I asked Uncle Harvey, "Do you think someone deliberately spread the rumors?"
"Possibly. But here's the thing—rumors alone aren't enough. If there aren't actual raw stones to back up the story, nobody will believe just talk. So the raw stones must have come from this mine."
"But the appraiser just said neither he nor his predecessor found any dragon-stone jadeite. Could he be lying?"
"I don't think so," Uncle Harvey said. "Jadeite doesn't only come from the mine trucks. There's another production method we can't ignore."
With that, he turned and headed back toward the summit overlooking the mine. I scrambled to follow.
We climbed the slope and stood at the overlook again. I asked Uncle Harvey, "What's different from before?"
"Nothing yet."
"What are we looking at, then?"
"Don't rush. The time isn't right. What time is it?"
I checked my phone. "Myanmar time, 3:59 PM."
Uncle Harvey smiled. "Right. You'll see in a moment."
I watched my phone screen. When the display turned to 4:00, the opposite hillside suddenly came alive. On the distant ridgeline, countless black dots appeared.
The dots quickly grew larger—they were people! Within seconds, these figures came sprinting down the steep, gravel-covered slope at full speed. More and more emerged, all charging downhill like a battle charge. I'd only seen this kind of scene in epic war films like The Lord of the Rings—tens of thousands of warriors pouring down a hillside, making the earth shake!
Except there were no soldiers, no horses—just Burmese people in ragged clothes, flip-flops, longyis, and hats. As they ran, they kicked up enormous clouds of dust that obscured the surging mass of humanity. I couldn't count how many there were—hundreds, easily, maybe a thousand.
"Who are all those people?" I asked urgently.
"Those are the Yemuxi."
Yemuxi was a phonetic transliteration meaning "unwashed by water"—dirty.
"Some are local residents, but most are drifters—essentially small gangs. They're usually controlled by a gang boss who gives them food, sometimes drugs, and sends them in to do the hardest work: mining jade."
"But there are excavators. Why do they need to dig by hand?" I didn't understand.
"The Yemuxi's mining method is essentially traditional—pure manual labor. They go in, see stones that might be jadeite, and if they're fully exposed, they pick them up; if they're half-buried, they dig them out."
"Can't the excavators do that?"
"They can, but not finely enough. The Yemuxi may be inefficient, but mechanical mining can't capture every last fragment. After the excavators clear huge batches of rock, that final ten percent of odds and ends and small broken pieces still lie on the mine floor. Who knows—the best material might be hiding among those little stones." Uncle Harvey seemed thoughtful as he said this.
The Yemuxi kept pouring into the mine. I was still reeling from the spectacle.
"The general rule is that at 4 PM sharp, they're allowed to enter and pick stones. That's why they charge in like they're going to war—the early birds get the best chances. Whatever they find, they sell locally."
Uncle Harvey continued, "Most Yemuxi don't really know jadeite—they're purely relying on luck. They sell whatever stones they find to stone buyers, taking whatever price they're offered. A few try to sell on their own in the outside markets. If one of them finds a top-grade stone, even if they sell it cheap, it's still a fortune for someone like that—years of income in a single find."
Carrying dreams of overnight wealth, risking their sweat and blood—that was how the Yemuxi gangs formed.
This was yet another form of jade gambling.
Here, the dump trucks and excavators were the only representatives of modern civilization. Aside from those massive machines, there was nothing but endless yellow earth, swirling dust, and the ant-like people. Not just small but utterly insignificant—insignificant. In the instant I pondered all this, several more Burmese workers sprinted down the steep slopes beside us, kicking up choking clouds of dust. I thought: if someone slipped on this terrain, they'd tumble tens or even hundreds of meters down. A fall like that would mean serious injury at best, broken bones at best, and being covered in blood at worst.
But jadeite quality doesn't distribute evenly! Sometimes, what's left behind might happen to be the most premium pieces—a single small fragment could be worth ten truckloads. The Yemuxi existed to extract this residual value—they were the mine's scavengers, the equivalent of cherry-pickers in the jade gambling world.
"If the mine trucks didn't produce the dragon-stone jadeite, then maybe the Yemuxi found it?" I asked Uncle Harvey.
