My Gold Rush Career Begins in 1984

Chapter 87: No Cause and Effect
After traveling four or five miles upstream, the river turned and began to run north-south, and the gold panning teams gathered on the west bank of the river.

Looking up at the upper reaches of the valley, Wu Yang asked, "Brother Zhou, should we go to the other side?"

Zhou Jingming was also surveying the river: "Of course we have to cross. We haven't been out for long, so there's no rush to go back!"

Wu Yang had been panning for gold with him for the past two days, panning here and there like a chick scratching for food, but one day of this work was equivalent to four or five days of work on the small peninsula. He was becoming more and more interested: "Then we need to find a way to cross the river... I looked at it, and the river is quite wide and the current is relatively gentle. We can swim across. How good are you in the water? Can you tread water?"

"I'm a pretty good swimmer!"

As the child of a ferryman, Zhou Jingming often jumped and swam in the river since he was a child. He could dive into the river and swim fifty or sixty meters.

Moreover, he has good lung capacity and can hold his breath underwater for two and a half minutes. He is quite confident when it comes to playing in the water.

Wu Yang looked around and felt that everything was pretty much the same: "Let's cross the river here."

As he was about to take off his shoes and go into the water, Zhou Jingming stopped him: "Don't rush, the river water is freezing cold, it's not comfortable to go in naked. Let's go upstream a bit further, there should be another way to cross the river, otherwise, how do these gold panning teams cross the river?"

Wu Yang paused for a moment, then said, "That's true. There are people on both sides of the river, and someone always needs to cross it!"

The two continued upstream and came to a bend in the river, near a gold panning site.

Zhou Jingming had actually been to this mining site in his previous life and knew it was an old mining area where people had been panning for gold in the early years. There were many mine tunnels of various sizes on the terraces along the riverbank.

Right here at the mining site, there was a cableway spanning both sides of the river. After private gold panning was opened, the first team to arrive here took control of this cableway.

In the past, people had to pay to use it.

Don't underestimate this zipline. These people can earn tens of thousands of yuan a year just by using it, which is a considerable income.

Zhou Jingming knew the area well and went straight along the riverbank to the wooden house next to the zipline: "Is anyone home?"

Hearing the noise from inside the wooden house, a man immediately opened the door and came out, glancing at the two of them: "Want to cross the river?"

Zhou Jingming nodded.

The man turned and went into the house, then flung out a device with two pulleys and a long wooden plank attached to the bottom through the window: "Five yuan per person!"

Wu Yang couldn't help but say, "Five yuan? That's so expensive!"

The man replied coldly, "If you think it's too expensive, you don't have to go!"

Zhou Jingming raised his hand to signal Wu Yang not to say anything more, stepped forward, took out ten yuan and handed it to the man, then carried his luggage, slung the wooden plank over his shoulder, and rode off again, calling Jin Wang over, who then put the plank on him and held it in front of him.

Wu Yang didn't say anything more and followed suit, mounting the plank.

The plank is long enough to seat three people at a time.

At the beginning, because it was a small slope, the two of them slid down directly. When they crossed the middle of the river, the momentum of sliding down disappeared, and they had to rely on their hands to grab the steel cable and pull themselves across.

As it rushed down the river, Jinwang was not used to it. It struggled violently for a couple of seconds but could not break free. Once it reached the surface of the river, it dared not move and cried out softly.

This freed up one of Zhou Jingming's hands to pull the steel cable.

Wu Yang followed suit, pulling the steel cable with both hands alternately with Zhou Jingming. It didn't take long before they reached the other side, where there was a small wooden house. Someone came out and retrieved the wooden plank hanging on the steel cable from the pulley into the house.

Zhou Jingming did not linger there, but led Wu Yang to continue upstream along the riverbank.

For the next two days, the two of them spent their energy at a newly collapsed embankment on the east bank of the river.

