Chapter 233: Afraid You’ll Starve to Death
Desmond Donovan suppressed the upward curl of his lips. He cleared his throat and said, "Well then, help us get the rest of it out. Let’s see if this thing is actually worth anything."
Since Desmond Donovan had said so, Master Keane didn’t press the issue and continued to work on the stone in his hands.
However, he was far more cautious than before. He didn’t dare continue making aggressive cuts with the grinder, instead grinding down little by little along the line where the green was showing.
This process was undoubtedly time-consuming and laborious, especially since, just as Arabella Donovan had predicted earlier, this raw stone was much larger than the one cut at the auction house.
All in all, it took Master Keane over two hours to extract the entire piece of jade.
"This..." Master Keane gazed at the raw jade on the table. It was the size of a large plate and impressively thick. He sighed in amazement, "The young miss’s luck is incredible. Whether it’s the color, texture, or translucency, this stone is top-grade. Its purity is also extremely high, with almost negligible impurities. More importantly, the whole piece is so large, and..."
It was clear Master Keane was feeling conflicted. Uncovering a treasure was certainly exciting, and unearthing such a magnificent one was a source of pride. But the crucial point was that this rough stone had already yielded one rare piece of jade. Now, it had produced another massive piece of premium green jade with delicate color, mature texture, and high clarity.
All of this made Master Keane, who had handled all sorts of jade for many years, want to cry out that it was impossible. He felt as if his years of experience and professional knowledge had been completely overturned, rendered useless.
Dennis Donovan, who was a longtime friend of his, could tell what Master Keane was thinking just by looking at him and felt a pang of sympathy.
Trying to talk science with his little grand-niece was a sure way to suffer. After all, her very existence wasn’t very scientific.
Although Caspian Rhodes had long guessed that any treasure Arabella Donovan set her sights on wouldn’t be bad, he was still surprised to see such a large piece of jade. It inevitably made him think of Arabella’s master, who, worried she wouldn’t have enough to eat, had specially prepared a large auction house for her to just sit back and collect money from.
Clearly, the master had worried himself sick over his young apprentice. It wasn’t enough to just stuff an entire business into her hands; he had to stuff treasures, too. One raw stone worth hundreds of millions wasn’t enough; he had to give her two, each one bigger than the last, with complete disregard for the laws of nature and the universe.
However...
Caspian Rhodes silently glanced at Arabella Donovan, who had already scurried over to the table to inspect the massive, glistening raw stone up close.
’A piece this big, and with spiritual marrow inside... I can have Miss Kerr and her team cut it up to make a lot of jewelry. The leftover material can be made into rings, earrings, pendants, and stuff. A tiny piece can be divided into many portions. Perfect, perfect. Now everyone’s gifts are taken care of.’
Desmond Donovan: "..." ’This little spendthrift! The moment she gets her hands on something good, she only thinks about her own people and never for herself. If you sold this, you could buy a whole truckload of gifts!’
Caspian Rhodes: "..." ’I knew it!’
Frustrating as it was, if Arabella wasn’t this kind of person, he wouldn’t value her and dote on her so much.
Desmond Donovan stewed in his own conflicting feelings for a moment, then pulled out his phone and sent a message.
A short while later, Arabella Donovan’s phone chimed. She took it out and saw it was a fund transfer notification.
When she focused on the transfer amount, her eyes went wide.
"Ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, ten thousands, hundred thousands, millions, ten millions..." Fearing she’d misread, Arabella Donovan counted each and every zero. When she finally confirmed she hadn’t made a mistake, her face went blank for a second.
After spacing out for a moment, she suddenly snapped back to reality and turned to look at Desmond Donovan. "Grand-uncle, did you send me this money?"
For Arabella’s convenience, the black card had been transferred to her name overnight. But it seemed the only person who would transfer such a large sum into it right now was the wealthy old man standing before her.
"Yes, I did."
"Why would you suddenly transfer money to me? And a hundred million at that..."
"...Afraid you’ll starve to death."
Arabella Donovan: "???"
’Mr. Rhodes was right. Grand-uncle must have taken the wrong medicine.’
Desmond Donovan was dumbfounded for a moment, then decisively redirected his anger toward Caspian Rhodes, his gaze looking like he wanted to eat him alive.
’You rotten kid! Nothing is even close to being official yet, and you’re already bad-mouthing me to my precious grand-niece behind my back. Just you wait, I’ll deal with you later!’
The "betrayed" Caspian Rhodes: "..." ’A miscalculation. I knew I shouldn’t have run my mouth just now!’
"The quality of this stone is indeed excellent." Guinevere Preston had come out of the house at some point and was now standing by the table, looking at the completely extracted raw jade.
"Grandmother, do you like this color of jade? I can have someone make a pair of earrings for you later, how about that?"
Guinevere Preston smiled and patted Arabella’s hand, which was linked through her arm. She shook her head. "No, thank you. This color of jade is a bit too vibrant. It doesn’t suit an old woman like me. You should save it for the elders of your mother’s generation."
Seeing that she genuinely wasn’t interested in this particular stone, Arabella didn’t press the issue. Besides, she had already set aside better ones for them.
"A stone this large will probably be inconvenient to process. Have you thought about who you’ll have help you with it?"
Arabella Donovan nodded. "I know an auntie—Miss Kerr. Her family runs a jewelry company. They have a special team for processing this kind of thing, and they can even help with designs and so on. Their pricing is fair, too. Most importantly, as long as I don’t want them to, they won’t breathe a word about this to anyone."
"The one who gave you the invitation to the auction?"
"Yes."
"As long as you have a plan. And don’t worry about people finding out about this stone. This world is full of thousands of strange and wondrous things; not everything can be explained by common sense. If someone really asks, just say you don’t know and let them guess for themselves."
Guinevere Preston’s words had a double meaning. On reflection, Arabella’s choice to have these raw stones containing spiritual marrow made into jewelry for her relatives and close friends was not a bad thing.
After all, these items had a special function. Giving them to people she knew inside and out would at least prevent them from circulating elsewhere and drawing the attention of ill-intentioned people to Arabella.
However, her words did remind Arabella of something. Although the spiritual marrow jewelry she was giving to her relatives wouldn’t be as potent as the ones for Guinevere Preston and the others, she still needed to come up with a more plausible reason, just in case.
’I’ve got it! I’ll just say that after I bought this jewelry, I took it to a nearby temple to be blessed by the gods and consecrated. Everyone loves going to temples to ask for peace charms anyway, and the effect is pretty much the same. When the time comes, people can decide for themselves whether it’s the jewelry that’s effective or the consecrated jewelry. The end of science is metaphysics, after all. Let them guess for themselves.’
The three who already knew the truth: "..." ’You’re a real genius, you are!’