As for Zhou Ziwei, he doesn't need to worry about whether his sea of souls can store so much soul power. He's just worried that even if he absorbs all the souls in the bullet, he might actually extract a value of 100,000.
If the energy in the bullet is insufficient, then his attempt to increase his strength by absorbing ordinary souls would be an impossible dream.
Unless Zhou Ziwei can harden his heart and slaughter tens of thousands of people at will, then... it's out of the question.
It seems I'll have to risk going back to that underground tomb to capture a few more solidified souls next time...
Zhou Ziwei clearly remembered that when the ladybug first stumbled into the underground tomb to escape the Bat King's pursuit, it saw quite a few solidified soul entities, and that was only in the outer area of the underground tomb. If it had gone directly into the center of the underground tomb... who knows what terrifying monsters it would have encountered... In short, it seems that if Zhou Ziwei wants to further improve his strength and upgrade his soul power again, the only way is to focus on the underground tomb.
There are seven small to medium-sized jadeite mines in this remote mountainous area, which can be considered a jadeite vein. However, it is a relatively isolated vein. Apart from here, there are no other veins for thousands of miles around. Otherwise, the environment here would not be so isolated.
Upon seeing Zhou Ziwei and his group arrive with so many cars, the owner of the largest jade mine was overjoyed and immediately threw a grand banquet that evening to welcome them.
To Zhou Ziwei's great surprise, the owner of the jadeite mine was actually Chinese, and had even studied jade carving with Gu Dongfeng for a while in his younger days. Strictly speaking, he should be considered one of Gu Dongfeng's nominal disciples! In any case, this man's jade carving skills weren't very good. Although he could carve a few things, his level was far inferior to Gu Dongfeng's. Gu Dongfeng would never allow him to claim the title of his disciple… he simply couldn't bear the embarrassment…
Fortunately, although this guy named Xu Zhengguang wasn't very good at jade carving, he was quite clever in other areas. After learning some principles about the formation of jadeite rough from Gu Dongfeng, he got carried away and secretly smuggled himself to Myanmar sixteen or seventeen years ago. Based on what he knew, he started looking for jadeite rough mines in Myanmar.
Surprisingly, this guy was quite lucky. Finding undiscovered jadeite deposits is something the Myanmar government has always encouraged. No matter who you are, as long as you can find and discover new mineral resources on your own and submit an application, you will automatically own 60% of the mining shares. Even if you don't have the ability to mine the deposits, the Myanmar government can provide strong support in various aspects through equity participation.
As a result, Xu Zhengguang actually became rich overnight by finding a new jadeite mine and became the owner of a new mine.
Of course... this can also be attributed to Xu Zhengguang's cautious behavior. Before officially reporting it, he did not reveal a single word to anyone. Otherwise... he would probably have been silenced a hundred times over.
Unfortunately, although the mineral deposit discovered by Xu Zhengguang was not small in scale, it was located in a very remote area, making transportation extremely inconvenient. Some of the mining equipment needed to build the mine was even airdropped.
Fortunately, his mine had government investment and support; otherwise... as a foreigner, he really wouldn't have been able to build a mine of this scale here.
However, since his application was approved, Xu Zhengguang is no longer considered a foreigner in Myanmar, because the first condition for becoming a mine owner is that one must be a Myanmar citizen. If not, one can apply for Myanmar citizenship.
Anyway, as a foreigner, you don't have the qualifications to mine here.
Since the mine began operation, it has produced a considerable amount of jadeite rough. However, the transportation problem has been a major headache. Although the government has a stake in the mine, it is unlikely that the government would simply send planes to transport the jadeite rough for no reason.
It's important to understand that Myanmar's national strength wasn't particularly good to begin with. Some of its aircraft were used by the military, so how could it possibly be used as a horse-drawn carriage by a small mine owner? Even if they were willing to let him use it, they would have to charge a certain price, which was astronomical, and Xu Zhengguang simply couldn't afford it.
This made the sale of his jadeite rough stones a big problem. Fortunately, shortly after the mining site was discovered here, people found six other mining sites in the surrounding mountains. These mining sites were connected and formed a certain scale, which finally attracted some rough stone middlemen to come here.