"I was thinking the same thing," Uncle Harvey mused. "If someone found a dragon-stone premium piece, there would definitely be rumors going around about one of the brothers striking it rich."
We decided to go down to the Yemuxi rest area and ask around.
The Yemuxi gangs were a disorganized bunch—thousands of them in total. But they were all controlled by the Yemuxi boss. If anything needed resolving, dealing with the boss was the most efficient approach. By industry custom, the boss negotiated a daily rental fee with the mine owner, allowing his people to rush in and pick stones after the excavators finished at 4 PM. And the boss would know best what they found and how much it was worth.
We walked to the Yemuxi rest camp. They looked at us with strange eyes—not hostile, but genuinely seeing us as aliens. We were too clean, too well-rested, too obviously not belonging there.
Then Uncle Harvey's phone rang.
He checked the number and answered immediately, his expression turning serious.
After barely two sentences, Uncle Harvey hung up and told me, "Let's go to Mandalay!"
"Why are we suddenly going to Mandalay?"
"My contact in Mandalay has intelligence. A shipment of very high-quality material came down from the Kaqin mine, and among it, some pieces with exceptional texture and transparency—it should be what we're looking for."
"Dragon-stone type?"
"I think so." Uncle Harvey said, "If it is, we need to negotiate a deal. At minimum, we need to determine the quantity and the details."
It was true—we'd walked all this way, asked all these questions, and still hadn't even seen what dragon-stone jadeite looked like. This news immediately perked me up! If luck was on our side, the answer that Twin Gold Towers needed was in this shipment.
Uncle Harvey switched vehicles. There was no time to thank Boss U. He pulled me along and we raced toward Mandalay.
---
Mandalay was Myanmar's ancient capital. Today, it's a bustling city, the center of the country's overseas Chinese community, with most Chinese businesses in Southeast Asia maintaining offices there—especially in the jadeite trade. The streets were hot and crowded, Burmese longyis in every color.
Normally, Uncle Harvey couldn't go three sentences without rhapsodizing about Mandalay's scenery, Mandalay's pretty Burmese girls, or how great the food was. But today, he sat in the car with his eyes closed, showing no interest in the view.
We met Uncle Harvey's "friend" in a narrow, shaded alley behind a Mandalay warehouse.
"Old friend, how are things?" Uncle Harvey was practically vibrating with urgency, his tone uncharacteristically polite.
"You finally got here! Any later and these would've been shipped out! You have twenty minutes. Twenty minutes, then the mercenaries arrive with armed transport! You absolutely cannot be seen by them—I'm taking a risk just showing you these."
"Brother, you're a character! Hahahaha." Uncle Harvey said with supreme confidence. "How long do I need to look at stones? Two minutes is enough. Where's the material? Let's hurry."
"Hurry, hurry! Really, we need to hurry! I don't know which one is what you're looking for, but it's definitely in this batch. But the whole shipment is wrapped raw jade! You can't see anything!"
Wrapped raw jade—wrapped stones. Raw jadeite bundled in yellow tape, completely opaque. You couldn't see a thing from the outside. In China, there was a jade gambling game based on wrapped stones, where the entire premise was "trust" in the seller's claim that the stones inside could pay off. But the original purpose of wrapping wasn't gambling at all—it was for transportation.
In Myanmar, if you handed a top-grade piece of raw jadeite directly to a logistics company and asked them to ship it carefully to China or elsewhere—you were basically asking to lose it. Armed groups and local powers would target jadeite in transit and forcibly seize it. If you filed a claim, they'd compensate you at double the insured amount. Say your ten-million-yuan jadeite was insured for five hundred thousand—that wasn't bad. They'd pay out a million at most.
So the industry standard was to wrap everything in tape first, then ship it via regular postage. Nobody could see what was inside, and logistics companies generally didn't tamper with sealed packages. That was the real purpose of wrapping.
Uncle Harvey's informant was clearly more capable than any logistics company. The intelligence that a shipment from Kaqin to Ruili contained dragon-stone jadeite had been intercepted precisely. But twenty minutes, and everything was wrapped—how were they supposed to find it?
