My Gold Rush Career Begins in 1984

Chapter 146 Surprise
The two men slowly stood up and looked Zhou Jingming and his two companions over for a while. Zhou Jingming's acquaintances recognized him as well: "I was wondering why you looked so familiar. It's you, Zhou Jingming!"

Wu Yang asked in a low voice, "Brother Zhou, do you two know each other?"

Zhou Jingming nodded: "I know him. He's a friend I met on the Beidahuang farm!"

Wu Yang then put down the hunting rifle he was holding.

Zhou Jingming, with a stern face, said to the man, "Gao Jianjun, it's only been a few years, and you've already become so disrespectful, you don't even know how to call me 'brother' anymore?"

"Yes, yes, Brother Zhou, you've really kept an eye on the dog. If it keeps barking like that, I'll really shoot it and kill the boiled meat!"

As Gao Jianjun spoke, he climbed up to the dugout.

Zhou Jingming yelled at Jin Wang twice, and Jin Wang stopped barking, ran to his side, and continued to growl fiercely at the two of them.

He had to bend down, pat its head, and scratch its neck to soothe it before the noise stopped.

Gao Jianjun is 1.75 meters tall, about the same height as Zhou Jingming, but he is broad-shouldered and thick-waisted, a complete fat man.

The man who came with him was a bit thinner and smaller. He wore a hat with his ears covered and a cotton coat. He had a long, large nose with a prominent bridge and a drooping tip. It was a classic hooked nose. Coupled with his slightly fierce eyes, he seemed somewhat sinister at first glance.

Zhou Jingming took out a Red Lotus cigarette and handed one to each of them. He smiled slightly at Gao Jianjun and said, "You're still as fat as ever... What are you doing here?"

"If you can come, why can't I!"

Gao Jianjun seemed quite pleased: "I was wondering why you went to the Workers, Peasants and Soldiers University. You should have been given a job, so why did you end up in this Gold Rush Valley?"

"I did have a job, but I wasn't happy with it. Now that some people are starting to go into business, I tried it out too. But I couldn't make it, so I came to Gold Rush Valley. Who doesn't want to get rich? Don't you think so?"

Zhou Jingming didn't want to talk about his own affairs in front of that person, so he just gave a simple answer and then asked, "What about you? With your qualifications, you should be doing very well. Why did you end up in this place?"

"What a load of rubbish! My whole family's future was ruined by one bomb!"

Gao Jianjun's expression darkened: "After you left Beidahuang, a few years later, my father also sent me to the Railway Corps School to study engineering blasting. I studied for two years. When I returned to the farm that year, I couldn't stay idle. I found something and got a bag of explosives to blast fish in the river."

As a result, I didn't expect that when the explosives were lit and thrown into the river, several people would suddenly emerge from the woods on the riverbank.

Bang... Stones burst from the riverbed, flying everywhere, killing two and injuring two.

Because of this incident, the impact was significant. My dad was dismissed, I was expelled from school, and we had to pay a lot of compensation. I had to go back to my rural hometown. Sigh... it's a case of our family's fortunes declining, and we couldn't make a living anymore. I heard that you could make money by panning for gold, so I came out this year."

Zhou Jingming nodded slightly.

In his previous life, he did not see Gao Jianjun in the Gold Rush Valley five years later.

Gao Jianjun's father was a railway soldier and a leader in the company's farm. In the 1950s, when 100,000 demobilized soldiers entered the Great Northern Wilderness, his whole family moved there.

Zhou Jingming met Gao Jianjun when he was an educated youth at a farm in the Great Northern Wilderness. At that time, Gao Jianjun was three years younger than Zhou Jingming.

Perhaps because they were of similar age, Gao Jianjun easily became friends with Zhou Jingming. During school holidays, he often followed Zhou Jingming to fish in ponds and rivers, and also to collect bird eggs in meadows. In winter, they would search for monkeys on stilts and set traps to catch foxes...

What really bothered Zhou Jingming was that Gao Jianjun seemed to know about explosives, so he asked, "Do you really know about explosives?"

Gao Jianjun blurted out, "Nonsense, that's exactly what I'm learning. Do you think I don't understand?"

Zhou Jingming then asked, "So you haven't left yet... are you planning to go wash the cave?"

Just as Gao Jianjun was about to answer, the man who came with him nudged him and said, "Jianjun, we should go back now... You can talk about it later."

“Zhou and I are friends. We’ve only been out for a short time. We haven’t seen each other for so long. What’s wrong with talking a few more words? It won’t cause any problems.”

Gao Jianjun didn't want to leave; he wanted to chat with Zhou Jingming a little longer.

The man frowned, his bravado masking his fear, and said, "Are you leaving or not? If you don't leave, I will!"

After he said that, he turned and left.

Seeing this, Gao Jianjun hesitated for a moment, then gave Zhou Jingming an awkward smile: "Brother Zhou, let's chat again when we meet. I have other things to do."

After saying that, he jogged to catch up with the man.

Zhou Jingming added from behind, "Be careful in the Gold Rush Valley!"

"Got it!" Gao Jianjun turned around and replied, then continued chasing after the man.

Watching the two walk away, Wu Yang asked, "Brother Zhou, you two seem to know each other well?"

Zhou Jingming nodded slightly: "When we were educated youth in the Great Northern Wilderness, he was my little shadow. But we haven't been in touch since I went to the Workers, Peasants and Soldiers University..."

He briefly told Wu Yang and Bai Zhishun about Gao Jianjun's situation.

"Judging from the way those people were hiding, they must have also gone into the mountains to clean their caves."

If Wu Yang could see it, Zhou Jingming could naturally be certain as well.

Doing this kind of thing is always done in secret; I don't want anyone to know.

