My Gold Rush Career Begins in 1984

Chapter 243 Caving
Pyrite has a golden appearance, which has deceived the eyes of countless people.

However, if you compare them side by side with real gold, you can clearly feel the difference.

In terms of color alone, gold is a pure golden yellow, while pyrite is a golden yellow with a white tinge.

Although pyrite is not gold, it is closely related to gold. A considerable amount of gold exists in the fissures or crystal defects of pyrite in the form of visible gold and invisible micro-gold, making pyrite an important gold-bearing mineral.

Zhou Jingming didn't rush into the cave. Instead, he rummaged through the pyrite slag and finally picked out a few pieces. Right there, he smashed them with a geological hammer, then took out the large bowl he had brought (without glaze) and put it in the bowl. He returned to the riverbank, found a stone, and ground it in the bowl for a while.

Then he took it to the river to wash it. When only a little bit of heavy sand remained at the bottom of the bowl, he took out a magnifying glass to examine it and finally had to sigh: "There is some fine gold, but the grade is too low and it has no extraction value."

He didn't even see a single grain of gold.

Even with various types of machinery, mining such minerals will result in losses.

The only hope left is to go into the mine and take a look.

Zhou Jingming didn't linger. He returned to the valley and looked at the three dark mine shafts arranged in a triangular pattern on the mountainside. He instructed Wu Yang, "Go into the forest and find larch and climbing pine trees. Get some pine seeds and resin. We need to make some torches before we explore the caves!"

"Why make a torch when we already have a flashlight?"

Batu thought it was just simple lighting.

“These caves are very old, and we don’t know what’s inside. We’re using torches not just for lighting, but to check if there’s any air inside and if there’s anything wrong with the air. If we didn’t use torches, we might not be able to get out once we’re inside.”

After a brief explanation, Zhou Jingming and Wu Yang went into the woods first.

Batu and Zhang Xueqin also went in to help.

The core elements of making a torch are two: the torch itself and the fuel.

The carrier is easy to find; branches, vines, and the like will do. The key is fuel.

In the mountains, the simplest and most convenient fuel is undoubtedly materials rich in oil, such as pine and cypress trees.

Of course, animal fat could be used as fuel, but it's impossible to hunt for torches these days.

Therefore, the best kind is the kind of thing that is translucent and moistened with oil, like Mingzi.

When the group arrived in the forest, they looked for dead pine trees and the stumps of climbing pines. After peeling off the bark, they examined the wood. If it was pine resin, they cut it down with a knife. They also collected the resin that had seeped out of the tree due to broken bark and insect infestation.

In this almost primitive forest, materials were easy to collect, and it didn't take long to make seven or eight simple torches.

After the torches were made, Zhou Jingming led the three of them to the cave entrance.

He looked at Zhang Xueqin and said, "Big sister, you should wait outside. Don't go in. It's quite scary inside."

Zhou Jingming wasn't trying to scare her. Anyone who has never been into a mine before would feel a nameless fear the first time they enter such a dark mine where they can't tell which way is which, as if they are being swallowed up little by little.

Zhang Xueqin didn't dare to follow him into the cave rashly, and quickly nodded.

Without further hesitation, Zhou Jingming took out a flashlight from his bag and was the first to crawl into the first mine shaft.

The mine shaft is not high, only about two meters high, with small railway tracks laid at the bottom, leading deep into the mine.

In the beginning section, because the rock strata were loose, a lot of wood was cut down and used to build a frame to support the cave walls, and wooden sticks and other materials were laid on the top for protection.

The timber was already rotten, and there were many pebbles on the ground, making it difficult to walk.

You can clearly feel the cool breeze inside, so there's no need to rush to light a torch.

Zhou Jingming simply shone his flashlight on the cave walls, but most of the time he was paying attention to whether the hanging rocks at the top had cracks and whether they would fall.

As you venture deeper, about twenty meters in, it becomes very quiet, the air grows cold, and you can't feel any movement.

Zhou Jingming hurriedly told Wu Yang to light the first torch and instructed him: "If the torch suddenly goes out or the color of the flame changes, we have to retreat immediately. This task is entrusted to you. Take good care of it."

Wu Yang replied in a deep voice, "Alright!"

He walked forward, holding a torch.

Zhou Jingming followed behind, using a flashlight to observe the rock face.

Suddenly, a few squeaking sounds came from inside the cave, and several dark figures rushed out of the darkness, startling the three of them so much that they quickly stopped. Upon closer inspection, they discovered that there were some small bats hanging sparsely on the cave wall in front of them. They had been startled by the heat emanating from Wu Yang's torch and had fled out.

The group ventured another ten meters or so into the cave. The wooden supports that had been in place were no longer visible; instead, they had been replaced by solid rock. It seemed that they had abandoned the support because they felt that the rock was strong enough to prevent the cave from collapsing.

The previous section was mostly pyrite, and the cave walls would occasionally shimmer with golden light under the flashlight beam. As you went further in, the pyrite became less and less, and more holes for placing explosives began to appear on the cave walls.

Further in, the mine gradually transformed into quartzite veins, with quartz deposits scattered haphazardly along the cave walls. Seeing this quartzite, Wu Yang seemed somewhat delighted: "Brother Zhou, there's a quartz vein..."

