Chapter 731: A Big Fortune Can Be Made Even in Winter

Jia Tianlong turned his head, still unwilling to give up, and asked Li Long:

"Little Li, can you transfer this jade to me? I want to invite it back home to worship it often. I reckon if I worship it often, having a son will definitely be no problem."

Li Long shook his head; matters of principle were not open for discussion.

"One hundred thousand?" Jia Tianlong gritted his teeth. Although he had been in the medicinal herb business for the past two years, to be honest, he had made quite a bit of money. After all, not many people could navigate this line, and not everyone knew how good the medicinal herbs in Northern Xinjiang were. But making money required building connections, and in just two years, his accumulation was still somewhat insufficient.

So, being able to produce one hundred thousand in cash was his limit.

He had quite a bit of stock tied up.

Li Long still shook his head.

Jia Tianlong shook his head as if deflated.

"Tianlong, it is already very good that we could have the fate to meet this jade, be able to conceive a child, and be able to come over to worship it. We should be content," Qiao Fengzhi gently persuaded her husband.

"Yes, yes, yes, Sister-in-law is right. Let's go, let's go inside, it's cold outside," Li Long said hurriedly.

It was indeed quite cold outside, and Jia Tianlong and Qiao Fengzhi followed Li Long into the master bedroom.

Sister Yang was in the bedroom with the two children. Seeing people enter, she came out to greet them.

Jia Tianlong knew Sister Yang. Li Long introduced her to Qiao Fengzhi. Qiao Fengzhi had heard the sounds of the two children and, after taking off her coat in the room, wanted to see them.

"Warm up first. You just came in from outside and have cold air on you," Sister Yang reminded her. "The babies are small and cannot catch a chill."

Li Long was quite happy inside; Sister Yang was still quite meticulous with the two children. Actually, if Sister Yang hadn't reminded her, he would have said it too.

A blush appeared on Qiao Fengzhi's face, and she felt a bit ashamed. On one hand, she was eager to see the children; having heard that Li Long's family had twins, and having been married for so many years without children, she liked little children very much and was urgently wanting to see them.

On the other hand, she had never taken care of children and didn't know much about these things.

Sister Yang didn't mean to blame her either. It was normal for people who hadn't given birth to or raised children not to know. She was actually curious before that Li Long knew more than even Gu Xiaoxia.

Of course, after knowing the family backgrounds of both sides, she guessed that Li Long had his sister-in-law's guidance, while Gu Xiaoxia's mother was gone, no one told her, so it was normal that she knew less.

Jia Tianlong and Li Long chatted about recent events and asked Li Long if he had received anything since he left.

Li Long said with a smile:

"There is some, but not much. I received a bear gallbladder and some Codonopsis. Do you want to take a look?"

"Yes, yes, yes, definitely!" As soon as Jia Tianlong heard there was a bear gallbladder, he became excited immediately. "Our area is not like the old forests in the Northeast; bear gallbladders are very rare, and it's really not easy to get one. Where is it? Let's go, let's go, let's go take a look!"

Jia Tianlong had just sat down, and Li Long had just poured him tea, but he stood up immediately.

Having been here before, Jia Tianlong knew the room where Li Long kept things wasn't here, and as he spoke, he wanted to walk out.

After walking two steps, Jia Tianlong stopped again and said to his wife, Qiao Fengzhi:

"Fengzhi, it's cold outside, you just sit here. Later, when you're warm, look at the two little children with Sister Yang, and give the gifts you brought to the children. Let's also get some of the Li family's good fortune, haha."

Li Long then stood up and walked out with Jia Tianlong.

During the day, the temperature outside was around minus ten degrees. It was still early winter, not yet the time when it was freezing cold and water turned to ice.

Li Long took Jia Tianlong to the east wing room. He opened the door to the second wing room, and after entering, he took two bags for Jia Tianlong, which were filled with sun-dried Codonopsis.

However, Jia Tianlong didn't look at the bags after taking them; his gaze fell on the bear gallbladder.

The bear gallbladder wasn't considered large; after all, the bear Li Long had hunted wasn't big itself. But looking at the quality of the gallbladder, it was very good. Jia Tianlong pointed to the bear gallbladder on the roof and said:

"I see it's already air-dried, shall we take it down and have a look?"

Li Long smiled, used a pole to pick the rope tied at the mouth of the bear gallbladder, took it down, and handed it to Jia Tianlong to look at.

After Jia Tianlong got the bear gallbladder, he began to examine it carefully.

Although this bear gallbladder wasn't large, its color looked really good. He brought the gallbladder close to his nose and smelled it; the scent was also very authentic.

"Are you selling this bear gallbladder? If you are, I'll take it for one thousand."

"If you want to give me money, then of course I'll take it," Li Long said with a smile.

He guessed that the real price of this bear gallbladder should be less than one thousand, but since Jia Tianlong was trying to curry favor with him, why not give him this face?

