Chapter 247: Chapter 185: 300,000 Tons of Jadeite Rough Stones, 1,200 Kilograms of Gold

In a place like Northern Myanmar, the average daily income is below one US dollar. Yet in this mining district’s tent shops, a single injection costs one US dollar, and a slightly larger one costs two. Compared to life elsewhere, this was still considered getting by.

And because of the proximity to the source, these "drugs" were cheaper here.

While Li Xiang was scouting the area, he discovered many of these "tent shops." After all, there were far too many Scavengers and miners here.

In a place like this, there was no other form of entertainment. Besides scavenging for ore, the only thing to do was to "enjoy" drugs in a crude shack.

Consequently, AIDS was also rampant.

With a daily income of less than one US dollar, and a single injection costing one to two, it meant that all the value they created with their lives was harvested by the drugs.

They used drugs to control the miners and the general populace. In the end, all the money flowed into the pockets of a select few.

Li Xiang’s goal on this trip was to harvest those very pockets.

He had finished scouting during the day. When he returned after 10 PM, the mining was still in full swing. On the steep "trash" heaps in the distance, Scavengers wearing headlamps worked tirelessly, looking incredibly diligent.

Wearing headlamps and wielding small pickaxes, they dug furiously through the mine tailings, unafraid of the dirt or exhaustion. Their only fear was failing to find the jadeite fragments the mining operation had missed.

But something like that really came down to luck.

There were certainly fragments to be found, but not many. How could any treasures be left in tailings that had been sifted through time and time again?

It was basically impossible to find a large piece of jadeite. Even if they did, it would just be snatched away by others or confiscated by the mine’s guards.

Some people managed to find small, worthless pebbles of it and exchange them at the market for a little money, but most people toiled all day for nothing.

Was it because they weren’t hardworking enough?

No.

Was it because they didn’t want to do anything else?

No, that wasn’t it either.

The bobbing headlamps, swaying with the Scavengers’ every move, looked like twinkling stars from a distance. As for their dream of getting rich overnight, it was just as distant and unreachable as those stars.

Clad head-to-toe in his Black Mountain Profound Armor, Li Xiang vanished in a flash, reappearing at a Jadeite Rough Stone storage area he had scouted earlier that day.

It was an open-air depot covered by a simple roof, but it was surrounded by dense barbed-wire and electric fences. There were also dozens of heavily armed guards and three dogs. No ordinary person could possibly sneak inside.

Li Xiang unleashed a continuous barrage of Cold Ice Sword Qi, killing all the guards and dogs on site. The dogs died before they could even bark a warning.

His Cold Ice Sword Qi Inscription hadn’t been upgraded since he first acquired it, and its "reserves" were limited. He could fire about sixty blasts at once, after which it would take eight to nine hours to fully recover.

That was the recovery time after complete depletion. If he used it more sparingly, he could maintain a constant state of combat readiness.

But for this handful of guards, his Cold Ice Sword Qi was more than sufficient.

Even if he ran out, he still had the White Fang Dagger and the White Tiger Rapier. And even without those, he could just pick up a piece of rebar—his own version of a Kanglong Mace—or, even simpler, a few small stones to use as projectiles. With tens of thousands of pounds of force at his disposal, unleashing just a tenth of his strength would make a stone deadlier than a bullet. Killing would be effortless.

After stowing all the guards’ firearms, ammunition, and grenades in his Otherworldly Warehouse, Li Xiang began to "plunder" the rough stones.

...

In a single night, he looted a full thirty-five mining sites. The amount of Jadeite Rough Stone he acquired was immense. He hadn’t weighed it, but combined with what he had previously obtained in Mandalay, it occupied about 100,000 cubic meters of space. Accounting for the gaps between the stones, he had at least 300,000 tons of the stuff.

As for its value, that would depend on the quality of the jadeite cut from the stones. But with such a massive haul, there were bound to be plenty of high-quality pieces.

Besides, the cut jadeite he had plundered before already contained many fine pieces.

He planned to wait a while before approaching He Zhixiang and Xu Xuan to open a Jade Merchant House with each of them in Yunnan Province and Sichuan Province, respectively. The business would integrate processing, wholesale, and retail, with sales conducted simultaneously through physical storefronts and online livestreams.

But he had to wait for the heat to die down. An incident of this magnitude would surely drive the local drug lords and military factions into a frenzy.

Li Xiang decided not to plunder any more jadeite. It would take a long time to slowly process and sell this many rough stones. He could always come back for another haul later if he ran short on raw materials.

His Otherworldly Warehouse currently had a volume of 64 x 64 x 64 meters, for a total of 262,144 cubic meters. The Jadeite Rough Stone was taking up roughly 100,000 cubic meters, and he planned to go plunder another 100,000 cubic meters of Southeast Asian Fragrant Rice.

The rice from several Southeast Asian countries was famous for its unique flavor and high quality, with rice from Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam being particularly outstanding.