Last year, he went with Zhou Jingming to the restricted area across the Haiertes River to clean the cave. Inside the cave, he listened to Zhou Jingming explain a lot and learned about the existence of gold and its close relationship with quartz.

Zhou Jingming smiled and said, "Don't get too excited yet. The presence of quartz doesn't necessarily mean there's a gold vein. The formation of gold is related to lithology, structure, magmatic activity, and strata. Generally, gold deposits exhibit certain characteristics, such as frequently appearing in tectonic fracture zones..."

As Zhou Jingming was talking, he suddenly realized that he was having a hard time explaining these things about geology and minerals, and he figured that Wu Yang and Batu would find them incomprehensible as well.

He thought for a moment, then said a characteristic he had summarized from experience: "The quartz bands you see now are almost all dry and very dense. They usually don't contain gold, and even if they do, it's negligible. If you see quartz that looks oily and contains more impurities, it might contain gold."

Wu Yang simply said "Oh," it's unclear whether he understood or not.

Zhou Jingming didn't say anything more and continued walking inside.

And so, the tunnel twists and turns inside the mountain, extending inwards at a slightly inclined angle. After walking about fifty or sixty meters, it comes to an end.

Zhou Jingming examined almost every quartz vein and used a geological hammer to knock off a few pieces of ore, which he then brought out of the tunnel. In the sunlight outside, he looked at the ore and threw it into the slag heap.

This is a useless mine shaft; those who mined it back then certainly didn't gain anything from it.

After a short rest, Zhou Jingming climbed up to a higher mine shaft about 30 meters away and continued to venture deeper inside.

This mine tunnel is quite large. After going in for about forty meters, a slanted branch tunnel appears on the right side of the tunnel wall, just big enough for one person to squeeze in sideways.

Looking at the quartz veins at the top, you can tell that gold must have been discovered here, which is why they started digging in.

Zhou Jingming glanced at Wu Yang's torch and, seeing that there was no major problem, told Wu Yang to wait outside. He then took his own flashlight, leaned to one side, and used his hands to brace against the cave wall as he slowly ventured deeper inside.

The main problem is that if both people are inside, there probably won't even be enough room for them to move.

After going into this side cave for more than 30 meters, Zhou Jingming reached the end. He looked at the quartzite that was about the width of a palm growing diagonally for a while. He didn't see any bright gold, but there were quite a few impurities. He knocked off a few pieces and put them in his pocket.

Then, looking at the remaining, smaller quartz veins emerging from the cave wall, I realized they had likely been exhausted and abandoned, and probably weren't very valuable.

They continued deeper into the cave, and after walking another twenty meters or so, they saw that the space in front of them suddenly became spacious and tall, with two entrances, one above and one below.

The upper opening leads straight ahead, while the lower one slopes diagonally into the tunnel.

Seeing this, even Wu Yang couldn't help but ask, "Did we dig the wrong place?"

Zhou Jingming thought for a moment: "It's possible, but we can't rule out the possibility that there's gold inside. We still need to go up and take a look... Wu Yang, can you ask me for a favor?"

Wu Yang handed the torch to Batu and squatted down by the wall. Zhou Jingming stepped onto his shoulders and, with Batu's help, climbed to the hole above. He then bent down and pulled Wu Yang up.

Batu's going along didn't serve much purpose; he was just following out of curiosity.

Zhou Jingming told him to wait there, and then he and Wu Yang went into the cave above.

This tunnel is quite deep, about a hundred meters deep. There are quite a few forks on both sides. It's not that we dug in the wrong place; we clearly found a lot of gold in it and kept digging in.

Zhou Jingming crawled into each of the side tunnels to take a look. In most of the tunnels, he found several pieces of gold-bearing quartz. In one of them, he was surprised to find a collapsed section that revealed a small vein of quartz with bright gold inside.

Although it was only a small strip the width of a palm, it was enough to make Zhou Jingming happy, because after breaking off a piece with a geological hammer, he found two flat pieces of gold about the size of a thumb, and the purity was quite good.

It's no worse than the quartz vein he found last year while cleaning the cave.

He immediately laughed: "Just this one quartz vein alone makes our trip worthwhile."

As he spoke, he knocked off a few more pieces of ore and put them into the bag that Wu Yang was carrying.

"I estimate that those people must have mined a lot of gold here, and when they thought they had mined enough, they guessed that there was still gold below, so they dug a hole from directly below and continued to dig in."

Having explored the cave passage sufficiently, the two returned to meet up with Batu and then ventured deeper into the passage below.

The tunnel below only went in forty meters before it ended. The quartz veins crisscrossing the rock walls didn't interest Zhou Jingming much. Instead, when he turned back, he stopped at a place where the rock wall was twisted and cracked. He looked at it again and again with his flashlight, and finally used a geological hammer to knock off some obviously looser mineral material.

The black and white mixed quartz ore had a honeycomb pattern, which he thought was a good place for gold to be contained, even though the gaps were not wide. He felt that there should be gold in there.

As for whether it exists or not, you can find out by looking outside.

When he finished exploring the mine and came out, he broke open the honeycomb-shaped ore, and tiny pieces of gold were revealed.

"When the gold rush season is over, we'll come here to clean the cave; we should have a great harvest!"

Zhou Jingming was very satisfied with the result.

(End of this chapter)