My Gold Rush Career Begins in 1984

Chapter 220 The Name Wasn't Well-Chosen

Wu Yang habitually searched him.

First, they took a Double Lion mechanical watch off Wu Fusheng's left wrist, and then they busied themselves taking off the gold ring on his finger.

He tried to pull it off but couldn't, so he simply picked up a stone from the side and threw it down.

Zhou Jingming grinned, but didn't say much. If it were him, he wouldn't have let go of a gold ring that weighed at least 20 grams.

However, when he glanced back casually, he saw a person standing on the distant hillside, watching them. He paused slightly, then whispered, "Someone's here!"

Upon hearing this, Wu Yang was also startled. He immediately grabbed his gun, looked around, and quickly spotted the man standing on the hillside: "It's the patrolman you had Wu Fusheng release yesterday... I'll go and take care of him."

He grabbed his gun and was about to leave when Zhou Jingming stopped him.

“He must have some resentment because Wu Fusheng bullied him like that. Besides, we helped him yesterday, so there shouldn’t be any major problems.”

Zhou Jingming stood up, slung the Type 56 semi-automatic rifle over his shoulder, and said, "I'll go take a look!"

Just to be on the safe side, some probing is still necessary.

He walked slowly toward the ranger, keeping an eye on the ranger's movements as he went.

Wu Yang continued to search the men, glancing at the patrolman every now and then.

He soon made a new discovery: he found gold nuggets in a lining sewn into the back of the clothes of one of Wu Fusheng's henchmen, and there were quite a few of them. He guessed that they had been embezzled while working at the mine.

The patrolman did not avoid Zhou Jingming. Instead, he sat down on the barren slope as Zhou Jingming approached.

When he was about twenty meters away, Zhou Jingming called out to him, "I mean no harm... Can I come up and talk to you?"

The patrolman nodded slightly.

Zhou Jingming relaxed his guard slightly and quickened his pace as he walked towards him.

The patrolman was beaten yesterday, and his face is still covered in bruises, and his left eye is so swollen that it's practically a slit.

The man was a bit older than Zhou Jingming. He stopped when he got closer and made up an excuse that was not entirely true: "Brother, I have a grudge against this man. I've come here to take revenge."

The patrolman glanced at Zhou Jingming: "I'm here to deal with him too."

Zhou Jingming was not surprised at all by what the patrolman said. Anyone with a shred of backbone would not have tolerated being bullied like that.

If it weren't for Zhou Jingming and Wu Yang yesterday, he might have lost his life.

On the other hand, if you don't have any guts, you can't stand guard in this desolate wilderness.

Zhou Jingming sat down next to him and offered him a cigarette: "What is your surname, brother?"

"My surname is Liu, and my name is Liu Shanfu. What about you?"

"My surname is Wang... Are you the only one at the checkpoint?"

"Yes, just me."

"You really went all out, daring to find their mining site all by yourself."

“I took this job, I make a living from this, so I have to do something.”

The answer was very simple, yet it filled Zhou Jingming with awe.

He admired people like that, who could still do things with pure dedication even for low wages.

Zhou Jingming had only ever met one type of person with that kind of aura: "Brother Liu, were you a soldier before?"

"I worked there for a few years!"

Liu Fushan nodded and continued, "This year, the Altun Mountains Nature Reserve was established, and forward outposts were set up. The people above contacted me, so I came."

"It's tough and dangerous in the mountains."

"It wasn't hard work. My task was simple: to ride around this desolate land every day and observe through binoculars how a pack of wolves chased a wild donkey, bit its hind legs, knocked it down, tore it into pieces, until it became a pile of skeletons and a pool of blood on the ground."

It was so lonely that most of the time I would pick up my binoculars, stand on the roof of the guard post or climb up the hillside to see if anyone from the nature reserve would come down into the mountains to bring me rice, noodles or vegetables. Even if it was a complete stranger, I wanted to go and have a good talk with them.

At that time, I hoped there would be more people on the mountain.

But it turned out that too many people were not a good thing. This spring, a large number of people suddenly appeared in the Altun Mountains.

I remember it was May 27th. Less than a kilometer from the outpost, a Dongfeng truck appeared in my binoculars, and then more and more people came, along with tractors of all sizes.

In just five or six days, more than eighty vehicles and eight or nine hundred people arrived, filling the valley.

This situation is no different from that of Haxionggou this year.

I went to look for him and found him. I told him to go to the nature reserve to complete the procedures, and he sent a group of people to surround me and beat me up once.

I reported the situation to my superiors, and they told me to ignore the gold mining and just make sure the wild animals weren't hurt. But yesterday... as you all saw, if it weren't for you, they would have killed me yesterday.

The reason I'm here today is because he let me go in front of you yesterday, but then sent people to the checkpoint last night. Luckily, I noticed him early and managed to hide...

Don't worry, what you're doing is what I want to do too, and I won't tell anyone.

Hearing this, Zhou Jingming felt relieved. The two chatted briefly on the barren slope, with Zhou Jingming asking Liu Shanfu about his past, and Liu Shanfu asking Zhou Jingming about his entanglement with Wu Fusheng.

For Zhou Jingming, this was just a lie.

He figured he was unlikely to come to the Altun Mountains again and would probably have no further contact with Liu Shanfu.

The gold panning business alone in Altay was enough to keep him busy.

Not long after, Wu Yang finished looting and retrieved the four Type 56 Half-Blades.

