Chapter 0267 – Mineral Vein (II)

The water in the pot quickly rolled. The rich meat flavor came out, a few people on the broth, after eating a few large cakes, in the stream next to the wash, the fire will be extinguished, this Kunlun Mountains, although rarely see tall trees, but these bushes if burned, but also enough to give the crowd sentenced to a few years.

After packing up things, Zhuang Rui took out his cell phone and looked at it, it was almost six o’clock, and then look at the signal on the phone, but there is not a grid, the phone stuffed back into the pants pocket, Zhuang Rui asked: “Dazhi, what place are we going to this time? How this way have not encountered people?”

This time the same people, plus in the transfer station encountered jade mining people, there are more than 1000 people, shunt to this Kunlun mountains, like a stone into the sea, even a wave did not turn up, a few people rushed a afternoon road. They didn’t even encounter a single person.

Zhang Dazhi cleaned the steel pot into the fierce backpack, casually replied: “Oh, brother Zhuang, the Kunlun Mountains are big, the general public have gone to the Yulong Kashi River to dig jade, but now there are all in the use of excavators to extract jade, we went to also can not be grabbed, might as well go to the wild ox ditch to break into it!”

“Bison Gully?”

“Yes, it’s Bison Gully, the white jade, clear white jade, and green jade produced there are fine and moist in texture, rich in varieties, and large in size, and belong to the top-grade good materials, which are basically the same as Hetian Jade, and many of them can even reach the standard of sheep’s fat white jade, especially its emerald-green, smoky grey, and greyish-purple varieties, which are all extremely rare in Hetian Jade.”

Tie Zi on the side took over, this time the decision to go to Bison Gully was also suggested by him, only that Bison Gully’s terrain was very complicated, with an altitude of more than 4,500 meters above sea level, and for jade quarrymen, it was a place full of fatal temptations and unknown crises.

Wang Fei also smiled and said, “In the year before last, there was once a Zhejiang man who opened a mine for jade in Wild Ox Gully and made a fortune overnight, I’m afraid that his fortune now, is going to be several hundred million dollars.”

Wang Fei’s words made Tie Zi and the others’ eyes emerge, they did not seek to come across a mineral vein, as long as they could get some high-quality jade from the Wild Ox Gully, they would be satisfied. The Jade King purchased jade at a fair price, and every year, there were many people who made hundreds of thousands of dollars after entering the mountain, and with the money, they went back to the mainland to buy a house and get married.

“Let’s go! It’s still a two-day journey to Bison Gully, we must bypass the Death Valley today.”

A group of five people re-started on the road again, the evening of the Kunlun Mountains is not hot, the slight cool wind blowing on the body is very comfortable, it is a good time to catch up, in the sky the last trace of the sunset will be the whole big mountain reflecting the red light of the mountain, the crowd came to a valley below.

“This …… this is the valley of death?”

No longer needing to be prompted by others, just based on what they saw in front of them, Zhuang Rui also knew that they had now arrived at what they called the Valley of Death.

With the last hint of haze in the sky, Zhuang Rui could clearly see that in the valley more than ten meters away from the entrance to the valley, dense weeds were overgrown, and in the grass all around, it was covered with the fur of wolves, the bones of bears, the steel guns of hunters and lonely graves of barren hills.

A skull without a skeleton, empty a pair of eye holes, as if to tell their own miserable encounter, the sky from time to time came the eagle chirping. All of them were rendering an eerie and frightening aura of death to the world.

“Yes, this place is also known as the ‘Gate of Hell’ of the Kunlun Mountains for thousands of years, and I don’t know how many corpses and bones have been buried inside.”

Zhang Dazhi’s voice was a bit low, a hint of fear flashed in his eyes as he looked at the tired white bones in that valley.

“Brother Zhuang, let’s go! This place is flourishing with pasture, but the shepherds who live in the Kunlun Mountains would rather make their cattle and sheep starve to death on the Gobi Beach due to the lack of fat grass to eat, rather than dare to enter this ancient and silent deep valley.”

