Chapter 3595 — So It Can Be Done
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
"You've done well for your first day, junior brother—tsk, tsk. To gather over forty-two catties on your very first day here, all waste jade though it surely is, still counts as quite good." One of the guards waved the ledger in his hand at Wei Zhao. Cooped up year in and year out in this dead mining zone where he saw no one, the man was starved for company; now that a new face had finally turned up, he was simply making talk to relieve his own boredom. "You've dug up a fair few of those seemingly-good jades too. Even if they're all waste, surface-good jade like that—gather ten thousand pieces and you can trade them for one good spirit jade! Come to think of it, there's still hope for you!"
Ten thousand pieces! If Wei Zhao had no cheat of his own, wouldn't he work himself to death?
Wei Zhao's sharp eyes caught sight of the ledger. At the top of the page was written his own name, below it a string of figures for the seemingly-good jades, and at the very bottom a striking number circled in emphasis: forty-two catties, three taels. That was already the figure after deducting the weight of the basket—the final, accurate record on his account.
Just as he had guessed. There was no total for pure waste jade, only the overall weight of all the jade. And that, for Wei Zhao, left a great deal of room to maneuver.
"Ha ha, it's nothing but luck, really! Senior brother, this is my first time here and I know none of the rules. Could you tell me how the hand-in works?" Seeing that the guard seemed fairly good-natured and approachable, Wei Zhao ventured to ask.
To be honest, though Wei Zhao was confident he had given nothing away, now that the final test was truly at hand, his heart was thumping a little. It was like a student cheating on an exam: even if he was not caught red-handed by the invigilator, once the paper was handed in he would still worry whether he had left some slip on it—copying the other fellow's mistakes exactly, say, and the like.
The guard looked at Wei Zhao, reflected that he had nothing better to do anyway, and said with a smile, "The hand-in's simple enough. You hand over that basket of spirit jade you dug, I hand over this ledger of mine, and after that there's nothing more for us to do but stand by and watch. There's a fellow at the storehouse whose job is to weigh your spirit jade all over again. So long as the number isn't too far off from the forty-two catties three taels I've marked here, there's no problem."
"Does it normally come out different?" Wei Zhao asked, narrowing his eyes.
"Of course it does. The same basket of jade weighed by different people will come out different every time, and my scales here are crude besides—nothing like the precision of the big scales at the storehouse. But generally, so long as the difference is within five taels, it's counted as normal," the guard replied.
Wei Zhao nodded thoughtfully. A spirit jade of average size weighed at least a catty, so if the discrepancy stayed within five taels, that meant it was surely down to weighing error—enough to rule out any suspicion of concealed spirit jades.
Besides, once the jade fell loose it was taken up by the guards and placed in the basket, which ruled out all the more any chance of a digger absorbing some of the energy inside before turning it in.