I changed the world.

"Brother Fuyuan." As soon as Zhang Jing entered Terminal 5 of the airport, he immediately spotted Jin Wang, who was wearing sunglasses and had a very conspicuous figure. He walked up to him, cupped his hands, and greeted him.

"It's Hongjian. Here, this is your plane ticket. You'll be boarding soon, so keep it safe." Jin Wang smiled and returned the greeting with a cupped hand. He then rummaged in his pocket, pulled out a few plane tickets, and handed one to Zhang Jing.

Zhang Jing was the first to arrive besides Jin Wang. Seeing that the others had not yet arrived, he sat down and chatted casually with Jin Wang.

Besides himself, Jin Wang brought two other people with him this time. One was a middle-aged man named Chen Jian, who was said to be very knowledgeable in jade appraisal, and the other was a young man named Jin Luo, who was said to be Jin Wang's nephew. The two men were sitting on the other side, looking after Jin Wang's luggage.

Chapter 101 Summoning

In addition, Jin Wang had contacted a travel agency in Linzhou specializing in Southwest China tours beforehand, and the group would be traveling as a tour group. Therefore, a female tour guide surnamed Wang would also be traveling with them to coordinate the itinerary and accommodations.

About half an hour later, everyone had arrived. In addition to Ma Bo and Li Xuezhe, whom Zhang Jing had met before, there was also a jade merchant named Lü Yangzhong, courtesy name Ziyue. He was also a well-off middle-aged man, said to be a famous jade jewelry merchant in Southeast China. He had also come to Zhaozhong at Jin Wang's invitation.

Zhang Jing then greeted the others one by one. These people all brought their companions or attendants, but Zhang Jing was the only one who went alone. As a result, the number of people in the group increased to 14.

....................................

The group's flight took off at 09:15 and flew directly to Guizhou Tianmen Airport in Nanzhao. After about five hours of flight, the flight landed at Guizhou Tianmen Airport at 14:03.

Since lunch was provided on the plane, the group didn't stay in Guizhou for long after landing and went directly to Zhaozhong City by long-distance bus. The journey from Guizhou to Zhaozhong is about 650 kilometers, and the route is mostly mountainous, with long stretches of winding mountain roads in poor condition, making the trip quite arduous for the group.

....................................

Driving on the bumpy mountain road, the bus swayed up and down like a ship sailing on waves. Zhang Jing looked out the window and saw cliffs that looked as if they had been carved by a knife and axe.

The road here is not wide, barely wide enough for two cars to pass each other. Perhaps because he often drives this road, the driver didn't seem to care about the road conditions. He drove very fast, speeding through the mountain road at an almost drifting speed.

This made everyone in the car feel like their lives were hanging by a thread...

The car was filled with a lingering sour smell, because several passengers had vomited along the way due to the bumpy ride.

"Driver, could you please slow down a bit? We're not in a hurry..." a passenger sitting at the front of the bus near the driver's seat couldn't help but ask.

"It's nothing! It's nothing! Don't worry!" The driver had a heavy southwestern accent and gestured behind him a couple of times, showing no intention of slowing down.

After traveling for a while, just as the bus turned a corner on a mountain road, Zhang Jing suddenly sensed something, frowned, and looked up. The next moment, several exclamations came from behind the vehicle.

Everyone looked back and saw that several rocks, each taller than a person, had indeed broken off from the mountainside and fallen onto the mountain road behind them, kicking up some dust. Fortunately, the vehicles had already passed and were not affected.

The driver was clearly experienced in this situation; he glanced at the rearview mirror and stepped on the gas, not slowing down but speeding up to quickly pass through the section of road.

..............................

When we arrived in Zhaozhong, it was already around 22 p.m. Since it was on the way, the bus stopped directly in front of the hotel. When we got off the bus, even though many of the passengers had traveled the mountain roads of southwest China before, they all seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.

"Twenty years ago, when I traveled the Lishan route, the road conditions were even worse than they are now. In these mountains, a road like this is considered pretty good..." Li Xuezhe chuckled and scolded his listless young companion beside him.