The bulk density of rice is approximately 0.75 tons per cubic meter. This figure varies slightly depending on the type of rice, processing method, shape, and moisture content, but it’s generally in that ballpark.

The density of an individual grain of rice is naturally greater than water, but there are gaps between the grains, which is why a cubic meter of rice weighs less than a ton.

100,000 cubic meters would only be about 75,000 tons.

’The warehouse is still too small.’ The remaining space was taken up by weapons, Spiritual Medicine, lumber, dry rations, clothes, and other miscellaneous items. He also needed to keep some space free as a reserve.

The next day, when the news broke, all of Northern Myanmar was stunned.

Who could be so bold as to raid the jadeite mining districts?

Furthermore, who possessed such Divine Techniques that they could loot thirty-five mining sites in a single night and transport that much Jadeite Rough Stone away without a trace?

This inevitably reminded people of the previous incident in Mandalay. What happened that night in Mandalay was still an unsolved case, and the authorities were clueless.

Then, a major incident occurred the following night: the stronghold of Northern Myanmar’s biggest drug lord was destroyed, and the 1,200 kilograms of gold in his vault were stolen by a Mysterious Man.

It was speculated that the same Mysterious Force behind the jadeite mine raids was responsible.

As for armories, Li Xiang wasn’t particularly interested at the moment. If he happened upon one, he’d grab the contents; if not, he wouldn’t go out of his way.

It was better to plunder military-grade weapons from developed nations, anyway.

The gold hoarded by the top drug lord was naturally of high purity, all of it "four nines" grade (99.99%). The 1,200 kilograms were worth just over 700 million RMB. However, Li Xiang had no intention of cashing it in. He would save it for the coming Apocalypse, to be used when needed.

If they managed to survive the Apocalypse, gold reserves would be needed to back the currency of a new, rebuilt order.

All currency needs an anchor, or it becomes worthless. The US Dollar, for instance, was once pegged to gold.

It was later decoupled from gold, but then became tightly linked to oil, which is why the Middle East Region is a strategic imperative for the United States that cannot be lost.

After the Apocalypse, there would be no need to launder this gold. Using it now would be too much trouble. Just selling off the Jadeite Rough Stone would likely take several years.

To cover his tracks, he would also need to rent a warehouse on the border of Yunnan Province. From there, he could periodically import some low-quality rough stones from Myanmar and slowly mix in the high-quality stones from his Otherworldly Warehouse.

The processing factory would only need to pick up the rough stones from that warehouse on a regular basis.

The value of rough stones fluctuates wildly, which is why the practice of "stone gambling" exists. A stone’s worth is entirely dependent on the quality of the material hidden inside. This left a lot of room for manipulation.

While Northern Myanmar was in an uproar, Li Xiang had already arrived in Southern Myanmar.

As for the "Mysterious Man" and the "Mysterious Force," there was no way to trace them back to him.

Someone once posed a question online: in a rural village with almost no surveillance, if a murder occurs and the criminal destroys all the evidence, how would the police solve the case?

Someone answered: If you had a conflict with the deceased, the case will be solved. If you had a financial dispute with them, the case will be solved. If you contacted them with your own phone number, the case will be solved. If you were lovers, the case will be solved. If you left behind any biological traces, the case will be solved.

There are all sorts of methods for solving a crime.

But there’s one scenario to fear: you have no connection to the deceased and have never met them. You live in Shanghai, but you travel thousands of kilometers to a remote mountain hamlet in the west, stab a complete stranger to death, evade all surveillance, and leave behind no biological traces—no fingerprints, no eyelashes, no hair... That case would be incredibly difficult to solve.

Li Xiang’s situation was even more extreme. He had been in Sichuan Province, had turned off his phone, and left no travel records. He arrived in Mandalay City in Central Myanmar in just two hours, then entered the Primeval Forests of the west and north before appearing in Kachin State in Northern Myanmar.

Completely covered by the Black Mountain Profound Armor at the "crime scenes," he left no fingerprints, hair, or clothing fibers. The only possible trace left behind was his footprints.

Even these footprints followed no pattern, with dozens of meters sometimes separating one step from the next.

Moreover, the boots of the Black Mountain Profound Armor left enormous prints. His own feet were a size 42, but the impressions they left were larger than a size 50.

Even the murders were committed with Cold Ice Sword Qi, which dissipated without a trace shortly after.

Then, without using any form of transportation, he traveled from Pakang in Kachin State to Southern Myanmar, a thousand kilometers away. How could anyone possibly investigate that?

Who could possibly figure it out?

Besides, in a chaotic country like Myanmar, what kind of brilliant criminal investigators could there possibly be?

At this very moment, Li Xiang appeared in P’an, the capital of Karen State.

Since he was walking through the city in broad daylight, he wasn’t wearing the Black Mountain Profound Armor. Instead, he had changed into a set of local clothes, put on sunglasses and a hat, and set out to experience the local culture.