Chapter 3595 — So It Can Be Done
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
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.