It's just that it's not easy for them to travel such a long distance, and each time they can only use an off-road jeep to carry a small number of raw stones, so the purchase price is definitely much lower than that of some old mines outside.
As a result, only high-grade rough stones can be sold at relatively low prices after the ore is mined here, while the lowest grade four rough stones are basically considered garbage and there's nowhere to throw them away.
When Zhou Ziwei and the others arrived at their mining site with Xu Zhengguang, they realized that what Gu Dongfeng had said earlier was indeed not an exaggeration at all. The houses here were really all built with jadeite rough stones, and some of the rough stones even had a hint of green seeping out from the polished parts, making the group's eyes turn blue.
Behind the camp was a huge rocky mountain, but this was no ordinary rocky mountain; it was made up of piles of pure jadeite rough.
Over the years, all the low-grade rough stones pulled out of the mine have been left there, and over the years, they have accumulated into a small mountain.
These things take up space here, and if I were to throw them further away, it would waste shipping costs. Giving them away for free... and nobody wants them anyway, so these things have really become a burden.
Xu Zhengguang encouraged the miners at the mine to cut stones for fun when they had nothing to do. He provided these low-grade rough stones to them for free. If they found jade inside, regardless of size, 80% of the jade would go directly to the person who cut the stone, while he, the boss, would only get 20%.
Such preferential conditions are almost unimaginable in other mining sites. You have to understand that even the lowest grade of rough stone is considered rough stone as long as it is taken out of the mine. Even if the hope of finding jadeite is one in ten thousand, it is not something that can be given away for free.
But with Xu Zhengguang, he almost wished he could give someone some money and have them take it all away for him, that would save him a lot of trouble...
After Zhou Ziwei confirmed this with Xu Zhengguang and was certain that he had completed a normal transaction with them, and that he could freely pick out some low-grade raw stones from the pile of stones without spending a penny, his eyes lit up. Before he even finished eating, he couldn't wait to take Liu Xiaofei and the other person to the pile of stones to rummage around.
Although everyone knows that there are bound to be some hidden gems in this rocky mountain, and that there might be a valuable piece of jade hidden in one of the low-grade rough stones.
For ordinary people, finding a few rough stones that might contain jade in such a large pile of rocks would be harder than climbing to heaven. But for Zhou Ziwei, whose soul power now has a radiation range of sixty meters, it is far too easy.
By simply emitting a dozen or so strands of soul power and then carefully scanning within a circular area, one can clearly determine how many stones in that area contain jade and the quality of that jade.
Zhou Ziwei had only briefly walked around the huge stone mountain, without climbing up or exploring the central area, when he was pleasantly surprised to see more than thirty raw stones that emitted a fluorescent green glow.
What left Zhou Ziwei even more dumbfounded was that... there was actually a large piece of seven-colored jadeite among them. Seven-colored jadeite means that there are many different colors on the same piece of jadeite, and the various colors of jadeite are mixed together. This kind of jadeite used to be called mixed-color jadeite, which was relatively worthless. However, in recent years, this kind of seven-colored jadeite has gradually become popular again, and is at least more expensive than ordinary single-color yellow jadeite or colorless jadeite.
If the color combination is reasonable and easy to carve, its value can be much higher than that of ordinary green jade and red jade.
The piece that Zhou Ziwei was looking at was as big as a wheel, and the jade inside was the size of a football. Its colorful hues were also extremely beautiful. Based on the memories of the jade carver's soul that he had absorbed, Zhou Ziwei was quite confident that he could personally carve this seven-colored jade into an absolute masterpiece.
If Old Master Gu Dongfeng were to personally take charge, Zhou Ziwei was even certain that this piece of material would be carved into a treasure akin to a national treasure.
As for the other green jadeite pieces that Zhou Ziwei saw, there weren't many high-quality ones, and the ones with green weren't very large either. It's clear that the rough stone appraiser hired by Xu Zhengguang was quite skilled. Apart from missing that huge piece of seven-colored jadeite, there weren't many other high-quality jadeite pieces here.
While Zhou Ziwei casually spotted over thirty pieces of jade with a single scan, he had actually scanned hundreds of thousands of rough stones in that same effort. Finding jade in just thirty-odd pieces is really not a large number…
However, there are far more than a million stones in this rocky mountain. Zhou Ziwei has only scanned a small portion of it. If he had the time to scan the entire rocky mountain, who knows what other surprises might await him...
