After hearing the whole story, Zhao Xueyi was speechless. "I say, Old Yi, since your relative left the stuff here with you, and it only takes up the space of one wicker trunk, how exactly are you the unlucky one?"
The old man said with a worried look, "The problem is, he borrowed fifty thousand from me and said he'd have to sell these rough stones before he could pay me back. When you run into a deadbeat like that, how could I not be unlucky?"
Zhao Xueyi immediately understood. "Oh, so he pawned the stuff with you, and you didn't explain it clearly!"
The old man smiled bitterly. "The problem is, he hasn't even pawned it to me yet. He said that if he couldn't sell it within six months, he'd use it to settle the debt. I even had a gambling-on-stones expert take a look at the time, and he said they could fetch at most forty thousand. Tell me, wouldn't I be taking a loss?"
Zhao Xueyi said, "You wouldn't lose that much. Besides, with your gift of the gab, Old Yi, you could definitely sell them for fifty thousand. Why not sell them early and treat it as getting your principal back?"
The old man said helplessly, "You don't know my relative. He's a complete scoundrel. If I sell them for fifty thousand now, he'll definitely come asking me for another thirty thousand. Otherwise, he could block my door every day, and there'd be no way to deal with him. To keep things peaceful, I'd better wait another two months before selling them..."
While the two were talking, Chu Chen used his special ability to examine the rough stones in the trunk. At first, he had only wanted to see whether these few rough stones contained