Don Quinton exploded: "Carving jade? And protecting heritage, my ass! You came to steal my jadeite!"
Young Wells held his hands up, pleading sincerely: "Brother, we really are jade carvers! I won a bronze prize at the Hundred Flowers Award! We just heard there was jadeite material here and came to take a look. It's our first time—we didn't know the rules! We're sorry, really sorry!"
Young Garrett quickly chimed in: "Sorry, sorry! Please don't hurt us!"
"You're a jade carver too?" Don Quinton asked young Garrett.
"Yes, I am. I've won awards and been in the paper—you can check."
"You came looking for jadeite? I've got jadeite. Don Quinton does business fair and square—good prices, quality goods. See that piece over there?" Don Quinton pointed to a raw jadeite stone propped upright on a table. "That's what we dug out today. You know whose house this was, right? Dominic Sterling! You know Sterling Legacy Jade?"
Both of them answered: "We know, we know."
"Sterling Legacy Jade is valuable. Take a look at this stone and give me your assessment."
Young Garrett and young Wells leaned in. It was a large piece with a waxy yellow skin. But despite the yellowish exterior, when they shone a flashlight through it, the interior was luminous—meaning the skin was thin as paper, with fine grain both outside and in, the inside clearly visible. The stone could stand upright on the table because a window had been cut at the base. Together they lifted it and examined it from another angle with the flashlight. No color—but the texture and transparency were excellent.
Young Wells raised the first objection: "Old material dug out of a demolished house was leftover from the ancients' cutting. It should be offcuts or confirmed material. Why does this stone still have its skin?"
Young Garrett answered without hesitation: "You know how the old-timers judged jadeite—anything without color was considered garbage. So when they rubbed open a window and saw there was no color inside, they just tossed it aside."
Don Quinton spoke up: "How much do you think it's worth?"
Young Wells said, "I'd say market price is somewhere between thirty and fifty thousand."
Don Quinton shook his head. "Fifty thousand won't do. At least a hundred thousand."
Young Garrett said, "A hundred thousand is a bit steep, but it depends on what comes out of it."
Don Quinton slammed the table. "Fine! Didn't you come looking for old jadeite? Here it is—fresh out of the ground! One price: a hundred thousand. My men will go with you to get the cash."
Young Wells said, "A hundred thousand is way too expensive!"
Don Quinton glared: "Your partner just said a hundred thousand was acceptable."
Young Wells said, "A hundred thousand—we're not buying."
Don Quinton's men all closed in. Don Quinton waved them back and said, "If you're not buying, that means you came to steal. One hand each."
Young Garrett and young Wells exchanged a look. They both knew they were done for—they'd run into a forced sale. This Don Quinton was ruthless.
They discussed it briefly and decided this was "life insurance money"—they had to pay. Young Wells said he had less than ten thousand on him, but young Garrett said not to worry—he'd brought over a hundred thousand to Tengchong. Don Quinton's burly men escorted young Garrett with the stone back to their lodgings to collect the money, then it was hand over the cash, hand over the goods. The entire transaction was conducted with courtesy and propriety, as if Garrett and Wei were genuinely valued jadeite clients receiving excellent service.
In the end, a hundred thousand was taken, and the several-jin jadeite stone was left in young Garrett and young Wells's rented room.
Young Wells and young Garrett shut the door, let out long breaths, and both slumped onto the floor.
For a long moment, neither spoke.
---
After a minute, young Garrett gave a quiet laugh. Young Wells looked up and laughed too.
Young Garrett said, "Brother... actually..."
Young Wells cut in: "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"Yes, brother! Good lord, this is incredible."
"This stone—once it's cut properly—it's worth way more than a hundred thousand! Hahahaha!" Young Wells couldn't contain his excitement, his voice rising.
"Shh, shh, shh." Young Garrett gestured for him to keep it down. "Don Quinton doesn't know the market. A piece of ice-grade this size, if there are no cracks, has to be worth at least a million. We made out like bandits."
"Let's cut it open, right now!"
"Should we study it a bit more, think it over? What if—"
Young Wells slapped the table and said in a hushed but fervent voice: "Garrett! Fortune favors the bold! One cut you're poor, one cut you're rich, one cut you move into a mansion!"
