?Chapter 1707:


    That boulder was no beauty—rough-edged, lopsided—but it had a gaping crack at the top, and within, a pale green glow peered out.


    The moment Dustinid eyes on it, his instincts screamed that this was valuable. Still, he masked his excitement behind a poker face.


    In a vige of fewer than a thousand souls, word traveled faster than wildfire. Soon, everyone here knew that someone was handing out big money to buy stones.


    For generations, the vigers had scraped a living collecting herbs and stones, so every home was a miniature vault of oddities.


    After a while, people lined up, eager to show Dustin their stones and see if they could sell them.


    But Dustin hadn’t brought money with him; he had left it in his car. He was simply checking if there were valuable stones here. After examining over a dozen stones, he found that half were worth buying.


    “Here’s the deal,” Dustin said. “The path here’s too narrow for my car, and I can’t lug all these stones myself. Help me get them to my car, and we’ll settle the ounts there. My money’s also in my car.”


    “Of course!” the vigers said in unison, and they hoisted their stones and marched down the mountain beside him.


    Dustin’s car sat parked at the vige entrance, still a good kilometer from the nearest home.


    Two pickup trucks idled at the base, the very reinforcements Dustin had arranged for hauling his newfound fortune.


    After getting to his car, he started with Adair’s haul: thirty stones in all. After a careful eye, he cherry-picked half. The crown jewel—the hulking stone Baylor had once coveted—earned Adair a jaw-dropping offer of a hundred and thirty thousand dors. The rest stacked up to one hundred and fifty thousand.


    The money counter whirred like a hive of bees, the notes clicking through one by one as the vigers stared, wide-eyed. This stranger wasn’t bluffing; he had pockets deeper than they’d ever imagined.


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    Adair thumbed through the cash after receiving it, grinning from ear to ear.


    Vigers teased him withughter. “So much money, Adair! You’ll never finish counting! Looks like your daughter’s schooling is paid for, and your son’s wedding will be a feast!”


    Adair chuckled. “Yes, I suppose I’m a lucky man today. But Baylor had the nerve to say our stones were worth so little before. Luckily, I didn’t sell the stones to him back then!”


    One grey-haired man muttered, “Baylor’s a swindler. He robbed me blind—I sold him over a dozen stones for nearly nothing. Next time I see him, I’ll give him a piece of my mind!”


    Murmurs rippled through the crowd—several wanted to teach Baylor a lesson when they saw him again.


    Meanwhile, Dustin sifted through the vigers’ stones, selecting only the cream of the crop. He paid fairly, yet wisely, making sure every coin spent promised returns.


    The vigers didn’t mind. On the contrary, they beamed, urging him to return soon, and that next time, they’d have even greater treasures for him.


    By sundown, the twenty million in cash Dustin had brought had all been spent.


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