Chapter 255: Li Village Disturbance

Everyone used hands and feet alike, spending almost three full hours to reach the summit. Looking out from there, endless undulating peaks stretched as far as the eye could see. Nearby was tropical savanna vegetation, while dense forests lay in the distance.

Everyone carefully observed the surrounding soil and vegetation conditions. They also tried digging test pits in some places. The soil on the hillside was fairly typical southern red soil, without special mineral outcrops. Although this iron mine was claimed to be open-pit, it was still covered by several meters of soil. They had to determine which points had iron ore worth mining—the transmigrators didn't have the powerful machinery of modern mining to remove the overburden on a large scale.

After digging several test pits, Cui Yunhong was still unsatisfied and decided to use modern geophysical prospecting equipment. He brought out his most treasured transient electromagnetic instrument, bolt tester, and ultrasonic detector. After a good bout of maneuvering, he finally delineated several locations suitable for development. He dug test pits again, and less than one meter down, he struck magnetite ore. He chipped off a piece and inspected it visually; sure enough, it was rare rich iron ore.

Li Benqing watched the lead shopkeeper take out strange devices, toss them around, and start digging holes. When he dug out a stone, he pocketed it like a treasure. But this stone was neither gold nor silver, nor the green stone Han people liked most. He couldn't make heads or tails of it.

Cui Yunhong led the team down the mountain for another ten li or so, successively discovering multiple mining points suitable for exploitation. He also found an associated pyrite deposit. Unfortunately, transportation was inconvenient; otherwise, it would be good fertilizer for the agricultural department.

As for the legendary malachite mine, it was never found. However, Cui Yunhong didn't take it to heart—compared to iron, their demand for copper was very limited, and Japanese red copper imported from Guangdong was about enough for their needs.

Several people trekked along the hillside ridges carrying equipment, digging pits, setting up instruments, and drawing maps from time to time. Under the scorching sun, everyone was drenched in sweat, and the fragments of silvergrass sticking to their skin were painful and itchy.

Finally, it was noon—time for lunch and rest. They drank the salt water He Ping had mixed in the morning. As for the rice biscuits that everyone agreed were hard to swallow, they crunched them all down. The physical exertion was simply too great.

"Do we continue exploring this afternoon?" Jiang Muzhi, the representative of the industrial sector, asked breathlessly. His physical fitness was relatively poor, and he really had too much fat. After tossing about all morning, he couldn't take it anymore.

Originally, Cui Yunhong didn't want to bring him on the exploration team, but Bai Guoshi had left with the ship to lead another exploration team to Tiandu, so the team lacked someone knowledgeable about biology and flora/fauna.

"Of course. It's not easy to come here once; we must try to collect as much data as possible to take back."

"God, let me go back to the twenty-first century! When will these days end!" Someone finally couldn't bear it and let out a wail.

"I really want to eat KFC." Someone looked at the sky with lifeless eyes. "And the roast lamb skewers, roast chicken frames, roast corn at our school gate..."

"It's too late to think about that now; just work honestly." Cui Yunhong laughed.

"Such a big mountain top—mining it will be difficult, right?" Jiang Muzhi asked.

"Mining isn't hard," Ye Yuming interjected. "If you completely ignore mine safety production regulations, give me fifty workers, and that's enough. Purely manual operation, working only the day shift, two tons of ore per person per day is no problem. That's one hundred tons of ore a day, which is nearly forty thousand tons of iron ore a year." He used to work in mine safety supervision and knew a lot about mine blasting and mining.

"Aren't you running a black coal mine?"

"Not black, just average level. Besides, this kind of open-pit mine doesn't need tunnels at all; just remove the overburden." Ye Yuming looked around at the mountain. "Actually, the earthwork volume of this mountain isn't too large. With enough explosives, we can completely blast it as a whole—"

Several people sucked in a breath of cold air. Whole blasting? Good heavens, blowing the lid off a mountain directly—what a grand gesture.

Cui Yunhong knew this wasn't an exaggeration. In open-pit mining, blasting a mountain top as a whole was very common and technically not very difficult—as for whether the Transmigrator Group had this capability, that was another matter.

"Forty thousand tons of iron ore a year; Ji Wusheng will be grinning from ear to ear."

"Such good rich iron ore can be directly smelted into steel."

