"Uniform density, no impurities, no bubbles, no layers." Lou Gao's voice began to tremble. "I've spent my whole life at the forge, and I've never seen anything like this."
He set the bead on the counter, rummaged through a drawer, and pulled out a piece of Aventurine. He scratched the bead's surface with it. Not a mark. Then he switched to an even harder testing stone. Still no mark. Lou Gao rummaged in a cabinet and took out a fingernail-sized, dark green stone. Luo Chen didn't recognize it, so Lou Gao explained in a shaky voice, "This is used to test metal hardness. It's three times harder than iron."
The dark green stone scraped across the bead's surface, but still left no mark. The Soul Jade nearly slipped from Lou Gao's hands.
"This thing of yours..." Lou Gao looked up, his eyes already reddening. "It's not metal, not ore, not stone, and not jade. So what is it?"
"I don't know either," Luo Chen said.
Lou Gao placed the bead in his palm, clasped both hands around it, and closed his eyes, as if sensing its warmth, its weight, and the direction of every tiny line on its surface. After quite a while, he opened his eyes and said hoarsely, "I'd like to keep it and study it for a few days. Just a month. No, half a month."
Luo Chen shook his head.
Disappointment was written all over Lou Gao's face. He looked like a child who'd had his candy stolen. He returned the bead to Luo Chen, his hands still trembling.
"Whenever you come to Gengxin City, come find me." Lou Gao pulled out a piece of paper from beneath the counter, quickly wrote down an address, and pressed it into Luo Chen's hand. "I won't charge you.