My Ranch Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Jackpot

Translated by me, edited by Kai.

“Uff!” Jiang Hai’s head slowly rose out of the water. Looking around the cavern with the flashlight, Jiang Hai couldn’t stop smiling as he reached his destination.

Crawling up onto the sh.o.r.e, Jiang Hai can’t help but to lie down and let out a long sigh. Looking at his watch, he spent a total of 8 hours swimming to reach here and 4 of those hours was in the underground river. This river was unexpectedly long, the trip going back is definitely going to be much longer. Hopefully the climbing gear can handle the additional weight.

After a short rest, Jiang Hai got up and slowly inspected the cavern. According to the dragon pearl, there are a few breathing holes in the cavern making this place somewhat livable. The pitch black cavern was illuminated as result of shining the flashlight onto numerous reflective surfaces. When his eyes adjusted to the new lighting, he couldn’t be happier.

“Ahahaha, I hit the freaking jackpot!!!!” Jiang Hai laughed crazily while looking at all the gemstones in front of him. The dragon pearl really didn’t lie, hexagonal gemstones of all colours, some purple, some red, some pink, some yellow, and some green were all piled together to form a mountain.

On top of this pile of jewels are a set of bones. If Jiang Hai’s guess is correct, then this must be the ancestral dragon. But after eons of weathering, there is not much left of him. From what is left, it is still possible to spot a pair of dragon horns on top of the head.

“Everyone below saints are just ants. By being an ant, you just gotta accept the fate of an ant. Look at you, fought all your life and died here. Now look at me, I’m just an ant. I accept this fact, but I don’t fight for power or fame and fortune thus I can still walk out of here and live perfectly fine.” Looking at the pile of dragon bones, Jiang Hai self-deprecated. He doesn’t think much about anything, but he doesn’t believe his life is better than the man in the sky (1).

“Alright that’s enough talk, let us see how much these things are worth.” Shaking his head, Jiang Hai quickly went to examine the pile of treasure. He reached into the pile and randomly moved his arm around as if it was a lucky dip. He grabbed something that shone just like a polished diamond under his light.

“What the, how can a diamond be this … ka” Jiang Hai exclaimed. If this is really diamond then he really hit the jackpot, but before he could think further, he heard a ‘ka’ sound as he used more power than he should have; the ‘diamond’ shattered into fragments.

“Fk! This was really gla.s.s?????” looking at the shattered ‘diamond’, Jiang He is dumbfounded.

Even with bad grades, the fact that diamond is one of the hardest materials in the world is pretty much known to all. If you want to process diamonds then you definitely require machines. When can man crush diamonds? Staring at the shattered ‘diamond’, Jiang He was truly dumbfounded (2).

Actually, there is no mistake, these things are gla.s.s. Gla.s.s, during the prehistoric era was very valuable since no one could craft them. Thus most of them back then are naturally formed, resulting in a very low supply and a very high price. But this isn’t the ancient ages anymore.

“How much can this sell for?? G*d d.a.m.n it, you’re fking kidding me!” Jiang Hai tosses the gla.s.s fragments in hands far away. What joke is this, it was hard enough to just get here as it is, but the only thing here a mountain of gla.s.s? Fk this sh*t.

Thinking about it just makes Jiang Hai even more angry. The original plan was sell all the jewels here, buy a piece of property in outside of China, slowly level up and pa.s.s a peaceful life. But from the looks of this, everything needs to be delayed. He probably has to go back to plant flowers. The more he thinks about it, the more frustrated he becomes. Without thinking, he raised his foot and madly kicked the ‘mountain of jewels’ in front of him.

A kick later, those gla.s.s ‘gemstones’ all shattered into bits and pieces and got kicked far away. Well as facts have proven, sometimes letting out your anger can have many benefits. Just like right now, these gla.s.s products have become his stress reliever and this ‘mountain of jewels’ is shrinking at a visible rate. And what of the dragon’s body? Alright, it already got kicked to I don’t know where.

Suddenly, his feet slipped after a ‘ge’ sound. There is something that didn’t shatter after being stepped on.

“Ahyo, what is this?” Thankfully Jiang Hai didn’t fall off the pile after the slip. Looking at where he last stepped on, there lies a reddish coloured, hexagon shaped stone the size of fist. After examining it and stepping on it, Jiang Hai can confirm, this is definitely not gla.s.s.

“Wait, there are real gemstones here?!” Thinking about it, Jiang Hai’s eye can’t help brightening. If this is the case then this trip might really be worth it. Without thinking further, the stepping experiment continued. Except this time, he is a lot more careful, slowly examining the jewels before stepping on them. If it doesn’t break under his feet, then it’s probably worth something so it gets packed up.

With this new motivation, 5 days pa.s.sed surprisingly quick. By the time Jiang Hai left the cavern, he can confirm that 99% of the pile is gla.s.s, but within that 1%, there may be gems of significant value. When he climbed out of the wetland, his bags did not shrink but grew. In them was all of this trips rewards.

After cleaning up, Jiang Hai quickly started his 2 day long return trip. In the nearest town, he took a nice long relaxing rest before boarding a plane headed to Beijing. Although he loves his hometown, Harbin, but he knows there is no big auction houses there. Whereas with the this trip’s haul, it is much safer to use the auction houses in Beijing.

When arriving in Beijing International airport, Jiang Hai suddenly thought of his wife Qi Li who works here.

“Don’t know if she signed it or not.” Jiang Hai muttered to himself. They don’t even think about you, why would you care now. Anyways hopefully she signed those doc.u.ments (3).

“Right, time to move on, me and her are on different roads and our paths are unlikely to cross. No point thinking about these things.” Jiang Hai quickly put that beautiful shadow behind him and left the airport. The following few steps were pretty simple: get on the light rails, find a hotel for the next couple days and research all the different auction houses here.

From what he found, there are two types of auction houses. The national ones and the international ones. No one trusts the national auction houses. If the items are only worth a couple of million then it is fine, but as soon as the value goes past tens of millions and beyond, then the items become very dangerous. With his current powers, if the item gets stolen then it is very likely he will either beat the sh*t out of them or even kill them. This will only bring unnecessary troubles, he might not even be able to stay in China anymore.

This is why he can only approach international auction houses. Out of all of the available auction houses, there are three big ones. The biggest of them all: Sotheby’s Auction. This auction has somewhat of a subtle relationship with China due to it auctioning some very sensitive cultural relics from the past (4). Thus was easily rejected by Jiang Hai. The second is Christy’s Auction, otherwise known as Christie’s, which was also rejected for the same reason. Then there is only the final option – Phillips.