At 9:20 in the morning, Dong Xuebin dug a one-shoulder backpack out from the drawer beneath his wardrobe and stuffed in the 110,000 yuan from selling the rare old books last time, money he had not gotten around to depositing in the bank. He then went downstairs to the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China on the east side of the road to withdraw more cash. However, this branch was rather small, and withdrawals of over 50,000 yuan had to be reserved a day in advance. Dong Xuebin had originally wanted to withdraw 100,000, but he could not be bothered to make another trip to the Qiao Bei main branch. Fifty thousand would do. A total of 160,000 was enough. After withdrawing the money and putting it into his backpack, he tightened his jacket collar, hailed a taxi on the service road against the cold wind, and headed to Panjiayuan Antique Market by the South Third Ring Road, searching shop by shop along the outer wall for places that sold raw materials.
"Boss, do you have any Jadeite Raw Material?"
"No, we only sell finished products here. Try asking somewhere else."
"Boss, excuse me, can you gamble on stones or jade here?"
"Nope."
"Boss, do you know anywhere around here where I can gamble on stones?"
"Stone gambling? There doesn't seem to be much of that in Panjiayuan. If you really want to play, you'd be better off going to Haidian or Chaoyang. They hold special raw-material auctions every week, the prices are fair, and the material quality is high." Dong Xuebin also knew there were places in the antique markets over in Haidian that auctioned raw materials, but the process there involved examining the materials first, then bidding and paying at auction, with the cutting only coming at the final step. It wasted far too much time. Six short minutes were nowhere near enough even for the time spent raising a paddle at auction, so from the very beginning, Dong Xuebin had set his sights on ordinary private transactions.
He walked and walked, searched and searched, asked and asked.
Suddenly, the screeching sound of a cutting machine drifted over from afar.
Dong Xuebin's eyes lit up. He had seen people gamble on stones back when he worked part-time jobs, so he knew that sound all too well. Looking up, he immediately headed over. But when he reached the storefront, he paused in surprise. The material the man was bending over and cutting with a cutter was not Jadeite Raw Material. Judging by its color and shape, it seemed to be rough crystal—natural rough crystal. Crystal gambling? That was pretty rare. After hesitating briefly, Dong Xuebin stepped closer and watched curiously. Gambling on crystals, agates, turquoise, seed jade, and jadeite could all be collectively called stone gambling. So Dong Xuebin did not necessarily have to choose Jadeite Raw Material or Hetian Jade seed material. Crystal gambling could also turn a small stake into a big gain.
The cutting machine stopped, and a large window had been cut into the side of the amethyst rough stone.
The sellers were a young couple. Seeing the result, the girl asked, "Is it any good? How much can it sell for?"
"The quality inside is average." The somewhat plump Fat Boss put down the cutting machine, picked up the rough stone, and inspected it. "It's worth maybe one or two thousand yuan."
"We paid five thousand, and it's only worth one thousand?" Upon hearing that, the girl angrily slapped her boyfriend. "I told you not to buy it, not to buy it. Look at that—didn't we lose the gamble?" They said that nine out of ten stone gamblers lost. Though crystal gambling was not as risky as jadeite gambling, it was not much better. It was perfectly normal for a cut to reveal a loss or a complete collapse in value. If you really spent five thousand yuan and cut open a rough stone worth tens of thousands, that would be the abnormal outcome. Besides, the Capital City was not a professional stone-gambling hub. Most of the rough stones shipped in were the "scraps and leftovers" picked over by their places of origin and major raw-stone markets, making the odds of gaining value even smaller.
Over there, the boy cared a little too much about saving face. Hearing his girlfriend complain, he gritted his teeth. "Cut open two more—this one and that one."
The girl snapped, "Stop buying them! Couldn't we do something else with that money?"
The boy ignored her and insisted on paying Fat Boss to cut the stones.
"Alright, I'll cut them the same way as before." Fat Boss gripped the cutting machine, flicked on the switch, and let the wheel whir to life. Then, holding the rough stone steady, he used the wheel to grind away at its surface little by little. Crystal was not as hard as jadeite, so rough crystal was relatively much faster to cut than Jadeite Raw Material.
One cut...
Five cuts...
Ten cuts...
Screech, screech. After a while, the two Colorless Crystal rough stones, one large and one small, were opened. The larger one had air holes and bubbles, and was basically ruined by the cut, worth almost nothing. The smaller one did not have any major flaws, but its quality was mediocre and it was not worth what he had paid for it.
Amid their arguing, the young couple left angrily with their rough stones in their arms.
Not long after, an elderly little man arrived and spent 10,000 yuan on a fairly large piece of citrine. In the end, there was an impurity the size of a little fingernail inside, and his 10,000 yuan went down the drain. At eleven, another group that looked like tourists bought four or five pieces of natural rough crystal. The best piece merely broke even, meaning its selling price matched its purchase price, while the other three or four all lost money, some more than others.
That was stone gambling. There were always far more losers than winners. Success or failure depended entirely on luck.
Dong Xuebin felt a little uneasy. He had watched for so long without seeing anyone cut open a stone that gained value and made money. Could he really do it?
"Little brother, want to try one?" Fat Boss looked over at him while wiping his hands with a towel.
Dong Xuebin, standing at the entrance, was not ready to make a move yet. He shook his head, then stepped into the shop to look over the crystal ornaments in the glass display cases. Pointing at several of them, he asked about the market prices. "How much is this Rose Quartz necklace? Eight hundred? What about that amethyst Guanyin? Twenty thousand? And that rutilated quartz ornament? One hundred thirty thousand?" There were items priced from a dozen yuan to over a hundred thousand. Different colors, different sizes, different brightness, and different degrees of purity all led to huge price differences.
"Finished products are expensive." Fat Boss tempted him. "Why not try stone gambling? If it goes well, you can get rich overnight."
Dong Xuebin smiled without saying anything. If it goes badly, you could lose everything overnight too.
After lunch, Dong Xuebin returned to the crystal shop. He spent an hour observing and learning from the side, gradually gaining a rough understanding of crystal gambling and crystal values. Put simply, natural amethyst was more valuable than natural citrine, natural citrine was more valuable than natural Colorless Crystal, darker colors were more valuable than lighter colors, uniform colors were more valuable than mixed colors, higher purity was more valuable than lower purity, heavier pieces were more valuable than lighter ones, rough stones suitable for making crystal balls were more valuable than rough crystal of the same color and weight, crystals with rutile strands inside were more valuable than those without them, and orderly strands were more valuable than tangled strands.
Having learned all that, Dong Xuebin had a general outline in mind. He began timing how long it took to open a rough crystal. Grinding away at the stone little by little from the edge would take a long time—ten minutes or even fifteen. But if he ignored material loss and other factors and simply made one direct cut to slice off a large section of the rough stone's side, it would be much faster, only a few dozen seconds. After all, its hardness was far below that of Jadeite Raw Material.
Ten minutes later, all the calculations were complete.
Dong Xuebin drew a deep breath. Okay. Let's begin.
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