Zhang Jun couldn’t be bothered to argue with her pointlessly anymore.
He put the last candy wrapper into the plastic bag. Without even glancing at Ding Lan, he turned and left.
“You…” Ding Lan watched Zhang Jun’s resolute figure walking away. His confident air, as if he really were carrying some “priceless treasure,” made the scorn and certainty in her heart waver for a moment, only to be replaced by even greater anger and resentment.
“Fine! Just fine, Zhang Jun! Let’s see how long you can keep up the act! Treating trash like treasure—I’ll see what kind of sky-high price you can get for it!” She gritted her teeth and, as if possessed, followed after him in her high heels.
Zhang Jun soon reached a nearby public restroom, paying no attention to Ding Lan, who had followed him.
He turned on the faucet, squeezed out some hand soap, then put the many filthy gold-colored candy wrappers from the plastic bag into the water and scrubbed them carefully.
As the grime came off, the wrappers’ true color gradually emerged—a mellow, subdued gold with a unique, restrained luster, utterly unlike any gold-colored packaging or aluminum foil he had ever seen!
The luster wasn’t dazzling, but it was rich and substantial, as if it held the weight of time.
He carefully spread them out on the clean tissues he had brought with him to absorb the water.
Though they were still covered in creases, each unfolded golden sheet gleamed brilliantly, its material clearly extraordinary.
Just looking at them gave one a solid, weighty feeling—the unmistakable feel of a precious metal.
Humanity’s love of gold is engraved in our genes!
So Zhang Jun felt inexplicably excited and fond of them, his hands trembling slightly.
Even Ding Lan, who had been watching coldly with her arms crossed, couldn’t help letting some of the scorn fade from her face.
Now that they were clean, these candy wrappers… didn’t look at all like ordinary industrially dyed paper or cheap aluminum foil.
That color, that texture… An even more absurd thought sprang uncontrollably into her mind.
Could these candy wrappers… really be made of gold?
No, impossible! Absolutely impossible! Who would make candy wrappers out of gold? And so many of them? What kind of family would do something so extravagant it bordered on stupidity?
Besides, even if they really were gold, why would anyone throw them away?
And how could they have ended up in a filthy garbage heap, where someone like Zhang Jun would find them?
So they had to be some kind of special paper that only looked like gold.
Yes, that had to be it!
Zhang Jun packed the wrappers away again, carried the bag out of the public restroom, and headed for a nearby jewelry store.
Ding Lan bit her lip. Doubt, curiosity, and a stubborn refusal to admit defeat drove her to keep following him.
“Why are you following me? Shouldn’t you be going on a date with Gong Wei?”
Zhang Jun had finally had enough and snapped.
“What’s it to you? You’re just some broke loser. You’d better stick to picking through trash.”
Ding Lan sneered.
“Trash? Heh…”
Zhang Jun sneered and ignored her, walking straight into the brightly lit Chow Tai Sang jewelry store.
The store was resplendent, its dazzling array of gold jewelry almost blinding.
In Zhang Jun’s perception, Treasure Sense ran together in an exceedingly dense concentration.
“Pfft, you broke loser. Don’t tell me you really think those candy wrappers are gold and came here to sell them?”
Ding Lan sneered as she followed him inside.
She had even planned what she would say to mock this delusional, presumptuous ex-boyfriend in the cruelest terms once the jewelry store employees confirmed that the worthless “gold paper” was nothing special.
Let’s see who really had no taste!
“Hello, sir. What kind of jewelry are you looking for?” A young saleswoman approached with a professional smile and a faint, elegant fragrance.
“Could you take a look at these… candy wrappers? I suspect they might be made of gold.”
Zhang Jun took the candy wrappers out of the plastic bag and placed them on the counter.
“Candy wrappers? Made of gold?” The saleswoman visibly froze. Her professional smile faltered, and a trace of disbelief and suspicion flickered in her eyes.
She often saw people come in to sell gold jewelry, but in all her years on the job, this was the first time anyone had come to sell Gold Candy Wrappers.
Was this young man crazy, or just letting his imagination run wild?
Still, she maintained basic courtesy and carefully picked up one wrapper. It felt surprisingly heavy in her hand, nothing like the flimsy thing she had imagined.
First, she rubbed its texture between her fingers, then examined the surface’s grain and luster under the overhead lights. She even lightly scraped an inconspicuous spot along the edge with her fingernail.
Her expression gradually shifted from suspicion to surprise, then from surprise to solemnity.
Even Ding Lan, who had been standing with her arms crossed, ready to enjoy the show, now sensed that something was off.
Could those scraps of paper… really be something unusual?
Her certainty began to waver, and she couldn’t help edging closer.
The saleswoman said nothing. She fetched a small white ceramic crucible, picked up one of the wrappers with tweezers, and placed it inside.
Then she lit the blowtorch in her hand, and its silent, pale-blue flame licked at the golden sheet.
Under the intense heat, the wrapper quickly curled and softened. The little sugar residue and grime on its surface turned to wisps of smoke, while the sheet itself rapidly melted and gathered into a smooth, rounded drop of reddish gold, like liquid sunlight. It rolled slowly across the bottom of the white crucible, its pure, dazzling brilliance free of any impurities or bubbles!
“It’s real gold!” She turned off the blowtorch, her voice carrying barely restrained excitement. “It’s extremely pure—at least 995 fine! This workmanship… It’s old gold leaf, hammered out by hand, thin as a cicada’s wing and smooth as a mirror. You almost never see craftsmanship like this anymore!”
A great weight lifted from Zhang Jun’s heart. Joy surged through his chest like lava, and he asked eagerly, “How much do you think all this is worth?”
“Each gold-leaf candy wrapper is made from an extremely thin sheet… Each one contains about 0.5 grams of gold on average. There are… 200 hundred here. The total weight should be 100 grams.”
After weighing them and confirming the amount, the saleswoman continued, “It is indeed 100 grams. At today’s international gold price, the buyback rate is 1,000 yuan per gram. That makes them worth 100,000 yuan.”
“A hundred thousand?!” Though he had expected it, Zhang Jun still felt a powerful wave of dizziness at hearing the enormous figure. His heart pounded like a drum.
He had merely made one round through a garbage heap and netted 100,000 yuan!
And that didn’t even include the 100 yuan in cash!
At the saleswoman’s words, “It’s real gold,” Ding Lan had already been struck as if by lightning, frozen in place.
When she heard the figure “100,000,” her ears rang, her vision darkened, and her legs went weak. She nearly lost her balance.
A hundred thousand! A whole hundred thousand!
She worked as a clerk at a small company, and even after three years of working herself to the bone and enduring everyone’s scorn, she couldn’t save that much money without spending a cent!
And Zhang Jun—the ex-boyfriend she had despised for being poor and useless, then decisively dumped—had just picked up gold worth 100,000 yuan from a garbage heap right under her nose?
Envy and jealousy surged within her, and her eyes reddened.
Her earlier mockery and contempt for him now seemed to take the form of an invisible hand, slapping her hard across the face.
The slaps rang out against her cheeks.