The reason Zhou Jingming stayed there for so long was that he saw that the mud and sand that had fallen into the water below the earthen embankment had actually formed a layer of fine black sand under the erosion of the water flow.

Black sand has always been associated with gold; if you see this stuff, you can almost always find gold.

He then examined the layered structure of the earthen embankment and realized that silt had once accumulated there, and the muddy bottom was clearly visible.

He had Wu Yang dig out some mud and sand at the bottom of the earthen embankment and wash it in the river. The gold content was surprisingly high, which was enough to show that it was a gold-rich layer.

Instead of spending a lot of time searching along the river for those small gold-rich areas, we might as well just stay here and work hard for a couple of days.

The reason for this decision is that the terrain here is very advantageous. The mud and sand on the earthen kang (a heated platform bed) are loose, so there is no need to dig. Water can be carried directly from the river to flush down the earthen embankment, which will allow the use of chutes.

Zhou Jingming and Wu Yang naturally couldn't bring the cumbersome chute with them this time, but that didn't stop him.

He spent more than half an hour finding a birch tree on the riverbank, peeled off a section of bark, drilled holes in the inward-curling bark, and threaded several sturdy vines through it. He didn't have felt, but he could find some larch needles in the forest, so he used the vines to fix them inside the birch bark to act as a felt to trap the gold.

Then, the two cut down a few more wooden sticks, tied them together with vines, and set up the birch bark chute.

The next thing to do is to keep scooping water and washing it against the earthen embankment.

As the water flows, the mud and sand gradually crumble down, falling along the birch bark into the river below. For mud and sand that cannot be washed away, a pickaxe or shovel is used to dig it out a few times, and then it is rinsed.

After two days of hard work, the two of them had managed to create a depression several meters long on the earthen embankment. If it weren't for the plant roots on top holding it back, it would have collapsed long ago.

They put in a lot of effort and harvested a lot of gold, at least fifty grams, mostly bran gold, with a few gold nuggets mixed in.

As for gold dust, there wasn't much of it; it was mostly larch needles, which were too coarse compared to the gold dust and didn't retain much. The next day, near dusk, Zhou Jingming finished work early. The gold yield on the small embankment was decreasing, and the gold-rich layer near the muddy bottom had been almost completely mined out; there was no need to waste time there.

After finishing their meal that evening, Zhou Jingming thought for a moment and said, "Brother, let's go back tomorrow. We've been out for four days, and it will take about two days to get back. The main thing is that we still need to recruit some people to take back with us."

To be honest, Zhou Jingming actually had four things to do after leaving the small peninsula.

Firstly, we should take Wu Yang out to try his hand at gold panning and accumulate more gold.

Secondly, during this period of his previous life, he was in a labor camp and did not know about the situation in the Haiertes River Gold Rush Valley. After looking around, he found that many teams had begun to grow in size, with many having thirty or forty people. Some of the gold bosses had even more people under their command, with some even reaching hundreds of people.

Third, try to see if you can run into someone you know.

However, in the past few days, apart from Zhang Debao the Scorpion, I haven't seen a single acquaintance I thought was useful in my past life.

This made him realize that he had been too hasty.

The Altay region is larger than some provinces. The Altay Mountains alone have countless valleys stretching for hundreds of kilometers, and gold panning sites are scattered everywhere. Finding even a few people in such a vast area is like finding a needle in a haystack, and the difficulty is self-evident.

Instead of spending so much time and effort searching, it's better to just let things take their course and see if we can meet again in the future.

Moreover, the gold-mining team doesn't necessarily have to find those people to help them. They can choose suitable people from those they meet in the following days, which is more reliable and practical.

The fourth thing is that with the equipment and supplies at the small peninsula's mining site, more manpower can be supported, the mining progress can be accelerated, and more gold can be obtained in a short period of time.

Sufficient gold will be a strong guarantee for what Zhou Jingming will do next.