Uncle Harvey didn't hesitate. He strode straight to the pile of raw stones and called back to me: "Flashlight!"
He hunched over the stones, torch in hand, touching each one just as the "black-skirted priest" at the mine had done—except because of the wrapped covering, he held the flashlight against each stone a bit longer, pressing rather than tapping. But still with incredible speed, stone after stone, examining everything in that warehouse of raw jadeite, trying to find the dragon-stone piece.
I didn't dare interrupt him with questions about his technique for evaluating stones through their wrapping. I just stood quietly and watched.
Mandalay's heat was oppressive, and the warehouse was stifling and airless. Pale sunlight slanted through small windows, illuminating dust motes in the air. Besides the heat, there was only the sound of the flashlight clicking against stones—tap, tap—over and over.
After about ten minutes, Uncle Harvey's frantic examination was complete. He was drenched in sweat, his right hand trembling slightly from pressing the flashlight button so many times. He looked up at me, like a surgeon delivering a verdict, and said: "Get me a knife and some yellow tape."
He took the knife I handed him, deftly sliced open the yellow tape on one stone's surface, and peeled back a small opening. "Look!" I shone my flashlight through the gap.
My god! This was the most beautiful jadeite I had ever seen in my life!
It was like concentrated summer foliage frozen solid—except leaves aren't this deep. It was like a pool of emerald water turned to ice—except ice crystals aren't this pure. Yet it wasn't as shallow as glass; it had the characteristic "hardness" that jadeite's high density creates. Just one glance, and that rich green seemed to pass through my eyes and imprint itself deep in my heart.
I had no words grand enough for this jadeite. It was too beautiful—it made you forget yourself. And this dragon-stone stone weighed at least two kilograms. Whether rubies or emeralds, what other precious stone could offer this kind of volume—enough for bangles, for sculptural pieces?
"Incredible, absolutely incredible," I babbled.
"Stop staring," Uncle Harvey said. "Tape it back up, quick!"
"Oh! Right, right." I snapped out of my daze and hurriedly rewrapped the tape, carefully aligning the seal mark position.
"Don't want the mercenaries to shoot us. Let's get out of here now that we're done." Uncle Harvey was restoring the stone to its original position while urging me on. After erasing all traces of our presence, we slipped out through the back door our "friend" had provided, not daring to look back.
Out on the Mandalay street, baking under the sun, Uncle Harvey's expression turned serious. "Zane, there's something wrong with this entire shipment."
"What's wrong? That was dragon-stone type! It was stunning!" I couldn't help exclaiming.
"It's dragon-stone type, no question. But it has an old fracture surface. Fracture surfaces are natural openings that many raw stones have when they're extracted. But this jadeite has a patina on its fracture surface. Patina only develops on antiques—or from frequent handling. Otherwise, how would patina form?"
"You mean it should be on antique pieces, or something that's been handled extensively? Otherwise why would there be patina?" I finished his thought.
"Right. Patina on a fracture surface means this is antique material. It's old stock. This is definitively from Kaqin—definitively dragon-stone—but it was mined decades ago. Not newly excavated."
"But they said this shipment just came from the mine!"
Why would someone take a genuinely antique piece of dragon-stone jadeite and pretend it was freshly mined from Kaqin? Doing so would actually undervalue it—antique material commands a premium. Who would go to such trouble? Who benefits? The mine owner? The Yemuxi? Or someone else entirely?
The mine appraiser said he hadn't seen any dragon-stone jadeite. So was it really the Yemuxi who found it? Or was everything just an illusion?
I was lost in thought, trying to untangle this web of mystery, when Uncle Harvey suddenly shouted, "No!"
It startled me badly.
"We fell for a diversion! They drew us away!"
"What? What's happening?"
"Damn it, we were so close to the truth, and we got played! We need to go back! Otherwise the person will get away!"
Uncle Harvey stamped his foot and pulled out his phone immediately.
"Go back?" I was bewildered.
Uncle Harvey made a brief call to the driver, then turned to me. "Yes, back to the mine. The answer's been there all along!"