Chapter 38: Entering the Treasure Mountain

To save time, the survey team once again split into two groups. One group, led by Wang Luobin himself, went to Tian Du to investigate the mine. The other group, led by Chen Haiyang, stayed behind to build Fort Yulin.

Finding Tian Du was much easier than finding Shilu. By following the Tian Du River upstream, they could find Huangni Ling (Yellow Mud Ridge), where the famous Tian Du iron mine was located.

The survey team switched to a rowing boat and continued up the long, narrow bay. The banks were lined with continuous mountain ranges covered in dense vegetation. Some of them had been here in another time and tried hard to find familiar scenery.

“We should be roughly following the route of G224,” Wang Luobin said, looking at the map. “We might only have to walk 2 kilometers to get there.”

At noon on April 20th, the Tian Du survey team successfully found the mouth of the Tian Du River. According to the map, this was not far from Da’an. A few more kilometers and they would reach the later Tian Du Town. However, Tian Du Town itself was not the location of the Tian Du iron mine; the mine was still about 2-3 kilometers from the town.

The survey team abandoned their boat here and went ashore, following the river upstream. The area around the river valley was a dense, pristine tropical rainforest, making it difficult to see the surrounding environment. After walking less than 2 kilometers, a river valley appeared before them, with a few villages nearby. Wang Luobin stopped, consulted his map and compass for a long time, and then announced that this was Tian Du Town.

“The Tian Du iron mine is still a few kilometers ahead. Let’s keep going, everyone!”

With Wang Luobin’s encouragement, the group continued upstream along the river. The path by the river was very difficult to walk. This area was teeming with all kinds of snakes, insects, and leeches, and swarms of flying insects. Fortunately, everyone was equipped with a full set of tropical gear as required: mosquito net hats, full-body tropical training uniforms, and especially anti-leech gaiters at the openings of their clothes. Especially when passing near some wetlands, the sight of rows of land leeches attached to the leaves and branches “standing up to greet” them as they approached was enough to give one goosebumps.

“Check your cuffs and pant legs!” Liu Zheng ordered.

After passing through the river valley, Wang Luobin had everyone rest, shake the leeches off their clothes and gear, and check for any that had latched on. Fortunately, their protective measures were effective. Although the leeches were very persistent, the best they could do was to burrow their heads into the outer layer of the canvas. However, seeing the ground littered with the mangled bodies of leeches, Wang Luobin also felt that developing Tian Du would not be so simple.

“I wonder if a large-scale application of insecticide would work.”

“No need for insecticide,” Liu Zheng said, observing the writhing, dying insects. “Changing the ecological environment here will finish them off. It’s too humid here. If we fill in the swampy areas, they will naturally disappear.”

After walking for less than another kilometer, they came to an open river valley surrounded by mountains on all sides. This should be the location of Tian Du Village. The famous Tian Du iron mine should be on Huangni Ling to its southeast.

The problem was that the vegetation here was too dense. No matter how they looked, they couldn’t see which mountain was covered in yellow soil. Although the Tian Du iron mine area was five or six square kilometers, the mine pit developed in later times was only three hundred meters in diameter. It was still a bit difficult to find it in this area.

“Besides being close to the port, the difficulty of developing this place is no less than that of Shilu,” Wang Luobin said. “We have to remove a large amount of vegetation, which is a huge amount of work.”

“If we could build a railway, we could transport in machinery and manpower.”

“The problem is that we don’t have the manpower,” Wang Luobin said, sitting on a large rock. “When the Japanese mined Tian Du, they relied on throwing lives into it to get ore. What we lack most now is lives—”

“What’s so difficult about that? In the future, we’ll just send all the captured Manchu prisoners to mine,” Liu Zheng’s nationalist sentiments flared up. “And those Malay natives from Southeast Asia, let’s just have a slave trade! Use them as consumables!”

“That’s all in the future. Who are we going to use to fill the gap now? It’s difficult,” Wang Luobin said, gazing at this barren virgin land. The members of the survey team were scattered around, using instruments to survey the mine, chipping at rock samples, and also mapping the terrain.

In the afternoon, based on data from later times, the survey team had roughly located the Tian Du mine. They dug a test trench and, following Wang Luobin’s instructions, excavated one ton of sample ore.

“Why dig so much? Are we going to carry it back? Do you expect to smelt steel with just this one ton of iron ore?”

