My Gold Rush Career Begins in 1984

Chapter 152 To Do It or Not?
When Shen Wei returned to the riverbank, he found that two of the three people on the riverbank were already corpses.

One of them had his head smashed by a rock and lay face down on the riverbank, blood gushing from his head, which was dented from the impact. He probably died without any resistance.

Another person, about ten meters away, had knife wounds on their back and chest.

Shen Wei had no idea what was going on with the three of them on the riverbank, or what the specific situation was.

He remembered the missing person. When recruiting people into the team, he asked about the general situation. He only said that the person had committed a crime in his hometown. He refused to say what the specific crime was. However, the person was usually taciturn and somewhat domineering in his behavior. Even Shen Wei, who was the leader, subconsciously gave him some leeway.

In the Gold Rush Valley, there are all kinds of people. Having met so many people, Shen Wei has developed a keen intuition for judging character.

This intuition told him that this person harbored a low-key ruthlessness, and it was best to avoid provoking such a person.

They organized a group of people to come out and clean the cave. After leaving the valley, they went their separate ways. In the end, the gold they panned for in the valley for more than two months has not yet been sold.

Once the cave cleaning is finished, who would still take the long detour back to the Gold Rush Valley to retrieve gold? They would definitely carry it with them.

On the riverbank, the gold panning tools were still there, but the two dead men had lost all their gold. Shen Wei had seen one of them carrying a deposit slip, but he couldn't find it.

Judging from the situation, he guessed that the man had most likely killed him and robbed him of his gold. He probably didn't have much hope for the three mines he was going to clean up, so he took advantage of the fact that there were few people around and it would be easier to make his move.

If the two of them pooled their gold together, it would be equivalent to working in the valley for another year. With such a sum of money, they could live quite comfortably for several years, no matter where they were.

When this judgment came to mind, Shen Wei felt a chill run down his spine, even though he himself had done similar things quite often.

But right now, he couldn't worry about that; he was busy going back to find the people who had cleaned the cave.

Right now, the most important thing is to seize that gold mine.

He hurried along and when he found the second mine, he heard an explosion coming from inside.

Gao Jianjun and his six companions waited on the side of the mine entrance.

Shen Wei was not in a good mood when he saw these people.

It's not easy to assemble such a group of people; each member has their own expertise and division of labor.

Some of them knew about blasting; they were graduates of the Railway Corps School, where they studied engineering blasting.
Some people live in the wild year-round and are familiar with all the signs before the weather changes, so they can clearly distinguish directions in heavy snow.
Some people have studied geology and understand the direction of mineral veins and the patterns of gold extraction...

The remaining few weren't very capable.

But cleaning the mine also requires labor. They don't need to know anything; they just need to put in the effort, constantly carrying tools. Once inside the mine, they just dig shovel by shovel.

Now, including himself, the team of thirteen people has dwindled to eight.

As he walked along the barren slope toward the mine entrance, he was still pondering the next manpower arrangements.

At the very least, Gao Jianjun couldn't let him participate. He knew those three people and might cause trouble at a crucial moment. There were also two who were just there for labor, knew nothing, and were honest and simple. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been fooled into coming to clean the cave.

Of those who are usable, including him, there are only five.

Five men with three guns—even though the three who occupied the mine also had guns, it wasn't entirely impossible for them to take them down…

Gao Jianjun was wary of Shen Weixin. Seeing that he had returned alone, he asked, "Brother Shen, why are you the only one who came back? Where are the other three?"

"Don't even mention it. The four of us went upstream along the river panning for gold. Everything was going well until I got a little resentful. When we got back up, I made a point of going to the mine shaft that we had blasted before, wanting to take a closer look to see if there were any places where gold had been found but were missed."

When I came out of the third mine, I found that two of the three of them were dead on the riverbank, and one had run away.

That bastard probably hadn't found any gold in the mine after days of searching, so he wanted to leave. Taking advantage of the few people around, he hatched a wicked plan, killed someone, and stole the gold.

As Shen Wei spoke, he pulled a piece of bright yellow gold ore from his pocket: "I saw it on a pile of waste when I was panning for gold along the river. It should yield some gold."

The crowd listened with astonishment, but quickly came to their senses; anything could happen in the gold rush business.

In other words, Gao Jianjun glanced at Shen Wei a few more times, trying to glean more information from him, because he immediately suspected that the things Shen Wei mentioned were likely done by Shen Wei himself.

As for the others, their attention was quickly drawn to the gold ore in Shen Wei's hand, and they wanted to pass it around to see how much gold it could yield.

Having not seen any gold for many days, this piece of ore at least offered them a little psychological comfort, though it wasn't very effective.

But then Shen Wei asked, "How was the situation in the last mine?"

Gao Jianjun shook his head: "We went in and looked, but there was nothing. We didn't see a single gold nugget, not even any of those belts that Zhang Haifei mentioned. It was all just stones."

The others also nodded.

But Shen Wei wasn't someone who easily trusted others: "I'll go take a look, I'll be right back!"

The two mines were not far apart. He took a flashlight and ran into the mine by himself. When he got inside, he found that, just as Gao Jianjun had said, there was nothing on the walls except for some rocks.

He had no choice but to retreat.

When he returned to the next cave entrance, only Gao Jianjun was squatting there with a hunting rifle; the rest of the people had all gone into the mine to clean up.

Six people were working in shifts inside the cave, and the cleaning was progressing quickly.

He only waited for about half an hour before someone came out of the mine and said that the location had been cleared.