Even now, Li Long felt that this was just a coincidence, but it was really too coincidental.

First, Jia Tianlong was very interested in that piece of jade, feeling that whether he could have children depended on it.

He didn't get it, just held it and touched it, and then she got pregnant after going back?

It was metaphysical to an excessive degree.

But Qiao Fengzhi really did get pregnant, and Jia Tianlong naturally attributed part of the credit to the stone.

Li Long was even thinking, would people run to his courtyard to worship the stone after this news spread?

Although people talked about science at this time, to be honest, there were plenty of people who believed in metaphysics.

It looked like Jia Tianlong was deeply convinced. Li Long even suspected that when Qiao Fengzhi gave birth to the child next year, and the child could be brought out, he would bring the child over to worship this jade.

Hey, was this how the most primitive worship came about?

"This Codonopsis is also not bad." Jia Tianlong picked up a piece of Codonopsis to look at, then broke off a piece and chewed it, saying, "The taste is very authentic. How much of this is there?"

"Seventeen kilograms," Li Long said. "What price are you buying at?"

"Thirty yuan," Jia Tianlong said. "Wild Codonopsis of this size is rare. In our Gansu area, the smaller ones I buy are twenty-something yuan, and now people are already planting this."

"Fine."

Li Long naturally had no objections.

Jia Tianlong took off the black bag he was carrying, preparing to pay.

When he lowered his head, he saw a stone on the ground, and he bent down to pick it up.

"Yo, Little Li, you have quite a lot of jade here, just picking one up is a piece of Mahe nephrite..."

Jia Tianlong then discovered that there were quite a few nephrites of various sizes piled up in the corner of the wing room.

Some were of average quality, the kind with "fly specks," and some were of good quality, looking very pure and beautiful.

Li Long smiled and said:

"I spend half of my time in the mountains every year. There are many good things in our mountains; some are picked up, and some are collected."

"Sell me a few pieces? You won't sell the big ones, but these small ones are fine, right?" Jia Tianlong felt that it was all inherited anyway, all things that came out of the same Jade Mountain. If he couldn't get the big jade, getting a few small pieces of jade shouldn't be a problem, right? Taking them back would also be a memento, wouldn't it?

"These aren't cheap." What Jia Tianlong was holding was a relatively pure piece of Mahe nephrite.

Li Long had a dozen or so pieces of such nephrite. Later, he basically didn't sell them anymore; he kept collecting them, including Hetian jade.

He planned to store them until around the first decade of the new century, when the price would be very high, and then sell them.

He himself wasn't very interested in jade artifacts; he just wanted to make money. As for what price they could rise to later, he didn't have much of an idea. He was just thinking that by then, cotton would be planted on a large scale, and it would be machine-picked cotton.

A cotton picker cost two or three million. With his current speed of making money, he definitely wouldn't be able to save that much cash by then. Selling a portion of these jades, he believed that among the raw materials he had in hand, there must be top-quality mutton-fat jade.

The kind that cost hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands per gram.

Sell them, exchange them for a cotton picker, and then he would be the most handsome master in the whole village, the whole township, and even the whole county.

Despite having lived two lives, Li Long's thinking was still that of a traditional farmer; no matter how he did things, it was all about working the land.

Of course, the main point was that he himself still hoped to be able to take root in this land.

In his previous life, when watching short videos, it wasn't that he hadn't seen those digital currencies, stock speculation, and the like, but at the time he didn't pay much attention to them, feeling that those things were too far away from him.

It was still solid work on the land and in the mountains that fit his identity.

The jade stored in the wing room was mainly nephrite. Although some didn't have black spots, for Li Long, they could be sold or not sold.

Since Jia Tianlong wanted them, Li Long didn't refuse and let him pick.

!

"Hey, you have more skins here... Yo, there are bear skins and snow leopard skins! These are different from last time, were they newly hunted?" Jia Tianlong saw the skins piled in another corner and asked.

"Yeah, these were collected when the herdsmen returned from the seasonal migration." Li Long didn't hide it either.

"It's only you, having a good relationship with the herdsmen, who can collect such good things. When we go into the mountains, they don't even let us see them, let alone sell them." Jia Tianlong also admired Li Long's ability.

In the end, including the bear gallbladder, Codonopsis, and jade, he bought things worth ten thousand from Li Long.

The main thing was the jade. He picked a dozen or so pieces of jade, the big ones being seven or eight kilograms, and the small ones being one or two kilograms. Among them was a piece with black spots, but the shape was very beautiful, like a big peach. Jia Tianlong liked it quite a bit and took it away too.

Qiao Fengzhi felt her whole body warm up, so she stood up.

Over there, Sister Yang heard the sound, lifted the door curtain, and smiled, beckoning to Qiao Fengzhi.