Zhaozhong is a small city that mainly focuses on border trade. In recent years, due to local policy support, it has also become an important channel for jade to enter the country, taking away some of Lishan's share in the jade rough stone trade.

Jin Wang had booked a five-story, two-star hotel, one of the more upscale hotels in the small town, named "Cuiyuan Hotel." After checking in, everyone moved in, and their rooms were all on the third floor. Zhang Jing had a single room, which he found fairly clean.

Nothing more was said that night. The next morning, the group left the hotel. The travel agency had arranged a local minibus beforehand, and the driver would accompany the tour group around the clock for the next few days. Before boarding, the female tour guide earnestly reminded everyone repeatedly not to go out alone and to stay with the group for all activities to ensure safety.

The local infrastructure was very poor. Only the main roads were paved with asphalt, while many roads were still made of rammed earth. As a result, most of the cars seen here were dusty and gray. Zhang Jing looked out the window of the minibus and saw that most of the cars on the road were old models from Japan. In this world, Japanese cars were synonymous with low-end cars and were much cheaper than local car brands in Dazhao.

From time to time, you can see some young people with unfriendly faces squatting or sitting by the roadside. Most of these people are thin, with hair like dry straw, wearing old clothes that don't fit them at all, and many of them are barefoot.

You can often see beggars by the roadside, usually with an old bowl in front of them, staring blankly at passersby.

Zhang Jing noticed that a high percentage of the people here smoked; some held cigarettes, while others smoked from pipes. Before arriving, Zhang Jing already knew that Nanzhao was the best tobacco-growing region in the Great Zhao Kingdom, and also one of the main areas for illegal entry and cultivation by foreign forces.

The minibus stopped in front of a huge site in the city. Several simple steel-structured buildings, resembling a large factory, were erected there. They were clearly newly built and surrounded by simple corrugated steel walls.

A huge banner hangs high on a steel structure in the center: The First Zhaozhong International Jade and Jewelry Exhibition.

The minibus stopped in the pre-marked parking area, where many other vehicles were already parked. Everyone disembarked, and the driver and tour guide waited on the bus until everyone returned.

The participants first went to a row of tables outside the venue to obtain their admission passes. All participants had registered through the industry association beforehand, and at this point, they only needed to show their ID cards, pay the fees, and obtain their admission passes.

A 200 yuan entrance fee is required to visit the public auction. If you want to participate in the bidding, you also need to pay a 5 yuan deposit, which will be refunded after the public auction ends.

Jin Wang had helped Zhang Jing register. After paying the admission fee and deposit, Zhang Jing successfully obtained an admission pass and a trade fair procedure manual.

As Zhang Jing followed the crowd inside, he looked down at the explanation in his hand. This public auction would last for six days. The first three days were for viewing the bids, and all the bids displayed on these three days were sealed bids. The fourth and fifth days were for opening the bids, and on the last day, a wave of open bids would be released.

Since everyone was buying raw materials for their own companies, the team members exchanged ideas after entering the venue and decided to split up and inspect the goods separately.

Jin Wang kindly asked Zhang Jing if he wanted to join them. Considering it was Zhang Jing's first time participating in such an activity and he had no idea about the prices, Zhang Jing agreed.

Today is the first day of the public auction. All the jadeite rough stones are being bid on via sealed bid. Large quantities of jadeite rough stones are neatly arranged on the ground, supported by felt. Some are sold individually, while others are sold as a bundle. Each lot has its own unique number.

The huge venue was densely packed with raw jade stones. According to the brochures they held, there were nearly ten thousand raw jade stones to be sold in this venue.

"It seems Zhaozhong really wants to make a splash. He's gathered so much material; he's definitely made the right choice this time," Jin Wang said, rubbing his hands together, looking quite excited.

The group walked along the passageway cleared between the rough stones. Although it was still early, a large number of visitors had already begun to flock in, showing that the price increase of jade in recent years had attracted quite a few interested people.