Volume 2: The Assassin's Nightmare, Chapter 312: The Treasure of the Shocking M
Standing in front of that huge rocky mountain, Zhou Ziwei hesitated for a long time before shaking his head and then turning away with Liu Xiaofei.
Although Zhou Ziwei was a little envious of the huge piece of seven-colored jade, he didn't want to dig it out of the hill right now. If he did, the appraisers at the jade mine might discover something special about it and raise the price on the spot, which would be a loss.
Anyway, didn't Xu Zhengguang say that he could take away any low-grade jadeite rough stones from this rocky mountain without spending a penny? After he had chosen from among his high-quality rough stones, he could come back here before leaving, load up a truck full of free rough stones, and then immediately head home. By then, even if Xu Zhengguang wanted to back out, it would be too late.
Because it was already quite late when they arrived, after attending the welcome dinner hosted by Xu Zhengguang, the group did not rush to look at the jadeite rough stones, but instead rested for the night in the room arranged by Xu Zhengguang.
The next morning, after breakfast, Xu Zhengguang once again invited everyone to a spacious warehouse.
The warehouse covers an area of about 1,000 square meters. Unlike the large pile of abandoned rocky hills, this place is heavily guarded. Everywhere you can see armed guards patrolling around the warehouse with serious expressions. At the main entrance of the warehouse, two rather old-fashioned light machine guns are prominently mounted.
Seeing this setup, Zhou Ziwei couldn't help but click his tongue in amazement. He knew that the situation near the Myanmar border was quite chaotic. If there weren't such strong security measures in a place like this, which was like a gold mine, it would probably have been looted long ago, leaving not a trace. Moreover, since the government also had shares in the mine, it was not difficult to have armed guards to protect it.
Although the group was led by the boss, Xu Zhengguang, they still had to undergo a check before being allowed inside.
The warehouse was divided into four areas, and it seemed that even though they were all high-quality raw stones, they were still divided into different grades.
Generally speaking, jadeite rough stones from this mine are classified into four grades by appraisers. The stones in the huge stone mountain outside are all the lowest grade four rough stones, which are basically worthless stones that are unlikely to yield jadeite. However, since they are also stones dug out of jadeite mines, they are also called jadeite rough stones.
This warehouse contains jadeite rough stones of grade three or higher. The prices of rough stones vary greatly depending on their grade. However, the rough stones sold here are not sold by the piece, but by the pile.
Zhou Ziwei and the others followed Xu Zhengguang into the warehouse of the Three Extremes Raw Stones. The warehouse occupied more than half of the entire warehouse area, covering a total area of 600 square meters.
Apart from the walls and roof, there was no decoration inside. Everywhere there were piles of stones, like small mountains. Zhou Ziwei glanced around and saw that the warehouse was only half full for the time being, with more than two hundred piles of stones still left in the large space.
Each pile of stones contains about a hundred pieces of jadeite rough. Of course, if some of the rough stones are large or small, the number will be adjusted to make up for it. In short, the volume of each pile looks roughly the same.
Xu Zhengguang pointed to the piles of jadeite rough stones that looked no different from ordinary stones and said, "These are all Grade III rough stones, so the price is relatively cheaper. Normally, each pile costs 680,000 euros, but... since you were introduced by Teacher Gu, the price can naturally be further reduced. Let's say 600,000 euros per pile. But there's one thing I must state beforehand: the rough stones here cannot be split into piles. That means you can only choose which pile of rough stones you want, and you cannot pick the rough stones you want from the piles and put them together yourself. That's absolutely not allowed."
Zhou Ziwei nodded upon hearing this, knowing that they were worried that if they encountered a master stone appraiser, and that the expert picked out all the good stones that could yield jadeite, then even if all the remaining rough stones could be sold, but after the buyer took them back, not a single one turned out to be green, then who would come back to buy rough stones from them next time?
Zhou Ziwei didn't immediately indicate whether he wanted to buy this type of tri-grade raw stone; he simply walked closer to take a look.
