Chapter 3595 — So It Can Be Done

Two spirit jades—waste jade though they were—once in Wei Zhao's hands would be genuine, solid good jade! Hiding away two pieces a day might not sound like much, but if he could keep at it smoothly, it would amount to a truly considerable fortune.

What was more, Wei Zhao did not touch those pieces that looked like good jade on the surface but were rotten within, fair without. He took only the sort that plainly showed themselves to be waste—the kind whose outer shell had not fully formed and which carried but a faint trace of energy, the kind that would shatter outright the moment that little bit of energy was spent.

For jade like that, the guards likely would not bother to keep a careful count. It was the pieces that looked like good jade that they would surely remember, and if Wei Zhao touched those, trouble would come easily! But whether he could really get away with it—that still had to be tested. If they truly were strict about the numbers, then Wei Zhao would have no choice but to return the stolen spirit jades.

As for why the weight had changed once there were more good jades, the guards probably would not grow suspicious. After all, no one would be foolish enough to count their own share into the tally—they would simply assume they had misremembered.

Still, if it proved feasible, then think on it: Wei Zhao was to work here for three months. Even setting aside days like the ranking matches and the newcomers' trials, that still left at least seventy days or more. Two pieces hidden a day—that made a hundred and forty!

Remember, the Welcome Pavilion handed out only a single spirit jade to a newcomer each month. What sort of sum was a hundred and forty? It was nothing short of turning his fortunes around overnight and becoming a wealthy man. Even Meng Jueming, a senior steward brother of such long standing, could never have accumulated so many spirit jades!

For consumables like spirit jades, which served both for cultivation and for trade, let alone a hundred and forty—Meng Jueming would have counted himself lucky to have thirty or fifty on hand. Otherwise he would not have agonized so long over parting with two spirit jades in compensation.

And so, once Wei Zhao had enough spirit jades in hand, never mind buying ingredients for pill refining—even the rarest of heavenly treasures and earthly materials would be his for the asking. In the end, it was just like the mortal world: with plenty of spirit jades in hand, a man's back straightened of itself, and his words and dealings carried a natural weight.

But all these fair visions rested on things going smoothly. Though Wei Zhao's plan for concealing the spirit jades seemed fairly thorough, if the two guards who weighed his haul were truly meticulous and attentive, they might still sniff out something amiss. Of course, judging by his observation of the pair, that possibility was really quite small. Even if there was some risk of the trick being spotted, it was very slight.

The two men had only taken cursory note of the number of those fair-without, rotten-within waste jades. As for the weight, they merely tallied the total on a counting device and never recorded the individual weights at all.

After working a full six hours, by his reckoning it must long since have gone dark outside. Suddenly a faint bell rang out from somewhere far down the mine tunnel, and one of the guards bellowed at the top of his lungs, "All right, the bell's rung—work's over! That's it for today. Pack up and come hand in your load with me!"

Wei Zhao looked around and could not help but laugh. The guard's words had been shouted at him and him alone. In the vast expanse of Mining Zone Ten, apart from the two guards and himself, there was not another soul.

He rose, brushed the dust from his clothes, put away his jade spade, shouldered his basket, and followed the two guards out of the mining zone.

"You've done well for your first day, junior brother—tsk, tsk. To gather over forty-two catties on your very first day here, all waste jade though it surely is, still counts as quite good." One of the guards waved the ledger in his hand at Wei Zhao. Cooped up year in and year out in this dead mining zone where he saw no one, the man was starved for company; now that a new face had finally turned up, he was simply making talk to relieve his own boredom. "You've dug up a fair few of those seemingly-good jades too. Even if they're all waste, surface-good jade like that—gather ten thousand pieces and you can trade them for one good spirit jade! Come to think of it, there's still hope for you!"

Ten thousand pieces! If Wei Zhao had no cheat of his own, wouldn't he work himself to death?

Wei Zhao's sharp eyes caught sight of the ledger. At the top of the page was written his own name, below it a string of figures for the seemingly-good jades, and at the very bottom a striking number circled in emphasis: forty-two catties, three taels. That was already the figure after deducting the weight of the basket—the final, accurate record on his account.

Just as he had guessed. There was no total for pure waste jade, only the overall weight of all the jade. And that, for Wei Zhao, left a great deal of room to maneuver.

"Ha ha, it's nothing but luck, really! Senior brother, this is my first time here and I know none of the rules. Could you tell me how the hand-in works?" Seeing that the guard seemed fairly good-natured and approachable, Wei Zhao ventured to ask.

To be honest, though Wei Zhao was confident he had given nothing away, now that the final test was truly at hand, his heart was thumping a little. It was like a student cheating on an exam: even if he was not caught red-handed by the invigilator, once the paper was handed in he would still worry whether he had left some slip on it—copying the other fellow's mistakes exactly, say, and the like.

The guard looked at Wei Zhao, reflected that he had nothing better to do anyway, and said with a smile, "The hand-in's simple enough. You hand over that basket of spirit jade you dug, I hand over this ledger of mine, and after that there's nothing more for us to do but stand by and watch. There's a fellow at the storehouse whose job is to weigh your spirit jade all over again. So long as the number isn't too far off from the forty-two catties three taels I've marked here, there's no problem."

"Does it normally come out different?" Wei Zhao asked, narrowing his eyes.

"Of course it does. The same basket of jade weighed by different people will come out different every time, and my scales here are crude besides—nothing like the precision of the big scales at the storehouse. But generally, so long as the difference is within five taels, it's counted as normal," the guard replied.

Wei Zhao nodded thoughtfully. A spirit jade of average size weighed at least a catty, so if the discrepancy stayed within five taels, that meant it was surely down to weighing error—enough to rule out any suspicion of concealed spirit jades.

Besides, once the jade fell loose it was taken up by the guards and placed in the basket, which ruled out all the more any chance of a digger absorbing some of the energy inside before turning it in.