As for manpower, there is no need to select teams that have collapsed due to fighting or unexpected situations.

Those teams that disbanded after a period of time will inevitably have some flaws among the members who emerge from them. For example, if these people have grudges against other teams, they are very likely to transfer those grudges to their own teams.

Since there are still quite a few gold prospectors coming to the mountains, we might as well just choose them.

Everything now is completely different from what it will be five years from now; we cannot use the mindset of five years from now to consider things now.

Rather than getting entangled in those messy causes and effects, it's better to treat it as a fresh start, something cleaner and more straightforward.

Hearing Zhou Jingming say he was going back, Wu Yang felt a little reluctant, but this was not something he could do alone. He also believed that Zhou Jingming would have better considerations, so he didn't say anything more.

That night, a wind rose in the mountains, and in the middle of the night, the bright moon was obscured by clouds. When I got up the next morning, the sky was gray and I didn't know whether it would snow or rain.

After a quick meal, the two packed their belongings and led Jinwang downstream to return.

This time, the two did not turn back, but walked downstream along the riverbank. However, they deliberately avoided the gold panning spots along the way to avoid misunderstandings or trouble.

In the afternoon, a light drizzle began to fall.

But such light rain wouldn't soak people in a short time, and it took a whole day to walk back to the entrance of the ditch where the small peninsula was located.

The two decided to spend the night there and see if they could encounter gold prospectors heading into the mountains the next day and recruit them into their team.

That night, we found a sheltered spot, gathered some firewood, and quickly built a small shelter that could barely keep out the rain and keep the fire warm. After eating and drinking our fill, we wrapped ourselves in blankets, pulled our waders over them, and ignored the cold, damp drizzle that fell on our faces and made our noses itchy and irritating, and went straight to sleep.

Not long after it got dark, when the two were dozing off, Jinwang suddenly started barking wildly.

Zhou Jingming and Wu Yang were startled awake. They immediately sat up and grabbed the hunting rifles that were beside them.

Looking in the direction of Jinwang's barking, two small, shimmering lights could be seen slowly approaching on the dark riverbank in the distance.

"Is it a wolf?"

Wu Yang asked in a low voice, "I've heard that wolves' eyes glow green at night!"

"What are you thinking? Even if it's a wolf, you need a flashlight or something to shine a light on its eyes to see it. Those two points of light moving back and forth must be a flashlight!"

Zhou Jingming also lowered his voice: "We need to be careful. If they're still on the road at this hour, they might be out looking to freeload."

Wu Yang stared intently at the two points of light that were drifting closer and closer. He felt that the distance between them was too far, and they didn't seem to be something growing on the same head. When they got closer, he finally confirmed that they were indeed two flashlights.

Although he had worked as an armed policeman in Heilongjiang, in recent years, wolves, which are called "green skin" by hunters in Northeast China, have become very rare. Moreover, his work does not allow him to easily come into contact with these wild animals; he mostly only hears about them.

Zhou Jingming knew that the firelight here must have been seen long ago, so he simply turned on his flashlight and shone it in the direction of the two flashlight beams. This was a way of giving them a heads-up, telling them that the people here were awake and shouldn't do anything reckless.

Upon seeing Zhou Jingming's light, the flashlight beam shone towards the two of them and continued to move closer.

As they got closer, the flashlight beam revealed only two people. Zhou Jingming called out, "Who is it? What are you doing?"

The two men, speaking in Mandarin with a local accent, said, "We went into the mountains to scout out the route, but we were in such a hurry that we ran out of water. Do you have any water? We'd like to ask you for some!"

Upon hearing this, Zhou Jingming sneered and whispered to Wu Yang, "Going into the mountains to scout... Instead of finding a place to rest at this hour, they're braving the rain and traveling at night. There's water in the river below, yet they're asking for water... Something's not right!"

　Thank you to readers Hei A Niu Ge and Feng Sha Zhi Lian for the generous donations!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)