Crash!
Chen Laosi’s final sensation was the sound of the warm, creamy-white jade in his palm shattering in the cave-in.
At sixty, he had spent forty years kneeling in a mine in the Kunlun Mountains. His knees had long since worn down into two lumps of iron. Yet when his flashlight illuminated a fist-sized Hetian jade pebble, he still dropped to his knees. It was creamy white, flawless, and free of inclusions. Under the light, it gleamed with an oily sheen, like moonlight made solid.
“Worth ten million... I can turn my life around...” Tears streamed down his face.
Thirty-eight years. Since entering the mountains with his father at twenty, he had watched his father, two elder brothers, and three apprentices die in this “Valley of Death.” His wife had run off with another man, and his son wanted nothing to do with his “grave-digging” father. All he had left was a body aching with rheumatism and this mine.
An ominous creaking came from the roof of the tunnel.
Chen Laosi clutched the jade tightly, as if he were holding his newborn grandson.
Crash!
“I refuse to accept this!”
Those were his final words.
A bit like a saint