When Wang Fei was talking, the hand that was grasping the gun, added a little more strength, as if there would be devils coming out of this ghostly deep valley to devour them in general, just at this time the afterglow of the setting sun completely disappeared, Wang Fei’s voice echoed in the valley, hollow and far-reaching, making a few people have a somewhat creepy feeling.

“There is no scientific research team to conduct scientific research on this place?”

Zhuang Rui glanced at the mouth of the valley that was like the mouth of a monster, followed Wang Fei’s footsteps, and climbed upwards from a small path next to the mouth of the valley.

This time the sky was already completely dark, Tie Zi, who was the most familiar with the road in the team, walked at the front, wearing a miner’s lamp on his head and holding a scimitar-like curved knife in his hand, cutting down the withered grass and low branches that stood in the way to clear the way.

“There was a sci-fi, but I didn’t quite figure out why.”

After leaving that valley of death, Zhang Dazhi’s talkative nature came up and told Zhuang Rui about the things that happened in this valley over the years.

In the 1980s of the last century. A group of ranch horses mistakenly entered the valley of death due to greed for the fat grass in the valley, knowing that for the herders, the horses were their lifeblood, a herder ventured into the valley to look for the horses, and a few days passed by, the people didn’t show up, but the horses did.

Later that herdsman’s body was found on a hill, clothes broken, bare feet, angry eyes, mouth wide open, shotgun still in hand, a dead look. To no one’s surprise, no injuries or signs of assault were found on his body.

Not long after this tragic accident, the geology team working nearby was also attacked by Death Valley. It was the same month, and while it was scorching hot outside, a blizzard suddenly broke out in the vicinity of Death Valley. A thunderous roar accompanied the blizzard, and the cook fainted on the spot.

According to the cook’s recollection, when he heard the thunder, he felt numbness all over his body and blackness in his eyes, and then he lost consciousness. The next day when the team members went out to work, they were surprised to find that the original yellow soil had turned into black soil, like ashes, and all the plants and animals had been “killed”.

At that time, the geology team quickly organized to investigate the valley, the investigation found that the region’s magnetic anomaly is extremely obvious, and a wide range of distribution, the deeper into the valley, the higher the magnetic anomaly value, under the action of the electromagnetic effect, the charge in the clouds and the valley’s magnetic field, resulting in a charge discharge. Making this a mine-prone area, and thunder tends to strike at running animals. This speculation is the best explanation for several consecutive events.

However, what exactly is the reason that the magnetic field value here is super high, the geology team did not have a clear conclusion, and after these events, the nearby herdsmen no longer dare to approach the Valley of Death, fortunately, there are no Viennese in the team today, otherwise, they wouldn’t dare to take a detour from the edge of the Valley of Death even if they were beaten to death.

After listening to Zhang Dazhi’s account, Zhuang Rui subconsciously looked back at the mouth of the valley that has been invisible, back straight cold sweat, it is estimated that this is the reason why people are rare, otherwise, I am afraid that it will also be the same as those places in Bermuda.

Several people riding the night, has been over two mountain ranges before stopping, this is a full thirty to forty miles from the Valley of Death, is also a large canyon, Tie Zi is very familiar with this place, borrowing the miner’s lamp on his head, directly near the rock wall, to find a very hidden cave.

“Brother Tie Zi, you have a good memory, it seems like we took a trip here the year before last, and you actually still remember it.”

Zhang Dazhi picked up a stone from the ground and threw it into the cave with force, he was afraid that there would be some animals hiding in there, one must know that in the Kunlun Mountains, wild wolves and brown bears are very common, and every year there would be rumors about incidents of herders being attacked.

Waiting for a while, the cave did not sound, a few people walked in, the cave is not deep, only ten meters like, covered with dust, a few people this way to rush down, has long been exhausted, but also too lazy to care about dirty or not dirty. They directly sat down in the slightly damp place.

