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Chapter 255 Metallic Palladium

Within just half a minute, three bucket loaders were all thrown into the deep sea by the electric eel. The mollusks and algae that could penetrate everything, coupled with the highly corrosive seawater, would easily turn the three loaders into unrecognizable pieces of coral within a short span of half a month.

After settling this trouble, Chen Fan stared at the torrential rain. Now that the leader was dead, his subordinates should not be able to cause any more trouble. It would be best if they could just run away with the money! Yet Chen Fan thought to himself that he simply couldn't be bothered to worry at the moment.

I don't care what tricks they are going to try to pull. Who has the free time to think about it, anyway? I will just handle the matter when the time comes.

...

It was eight in the morning, and the sky was slowly clearing up. When the sunlight shone and the wind blew past, the fog in the air dissipated, exposing the dock that had been covered up.

With a clack, the big gates of the dock opened up. Chen Fan walked out a bit to stretch his body. Then, he took out his phone to give Zhang Xueyang a call.

The last time Chen Fan had gotten a big amount of silver, it was Zhang who had helped contact those buyers. So, this time, Chen Fan thought of asking if it was possible to get in contact with someone who was willing to buy gold.

Business transactions with the old geezer Argyll could only be done with hard currency. And, gold was no doubt a harder currency than the globally recognized American dollar.

Thus, trading this way could even relieve the hassle of currency inflation. This is the reason why many people liked to use gold. It did not depreciate easily like cash, and even for gold that was obtained illegally, it never left any tracks behind once it had been melted.

"I'm fainting!" When Zhang Xueyang received the call, he complained, "Why does the busy man have time to call me today? I usually can't even get through to your phone once!"

"You can always leave a message, right?" Chen Fan said laughingly. "Remember the friend you helped me to contact to buy my silver last time? I am looking to sell him some gold."

"Gold?" Zhang Xueyang was a little confused. "Unlike silver, gold is very easy to sell, as its price does not fluctuate as much. Couldn't you just sell to anyone?"

"I came to you because this batch of gold is quite large, so I was planning to look for someone familiar to sell it to."

"Large? How much do you have?"

"It's a really big amount. Around 10,000 or so!"

"Oh!" Zhang Xueyang first nodded his head, but then quickly caught on and shouted "What? 10… Thousand! Are you sure you are not talking about brass?!"

"It's real gold. But,I still don't know its exact purity level yet!" Chen Fan took out a piece of gold from his pocket as he spoke. He then played with it under the sun. It was bright and yellowish, so its purity level should not be too low.

After hearing Chen Fan's strongly emphatic tone, Zhang Xueyang went silent for a moment. It was obvious that he was awestruck by the number.

Zhang Xueyang made a rough estimate in his heart and realized that the value of such an amount was beyond 1.5 billion Renminbi! With such a large amount of gold, not to mention whether that friend of his has the capability to purchase all of the coins, even if he were to call upon all if his friends, no one would be able to take out such a scary amount of cash to carry out this one transaction.

"You fella, where did you get so much gold? You didn't rob someone, did you?"

"If I could do that, would I still be here right now?" Chen Fan said modestly. "10,000 is just a rough estimate. Lately, I have been making some big transactions with South Africa, which were all transactions that used gold. However, we still have not completed our transactions yet, so they might take a while. I was just wondering if that friend of yours can purchase this amount of gold right now?"

"Even 1,000 would cost his whole life savings, not to mention 10,000!" Zhang Xueyang complained. "If you are really thinking of selling them, I can only help you to get in contact with some of the larger gold jewelry companies. However, they have a high standard regarding the purity level of gold. They usually request for it to be 99.999 percent pure gold. Another option for you is to let him purchase a few hundred right now, then as time goes by, he would be able to purchase more."

"In that case, let's take it slowly, since I am not in a hurry!" Chen Fan accepted his suggestion. "Then, could you ask him to come over to my place? I have a sample that he could use to measure the purity level of the gold."

...

It did not even take half an hour before an Audi A6 hurriedly stopped in front of Chen Fan.

"Brother Chen Fan, we meet again!" His legs had yet to even touch the ground, when Boss Zhao greeted Chen Fan from the driver's seat with that trembling fat face of his. When he had received the call from Zhang Xueyang, he was so emotional, he felt like he was about to fly up to be made a saint!

It was such a large amount of gold! If he were to obtain it now, it would surely be lower than the market price. Then, he could earn a great profit from it!

As for the matter of the originating source of the gold, he didn't care. After all, all he needed to do was to melt the coins into liquid gold. Then, not even the FBI could find its original owner, should they have been stolen!

