To get rich quickly, you need to be simple and rough

The wedding night was sweet. Li Yongqiang and Dao Yulan changed into new clothes, walked around the village with candies and cigarettes, and told everyone the news of their marriage.

Li Yongqiang also invited the branch secretary, accountant, and the people from the educated youth camp to dinner. Everyone smiled and congratulated the newlyweds. The male educated youth privately said that Li Yongqiang could no longer return to the city and would have to settle down in the countryside. The female educated youth also thought Dao Yulan was quite clever, marrying a city man. Look at her new clothes today.

Li Yongqiang and Dao Yulan prepared ten pounds of meat and two tables of dishes. Everyone came to the banquet with a generous helping of one yuan and eighty cents each as gifts. The rice wine brought back by the supply and marketing cooperative was drunk with relish. They devoured such a rare feast of meat and vegetables, especially since the educated youth had only eaten meat so often after such a long time. Eating corn, rice, and pickles every day was making my stomach sour.

Secretary Yan gave a speech before the meeting: "Comrade Li Yongqiang followed our instructions and came to our Yunnan Province. He and Comrade Dao Yulan formed a revolutionary partner. In this vast world, you both have great potential. I hope you will take root in the countryside and receive re-education from the poor and lower-middle peasants. I wish you progress together!"

Secretary Yan babble'd about going out for a meeting, and everyone applauded, concluding the wedding was a success. As the guests were waiting to leave, Li Yongqiang couldn't help but smile at the empty plates.

The soup in the plates was wiped clean and eaten up, so it was a relief to wash the dishes.

Dao Yulan was tidying up the dishes and washing the dishes at home. Li Yongqiang came to the valley that Dao Yulan mentioned. This was a pile of waste materials that had been stored in the jade factory for hundreds of years. There were raw stones that had been cut into pieces, and various scraps left over from making jade. The entire valley was full of various jades, most of which were tattered and not worth mentioning.

Any green material that can be used to make bracelets or pendants has almost been sold out. White-based green and various green jadeite are very popular in this era. Once the raw stone has a little green, its value will double.

However, the high-quality jadeite that was highly praised by later generations had little market. Even if a glass-type colorless jadeite raw stone was thrown on the roadside, no one would pick it up. As for the floating flowers, black jadeite, sky blue, enchanting purple, chicken-oil yellow, and red jadeite, no one was interested in them. Only when the green color was cut out would the price skyrocket.

Li Yongqiang was not looking for these scraps, he was looking for those raw stones with good water quality but no green color when cut.

Li Yongqiang summoned the lazy lady from the space. The lazy lady held the spirit stone tightly between two palm-sized leaves. Li Yongqiang picked up the spirit stone from the two leaves and said, "Lazy lady, you are getting lazier and lazier. Look how fat you are. I will give you a chance to exercise and dig out all the rich spirit stones in this stone."

The lazy lady slid down from Li Yongqiang's wrist, took a reluctant look at the spirit stone in Li Yongqiang's hand, and as if she had made up her mind, she grew countless vines and explored down along the waste mountain.

Li Yongqiang found a piece of Mu Na raw stone that had been cut to pieces. It weighed more than a ton and was a horrible sight with a large white area. However, the cut raw stone looked like a chair. Li Yongqiang took out a bottle of Happy Fat House Water and drank it, and also took out a bag of beef jerky.

Li Yongqiang was nestled among the rough jade, enjoying a meal and a drink. An hour passed, and before him lay more than a thousand pieces of jade rough of varying sizes, all cut into fine-quality jade and "variegated" jade. Li Yongqiang put all the rough jade into his storage room.

But the lazy lady kept stretching out her leaves to touch the piece of cut black wood under Li Yongqiang's butt.

Seeing the lazy lady like this, Li Yongqiang did not dare to neglect it. He touched the raw stone with his hand. The cut surface was very delicate. He looked at the skin and there was no pine flower belt. But the sand was unusually fine. Logically, such a stone should be completely useless.

The owner of this stone was unwilling to give up and cut off a section of the stone pier, which was almost finished. Li Yongqiang wrapped his mental power around the stone and visualized its interior. Under this white stone, which was only a palm's thickness, a green ball the size of a coconut was eye-catching.

This is a genuine glass-grade imperial green. While later generations have touted various colors, jade is primarily revered for its green color. Even a mine might not yield a single piece of genuine imperial green. Even more rare is the fact that this piece of imperial green jade is free of cracks and can be made into several bracelets. The scraps can even be made into two strings of beads or several plaques.

Li Yongqiang: This is genuine jadeite, the true Mu'na Supreme Mine. No one knows what's inside until it's chopped into sifted pieces. There's an old saying in the jade industry: even gods can't tell the difference between inch-by-inch jade. This is precisely why the owner nearly chopped this rough stone into pieces, leaving the unfinished piece uncut. Little did he know, jadeite is like a naughty little girl, a moment of negligence can lead to a lifetime of loss.

Li Yongqiang put away the rough stone and planned to make a beautiful bracelet for Dao Yulan when he had time. He also made a bracelet for his mother Xu Huizhen. Such a clean and pure material without cotton is hard to come by.

Li Yongqiang just chopped a bundle of firewood and dragged it home. Dao Yulan had already cleaned the house, and his wife did the work neatly and efficiently.

Li Yongqiang took out a thousand yuan and stuffed it into his wife's hand. "You can use this money for household expenses. Our family doesn't rely on work points. Take this money and go buy some food when the brigade is short of food. I'll go talk to the Party Secretary tomorrow and get some easy work arranged for you. You can provide for the family."

Dao Yulan looked at Li Yongqiang and held his hand in hers, looking at it non-stop. "Brother, I'm easy to take care of and capable. Right now, the control is too strict near Myanmar. Let's not take any risks. If you really like that stone, wait for Grandpa Lan from the village to come back at the end of the year, and I'll take you to pick out some material. He has connections in Myanmar. This is what fate means. Stone is something that even gods can't tell. Back then, Yibu collapsed while cutting black stone. I spent 300,000 yuan on it, but I didn't see any green even after cutting it into slices."

Li Yongqiang felt a sense of déjà vu when he heard about this stone: "Yulan, can you tell me more about what happened to Yibu back then?"

Dao Yulan's face was filled with melancholy. "Back then, I, Yibu, was a Bolang under Zhao Meng. I was very trusted by Zhao Meng and was in charge of all the jade business in Zhao Meng's hands. Back then, Yibu and his team took a fancy to a piece of black-skinned stone from Mu Na. It weighed several thousand kilograms and was covered with pine-flowered python stripes. The stone had a fine, oily surface and looked like a perfectly ripe piece. Yibu and his team bought the stone and began polishing it. As soon as they polished a cut, green appeared."

Dao Yulan took a sip of the Pu'er tea Li Yongqiang had brewed and continued, "This is a huge increase in price. Someone offered 500,000 yuan for this piece of material. My grandfather's greed got the better of him, so he continued polishing the stone and produced another palm-sized piece of green jade. At this time, someone was already offering 1 million yuan for this stone."

Li Yongqiang: "What happened to the stone later? Was it cut?"