“Brother Zhuang, we’re camping in the mountains, someone has to be on night duty to sleep at night, so you’ll be the first in line! Call out to me at twelve o’clock, Mangzi is the third, Wang Fei is the fourth, Brother Tiezi is harder, so I won’t arrange for you to be on night duty today.”

After sitting down, Mangzi opened his backpack and took out five folded up sleeping bags from it, handing them to the people one by one, while Zhang Dazhi started to allocate the night duty time for each person.

Arranged Zhuang Rui first, in fact, is to take care of him, guard to 12 o’clock will be able to sleep until dawn, far better than the middle of the night to climb up two or three hours to go back to sleep, as for Tie Zi is responsible for opening the road, physical exertion is relatively large, so Zhang Dazhi did not arrange his.

The people of Zhang Dazhi’s arrangement have no objection, Wang Fei roughly explained to Zhuang Rui the use of shotgun in the hands of the method, and then drilled into the sleeping bag to go, a little more time to rest, tomorrow in order to have a little more spirit.

Fortunately, this night, in addition to a few wolves howling in the distance, nothing happened, passed peacefully.

The next day the sky has just dawned, the people have started to go on the road, the temperature difference between morning and evening in the Kunlun Mountains is relatively large, the cool morning rush is the most comfortable, to the midday heat, you can rest a little more.

To the third day of the morning more than ten o’clock, a group of five people rushed to the wild ox ditch, here is already four thousand five hundred meters above sea level, although everyone’s face shows the excitement, but ZhangDaZhi still find a place, let the crowd first rest half a day, wait until the afternoon and then go to the bottom of the ditch to look for jade.

“Boom!”

Just as a few people had just sat down, an explosion suddenly came from the distance, Zhuang Rui felt the ground beneath his buttocks vibrate, and hurriedly stood up to look in the direction where the explosion came from.

“Brother Zhuang, don’t look, that’s the Zhejiang people’s jade mine, they’ve been mining for over a year.”

Zhang Dazhi had long been accustomed to such a situation, in the Kunlun Mountains, as long as there was a jade mine, the sound of blasting could be heard almost all day long.

Just in the face of a few people, all showed a look of envy, for them, as long as they can find the jade vein, even if there is no money to mine, sell the news can make a fortune.

But this vein is generally deep underground, no detection tools, almost impossible to be found by them.

Bison ditch is already deep into the Kunlun mountain range, due to the growth of a large number of bison herd and named, of course, that refers to decades ago, now it has long been difficult to see the traces of the bison, here although called the ditch, in fact, the depth of up to more than 20 kilometers, inside the grass is fertile, very suitable for animal survival.

In the bison ditch on both sides, are the top of the mountain all year round snow does not melt the snow mountain, but every summer, half of the mountainside after the snow melts, will bring the mountain rocks rushed into the bison ditch, millions of years down, in the bison ditch, formed a not very wide, but on both sides are piled up with the mountain rocks of the river.

Tie Zi and other people’s destination, is this river, due to the altitude here has been up to more than four thousand meters, and large-scale machinery is difficult to transport in, coupled with the general physical fitness is very difficult to quarry jade here, so this river is not like the Yulong Kashgar River, was cut off from the upper reaches of the river, and then a large excavation, basically retained the natural state. However, there were quite a few people who had already set their eyes on this place, not long after Zhuang Rui and his team arrived at the Bison Gully, a three-member team met up with them, and although they didn’t know each other well, they still exchanged greetings.

Since all the jade by the river washed down from the mountains, there would be a bit more relatively good jade at the entrance to the river’s foothills, Zhuang Rui and the others arrived first, so the guys were very self-conscious about going downstream.

When the people were resting, Tie Zi gave Zhuang Rui some tips on how he had been picking jade for many years, but after categorizing them, Zhuang Rui found that this jade picking and gambling had the same thing in common, that is, if you want to pick good jade, it is largely attributed to good or bad luck.