Qiao Fengzhi hurried to walk over there, and when she reached the door, she softened her steps, afraid of startling the children.

Entering the bedroom, she saw the two children sitting on a specially made wooden bed playing. Seeing someone enter, both children looked toward Qiao Fengzhi, then smiled at her. After smiling, they played together again. Mingming and Haohao hadn't been sitting for long, and soon they lay down again, one pulling on the little sock on his own foot, and the other directly hugging his foot and stuffing it into his mouth.

"How old are they?"

"Five months," Sister Yang said with a smile. "They are quite sturdy."

"Can they sit at five months? These children... really amazing!" Qiao Fengzhi exclaimed. She walked to the side of the wooden bed, watching the two children playing by themselves.

Mingming and Haohao seemed to know someone was watching them; they looked at Qiao Fengzhi, then looked at Sister Yang, and then smiled and went back to playing by themselves. This time, the two children were face to face, one pulling the other's hand, the other tugging at the other's clothes, trying hard to pull the other toward themselves.

"Really fun!" Qiao Fengzhi watched and exclaimed.

She had seen many children back home, but she had really never seen a pair as well-behaved as this.

"They are very easy to raise," Sister Yang said with a smile. "Most of the time they just play by themselves; if they are hungry, they call out a couple of times, they don't cry or make a fuss much."

"I hope my child will be as easy to raise in the future." Although she hadn't given birth to a child, Qiao Fengzhi knew that raising children was hard work.

The two in front of her were really different.

She took two small gold locks out of her bag and placed them beside the two children respectively.

Qiao Fengzhi originally wanted to put them on the children, but she was afraid her hands were clumsy and would hurt them.

"This..." Sister Yang didn't know whether she should accept them.

Jia Tianlong bringing his wife over was mainly to worship that piece of jade. Qiao Fengzhi's inner desire was mainly to see these twins.

After seeing them, she hoped that if her child could be like one of these two, it would be great.

When Li Long and Jia Tianlong returned, Sister Yang told them about this.

"Accept them." Li Long knew this was the sincerity of the two people, and they also wanted to borrow the good fortune of his children, so he accepted them.

In the end, Li Long drove them to the county guesthouse—Jia Tianlong was carrying so many things, it wasn't easy for him to leave.

"You are selling those skins too, right?" Jia Tianlong asked Li Long at the end.

"Yeah, I'm selling them."

"Then don't be in a hurry. When I have time, I'll give Old Zhao a call. If he knows, he will definitely come over. Those bear skins and snow leopard skins are not ordinary—Old Zhao has been collecting snow leopard skins; there are many people who want this stuff!"

Li Long indicated he understood.

Returning to the large courtyard, after Li Long turned off the engine, he went over to the jade stone. Seeing the bronze incense burner and the three plates of offerings were still there, that incense burner didn't look like an ordinary object; it should have some age to it.

Xiao Hei was jumping up and down in the dog kennel. Li Long then collected the three plates of things, put the incense burner further inside the brick platform, and only then went to untie Xiao Hei.

As soon as Xiao Hei was free, it immediately darted out, running quickly in the courtyard, and even plunged headfirst into the snow pile piled up in the flower field.

Obviously, it still didn't like being tied up.

Li Long originally wanted to collect that incense burner too, but later thought, forget it.

Maybe Jia Tianlong would suddenly return, and if he saw this thing missing, it wouldn't be easy to explain.

He was still a relatively thin-skinned person; people treated him well, so he couldn't do things that would make people lose face.

At dinner, Li Long told Gu Xiaoxia and Gu Bo Yuan about Jia Tianlong and his wife coming over. He didn't mention selling the bear gallbladder and jade. Anyway, these things were all brought back by him, and Gu Xiaoxia didn't care much; selling them was fine.

Gu Xiaoxia never asked him about money either. The seven thousand yuan from last time, Gu Xiaoxia had stored and hadn't touched, it was earning interest. She was also quietly saving her own salary.

This time, it was mainly because the matter was relatively metaphysical, so Li Long just treated it as gossip.

"You mean, his wife is really pregnant?" Gu Xiaoxia also felt it was a bit unbelievable. "This is too coincidental, right?"

Gu Bo Yuan didn't speak, as if he was just listening to it as a joke.

Sister Yang listened and pursed her lips. After eating, Li Long and Gu Xiaoxia went to the bedroom. After Gu Bo Yuan returned, Sister Yang finished cleaning the kitchen and went to look at that jade stone again.

There really was an incense burner beside the jade. Sister Yang didn't really think about worshipping anything; she just thought, could this thing really be spiritual? If it was spiritual, did she have to offer incense every day?

Regarding these things, Sister Yang was even more superstitious than Li Long and the others.

Regardless of whether it was spiritual or not, being respectful was always fine.

A few days later, another guest came to Li Long's large courtyard.

This time, it was Zhao Hui who came. (End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 732 =====