Young Garrett laughed out loud too.
Young Wells continued excitedly: "Think about it—if I make money in Tengchong, I'll buy an Audi 100 and drive it all the way back to my hometown of Nanyang. How cool would that be? Then I'll buy a big house in Nanyang! I'll have a wine cellar, a grain store, and the rest will be a vegetable garden. Oh right, and a big swimming pool. In those Hong Kong movies, only real mansions have swimming pools."
"I'd advise you not to get ahead of yourself. We still don't know what's inside."
"Why not dream big! Garrett! It's called ambition. If you make money, what are you going to do with it?"
Young Garrett thought for a moment, then said: "I'd set up a proper workshop and bring in some machines. They say there are new polishing machines that are way faster than doing it by hand, and the results are just as good. With that, I could make real money in a few years."
"Garrett, you're the one with real ambition!"
Young Wells ran into the bedroom and came back with two bottles of Myanmar Beer. "Finish these, then we cut!"
Young Garrett nodded. "Let's do it, brother!"
Young Wells held the stone and stood to the side. Young Garrett bent down and turned on the water valve—a fine stream of coolant began flowing over the blade. He wiped his hands on his pant leg and switched on the machine. The high-speed spinning, the deafening roar, the spray of water, and the hope of fortune. He took the stone from young Wells and began to cut with intense focus.
His fingers were so close to the blade. But a true jade carver never worried about this—no jade carver ever injured their hand during cutting. In the presence of immense wealth, a person's concentration becomes superhuman, their senses razor-sharp.
Finally, the cut was complete. The two brothers each grabbed a half, shone their flashlights inside, and looked.
Then both their faces showed confusion. The result was completely unexpected—neither good nor bad. It was like flipping a coin to see heads or tails, only for the coin to land on its edge.
They looked at each other. What was going on?
The jadeite that had been cut open did have excellent transparency and an incredibly fine texture—completely colorless. In terms of texture and transparency, it was nearly at the "high ice-grade" level, just below glass-grade. Beautiful. Most impressively, it was a large piece with relatively few internal cracks, leaving plenty of room for cutting plaques, even bangles or display pieces. All of this matched or even exceeded young Garrett and young Wells's expectations. This was a win.
But then came the puzzle, and the source of their distress. Inside the jadeite were clusters of white cotton-like inclusions—called "cotton." "Cotton" is a type of jadeite inclusion—not as dangerous as black "moss," but it severely affects the jadeite's quality. These cotton inclusions meant the cut was a loss.
The old saying goes: "Where there's dragon, there's water." It means that wherever jadeite has good color, the texture and transparency improve in that area. Even within the same raw stone, the mossy parts have poor texture—barely bean-grade; the colored parts improve to ice-grade or higher. Side by side for billions of years, yet the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer—just as the Gospel of Matthew says.
The problem with these white inclusions was that their texture wasn't good enough. In what should have been a crystal-clear piece of jadeite, these dense white clusters obscured the underlying transparency. Most consumers were laypeople who bought on visual appeal—a glance revealed nothing but a mass of white cotton clouds.
This made it extremely difficult for a jade carver to showcase the jadeite's beauty, so as raw material, the price took a massive hit. Young Garrett and young Wells had braced themselves for some cotton, but the quantity and density of these white clusters far exceeded their expectations—far beyond what technique could manage. That was why they were distressed.
"Ah! There's too much cotton. This won't do," young Wells lamented.
"It's not all bad. There's still hope."
"Hmm..." young Wells began to think.
"Old rule. Let's slice a few pieces first, test it out, then we'll discuss," young Garrett suggested.
Young Wells was thinking the same thing. The moment they saw the material, both had reached the same conclusion—use their jade-carving skills to turn this stone around. The true power of jade-carving lay right here: turning dross into gold!
So each of them cut several thin slices, about a centimeter thick and the size of a cookie. They borrowed a carving bench at a friend's workshop in Tengchong and decided to spend the night working separately, then meet the next day to discuss how to carve it.
Much of jade-gambling and jade-carving happens at night.
Night is the quiet time that God reserves for creators. And in the deep of night, proprietary trade secrets are harder for prying eyes to steal.