“We need to send it back for trial smelting. The steel plant doesn’t have such a small furnace.” Wang Luobin even felt that one ton was too little—this iron ore, with over sixty percent iron content, could be directly used in an open-hearth furnace for steelmaking, which would require two experiments.

“Alright, but let me say this first: everyone has to help carry this ore. Otherwise, the few of us in the survey team will be worked to death.”

So the entire survey team began to dig for ore, sweating profusely. Fortunately, one ton of ore was not too much, and a dozen or so people digging for an hour was enough.

After collecting the sample ore, the survey team completely backfilled the test trench—this resource could not be known to the locals for the time being.

The Tian Du iron ore was also of extremely high iron content. So much so that during the Guangxu era, a local gentleman was able to mass-produce pig iron bricks for the market with just a small square furnace and a dozen workers, making a huge profit for a time. Wang Luobin did not want such a thing to happen prematurely at this time.

“Everyone get a good rest tonight. Tomorrow we’re going to Da Mao.”

“Where’s Da Mao?” Liu Zheng was covered in sweat and dirt. He wanted to take a bath in the river but was afraid of leeches. He was in a bad mood, hoping to go back to the sea for a good bath tomorrow, when he suddenly heard about this Da Mao.

“It’s a manganese mine, with reserves of 1 million tons,” Wang Luobin said. “It’s an important raw material for making special steel.”

“Boss, don’t tell me we need another ton of samples.”

“A ton is not necessary,” everyone breathed a sigh of relief. “But 500 kilograms is still needed.” Everyone glared at him.

The next day, the survey team pushed further inland. Before setting out, Wang Luobin called the fleet by radio and instructed Chen Haiyang to send people to transport the ore, with special instructions: “Ensure secret transport, especially, do not let the locals know what is being transported.”

After arriving at the supposed location of the Da Mao manganese mine, the survey team began to set up points and take samples throughout the mining area, digging test trenches. This place was much harder to find than the Tian Du iron mine. After five or six days of work, the survey team was almost like a group of gophers, having turned over the entire surrounding soil layer. Chen Haiyang had already finished transporting the iron ore and still didn’t see the survey team return, so he quickly sent another group of people over to help dig test trenches.

In the end, they did find a small outcrop of manganese ore, but the real vein was ten meters underground. The mining difficulty was still considerable.

“Director Wang, I think we should forget about this manganese mine for now—” Liu Zheng was as black as a coal miner. “The shallowest part is still ten meters deep, and there’s water coming out from below. I’m afraid it’s impossible without digging a tunnel.”

Wang Luobin looked at the dark test trench in front of him. Open-pit mining was probably out of the question. But digging a tunnel would involve a series of supporting projects: pumping water, ventilation, tunnel hoisting, support… This whole set of things, even if done with all primitive methods, would still be a huge project.

“Let’s just dig a few dozen kilograms of sample ore and withdraw,” Wang Luobin said, looking helpless.

“Look what this is. Is it copper ore?” Suddenly, someone brought him a piece of ore.

Wang Luobin picked it up and looked. It was a gray rock with a light green, glassy luster. He weighed it in his hand, then scratched it with his Swiss army knife to test its hardness.

“I didn’t expect to find something good here!”

“What?!” The few people around him all crowded around.

“This is phosphate rock!” Wang Luobin was very excited—matches, one of the transmigrators’ divine artifacts, could only be born with this thing. From this point of view, phosphate rock was much more useful than manganese ore. He lit his lighter and burned a corner of the ore. The flame turned green.

“That’s right, this is phosphate rock!”

The use of phosphorus was known to almost everyone. Even if they didn’t know it was used to make matches, they knew it was an important agricultural fertilizer. Now that they had found phosphate rock next to the manganese mine, what was originally a somewhat tasteless discovery suddenly became extremely valuable.

“Where did you find it?”

“Just on that small hill.” The person who found the ore quickly pointed out the location. Wang Luobin was more excited than when he found the manganese mine and rushed towards the test trench.

The test trench was dug on the slope of the small hill, at an angle of about 30 degrees into the mountain for about four or five meters. Wang Luobin was not a geologist, but he could generally see that the core of this small hill was mostly composed of phosphate rock. It was also not suitable for open-pit mining. This disappointed him a little.

“At least one base can support two mining sites,” he comforted himself. But in the short term, it was more realistic to go to the Dongsha or Xisha islands to mine guano.

