Chapter 5 High-Temperature Crucible Electric Furnace

  "Master... Master, are you leaving just like this?" Gao Chuanliang asked with a dry mouth after letting the shop assistant help the master put the cloth bag full of silver coins into the master's "moto"'s basket. At the same time, Gao Chuanliang was extremely nervous in his heart, why did the master not bring him a watch this time or tell him to pick up goods somewhere, could it be that the master had changed his mind.

  "Hmm! Is there anything else?" Sima Ji asked on the motorcycle, thinking carefully for a moment, it seemed like there was nothing else. Didn't he come just to get the money? Now that he had gotten the money, what else could there be? Why did Lao Boss's face look a bit off? Hadn't his share been given to him too?

  "Master... um... I... should go to which place to pick up the goods, didn't you sell out all the watches you brought last time?" Gao Chuanliang gritted his teeth and summoned up the courage to say what was on his mind.

  "Oh! Look at my memory, I came in a hurry and dropped my watch. I'll personally deliver it to you tomorrow at this time. Don't worry!" Sima listened to Gao Chuanliang's words and looked at his expression, suddenly understanding why Boss Gao was acting like this - he was afraid that this business wouldn't work out again. He was his own god of wealth after all!

  "Ah... Young Master, farewell!" Gao Chuanliang tried to conceal his unease, but he couldn't shake off the feeling of guilt and regret for being too greedy. As he watched Sima ride away on his "moped", he made a decision in his heart, hoping that the young master would give him another chance.

  Simar rode his motorcycle at almost the highest speed, leaving Kongjiazhuang Village. Although he didn't encounter any bandits on the way, he couldn't help but think of the doctor who was killed when he first entered this space. He wondered if a group of bandits would suddenly appear from around the corner and take his life away. Due to road conditions, the motorcycle could only move at a slow speed of about 40 kilometers per hour. Simar even felt that his hearing had become much more sensitive as he clearly heard the crisp and pleasant sound of the silver coins in the cloth bag hitting each other due to the bumps on the road.

  "Clang……" The crisp sound of the two silver dollars colliding was music to Sima's ears. Lying in bed, Sima held a shiny silver dollar and wondered why old movies often had scenes where people held silver dollars and listened to their crisp ringing sounds. It was indeed a pleasure. Looking at the several thousand silver dollars in front of him, Sima began to worry about how he could get rid of them. These silver dollars were no different from those he saw in antique markets, but most of them shone with a dazzling silver light. If he took these brand new silver dollars to an antique market, they would definitely be mistaken for counterfeit goods. Moreover, even if he went back in time to ancient markets, it was unlikely that he could get rid of so many silver dollars in a short period of time.

  "The boss is busy with that." In a hutong in the city, Sima Chao sat down in front of a goldsmith's shop, pulled out a cigarette and started chatting with the goldsmith.

  "Not busy, not busy. Boss has something to do." This will probably have no business most of the time and it's all about chatting with others to see if there's any potential business coming in. The thin-looking goldsmith also became enthusiastic, took over the cigarette, lit it up and asked.

  "I see this says high price acquisition of gold and silver, I'd like to ask about the price." Sima said straightforwardly.

  "Oh! Ah! 130 gold, 2 silver pieces" The goldsmith replied skillfully while taking a drag on his cigarette, carefully sizing up the young man in front of him. He didn't look like one... unless he was desperate to get rid of it, nobody would come to this kind of place to sell their gold and silver at such a low price. This guy just didn't seem like that kind of person.

  "Ah! The price is so low!" Sima Xin had already checked the recent prices of white banks online before coming, and they were generally around 2.6 yuan, but he didn't expect to be pressed down by nearly 20% in one go. Calculating the gold collection price difference, it was also pressed down by more than 20%. This kind of small shop that specializes in collecting scraps is really not ordinary!

  "Boss! What price will you buy this silver dollar for?" Sima said as he took out a silver dollar from his bag and placed it on the table.

  "Haha! This one! I said, brother, this silver dollar has been washed, otherwise how can it be so new." The goldsmith said while casually picking it up to take a look and testing its purity and weighing it "Fifty-one dollars and sixty cents, the highest price I can give is this. How about it, brother, are you willing to sell?"

  "Alright, a total of 600 yuan, hand over the money and goods at 2 pm this afternoon." Sima calculated that if he sold his SSG-12-16 high-temperature electric furnace for 600 yuan, he would make more than 30,000 yuan. Buying an electric furnace would cost 25,000 yuan, and renting a small room with industrial electricity would add up to around 30,000 yuan, which was just enough. Buying the SSG-12-16 high-temperature electric furnace was also a necessary measure. If he didn't buy the electric furnace, selling silver coins for a few hundred yuan at a time wouldn't be a problem, but if he tried to sell several thousand yuan worth of silver coins all at once, he would likely end up having dinner at the police station. However, using the electric furnace to melt the silver coins into silver ingots made it easy to sell them on the market, even though the local market for extracting silver from waste was not as large as that in Yongxing or Xianju, with annual transactions totaling tens of millions of yuan. Moreover, most of the recycled silver had a purity of around 90%, similar to that of silver coins.