"This is only based on fifty miners working ten hours a day." Ye Yuming said, "When the Japanese mined Shilu, each worker worked fourteen-hour shifts with a quota of eight tons. At that time, apart from a small number of pneumatic picks, the mine couldn't talk about having much mechanized mining. With our Transmigrator Group's ability, maintaining a mining team of two or three hundred people and mining one hundred and fifty thousand tons of iron ore a year is no problem."

Cui Yunhong said, "Actually, mining an open-pit mine like this isn't much trouble, but we have to handle the supporting facilities. Just eating, drinking, and waste disposal for the workers requires building a small village specifically. If it's not arranged well, it won't work. Mining and transporting ore are both high-intensity labor. If the quality of life is too poor, the mortality rate will be very high. Unless we do death-style mining like the Japanese, filling it directly with human lives, otherwise the mine will collapse in a few months."

Huang Zhuazi spoke heroically: "In the future, we'll capture men from Japan to mine!"

"No matter who comes to mine, the engineering volume won't be small." Cui Yunhong said, "The difficulty of Shilu lies in transporting the ore out." He opened the map. "Originally, the Changhua River provided a convenient outlet to the sea, but unfortunately, Shilu Ridge isn't on the banks of the Changhua River. The only feasible channel is still the same route the Japanese chose: build a railway from Shilu to Basuo. Then export from Basuo."

However, the construction of this route was extremely difficult. The terrain along the way was complex. When the Japanese army laid this fifty-five-kilometer railway line, they mobilized tens of thousands of workers and took five months to complete it.

On this line, the terrain between Basuo Port and Beili was flat; between Beili and Baoqiao was a hilly zone; east of Baoqiao was mountainous. The valley and hilly zone between Beili and Baoqiao was fifteen kilometers long, and the engineering was particularly arduous. A total of seventeen bridges were built along the line, including three large bridges, three medium bridges, and eleven small bridges, as well as 178 culverts. All were reinforced concrete or iron frame structures. A tunnel 250 meters long was also built between Baoqiao and Shilu.

Basuo was originally a small fishing village. To accommodate ore ships of over ten thousand tons entering the port, it was expanded into an artificial harbor. The entire Shilu development—including the mine, railway, port, and power plant—mobilized a total of 140,000 laborers. Casualties among workers numbered in the tens of thousands.

Hearing these figures, everyone felt that mining here wasn't really feasible. Jiang Muzhi whispered, "Since that's the case, didn't we come for nothing? The Executive Committee definitely won't develop Shilu."

"I think so too, at least not in the First Five-Year Plan." Ye Yuming said, "If you ask me, rather than going to the trouble of building a railway to Basuo and then building an artificial port at Basuo, it's better to simply build directly to Tiandu, connect the two major mining areas, and ship everything out from the natural good harbor of Yulin."

"That line would be about 180 kilometers long; that's not easy either. The Japanese didn't finish it until '43."

After this discussion about the development prospects of Shilu Iron Mine ended, the recovered exploration team continued their investigation activities on the ridge. During this period, Cui Yunhong collected other types of ores, but malachite never showed its face—was his luck bad? Cui Yunhong was truly puzzled. Shilu had been famous for copper mines for hundreds of years, which meant malachite outcrops on the surface should be very common. Such searching continued until getting dark before they ended and went down the mountain.

The second and third days, the exploration team continued to conduct investigation and exploration around Shilu Ridge. During this time, they encountered a black bear unexpectedly. After staring at each other for a few minutes, it ended with the black bear voluntarily retreating. Although Huang Zhuazi really wanted to satisfy his craving to shoot, handling such a huge creature after killing it would be troublesome and a pure waste.

Seeing that further investigation wouldn't yield new discoveries, Cui Yunhong broke camp and returned early on the fourth day. The journey back was uneventful. Returning to Sanchahe, the bamboo rafts were still in place. After resting for a night, they boarded the rafts to return. Going downstream was fast, and they returned to the Li stockade in the afternoon.

Unexpectedly, as soon as they entered the Li stockade, they were surrounded by a dozen Li men. These people held knives and guns, their faces serious. Many ordinary people of the stockade stood watching from a distance. This posture startled Cui Yunhong. He thought, we didn't do anything wrong, did we?

"Xiao Mu, what do you think your compatriots are planning?"

Mu Min said helplessly, "I am Li, but I don't speak the Li language—"

Just as they were fearful, a prominent figure among them bowed and spoke at length to them, his expression very respectful. But they still couldn't understand a single word.