Speaking of which, this huge pile of rough stones is only selling for 600,000 euros, which is really cheap. 600,000 euros is only a little over 5 million yuan.
However, Zhou Ziwei clearly remembered that at the jade gambling conference he attended in Kunming, any broken stone that showed even a tiny bit of green was put on display and priced at a sky-high price of two or three million, regardless of whether it actually contained jade.
This means that... any rough stones here worth hundreds of yuan, regardless of whether they contain jade or not, can be bought, wiped clean, and cut along the edge. As long as the stone shows a hint of green or even signs of green, it can be sold as a semi-gambling material at a high price.
You don't need too many stones like that. If two or three out of a hundred stones turn out to be of similar quality after being partially cut open, then you can make a profit from this large pile of raw stones. If you can get five or six stones that turn out to be of decent quality after being cut open, you can definitely make a fortune.
Therefore, if Zhou Ziwei simply wanted to make money, it would be easy. He wouldn't even need to be picky; he could just carry a bunch of stones back and make a fortune.
These are all rough stones mined from jade mines. Although they may not actually contain jade, at least one or two out of ten will show some scattered green. Even though there might be a grayish-white area underneath that green, Zhou Ziwei has a X-ray vision that ordinary people don't have. He can easily use a semi-cutting technique to present the best side of each rough stone. In this way, unless there is not a trace of green in the entire stone, Zhou Ziwei can sell them as rough stones of excellent quality.
However, this approach seems a bit too unethical. Last time, Zhou Ziwei used a similar method to trick Huang Lianshu. No matter how Huang Lianshu tricked him, Zhou Ziwei naturally wouldn't feel any guilt. But... if he were to use this method to trick some complete strangers, then... he really couldn't bring himself to do it.
The chances of finding jadeite in these grade 3 rough stones are really not much higher than those in grade 4 rough stones. If they didn't use such unethical methods, they probably wouldn't make much money.
This huge pile of hundreds of raw stones would probably take up the space of four or five off-road vehicles, so after a quick look around, Zhou Ziwei immediately lost interest in the stones.
In Zhou Ziwei's eyes, out of the more than two hundred piles of stones in the entire Three Extremes Raw Stone warehouse, only about twenty piles actually contained jadeite; the remaining one hundred and eighty piles were just worthless broken stones.
As for those twenty-odd piles containing jadeite, the quality of the jadeite inside wasn't very good. The slightly better quality pieces were too small, so in short, they weren't very valuable.
Seeing that Zhou Ziwei wasn't very interested in the raw stones here, Xu Zhengguang wasn't disappointed at all; on the contrary, he was even more delighted.
You should know that all the stones here are the cheapest quality. They're only slightly more presentable than the stones in that mountain of stones outside. The ones that actually have the potential to yield jade have already been picked out by the appraisers.
Such a large pile of rough stones only sells for 600,000 euros, so their profit margin isn't that high. If Zhou Ziwei really wants the stones here, he only needs to pick out two piles, and the ten SUVs he brought will probably be almost completely filled.
In that case... Zhou Ziwei naturally wouldn't buy the truly valuable raw stones.
Xu Zhengguang wasn't making money from the broken stones here. What truly brought him huge profits were the high-grade jadeite rough stones, which, although few in number, were extremely valuable.
Without saying a word, Xu Zhengguang immediately led Zhou Ziwei and his group to the warehouse of second-grade jadeite rough.
This warehouse is much smaller than the warehouse with the three-dimensional raw stones. The stones here are also sold in piles, but each pile only contains twenty or thirty stones at most, and there are only about thirty such piles in the entire warehouse.
The rough stones here are also sold in piles, and the price is the same as that of rough stones in the Three Extremes, at 600,000 euros per pile.
The difference is that each pile of Grade III rough stones contains at least a hundred stones, while for the same amount of 600,000 euros, you can only buy a maximum of 23 rough stones.
However, relatively speaking, the chances of finding jadeite in these second-grade rough stones are much higher, and the quality is also much more pleasing to the eye.
Zhou Ziwei circled the thirty-odd piles of stones again and found that the raw stones here were indeed much more reliable than those three-level raw stones. Among the thirty-odd piles of raw stones, only three piles contained no jade at all, while in the remaining piles, almost every one or two raw stones contained jade.