Zhou Jingming didn't want to linger in this troublesome place, so he said goodbye to Liu Fushan and left.

When Wu Yang met with Wu Yang, Wu Yang lowered his voice and said, "They probably found less than two hundred grams of gold. They didn't have much money on them."

As he spoke, he took the gold out of his pocket and handed it, along with the watch, to Zhou Jingming.

Zhou Jingming pushed his hand away: "You can keep it yourself. Not to mention the gold and money we haven't seen yet, we've already made a profit just by picking up these six Type 56 semi-automatic rifles on this trip."

The other two Type 56 rifles and three shotguns were hidden on the way there and were not brought to Wu Fusheng's mine.

Since following Zhou Jingming, Wu Yang has been doing many of the tough and dirty jobs. Subconsciously, Zhou Jingming felt that he should give Wu Yang more opportunities.

Wu Yang didn't waste any time. He casually put the things into his backpack and then handed over a bunch of keys: "Wu Fusheng has several keys in his pocket. They should still be the keys to his dugout and his apartment in Golmud."

Zhou Jingming took it and looked at it, then casually put it in his pocket and sighed, "Fusheng is a good name, but it's a pity it's the surname Wu. Wu Fusheng, he doesn't have the fortune to live."

Wu Yang smiled and said, "If you have to blame someone, blame it on their bad name... Brother Zhou, what do we do next?"

"Of course we'll go back to the mine to get the car, and while we're at it, we'll see if Wu Fusheng really did hide something in the dugout."

"They still have so many people at the mining site, I'm afraid this will be difficult to handle?"

“It’s alright, you don’t need to come with me. Just take the gun and wait for me on the road to Itunbulak.”

"I'm still worried!"

"What's there to worry about? Wu Fusheng and his three henchmen are here. As for those people at his mine, Wu Fusheng greeted me with a smile. What can they do to me? Don't worry!"

Seeing Zhou Jingming say this, Wu Yang thought about Wu Fusheng's attitude towards Zhou Jingming and felt that the people at the mine site probably wouldn't do anything to Zhou Jingming. He just said, "Then be careful!"

The two parted ways. Wu Yang took the weapons and headed towards the mountain path, while Zhou Jingming went upstream along the river.

He returned to the mine an hour and a half later, where the gold prospectors were still working under the scorching sun.

Zhou Jingming glanced at everyone, not rushing into the dugout, but instead going to the mine site first to ask the foreman, "Brother Wu asked me to inquire, how many truckloads have been dug on average so far?"

"It's too hot, the brothers can't take it anymore. We haven't dared to rest, and we haven't even made a hundred truckloads so far..."

"It's getting late. At this rate, you won't be able to get two hundred trucks done in a day."

"This is something that was never going to be done; people aren't machines..."

The foreman sighed and looked at Zhou Jingming with a pleading expression: "Brother, I see you have some influence with Boss Wu. Why don't you put in a good word for us? If we really do this, we brothers really won't be able to stay at this mine anymore."

Zhou Jingming nodded: "I'll give it a try... I had good luck today, I found a herd of antelopes in the mountains. A group of us went over, and I was the most useless one. Boss Wu asked me to pick up some things, but his car hasn't arrived yet. I still have to ride my motorcycle to Yitunbulak to find the car, so I won't talk to you guys anymore. Let's see how well we do tonight. If we do well, and Brother Wu is happy, I'll put in a good word for you."

To be honest, I also think Angkor's demands are excessive.

Upon hearing this, the foreman repeatedly thanked Zhou Jingming.

Zhou Jingming took out the bunch of keys he had gotten from Wu Fusheng, weighed them in his hand a couple of times, and then turned and went to the dugout.

While unlocking the door, he looked around again, listened quietly for a while, and when he saw that there was no movement, he opened the iron lock hanging on the door and crawled into the dugout.

He closed the door, went to the large bed, knelt on one knee, and looked under the bed. Sure enough, he saw some soft soil under the bed. He immediately swept it away with his hand, revealing a stone slab.

This pleased Zhou Jingming. He carefully lifted the stone slab, revealing the hole underneath. He was about to reach in when he stopped himself just as his hand was about to touch the hole.

He suddenly felt that Wu Fusheng had confessed too readily and suspected something was amiss.

After thinking for a moment, he got up, pulled a small twig from the top of the dugout and placed it on the purlin, then stuffed it into the pit and stirred it.

With a loud clang, a powerful clamp sprang up and snapped shut, instantly breaking the branch in two.

It was a huge trap that could be used to catch wild boars. If you were to reach in recklessly, your fingers could be snapped off on the spot.

Zhou Jingming was startled, relieved that he hadn't been too reckless.

He looked around, then poked around under the bed a few times with a twig and stirred the pit again. Seeing nothing amiss, he carefully crawled under the bed and saw a package of bran gold sealed in an oil paper bag under the iron clamp in the pit. He immediately took it out.

He searched the room again and found two packs of Type 56 ammunition, two stacks of 100-yuan notes, and some loose banknotes.

Seeing that he couldn't find anything inside, Zhou Jingming stuffed the items he had found into his backpack, picked them up, and left.

When he reached the door, he listened carefully again. Seeing that there was still no movement outside, he dusted himself off, opened the door, crawled out, and then locked the door again.

As he walked toward his motorcycle, he made sure to greet the foreman before mounting his motorcycle and speeding away.

(End of this chapter)