"Brother Chen Fan, where is the gold? Quickly let me see about its purity level!" Boss Zhao could not stop but shake his fatty palms. His excitement was written all over his face.

"It's a memorial coin!" Chen Fan took out a few coins from his pocket, then chose a specific golden coin to pass to Boss Zhao.

Zhang Xueyang took out an aluminium alloy box from the car, which contained all sorts of equipment, including a scrapper, a flame gun and a magnifying glass. He used these tools to measure the purity level of the gold.

Having received the gold coin, Boss Zhao first directed it at the sun to take a look. Then, he used a plier to hold it and a flame gun to burn it, until it turned red. He did this to observe if the external and internal material were the same, and to see if there was a change of color after it cooled down. Real gold would never be discolored by fire.

He did not once ask a single question about the source of this gold, because he felt that this was just an ordinary memorial coin. Even the moulding technique was pretty unrefined, not revealing any artistic value.

While Boss Zhao was experimenting with the purity level of the gold coin, Zhang Xueyang, who was standing to the side, had his gaze attracted by the other silver-colored coin that Chen Fan was playing with his hands.

After requesting the silver-colored coin from him, Zhang Xueyang placed it under the magnifying glass, then looked at it for a long time. Then, he suspiciously weighed it with his hands, before lightly scratching it with a sharp knife twice.

"Who would use such a pure Palladium to make a memorial coin?" Zhang Xueyang handed the coin back to Chen Fan, while he murmured to himself.

"Palladium? What's that?" Chen Fan's curiosity was piqued.

"Oh, it is a type of rare metal that belongs under the Platinum group. It is considered by many countries as being a strategic metal. This is because 80 percent of it originates from Russia and South Africa, while other countries have very little of such metals at their hands. Also, the purification process is very complicated. It is mainly used for aircrafts. Our family used to process these kinds of metallic components. We helped the Tian Hai Aircraft Manufacturing company to produce air filtration sheets for their aircraft engine. After a while, they complained that our processing rate was too slow, so they stopped commissioning us after the first batch of 500 components."

Zhang Xueyang put a cigarette in his mouth, then took a deep breath. "The most fascinating thing about this sort of metal, is that it can quickly expand when placed next inside hydrogen gas. Take the memorial coin, which is slightly bigger than a dollar, for example. If it were to come into contact with hydrogen gas, it would expand to about 900 times its current size!"

"Then, how about its price?"

"It is measured in terms of grams, like gold, depending on its purity level. Local production of one gram is around 150 bucks or so, whereas products from Russia and South Africa are slightly more expensive, costing around 180 bucks for one gram."

"Woah! Are you exaggerating? If not, based on what you just said, a piece of filtration sheet would cost over 100,000 bucks already!" Chen Fan exclaimed.

"Your calculation method is wrong. It is usually alloyed with other metals in production. The filtration sheets we used to produce only required about 5 percent of Palladium." The golden-haired Zhang Xueyang looked at Chen Fan with a smile. "Your Palladium's purity level isn't too shabby. If you could get your hands on a large amount of this, I am willing to purchase it at a high price!"

"What do you want it for? Are you thinking of building a plane for fun?"

"It is for speculation. You have no idea that, because our country restricts our exports, the western countries are also using the same trick by restricting exports and building up large stockpiles of goods. Now, the pricing of strategic metals in the whole international market has been inflating at a higher rate than even gold."

"You can even speculate strategic metals?" Chen Fan was stunned for a while. "Aren't you afraid that the government will catch you?"

"It's not that serious!" Zhang Xueyang simply shrugged. "You have to understand that strategic metals and embargoed-metals are two totally different things. Strategic metals refer to metals that are relatively important. Without them, many facilities and manufacturers would not be able to continue production. For instance, Palladium that is used in the production of medical facilities. Still, it does not mean that these metals must be strictly locked down like a strategic nuclear missile!"

He continued. "Palladium is very low in supply, which makes it expensive, but that doesn't mean that it cannot be purchased. It is just hard to obtain a large quantity of it. Moreover, selling a large amount of Palladium to our country would be an act that would be commendable by our government, so why would we fear being caught?"

Hearing this reasoning, Chen Fan simply took out two other coins. "Help me to check out what metal these two coins are made of."

Receiving one dark golden and one silver white coin, Zhang Xueyang examined it for a very long time. Then, not knowing whether to cry or laugh, he said, "It is just your typical brass and silver. They aren't worth much."