Most of the survey team didn’t think so complicatedly. They enthusiastically dug another five hundred kilograms of sample ore to be brought back to Lingao and handed over to the chemical and metallurgical departments.

When the survey team returned to Yulin Harbor, the infrastructure construction was only one-third complete. Yulin was a place with mountains, water, land, timber, and stone, lacking almost nothing. It was truly a good place for a development base. This place was also different from Fort Changhua. The purpose of Fort Changhua was just to obtain a trading post and to lay the groundwork for the future mining of Shilu. This place was a large distribution center for the transmigrator group to obtain resources, and its scale had to be much larger than that of Fort Changhua.

Zhang Xingpei of the Lingao Construction Company, who came with the ship, was an expert in wooden structure construction and also one of the many “sea turtles” (returnees from overseas) in the transmigrator group, with experience in building houses from start to finish.

In particular, the consultant was Yu E’shui—this person had joined this circumnavigation survey purely for the purpose of having fun. After a few days of excruciating seasickness at the beginning, he was now full of vigor and had volunteered to be the construction consultant for Fort Yulin—he was obsessed with building survivalist fortresses and had a special interest in logistics and defensive battle examples.

“It doesn’t need to be used to deal with a siege, but it must at least ensure that a small number of people can protect a large amount of goods.”

This was the key point that Yu E’shui extracted after listening to Wang Luobin’s long-winded list of requirements for the base.

Zhang Xingpei used to be fat, and although he had lost a lot of weight in recent months, he still had the slow and methodical manner of a fat person. He coughed before saying:

“How big does the cargo yard need to be? What kind of goods will be stored there? Does it have to be covered?”

“The goods should be ore, timber, coconuts, and the like.”

“So it needs a large stacking yard.” Zhang Xingpei looked for a long time and sketched a simple floor plan on a notepad.

The design he drew was just a simple large courtyard, square. Each corner had a bastion. One of them was the living area, which was larger and could accommodate about twenty people for long-term residence, with a warehouse. The other bastions also had complete living facilities and could accommodate up to one squad each. The main gate of the courtyard was right next to the living area for easy defense. The courtyard wall was a wooden wall made of logs stood upright in a row, with earth piled at the bottom, 6 meters high. The top was all sharpened, and it was impossible to walk on top. It was basically impossible to climb without a ladder.

The four bastions, including the main gate itself, were built of brick and stone, with tiled roofs. A moat was dug outside the fort, and river water was introduced from nearby. The summer and autumn rains were heavy here, so water was not a problem.

To facilitate the loading and unloading of goods, a ten-meter-long pier would also be built in the bay in front of the fort for ships to moor.

“Isn’t it a bit flimsy—” Chen Haiyang was very worried when he saw this design that looked like a medieval fortress.

“The defense is a bit low, but it’s enough. The local wealthy landlords’ stockades are not even at this level,” Yu E’shui said. “The defenses of An You Le city are just a wooden fence and a few towers. It can be seen that the biggest threat here is just a few dozen pirate sailors coming up to wander around and rob a few unlucky people who didn’t escape in time.”

Even if the enemy really rushed into the courtyard, the only things they could loot were ore and timber, which didn’t seem to be of great value. If they really wanted to launch a strong attack, An You Le city was obviously a more valuable target than Fort Yulin.

As everyone was discussing the details, the team’s doctor, Jiang Qiuyan, suddenly asked, “Who are we going to leave to guard this Fort Yulin?”

“For now, eleven or twelve people will be enough. Two or three transmigrators and a squad of marines. We’ll expand the scale later according to the development situation.”

Jiang Qiuyan said, “Director Wang, I don’t think this will work. How many people does the transmigrator group have in total? Spreading them out like pepper like this, too few is not enough, and too many is a waste of talent. Not to mention ourselves, just the marine team will be short of three squads.”

“That’s right. We have to station people here and there. I always feel that we don’t have enough troops,” Chen Haiyang had long been troubled by the shortage of naval forces. Whether it was sailors or marines, the Department of Maritime Forces felt that they were stretched thin.

“And have you thought about another problem? A few transmigrators are isolated in this barren land. Besides themselves, they can’t even see a few living people, let alone natives. Due to limited conditions, the Executive Committee can’t equip every base with comfortable living facilities. Over time, won’t these people have a mental breakdown one by one!” Jiang Qiuyan gestured excitedly, making people feel that he himself was about to have a mental breakdown.