Zhang Jing held a small notebook in his hand, following behind Fatty Jin, listening to his constant comments on the materials, which was also a way for him to accumulate some experience.

It took Zhang Jing more than an hour to briefly tour the two venues, and he gained a general understanding of the raw materials.

Of the raw materials available today, about one-tenth are high-end materials, about 20% are mid-range materials, and the rest are relatively inexpensive low-end materials. These low-end materials are mostly sold in bulk, with a few pieces per batch.

Of course, this doesn't mean that high-end materials are always good; it's not impossible to cut out a piece of garbage. And occasionally, a top-quality piece can be found among those seemingly worthless materials. This depends not only on the buyer's discerning eye but also, to a large extent, on luck.

Most of the rough stones in this public auction were semi-rough stones, with windows already cut into them or sections already opened to reveal some of the inner stone. These stones accounted for at least two-thirds of the total. Some were even cut into several pieces, making them semi-transparent stones.

Of course, such materials, if they perform well, are generally not cheap. According to Jin Wang, the top lot in previous public auctions usually came from such semi-gambling materials.

In fact, Zhang Jing had already noticed that after looking around, Jin Wang was generally focusing his attention on the semi-rough jade pieces. Zhang Jing understood this well; after all, the risk of semi-rough jade pieces was much lower than that of fully rough jade pieces. Jin Wang was a jade merchant, not a gambler, and controlling risk was very important to him.

However, for Zhang Jing, it was different; he decided to focus on all the gambling information.

So, Zhang Jing made an excuse that he had taken a fancy to a few pieces of material and wanted to take a closer look, and then parted ways with Jin Wang.

Zhang Jing wandered around the area again, and with the help of True Fire Refining Eyes, he finally identified three rough stones: two large and one small.

In fact, the two largest pieces of rough jadeite among the three are quite eye-catching in the entire site, simply because of their size. One of them is over a meter tall and weighs 5.3 tons; the other is even larger, standing more than a meter tall and weighing 8.6 tons. These two large pieces of rough jadeite are among the largest in the entire site.

The 5.3-ton rough jadeite was an old material from the Mugan mine. It was rectangular in shape. Although Zhang Jing did not know much about rough jadeite before, he had done his homework before coming here and had a basic understanding of some common knowledge about rough jadeite, such as its origin.

Muk Gan is the earliest mining site in Bago, a historically famous pit. The high-quality jade produced there is known for its fine crystals, good texture, high transparency, and rich color, which makes it more expensive than jade from other sources.

The piece that Zhang Jing had his eye on was a typical old piece with a black, misty, sandy skin, but it was covered with a lot of moldy pine flowers.

These moldy spots are scattered quite widely, like stars scattered everywhere, and it is precisely because of this that they greatly detract from the quality of this piece of material.

This piece of jade, marked B1-2186, wasn't cheap; the starting price was 150 million. Under Zhang Jingzhen's Fire-Refining Eyes' observation, its interior was a condensed ball of white light. About a quarter of this ball of white light had some gray mist swirling around it, but the rest was clean white light, pure and bright.

The other piece of material that Zhang Jing had his eye on was a piece of yellow-red sandy jade from Madachang. Although Madachang is not a traditional old production area with a long history, it is a well-known source of good jade and has become extremely popular in recent years.

The appearance of this piece of jade also has some problems, namely, the presence of many small cracks. This is a huge drawback, as the saying goes, "It's not the large cracks that are scary, but the small cracks," because small cracks are very prone to change, varying in size and depth, making them difficult to predict.

In addition, another problem with this piece of material is that it has several punctures, which can penetrate into the stone and cause great damage.

These are obvious flaws, like lice on a bald man's head; even a novice like Zhang Jing can see them. As for other problems, Zhang Jing has no idea.

Under Zhang Jing's secret observation, this large piece of material was found to be no less impressive than the previous one. Except for a few spots corresponding to the moss, where some grayish energy lingered, it was not deep. The huge interior of the material displayed a bright white light.

The starting bid for this rough stone, numbered B0-4521, is 213 million, slightly higher than the previous one.