one WeChat message, sent by Meng Ke at 7:30 that evening. It was just a few words: "Are you back?"

Only forty minutes had passed, so he hadn't kept her waiting too long. Shen Jingchuan hurriedly typed back: "Just got back. I was busy earlier and didn't check my phone. Sorry for the late reply."

Less than two seconds after he sent the message, Meng Ke replied: "Did everything go smoothly? Did you find any good treasures?" She added a curious, wide-eyed emoji at the end.

Shen Jingchuan typed with a hint of a smile: "I found something good. I'll come see you tomorrow and let a master like you take a look."

Meng Ke: "Sure. Get some rest early, then."

After putting down his phone, Shen Jingchuan felt warm inside. There was hardly anyone who thought of him normally. Only Meng Ke had remembered that he was away.

Early the next morning, he changed into casual clothes.

He deliberately took the jadeite rough, which was bigger than a human head, out of his space and put it in the backpack he carried. With such a big stone weighing on his shoulder, the bag looked heavy, which made things look more reasonable.

He had booked a car in advance. He went downstairs and ate breakfast at a little shop by the entrance to his residential compound, then waited nearby for less than two minutes before the car arrived. He rode straight to the entrance of Meng Ke's shop and took out his phone to check the time. It was 9:30.

He had only taken a couple of steps toward the shop when he saw Meng Ke come out. She had clearly been keeping an eye on the street for some time.

Her eyes were bright, with a happiness she couldn't quite hide, mixed with a touch of girlish reserve.

After all, not long ago, she had finally relented and said she would give Shen Jingchuan a chance to pursue her. Shen Jingchuan had also confessed that she had been his first love back in school. Now that the two of them had just pierced that layer of window paper, the air between them was full of ambiguity, and every glance carried a little something different from before.

They stood at the entrance looking at each other for two seconds. Neither spoke first, and the ambiguity in their eyes only grew a little stronger.

Shen Jingchuan came to his senses first. He quickly stepped forward, pushed open the door, and moved aside to let Meng Ke go first. Meng Ke glanced sideways at him, a faint smile on her lips, and stepped inside.

She led him straight to the back of the shop and into her little studio, which was a little over ten square meters.

Once inside, Meng Ke asked him to sit at the table while she turned to get the tea set and brew some tea.

Her wrists turned in smooth, deft movements. She brewed the white tea in a glass, and the leaves swirled and unfurled, a particularly pleasing sight.

Shen Jingchuan was watching her hands when Meng Ke set down the teapot and spoke first:

"So, where exactly have you been lately? You've been so mysterious."

"It wasn't that I meant to keep it from you,"

Shen Jingchuan said, rubbing his nose as he spun the story he had prepared:

"I..."

"All right, don't say any more. I understand."

Meng Ke waved a hand, cutting him off:

"It's not like I have to get to the bottom of everything. I know there are rules in this line of work. As long as you're all right and aren't getting involved in anything dangerous, that's enough."

She paused, leaned a little closer, and deliberately put on an exaggerated tone, an amused curiosity in her eyes:

"So, was the trip worth it? That backpack of yours looks awfully heavy. Don't tell me you really found some priceless treasure?"

Shen Jingchuan didn't waste words. He took off his backpack and set it on the table, unzipped it, then lifted out the rough stone with both hands and placed it on the tabletop. It was a full size bigger than a human head.

A large window had been cut into the rough, exposing the even, clear jade inside. Under the light in the room, it gave off a pure, lustrous glow.

The smile froze on Meng Ke's face. Her eyes fixed on the stone, and her little mouth fell slightly open and stayed that way for a long while. After several seconds, she suddenly looked up at Shen Jingchuan, her voice a little unsteady:

"My god... Shen Jingchuan, do you know what this is?"

"Jadeite. Of course I can recognize that."

Shen Jingchuan looked perfectly composed.

Meng Ke rolled her eyes at him in annoyance:

"No kidding. Don't I know it's jadeite? If you couldn't even recognize that, you might as well get out of this business. I'm asking if you know its type and translucency."

"I really don't know that,"

Shen Jingchuan admitted, shaking his head:

"It just looked pretty translucent to me, so I figured it couldn't be bad."

"It's much more than just not bad..." Meng Ke murmured, her gaze sticking to the rough again. She reached into a drawer, pulled out a high-powered flashlight, and clicked it on against the exposed jade.

As the cold white light shone in, the whole face of the stone became as translucent as frozen ice water. The light passed unimpeded through most of the stone. The inside was perfectly clean, without a trace of cottony inclusions or a single crack. It had a richly gelatinous quality, and after staring at it for a while, it seemed as though you might sink right into it.

She held up the flashlight and shone it over the stone again and again, slowly moving it along the edge of the window without saying a word for a long time.

Shen Jingchuan waited beside her, growing a little puzzled. He couldn't help asking:

"Come on, say something. What grade is it? Judging by your reaction, it must be worth a lot, right?"

Only then did Meng Ke slowly switch off the flashlight and look up at him. Her eyes were still full of lingering shock, and her voice held a note of disbelief:

"My old classmate, do you know you've struck it rich?"

"I know it's worth some money." Shen Jingchuan smiled. "Surely it can't be worth less than that seal from last time? It's so big."

"Worth some money?"

Meng Ke raised her voice a little and pointed at the rough:

"This is glass-type imperial green, and it's true ice glass-type with the cleanest base. The window is this big, and the jade inside is as even as a pool of water, without a single crack. Look at the size of it yourself—it's bigger than a human head. Even allowing for it to narrow inward, you could still cut more than a dozen full-sized bangles from it, not to mention the material left for plaques and pendants. All of it would be top-grade."

She paused, took a deep breath, and gave him a firm figure. "At current market prices, judging by what's showing in the window, if you resold the entire rough, a conservative estimate would put it over 300 million. If you cut into it and it's all the same quality, the price would multiply several times over."