At this moment, Zhou Jingming was thinking more about how, in the future, when he could really take charge of the business, obtain a mining license, and have the ability to mine gold, the mine would need a lot of technical personnel. Since Gao Jianjun had studied and understood blasting, he was a useful talent.

However, people change, and after all, they hadn't seen each other for many years. To Zhou Jingming, Gao Jianjun was just a familiar stranger.

That final word of advice was only given during the two years we spent together in the Great Northern Wilderness.

Zhou Jingming called Jin Wang over and unexpectedly slapped it across the face.

Jin Wang immediately adopted a posture of tilting his head, baring his teeth, and howling fiercely.

"You're still being aggressive? You still dare to be aggressive towards me..."

Zhou Jingming pointed at it: "Who told you to wander around outside like that? Did I starve you or skimp on your food and water? Do you know that you almost became someone else's prey today?"

Whether it understood Zhou Jingming's words or felt that Zhou Jingming was the master and shouldn't have this attitude, after a brief standoff, it slowly retracted its bared teeth, its eyes softened, flicked its curled tail, and sniffed Zhou Jingming's calf.

Zhou Jingming took a deep breath and looked again in the direction Gao Jianjun had left. He believed that since they were also going to wash the cave, they must be heading to the restricted area upstream, and he was very likely to run into them in the mountains.

"Get something to eat. Once we've eaten, it's time for us to get moving."

Zhou Jingming gave a shout and went into the dugout first.

Wu Yang and Bai Zhishun followed them in, busily stirring the fire in the earthen stove to heat up the naan bread. They also fetched water from the river in a kettle and boiled it on the stove for drinking.

The gold prospectors in the valley have almost all left, and the river water has returned to its clear state.

While waiting for the water to boil and the naan to bake, the three of them packed up their luggage.

After eating and drinking their fill in the dugout and feeding Jinwang, the three of them carried their luggage and continued upstream.

Along the river, we saw a few more people, rocking their golden buckets in the icy water on the riverbank. We also saw two groups of people; after a brief encounter, they disappeared without a sound, each going their own way or disappearing into the woods.

The largest group they saw had about a dozen people, five of whom were carrying hunting rifles. This was the group that Zhou Jingming and his two companions deliberately avoided, mainly because the other party's behavior was somewhat arrogant, and Zhou Jingming did not want to cause trouble.

For the next half day, the three of them spent almost all their time hiking through the mountains and forests.

Zhou Jingming diligently searched for the memories in his mind along the way, trying to verify everything in the valley.

Around noon, the three arrived at a side gully where there were almost no trees, only barren mountains. These desolate mountains, eroded by snow and rain, were constantly crumbling, leaving large piles of rock fragments at their base. Some of the more severely eroded sections looked as if they might collapse at any moment.

What is most striking are the numerous mine shafts on these mountains.

Zhou Jingming pointed to the cave entrances that were half-hidden by mud and sand: "These are the mine shafts left over from when they were mined a lot in the past... Let's start from here."

Zhou Jingming looked around to make sure no one was there, then led the way toward the nearest mine entrance.

When I visited these places in my past life, I couldn't see so many old mine shafts anymore. They were either occupied by Boss Jin who had obtained the mining license, or they had been blasted down by those cleaning the mines.

Of course, more mines were later created in the mountains, left behind by those gold mine owners.

Some were abandoned by the gold mine owners because they couldn't extract any gold; some had collapsed and resulted in fatalities, so they were sealed off; and some were abandoned mines where the gold mine owners' cash flow had dried up and they had no money to continue mining.

Back then, many people dreamed of making a fortune by cleaning caves.

The reason he isn't rushing to enter those state-owned mines is that although they've stopped operating, they still have people patrolling them. There's an opportunity to enter those mines, but usually he doesn't dare make a big fuss, and he might get caught, so it's inconvenient.

On the contrary, these ancient mines, which are located in restricted areas but are poorly maintained, are more suitable for ore washing.

Even if explosives are used, it won't matter.

When the three arrived at the cave entrance, they took out their flashlights and shone them inside. Zhou Jingming saw that the cave was supported by wood and seemed to be well preserved. He was worried about Bai Zhishun going in, and he also knew that Wu Yang had never been down in a mine before, so he was afraid that something might happen to them if they went in.

Only he could go into the cave to check the situation.

"You all stay at the cave entrance, I'll go in and check the situation first!"

He put down his luggage, picked up a pickaxe, lit a lantern, and with a flashlight in his mouth, crawled into the cave.

The lantern was used to observe the air conditions inside the cave. If the lantern flame burned well, it meant that the air was fine and there was no need to worry about suffocation or anything like that.

If there are any changes in the size or color of the flame, you should be very careful.

Once inside the cave, the space is slightly larger, allowing one to walk around with their head slightly lowered.

He hung the lantern on his waist, then held a pickaxe in one hand and a flashlight in the other, carefully observing his surroundings as he ventured deeper into the cave. Whenever he saw cracks in the cave walls, he would gently poke or hook them with the pickaxe to check for potential collapse and to guard against any rocks that might suddenly fall.

Fortunately, this first cave brought Zhou Jingming quite a surprise.

He went about seventeen or eighteen meters deeper, but then he couldn't go any further. The cave had collapsed, and a large amount of mud and rock debris completely blocked the passage, making it impossible to proceed.

It seemed that the collapse in the cave had happened this year, because he saw that some of the broken stones still looked fresh.

The key point is that when he swept his flashlight across the pile of mud and rocks, he found some golden things.

He shone his flashlight up to the top and carefully examined it. After confirming that it wouldn't collapse, he slowly approached and rummaged through the mud and rocks to find a stone with black and white inclusions. Upon closer inspection with the flashlight, he saw that it was a quartz stone, and the densely distributed golden things on it could only be gold.

(End of this chapter)