He and Gao Jianjun immediately followed into the mine, walking about fifty or sixty meters into the narrow tunnel until they reached the deepest part of the mine. The group of men scanned the tunnel walls with flashlights, tapping on any uncertain spots with pickaxes or hammers. However, after a thorough search, they still couldn't find a single trace of gold.

Everyone was disappointed again.

After leaving the mine, someone started shouting, "Hurry up, while there's still time, let's open the third mine too. Damn it, fortune is in the hands of fate. If we don't see any gold, I'm going home."

Shen Wei had other plans in mind, and his thoughts were no longer on that last mine.

But since everyone was urging him, he nodded in agreement and led the group downstream to find the third mine.

Who knew that before they even entered the last mine shaft, a block of mud and rocks suddenly rolled down the mountain, probably due to weathering, and just then it couldn't hold on anymore.

The hillside was steep, and the mud and rocks tumbled and rolled a few times, immediately scattering the mud and the stones inside.

The mud is alright; it won't roll very far before it settles down.

But those stones were quite large, and as they rolled, they bounced and tumbled, causing even more stones to roll as they hit the slope below.

At first glance, there were dozens of pieces, giving it a grand and impressive feel.

Everyone was terrified and hurriedly hid.

Let alone large rocks, even those fist-sized stones rolling down at such a speed would definitely hurt if you got hit.

As Shen Wei was dodging, the stone he was stepping on slipped, and he couldn't get any leverage in his foot, so he couldn't move his body away quickly.

With the rocks right in front of him and no way to avoid them, he simply ran down the gravel slope.

As a result, a rock hit his thigh, causing him to stumble and fall forward, injuring his arm and scraping a piece of skin off his palm, which stung painfully.

This made him even more annoyed.

But no one could be blamed for this. He could only grab some mud and smear it on the wound to stop the bleeding. Then he rubbed his thigh where the stone had hit him. Judging from the level of pain, he figured there would be plenty of bruises.

Once the falling rocks had stabilized, he limped up the gravel slope.

Several gold prospectors secretly laughed when they saw his disheveled appearance.

One of them saw the blood on his hands: "Seeing blood is not a good omen. This is Master Huang's hint. We can't continue."

Hearing this, Shen Wei became even more annoyed and yelled at the man, "Shut your bird beak!"

After resting for a while and completely stopping the bleeding on his hands, he instructed Gao Jianjun: "Brother, take the two of them in first to check. Once you've confirmed that there's nothing wrong in the cave, have someone come out and tell them that I'll let them in to drill the blasting holes."

He directly selected the other two gold prospectors he had excluded.

Gao Jianjun had no suspicions and just wanted to blast the ore as quickly as possible to end this deadly gold-panning trip. He immediately called the two men, lit flashlights, and went into the mine.

After the three entered the cave, Shen Wei immediately waved to the remaining four: "Brothers, we're rich!"

A single, soft sentence successfully stirred the nerves of the four people, who, seeing Shen Wei's cautious expression, all moved closer.

He lowered his voice: "That bastard Zhang Haifei lied to us. The mine we opened up earlier has produced gold."

Immediately, someone asked in a low voice, "What's going on?"

Shen Wei immediately went to pan for gold along the river and took the opportunity to re-inspect the mine shafts that had been blasted. He found that the mine shafts they had blasted had been occupied by others who were digging out gold ore, breaking it up, and carrying it to the river to pan for it. He recounted how they did so.

"That's the mine we blew up. We finally found gold, are we going to let others profit from it?"

His words were full of incitement, completely ignoring the fact that Zhou Jingming and his men had blasted the mine again: "We went through so much trouble and took such great risks to come to this place where mining is prohibited, what for? For gold... Can we tolerate this?"

As soon as he said that, someone immediately asked, "Then what should we do?"

"They definitely won't agree to let them give it up directly, so the only option is to take it back?"

Shen Wei said with a serious face, "I specifically kept you guys behind to talk about this. Brothers, as the old saying goes, fortune favors the bold. You've all seen plenty of fighting and killing in the gold rush. If you want to get rich by panning for gold, you have to fight and scramble, otherwise you won't get rich. So, I'm asking you, do you dare to do it?"

The group looked at each other, all appearing somewhat hesitant.

Someone asked, "Why avoid those three? Wouldn't it be better to have more people?"

“Gao Jianjun knows one of them, and they seem to be on good terms. If we ask him to participate, he probably won’t agree and might even cause trouble. The other two aren’t the kind of people who do this kind of thing; bringing them along would only get in the way.”

"How many are there?"

"There are only three of them, and they're with a dog. The problem is, all three of them are carrying guns... But we have guns too, and we even have two more men, so there's nothing to be afraid of. Besides, they came into the restricted area to mine ore on the same day as us, so they might have already made some gains elsewhere, maybe quite a lot. If we take them down, we might be able to squeeze some money out of them..."

Upon hearing Shen Wei mention that Zhou Jingming and his group also had three guns, some people became even more hesitant. With guns, things were unpredictable: "This is difficult, too risky. They have guns and dogs. If they're skilled with guns, going there would be suicide..."

“You’re afraid of chicken feathers? Besides robbing, we also have explosives, right? Shorten the fuse, light it, and throw it over there. Even a god couldn’t stop him… So, I’m asking you, are you going to do it or not? If you’re not going, I’ll find someone else, but let me make this clear: the gold in the mine has nothing to do with you.”

After a brief hesitation, one of them, unable to resist the lure of the gold in the mine, nodded in agreement: "Let's do it!"

The others nodded in agreement.

(End of this chapter)