Fortunately, Li Benqing was there. It turned out this person was an Ao Ya (Elder) in the stockade. He said the Dong Zhu (Chief) of their stockade was very ill. Hearing that these Han merchants had divine medicine and had cured Li Benqing's malaria at once, he also wanted to ask them to grant a few divine pills to save the Chief.

Hearing this, everyone was quite troubled. If it was just malaria, that would be easy; just giving a few more chloroquine tablets would do. But He Ping was only a half-baked health worker. If he had to treat illness seriously, it would be fine if he guessed right, but if he treated someone to death—this was the family of the stockade's leader! In the twenty-first century, people would chase and beat doctors and nurses in hospitals when their relatives died, let alone in a primitive village in the seventeenth century.

He Ping said, "Let's go take a look."

"You really plan to treat this Chief?" Mu Min really wasn't at ease.

"Not going would be worse. I feel these people's attitude is quite sincere."

"But you don't even know what disease he has!" Mu Min said anxiously. "This is the master of a Dong; if he dies, the whole stockade will vent their anger on you, and we won't even have time to save you—"

"Don't worry, I was more or less educated by Dr. Shi for a few months; I'm still confident in basic medical skills. I can always cope. Besides, if we really want to leave, they might not be able to stop us."

Huang Zhuazi nodded: "Indeed, worst case we fight our way out. If we're afraid of implicating people, we can just take Li Benqing with us—"

"You guys relax. If I find I can't treat it, I'll give some placebo. At most, we get driven away; I won't treat anyone to death."

So they agreed to treat the Chief. The group first returned to Li Benqing's residence and inventoried the medical kit in their luggage. Because it was used by the exploration team, all kinds of bandages, dressings, common drugs, anti-inflammatory drugs, and the like were complete. There were also simple surgical instruments and disinfectants.

While everyone was organizing things, Li Benqing circled around outside and came back quietly, his face full of worry. He said to Xiong Buyou, "Shopkeepers, I'm afraid the Chief's illness isn't something that can be cured with medicine—"

Xiong Buyou hurriedly asked what was going on. Li Benqing quietly explained:

It turned out the Chief had been sick for seven or eight days. He had used Li herbal medicine but couldn't recover. The people in the stockade suspected he had suffered "Jin" (Curse). The so-called Jin was similar to the concept of ghosts and spirits causing trouble in Han areas. It was generally believed that certain people with magical powers summoned "ghosts" to harm people. The Chief invited a Dao Gong (Shaman) to perform the ghost release ritual, but it couldn't be lifted no matter what. It was said that the "ghost" summoned this time was very powerful. Now no one dared to provoke this matter.

"You are Han people; why bother provoking Li family matters?" Li Benqing advised with good intentions. "In case the person casting the curse gets angry at your interference and casts a curse on you too, wouldn't that be a sudden disaster!"

Naturally, everyone didn't care about these superstitions, but they couldn't fearlessly say "We are atheistic warriors." Speaking such words probably wouldn't convince anyone.

"Old man, rest assured," Xiong Buyou comforted, "We have science—"

"Is your science ghost very powerful?" Li Benqing's rhetorical question made everyone laugh and cry. It turned out that in the primitive religious beliefs of the Li people, there was no concept of gods; all supernatural powers were called "ghosts."

As they were speaking, Mu Min suddenly stepped forward and asked: "Since it's said someone cast a curse, is it a Jin Gong (Curse Father) or Jin Mu (Curse Mother)?"

"Heard it's a Jin Mu. The Ao Ya have already ordered people to arrest this woman." Li Benqing shook his head. "A perfectly good woman, don't know what evil possessed her."

"This is bad." Mu Min was somewhat anxious.

"What's wrong?" Everyone was baffled.

Mu Min explained: Whenever there was a so-called "suffering from Jin" incident, the Dao Gong's ritual would name someone as the "curse caster." A man was called Jin Gong, and a woman was called Jin Mu.

People declared as Jin Gong or Jin Mu were somewhat similar to "wizards" and "witches" in medieval Europe. Everyone feared and hated them, believing they could cast curses to harm people at any time. Consequently, once someone in a Li stockade was identified as Jin Gong or Jin Mu, the masses would often kill them. In some places, it was slightly more lenient, but they couldn't avoid means of so-called "exorcism" such as torture and being forced to bathe naked. This phenomenon wasn't eliminated until the People's Government intervened vigorously in the 1950s.

Now that someone had been identified as a Jin Mu, this woman's life was in danger.

(End of Chapter)