The Strongest Man’s Fake Wife Wants to Live Chapter 33

At those words, the soldiers no longer opened their mouths.

The fingertips of the soldiers who had been grumbling as they shoveled dirt gradually steadied, and their planting pace began to settle into a consistent rhythm.

Whether the trees they planted today would ever see the light of day or not, they all knew that, one way or another, this was for the territory. And so, little by little, they began obediently following Pesha’s orders.

Meanwhile, Jane watched the scene from the side, feeling a strange mixture of emotions.

At first, he had thought it was nothing more than an absurd order, but things had begun to unfold rather strangely.

The soldiers moved, Rebecca coordinated them, and Pesha took the lead as though she were drawing up some kind of blueprint.

‘……Is she really planning to grow plants in this contaminated land?’

Perhaps this work was not simply about planting trees.

If it succeeded, it would become the spark that changed the future of the entire territory.

It was at one point, while the sound of the soldiers’ shovels continued busily, that—

Clang!

A sudden, hard impact mixed with the sound of metal rang out, and one of the soldiers working nearby spat out an irritated voice.

“Damn it, this rock again.”

He put down his shovel and nudged a round lump buried in the ground with his foot.

As the dust cleared, translucent stones with a subtle hint of color emerged against the earthy ground.

“This isn’t just an ordinary rock, is it?”

Another soldier tilted his head and approached, rolling the stones around with his shovel.

“Forget it. Just move them and throw them away. How many times have I told you this is common land? Yet you keep dumping them here!”

At those words, Pesha, who had been looking around the area where the trees were to be planted, raised her head.

“Dumping them?”

The soldier, who had been irritated a moment ago, was startled at the sudden appearance of his lady and hurriedly straightened his posture.

“Ah, my lady. It’s just that…… those damn miners dumped more rocks here again.”

“You mean they throw the rocks away?”

“Well, you know the byproducts left over after mining emeralds.”

“Emerald…… byproducts?”

Pesha frowned.

The combination of the words ‘emerald’ and ‘byproducts’ was not something she could easily understand.

She walked over to where the soldiers had cleared the rocks and looked down at the lumps gathered in one place.

Under the sunlight, they were clearly different from ordinary rocks.

A faint blue-green glow spread through the opaque gray.

“……It’s blue.”

Pesha murmured to herself without thinking.

If these really were byproducts from emerald mining, shouldn’t they have a greenish color?

Yet some of the stones were bluish or colorless and transparent, while others even had a yellowish tint.

Her fingertips slowly traced the surface of one of the stones.

It was rough, but the weight she felt beneath her fingertips was quite substantial.

“You’re saying these are what’s left over after mining emeralds?”

“Yes. When the miners mine emeralds near the Abyss, they can’t stay there for long because they’re afraid monsters will attack them. Since they can’t sort them quickly, they bring everything back at once and then dump the stones that aren’t emeralds like this. We’ve told them not to, but honestly……”

Pesha narrowed her eyes.

Transporting them all the way to an official disposal site would require a great deal of manpower and time.

Since there was nowhere to dump them immediately, they must have used empty land like these hills.

But the problem was the stones themselves.

They looked like ordinary rocks at first glance, but when light struck their surfaces, a faint blue hue spread across them.

Pesha absentmindedly brought her fingertips to one and instinctively sensed that it was not merely worthless rubble.

‘If my guess is right, this is…….’

An emerald was a green variety of a mineral called ‘beryl.’

Its grade was determined according to its transparency, intensity of color, and the form of its impurities, but generally, its deep green color was its most distinctive characteristic.

And when the color was different, it was called by an entirely different name.

When beryl had a blue hue, it was called ‘aquamarine’; when it was yellow, ‘heliodor’; and when it was colorless, ‘goshenite.’

Pesha looked again at the translucent blue stones scattered across the ground.

Their surfaces shimmered like glass as they caught the light, and when she held one in her hand, she could feel its substantial weight and firm resistance.

‘They’re throwing these away? That makes no sense. Even if they don’t know about the others, do they not know what aquamarine is?’

And yet, Pesha had seen jewelry set with aquamarine several times here.

She had simply passed over them without much thought back then, but what was going on?

She needed to confirm it herself.

“I need to go back to the castle.”

“What?”

Pesha said it briefly and turned around.

A piece of the blue stone was still clutched in her hand.

“Right now?”

Jane’s eyes widened.

“We still have work instructions to carry out.”

“I’ll come back. First, I need to find out exactly what this stone is.”

Pesha said nothing the entire way back to the castle.

It had been more than a decade since she had last seen an uncut, unprocessed gemstone that had not been set into jewelry.

‘I thought I was already sick of gemstones.’

Before she had been possessed into this world, Pesha had learned how to appraise gemstones.

More precisely, she had even made a living from it for a short while.

She had quit not long after starting because she encountered various practical limitations in the real world, but even so, compared to an ordinary person, she still had considerable knowledge of gemstones.

When she combined that knowledge with what she had heard from the soldier, no matter how she thought about it, the stone really did seem to be aquamarine.

‘Still, I should make sure properly first.’

Upon arriving at the castle, Pesha immediately called for a servant.

“Bring me a jeweler. Someone experienced and skilled.”

“Yes, understood.”

Not long afterward, a middle-aged jeweler came to the castle.

Several pieces of ore personally selected by Pesha had been placed on a table covered with cloth.

They were all stones discovered around the mine or while they were planting trees.

The jeweler carefully picked them up one by one and examined their surfaces.

He rotated them beneath the faint light to inspect their crystal structures, then nodded and spoke.

“Yes…… my lady. This stone is definitely beryl.”

Pesha leaned forward.

Her heart pounded.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Judging by the crystal structure, color distribution, and transparency, I’m certain.”

He lifted the blue stone in his hand.

“This appears to be aquamarine.”

Pesha’s breath caught.

‘So it really was.’

That mysterious blue hue created as the light delicately passed through it.

Without a doubt, if properly cut, this could become a high-quality aquamarine gemstone.

If various types of beryl, including aquamarine, were produced in the territory, perhaps they could solve the dreadful financial difficulties Swapro was suffering from.

But the jeweler soon fell silent, then carefully added,

“However…… unfortunately, this has little value.”

“What? You said it was aquamarine.”

Pesha’s voice grew firmer.

“You’re saying aquamarines of this size have no value?”

“Yes. To be precise, it has no value ‘in the gemstone market.’”