Chapter 44
Chapter 44 Gamble or Not
“Everybody is here. Shall we begin?” Elly is bored. She says in a cold voice while picking her long red nails.
Elly grows up with all the love of her family. She is sent abroad right after graduating from high school so she is open like half an American born Chinese. Besides, Fortune House used to dominate the jewelry industry in S Province. Out of the favor for his granddaughter, the old chairman of Fortune House appointed Elly as the administrative manager, which makes her look down upon all the other traders in the industry.
Elly is used to being arrogant. She has to own everything she likes. She acts this way every time she goes to buy raw stones, as well as when she knows that Li Anping has a girlfriend—People has been dissatisfied with her behavior for a long time. They are just reluctant to say it.
If the Burmese host doesn’t know that Fortune House is one of the most powerful companies among all the buyers, he will not stay polite to her.
Unluckily, Elly is not aware that everyone is waiting to see Fortune House go out of business in her hand. She believes that they are all afraid of her, which is why she dares to issue that “ban” on Lin Luoran.
Lin Luoran can’t stand it anymore. She doesn’t understand what Elly is thinking about. Although Elly is powerful in her hometown, they are now at the remote border. Also, the host has the ability to smuggle the raw stones out and contact all the buyers. How can he have lesser influence?
“Just follow me!” The Burmese host holds back his anger and invites everybody in.
Turns out the raw stones are not in the yard. The Burmese man walks ahead and leads the buyers out of the back door of the yard. The back door of another house is right across, which is quite convenient.
Lin Luoran avoids Mu Tiannan and follows Liu Zheng inside, then she hears incessant gasps.
Liu Zheng’s uncle has rushed to the front. An over-3-meter-high huge raw stone which two people can barely hug is in the center of the yard!
Seeing that these jade traders and experts on raw jade stone are surrounding the huge stone, Lin Luoran can’t help thinking that the Burmese man really is good at using psychological tactics. The huge stone is a head-on blow on all the buyers. It shows that the host is so capable that he has smuggled such a huge stone from the mine field. It is also an implication that this batch of goods is of high quality.
“Uncle, how is it?”
Liu Zheng asks when his uncle returns with reluctance.
“I’m not sure. The serpent belt is okay, but a raw stone of this size is rarely seen in the market in recent years. It’s so strange that it shows up in here… I guess the host wants to sell it at an extremely high price, and it may not be worthy to gamble on it.”
His words make Liu Zheng speechless, and Lin Luoran puts away her disdain for normal people. Liu Zheng’s uncle doesn’t have any special ability, but he does own the experience from years of failure. His opinion on the huge stone varies not far from the fact.
Everybody is attracted to this huge stone. Lin Luoran doesn’t have enough money to buy it and her boss doesn’t seem to be interested either, thus she starts to check on other stones in the yard.
These raw stones in various sizes and shapes may contain lots of Reiki! Thinking about this, Lin Luoran decides immediately that she has to take the trouble and go touch all the raw stones here!
As for the gambling, she plans to observe Mu Tiannan first and bids when there is no danger.
Now that Lin Luoran has made a plan, she starts to hang around. Touching this one and checking on that one, Lin Luoran absorbs Reiki from the raw jade stones.
Liu Zheng’s uncle thinks that Lin Luoran is acting like an amateur and becomes unsatisfied with her title of purchasing consultant. However, it will be inappropriate for him to say bad things about a young girl. He has to hold his thoughts back, which gives him a bad mood.
Liu Zheng just smiles and teaches Lin Luoran some common methods of picking raw stones.
Lin Luoran notices that Foppish Mu seems to be closely following Fatty Cui, and she is relieved. With the sensitivity to Reiki of her bead, she can definitely detect Reiki on him if he is also a cultivator. Lin Luoran suspects that Mu Tiannan is now targeting on Fatty Cui because he did buy that piece of jade with Reiki from Fatty Cui.
“How’s it going? Is there any stone you like?” Liu Zheng asks curiously since Lin Luoran only looks and touches the stones without offering price.
Lin Luoran laughs, “Do you really believe in the rumor that I’m a goddess of luck? I have only picked two good stones by chance before. Are you actually going to let me pick stones for you today?”
Liu Zheng is noncommittal, “There are unknown possibilities in terms of raw stone. Stones from the same old field may vary much in quality. Since it is called stone gambling, we can see from its literal meaning that it is related to luck.”
Lin Luoran smiles and randomly points to a raw jade stone which is half-man tall, planning to test Liu Zheng.
“General manager, what if I say we buy this one?” The stone looks unpleasant to the eye. Any other experts will say that there is nearly no chance that it contains jade. However, Lin Luoran has just probed it with Reiki and she knows that a regular size of jade is in the center. From the surging Reiki in it, buying it will definitely be profitable.
Liu Zheng laughs. How can he not know that Lin Luoran is testing him? Still, he takes out his check book without hesitation and goes to negotiate with the host.
The Burmese host has told the buyers about the rule. Except for the huge stone which will be in a public auction in the end, all the other raw stones can be bid by writing a price on paper and whoever has written the highest price can have the stone.
This kind of bidding without a base price is so stressful. The Burmese man is indeed canny.
“Why do you write down 588,889?” It is the first time that Lin Luoran participates in a dark bidding and she can’t figure out the reason why the last number has to be nine.
Instead of laughing at Lin Luoran’s lack of common sense, Liu Zheng explains patiently, “There is no public bidding so the price we offer must be the biggest. This is a hidden rule to prevent others from gaining the initiative.”
In fact, this is a classic trick on public auctions in Burma. On public auctions, many raw stones will be cut into half in the middle to let everyone see the section. Then, what people will gamble on is the size and transparency of the jade. Since the buyers are all experts on jade, their offer may be similar, so using nine as the last number is a way to gain advantage over your competitors.
Liu Zheng submits the paper with the number of the raw stone and his offer on it and says, “Purchasing Consultant Lin, do you believe in my sincerity now?”
Lin Luoran blushes. Thank god that she knows there is jade in the raw stone, or else Liu Zheng’s money will be wasted because of her.
Should she help Liu Zheng pick some good raw stones? Lin Luoran looks to Mu Tiannan who is checking on the huge stone along with Fatty Cui. She is hesitating. This time, shall she gamble or not?