At the beginning of this year, a big boss from Wenzhou, hired dozens of excavating bulldozers and a large number of manpower, in the Yulong Kashi River cut off a seven or eight kilometers long section of the river, a large mining up.

Finding jade with modern machinery has been a major development in recent years. Bulldozers push the earth and rocks in the river channel to one side, and waiting workers crowd up to use shovels to rummage for jade in the earth.

However, after more than a month’s time and tens of millions of dollars spent, a lot of jade was harvested, but it was all ordinary jade, which could not offset his huge expenses, so the businessman had no choice but to end the jade harvesting operation at a loss.

Just that the Wenzhou businessman is not willing, after work and ran to the mining site, but saw a local Uyghur workers, smoking cigarettes, stood up, very casually under the feet of a stone to kick, but from the bottom of a fist to pick up a large jade, after identification, for the top grade suet jade, valued at tens of millions of dollars, which makes the Wenzhou businessman gas almost spit blood, and left the night in Xinjiang.

This reasoning is the same as spending millions of dollars to gamble on a piece of shit ground jade, light money is not work, but also have luck, it is clear that the Wenzhou businessman’s luck is not good.

After resting for more than three hours, Zhuang Rui and others also began to pick jade, Mangzi from the backpack inside the four flat folded together basket basket to, this is very tough silk thread woven, folded with alloy steel bars, the back of the sewn strap, after the unfolding can be carried on the body, will be picked up in the inside of the jade thrown.

Several people carried such a basket and walked towards the river, which was a bit blinding by the sunlight, Zhang Dazhi and others’ faces were all full of hope, for them, a good piece of jade could possibly change their lives.

The so-called jade mining, in the river on both sides of the tens of millions of large and small stones, to find the jade, said the big waves of sand is not an exaggeration, in ancient China, the jade mining is in the river on both sides of the pull on the big net, from the inside of the jade screening, but sometimes often a day down, can not find a ding of jade material to.

After thousands of years of snow mountain water wash, the river on both sides of the large and small stones, have become very smooth, the crowd simply took off their shoes, barefoot walking in the sunshine of some hot cobblestones, the ear comes from the sound of the gurgling water, but also has a special flavor.

Although here is in the deep mountains, but for thousands of years, there are adult tens of thousands of jade pickers came here, want to pick up jade from the river, is not so easy thing, several people walked out of four or five hundred meters along the river, are nothing.

Zhuang Rui would have liked to try to distinguish the river side of the stone, just not after three or five minutes, that densely spread throughout the entire river on both sides of the cobblestone, let Zhuang Rui become dizzy.

From the surface, there is no way to tell the difference between these stones, no matter the size, shape and color, almost exactly the same, if you do not bend down your body to take a closer look, it is very difficult to identify, you may have just looked at a piece, turn your head and look again, you will not be able to find the stone that you have just looked at.

Looking up to Tie Zi and the others, Zhuang Rui realized that these people were almost all squatting on the ground, moving forward step by step, even Mang Zi who was so tall, Zhuang Rui tried to crouch on the ground for a while like they did, but it hadn’t even been ten minutes yet, and the soreness of his waist and legs made it unbearable, so he could only stand up.

Zhuang Rui was now standing on the river holding the hiking stick that Tian Bo had given him, and it more or less looked a little bit so abrupt.

“Da Zhi, do you think the Jade King will cheat us? This man is standing there picking jade in a big way, can he be recognized?” Tie Zi and Zhang Dazhi leaned not far away, talking in a low voice, not that he didn’t believe in Tian Bo’s words, just that Zhuang Rui’s performance was really not very reliable.

“Don’t talk nonsense, when has the Jade King ever looked away! Brother Zhuang is not familiar with jade picking, but he can recognize jade, so we don’t have to bring some garbage back.”

Dazhi picked up Zhuang Rui and Master Gu from the airport, knowing how much the Jade King valued them, he naturally thought highly of Zhuang Rui, plus the Jade King’s explanation, he took good care of Zhuang Rui all the way.