  It only took a few minutes for Sima to settle the afternoon's transaction with Chen, the goldsmith in front of him. They agreed to meet at a five-star hotel in the city, as carrying hundreds of silver dollars on the street would be quite inconvenient. After taking Chen's business card, Sima hastily hailed a taxi outside and rushed off to take care of other unfinished matters.

  At two o'clock in the afternoon, Sima arrived at the agreed location with a package of silver coins. The six hundred taels of silver weighed nearly 20 kilograms and were not easy to carry by hand.

  "Mr. Chen, check it out, a total of 600 yuan, not one less, guaranteed no counterfeit goods." Sima put the bag on the table and took out six silver coins to say to this goldsmith who accepted gold and silver.

  "Haha! Wait a minute!" Jin Jiang opened the newspaper wrapping around the silver dollars and picked them up, expertly examining each one. It didn't take long to verify one silver dollar, but verifying 600 of them would take a considerable amount of time. If he hadn't already rented a house in the suburbs that morning and arranged with his friend at the power plant to help him with the industrial electricity, Sima wouldn't have had the patience to wait for Chen Lao to finish verifying each silver dollar. Sima was starting to think that buying an electric furnace was indeed a good decision, otherwise it would take forever to sell these few thousand silver dollars.

  "Sorry, sorry! It's taken a long time and my hands are numb. Please forgive me, Mr. Wang." After more than an hour, the goldsmith finally finished examining each silver dollar and looked up to see that Sima was getting impatient. He quickly spoke up, thinking to himself that he would probably make several thousand yuan this time and that he had to take good care of this "god of wealth" in front of him. Mr. Wang was a temporary alias that Sima had come up with that morning.

  "Six hundred silver dollars, as we discussed this morning, total three million and ninety-six thousand. This is a total of three million one, Boss Wang, you can count it yourself, no need to find the change." Mr. Chen took out three stacks of banknotes wrapped in newspaper from several pockets of his clothes and handed them over to Sima.

  "Thanks, Mr. Chen." Sima took the banknotes and opened the newspaper to count them. Fortunately, checking paper money was much easier than checking silver coins. It only needed a quick glance to determine whether it was genuine or not. After all, GMB had been doing this for decades, and practice makes perfect. Although the counting speed was not as fast as that of bank employees, it only took a few minutes to finish. Sima put the money in his bag, thanked him, and walked away with a light heart. The feeling of carrying paper money was much lighter than carrying silver coins, but it lacked the solid feel of the latter.

  "See you later! Boss Wang, next time there's business, be sure to take care of me!" The two parted ways in front of the hotel, with Chen saying "Definitely, definitely." But in his heart, Sima was thinking that if next time someone dared to give him a discount of over 20%, he would...

  "Mr. Li, here's a deposit of 10,000 yuan. I hope you can expedite the process as soon as possible, and it would be best if the SSG-12-16 high-temperature electric furnace I ordered could arrive tomorrow." Sima said in an industrial equipment company in the city.

  "Sima, don't worry, we're old friends. At the latest, we'll deliver the equipment to you by tomorrow afternoon," Li Feng replied. Although he found it a bit strange that Sima was spending money on this experimental electric furnace, no one would push away money. This type of electric furnace is for laboratory use and has a small capacity, but due to its wide range of applications, the supply has always been plentiful. After receiving Sima's call in the morning, Li Feng had already confirmed with the supplier that it could be delivered tomorrow morning.

  "Haha! I'm telling you, brother, since you left that unit, we haven't been in touch for months. Looks like you've found a new way to make money again!" Li Feng said with a smile after opening the receipt.

  "That thing, you're not unaware of it, I can still feel the door. It's not like we're doing a small business with a friend and just need this electric stove, so I thought of you." Sima took over the receipt and sat on the sofa. If it were a week ago, no matter what, Sima would not have come to Li Feng's company to show him his own embarrassment. Now that everything is starting to turn for the better, Sima feels like he's slowly regaining his past confidence, at least his self-respect. In Li Feng's office, the two of them chatted about some interesting things from the past few months, and it also felt relaxed.

  "Hey! Sima, by the way, do you know how to use this electric stove? Do we need to send a technician over to train you?" Li Feng asked as Sima was about to leave.

  "Ah! Hmm! As you thought, I really don't know how to use this machine. Remind me not to forget to send a technician over." Luckily Li Feng reminded him or else Sima would have forgotten that he didn't operate this kind of machine.