However, most of these jadeite pieces are of average quality, and even if they were all cut open, they probably wouldn't be worth the 600,000 euro price tag.
This means that if someone comes here to buy raw stones and then cuts them all open themselves, they will basically end up losing money and making no profit.
Seeing this, Zhou Ziwei couldn't help but mutter to himself, wondering if the rough stone appraisers here also possessed X-ray vision like him. Otherwise, how could they divide these rough stones so evenly, with each pile having roughly the same quality, and their true value clearly lower than their selling price... Of course, the possibility of the appraisers actually having superpowers was still quite slim. If someone really had that ability, they probably wouldn't be an appraiser for others; they would have already made their fortune by gambling on stones themselves. And if the appraiser didn't have X-ray vision, it meant that this person's skill and eye were truly quite extraordinary...
After looking around without finding anything good, Zhou Ziwei shook his head again.
Xu Zhengguang didn't waste any more words and immediately led Zhou Ziwei and the others to the warehouse of first-grade raw stones.
The warehouse area has shrunk considerably again, and the rough stones here are still counted in piles. However, each pile of this grade rough stone only contains about six or seven stones, but the price of each pile has soared to 1.2 million euros.
In other words, the average price of each rough stone here is around one to two million RMB.
This price is almost equivalent to the price of semi-rough stones in a normal rough stone auction, which makes Zhou Ziwei somewhat puzzled. He doesn't understand how the middlemen can make money when fully rough stones are already so expensive.
However, after Zhou Ziwei carefully scanned the quality of the jadeite rough stones here, he finally understood what it meant to be worth the price.
Surprisingly, although each pile only contained six or seven rough stones, about half of them actually contained jadeite, and some of them were even of good quality.
After casually glancing at the stones and doing some rough calculations, Zhou Ziwei discovered that although the average selling price of the rough stones here was ridiculously high, if he were to actually cut all the stones out himself, he might not necessarily lose money. In fact, he could even make a considerable profit from two or three piles of rough stones... Especially one pile, although this pile contained relatively few stones because the stones were all quite large, with only five rough stones in total, four of these five rough stones actually contained jadeite material. The remaining stone also had some banded jadeite crystals, but these jadeite crystals were too thin, and even if they were cut out, they could not be made into any jewelry; they were basically just a piece of waste material.
The other four pieces were of very good quality. Zhou Ziwei estimated that if all the jade meat were taken out, it would be worth 20 to 30 million RMB, which would definitely be worth the price. There was also a pile of first-grade raw stones. Although only three of the raw stones had jadeite cores, one of them was actually a very rare spring-colored jadeite.
The so-called "spring with color" consists of two colors: purple and green. Both colors must be pure and form a very beautiful combination. Historically, there was a mine that could produce high-quality "spring with color" jade, but that mine has been depleted for a long time. Therefore, such high-quality jade is extremely rare nowadays.
However... the owners themselves are well aware of the value of these high-grade raw stones, so Zhou Ziwei basically has no chance of finding a bargain. Even if he could make a profit, there wouldn't be much room for it. Unlike him at the raw stone auction in Kunming last time, where he only spent 10,000 yuan as initial capital and made over 100 million yuan directly. That was real exorbitant profit...
Thinking about this, Zhou Ziwei regretted coming here to buy jadeite rough stones. If he wanted to make money, or just wanted to buy a few truly top-quality jadeite pieces for himself, he would have been better off waiting for the jadeite rough stone trading fair in Tengchong and just casually trying his luck there. Maybe he could even find a few great bargains... But now, having come all this way to this mine, even though he could see every single rough stone clearly with his special ability, he found that no matter how he calculated, there wasn't much of a gamble involved, which was really unsatisfying...
Fortunately, Zhou Ziwei remembered that there was a huge mountain of stones outside that he could pick and choose from without spending a penny, and that there were some good items inside. This made Zhou Ziwei feel better.
If all else fails, just pick a few piles of level-one rough stones here that won't cost you anything, and then go to the stone mountain to collect a few more free ones.
Without further ado, Zhou Ziwei immediately pointed out the three piles of raw stones, indicating that he wanted all three piles.