Zhuang Rui was thirty to forty meters away from them, naturally he couldn’t hear the conversation of Da Zhi and the others, he was now using the aura in his eyes as if he was hoeing the ground with a plow, sifting forward a little bit.

Due to the daytime light is very bright, coupled with the fact that nearly half of these stones are in the water, reflecting blinding light everywhere, Zhuang Rui also for the first time to use the aura encountered problems, there are several times to see the color in the stone, but after using the hiking stick to grab it, but found that it is nothing more than the reflection of the sun.

“There, I picked up a piece of jade, Brother Tiezi, come and help me look.”

Just when Zhuang Rui had some headache, behind him Mangzi shouted, Zhuang Rui turned around and looked, this kid jumped into the river, his clothes were all wet, his hands were holding a stone, and he was crawling to the top of the river!

June is the snowy mountains on the ice gradually melting time, this river is not very wide, but the current is particularly rapid, even if the fierce son holding a large stone, the body is still in the river washed downstream seven or eight meters away, just to Zhuang Rui not far from the place.

Zhuang Rui saw Mangzi still dead will be the stone in the arms, simply not empty hand to the bank to climb, quickly spoke out and said: “Mangzi, how to fall into the water, throw away the stone, you quickly climb up.”

Mangzi did not reply, very difficult to stand up straight in the water, hands hard to throw the stone on the river, just landed in Zhuang Rui feet, which reached out and grabbed Zhuang Rui reached over the hiking stick, climbed to the bank.

Zhuang Rui even pulled and tugged Mang Zi dragged up, this weather although it is in June, but because of the high altitude, the temperature difference between morning and evening is very large, to the night time, the temperature will drop to about ten degrees, although Mang Zi’s body is very strong, but it is not guaranteed that it will also be sick.

“Mangzi, take off your clothes and put them on the ground, quickly go and change into a dry outfit.”

Zhang Dazhi and Tie Zi and Wang Fei also ran over at the sound, seeing Mangzi’s wet appearance, Zhang Dazhi frowned, if this big man got sick, no one would be able to carry him!

“It’s alright, Brother Tie Zi, come and take a look quickly, this stone has jade, right?”

Mangzi grinned a silly grin, not taking it seriously at all, as he pulled Tiezi down next to the rock he threw up.

“Mangzi, go change first, I’ll take my time looking at it.” Tie Zi glared at Mang Zi, he was an old jade picker and knew that getting sick in the mountains and lacking medical care would be very troublesome.

“Okay, I’ll go change now.”

Mangzi stripped off the clothes on his body in three or two strokes and threw them onto the rock at the river’s edge, then ran bare-assed to the place where he had put his backpack, took out his clothes and put them on, and impatiently ran back again.

This stone is flat, the size of a basin, thick probably about twenty or thirty centimeters, the whole stone is yellowish, slightly whitish in color.

Tie Zi tried to hold a bit, it is estimated that there are forty to fifty kilograms of weight, it is difficult for Mang Zi can throw it to the shore, on the side of the stone, revealing a palm-sized piece of milky-white jade flesh, it can be concluded that this is a piece of jade, and the quality is not too low.

“Brother Tie Zi, how is it?” The usually somewhat mute Mangzi, this will be excited face full of red.

“This piece of material, let Mr. Zhuang take a look at it first! I’m afraid to say it’s not good.”

Tie Zi saw this piece of jade, has guessed eight or nine not very close, the heart is also very happy, after all, this harvest is considered everyone’s, but he also wanted to try Zhuang Rui, in the end is really material, or in vain.

Zhuang Rui asked casually, “Mangzi, how did you find this piece of material?”

This piece of jade material is at Zhuang Rui’s feet, he did not push, squatting down his body to look up, from the jade flesh exposed to see, this is a piece of white jade material, and the quality is not low, on the palm size of the jade flesh, it can also be sold for 40,000 to 50,000 dollars.