29: Upgrade your intelligence to intermediate level – high investment, high return!
Chen Kai said calmly, took off the small gold bead from the red string, and stuffed it into his pocket.
"Remember to try live streaming. This thing has some potential."
When he walked to the shop entrance, he turned back to remind him again; having said this much, if he still wouldn't listen, there was nothing more he could do.
"Got it, remember to send some gifts to your Great Uncle tonight."
Zheng Liu Chang smiled cheekily, waved his hand, and turned around to start researching how to live stream.
Seeing this, Chen Kai nodded with satisfaction.
For a true brother like this, when one has the ability, one should offer a helping hand, even if it was just one piece of intelligence.
But isn't the essence of making money just utilizing information gaps?
He opened the navigation app and searched for a gold recycling shop; the nearest gold shop was only one kilometer away.
He rode his little electric donkey and slowly headed over.
Upon arriving in front of the gold shop, he looked at the sign [High-Price Recycling of gold, Silver, and Jewelry] and checked today's gold price online.
He didn't know until he checked, and he was shocked once he did.
The price of gold had soared to 820 yuan per gram; his memory was still stuck at the time when it was four or five hundred yuan per gram.
The historical peak was over one thousand per gram. If one had bought a large batch at four hundred-plus and sold it at over one thousand, wouldn't that have been a huge profit?
Unfortunately, he didn't have that luck or that business acumen.
"Isn't this a Score a Bargain? I just don't know how heavy this little gold bead is."
Chen Kai rubbed his hands in excitement and carefully looked at the sign at the door.
[Today's gold Recycling Price: 810 Yuan/Gram]
It was quite fair, so he decided to sell it at this shop; he couldn't be bothered to ride his little electric donkey several kilometers to sell it elsewhere just for a dozen yuan.
gold recycling prices were all about the same, maybe differing by only a few yuan; the round trip wouldn't even cover the electricity cost for charging his Electric Scooter.
He walked straight into the shop. The owner was a white-bearded old man wearing a white undershirt, lying on a rocking chair and fanning himself with a round cattail leaf fan.
Seeing a customer enter, he stood up from the chair.
"Young man, selling gold?"
"Yeah, see how many grams this is."
Chen Kai carefully took the small round bead out of his pocket, afraid of dropping it on the floor, and placed it on the glass counter.
This small round bead wasn't big, but it wasn't small either; it was just about the size of a fingernail, but when placed in the hand, it clearly felt like it had some weight, not light and airy.
The Old Man picked up the small round bead from the glass counter, weighed it in his hand, and nodded silently.
"There are too many fakes lately; it's hard to distinguish them with the naked eye. Can I burn it?"
The white-bearded old man asked.
"You can burn it. True gold fears no fire, right? I understand."
Chen Kai smiled, indicating his understanding.
Upon hearing Chen Kai say this, the white-bearded old man took out the melting bowl and the Torch, put the little gold bead inside, and started complaining to him.
"Exactly, if everyone who came to sell gold was as sensible as you, young man, it would be great. There are too many fakes on the market now—gold-plated silver, tungsten gold, brass—you can't distinguish them with the naked eye at all."
"You scrape it with sandpaper, and guess what? The color inside is different! And they even say I ruined their gold."
Chen Kai didn't feel annoyed by the Old Man's complaints and chatted with him with a smile.
In a short while, the surface of the little gold bead melted. The Old Man looked at it through his reading glasses, "It's real gold. Let me weigh it for you to see how many grams it is."
He used tweezers to pick out the gold bead and placed it in water to cool down.
Then he placed it on an electronic scale precise to the gram.
"Exactly 2.5 grams. I'll calculate it at 810 per gram for you."
The Old Man spat on his hands, took out a calculator, and did the math.
"Two thousand and twenty-five. I'll give you two thousand and thirty. In the future, if you have any good jewelry or such, come to me for recycling."
"Sure, no problem, Old Man. You can scan my code."
Chen Kai happily displayed his mobile payment QR code; this was truly an unexpected gain.
Watching the transfer arrive, Chen Kai waved his hand and walked out of the gold recycling shop.
He really didn't expect that a little gold bead smaller than a fingernail could sell for two thousand yuan, totaling four thousand in extra income.
One hundred ninety leveraged seventeen thousand; who else could do that!
【Ding!】
【Congratulations to the host for successfully using the Intelligence System to earn four thousand. Please manually upgrade, host.】
Hearing this familiar system sound, Chen Kai couldn't hide the smile on his face anymore.
He quickly rode his Electric Scooter home, buying lunch on the way.
...
Half an hour later, the moment Chen Kai pushed open the door to his Rental House, he impatiently clicked to upgrade the system.
【Please choose any day from Monday to Sunday for the host to upgrade to Intermediate Intelligence.】
Chen Kai was stunned, took out his phone to check, and saw it was Tuesday.
The intelligence refreshing tonight would be for Wednesday.
He was a bit impatient to see the new intelligence. "Let's go with Wednesday."
【Understood, upgrading the system for the host now.】
Chen Kai looked at the system upgrade page in front of him and lay on the bed, feeling very happy.
He just didn't know what valuable intelligence would be refreshed tonight.
He roughly calculated that he had already used the system to earn 110,000 in less than a week.
He had turned his future from one of total darkness to one of total brightness.
If he earned another two hundred thousand plus, he could pay off his debts; it might not even take a month, maybe two weeks!
【Ding! The daily intelligence system has finished upgrading. From now on, the host will receive Intermediate Intelligence every Wednesday.】
Chen Kai looked at the system screen and couldn't help but curl the corners of his mouth.
"Ding!"
"Ding!"
Just then, his phone suddenly rang.
Chen Kai subconsciously thought of that woman's face, mistakenly thinking it was a message from Liu Yunshang.
He clicked into WeChat to check and didn't expect it to be the long-silent Family Group.
Sometimes Chen Kai couldn't figure it out; they weren't a big family, just a bunch of people who compared themselves to each other and played tricks on one another—what was the point of establishing a Family Group?
When you're doing well, they pretend to attach themselves to you, but gossip behind your back.
When you're doing poorly, they step on you.
Chen Kai had seen the coldness of human relationships and no longer looked at these so-called "relatives" with the eyes of family.
When he started his own business, visiting relatives involved all sorts of flattery; once he hit rock bottom and his parents asked them to borrow money, they received countless cold shoulders.
It was as if they had forgotten the favors they had received from him in the past.
His only real family was his mom and dad.
Only his Great Aunt lent him 100,000. She said it would be repaid in three years, they signed an IOU, and the interest was higher than the Bank.
Now, less than a year later, she had already started coming to the door to demand debt repayment, even hurling insults like calling their whole family dirty scoundrels.
Chen Kai had become indifferent to it. He simply clicked into the Family Group, preparing to set it to 'Do Not Disturb'; when you're down on your luck, speaking up is just becoming a laughingstock for those who look down on you.
"Huh? That's not right; I already set it to 'Do Not Disturb'."
Chen Kai was stunned. He clearly had set it to 'Do Not Disturb'; could it be that they were specifically tagging him?
He clicked in and took a look; sure enough, they were tagging him individually.