4: Chapter 4 A Gold Dog the Size of a Watermelon

Su Mingyuan looked down at himself. From head to toe, he was as black as if he had crawled out of a coal mine. His T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers were completely ruined.

Black oil was dripping down his hair, sticking to half of his eyes. His eyelashes were glued together, making it an effort just to blink.

"I need to wash this stuff off first..."

He remembered that when he was looking down from the gentle slope just now, there was a river at the foot of the mountain. The water was so clear that the bottom could be seen, and the distance was visually estimated to be only three to four hundred meters.

No sooner said than done.

Su Mingyuan held the shovel in one hand and wiped the oil off his face with the other, stumbling as he ran toward the riverside.

The weeds were knee-high and the slope was not large, but the oil all over his body made him like a youtiao just fished out of a pot, slipping with every step.

The closer he got to the river, the clearer the sound of the water became—swishing and gurgling, like someone constantly pouring pearls into a jade plate.

The river surface was already right before his eyes. The sunlight hit the water, shining brightly and making him squint.

"I've finally arrived—"

Su Mingyuan accelerated and rushed the last few steps.

Then, his right foot suddenly crashed into something.

"Hiss!"

Stumbling, his whole body lunged forward directly!

The shovel flew out of his hand, and he instinctively propped his hands forward. With a smack, he fell solidly onto the shallow water beach by the river.

The icy river water poured into his collar and cuffs, making him shiver with cold.

"Fuck..."

Su Mingyuan lay prone in the water, his face pressed against the sand and stones at the bottom of the river. Half a mouthful of water poured into his mouth, choking and cold.

"What kind of day is this? First petroleum poured on my head, and now eating shit in the river..."

Cursing, he propped himself up from the water, glanced down at the direction of the stone that had tripped him, and thought to himself that he would settle accounts with it after he finished washing.

There was no time to think more; he needed to take a bath first.

The river water was indeed cold, but the water quality was ridiculously good.

Clear to the bottom without a trace of turbidity, the current was neither fast nor slow, and the depth just submerged his calves.

Su Mingyuan squatted in the shallow area, cupping water with both hands and splashing it onto his face. The black oil was washed away, winding downstream along the current.

He rubbed his arms, then lifted his T-shirt to rub his belly—crude oil had high viscosity and was not very clean to wash with cold water, but at least it could remove the thickest layer on the surface.

As he rubbed, he suddenly stopped.

Because he discovered that the sand at the bottom of the river was reflecting light.

It was not ordinary reflection.

It was golden light.

Su Mingyuan's pupils suddenly dilated.

He brought his face close above the water surface, almost touching it, and looked across inch by inch.

The bottom of the river was covered with a layer of fine sand. Between the sand grains, countless tiny golden particles were densely mixed in, like someone had poured a bag of gold powder into the river and then spread it evenly by the current.

As the sunlight shone down, the entire river bottom was glowing.

It was not a small patch, nor occasional grains.

It was the entire river.

As far as the eye could see, upstream and downstream, every inch of the river bottom emitted that warm, heavy golden glow.

"Gold sand?"

Su Mingyuan's voice was a bit floaty.

With trembling hands, he pinched a small pinch of sand from the river bottom and spread it out on his palm.

Ordinary sand grains, gravel, and—tiny golden particles—shone with a soft luster under the sunlight.

He rubbed those golden particles with his thumb.

The texture was soft, highly ductile, neither broken nor cracked. After being crushed, it slightly deformed, leaving a thin bright trace.

Quartz sand was hard and brittle, shattering into powder at a single crush.

Mica sheets were thin and brittle, cracking upon a pinch.

There was only one thing that could not be crushed, could not be cracked, and could still deform—

Gold.

When Su Mingyuan was interning in the petrochemical workshop, the veteran master who guided him was a man of diverse knowledge, who once said during casual chat: "Little Su, do you know that panning for gold in ancient times meant sifting sand in the river? Gold has high density and sinks to the bottom. With a dustpan to pan it, the sand washes away and the gold stays. Whenever the gold sand content in a river exceeds 0.5 grams per ton, it is worth mining."

And the river before his eyes, visually estimated for the proportion of golden particles in every handful of sand—

was simply not at the level of fractions of a gram.

He cupped a full handful of river sand with both hands and gently shook it in the water. The fine sand was washed away by the current, and at least one-tenth of what remained in his palm was golden.

One-tenth.

"This fucking isn't a river, this is a gold mine..."

Su Mingyuan squatted in the water, feeling a bit dazed.

In the upper right corner of his vision, the countdown was still ticking quietly—[02:31:44].

First a casual shovel spurted out petroleum, and now squatting in a river panned out gold sand.

What on earth was this place, a Periodic Table theme park?

He took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down.

Regardless of whether these gold sands were real, the layer of oil on his body had to be washed off first. Su Mingyuan stood up, wanting to find a cleaner spot to continue rubbing—as soon as his right foot stepped out, his toes crashed into something hard again.

"Hiss—it's you again!"

It was the culprit that had tripped him earlier.

Su Mingyuan glared down, just about to curse and kick it away—

His movement stuck.

That lump of things was half-buried between the soil and weeds at the edge of the riverbank, irregular in shape and pitted on the surface, like a watermelon that someone had taken a bite out of.

It was not small, about the size of an adult man's head.

When he fell just now, he hadn't bothered to look at all. Glancing down now—beneath that grayish-yellow mud shell, a layer of dark golden luster faintly showed through.

Su Mingyuan's gaze was nailed onto it.

He slowly squatted down and reached out to brush away the grass leaves and floating soil covering it.

His heart went thump.

He exerted strength to pull that thing out of the soil—heavy.

It was much heavier than imagined. Only with both hands could he barely support it, estimating it to weigh thirty or forty catties.

Su Mingyuan held it and walked to the riverside, squatted down, and pressed it into the water to scrub.

The mud and oxide layer were washed away by the current, revealing its true face inside—

Golden.

Pure, dazzling, without a trace of adulteration, gold.

The surface had naturally formed uneven textures, like a lump of metal dough kneaded into an irregular shape. Its texture was dense, its feel heavy, refracting a warm glow under the sunlight.

Su Mingyuan had seen this thing before.

Not seen in reality, but in a documentary.

CCTV had an episode specifically about it—《The Most Precious Natural Gold Nuggets on Earth》.

Its scientific name was "natural gold nugget".

Commonly known as—doghead gold.

Because naturally formed large gold Ores had irregular shapes and sometimes looked like a dog's head, it got this name.

Doghead gold was extremely rare.

Ordinary placer gold and vein gold were shattered into tiny particles after tens of millions of years of geological movement, scattered among rivers and veins.

But doghead gold was different—it was a large natural gold nugget formed by the high enrichment and natural crystallization of gold elements under extremely special geological conditions.

Globally, recorded doghead gold weighing over one kilogram totaled no more than ten thousand pieces.

For those with a single piece weighing over five kilograms, almost every piece had a name, being collected by museums or bid on by tycoons at astronomical prices.

And the one in Su Mingyuan's hand—

watermelon-sized, weighing thirty or forty catties.

was just so swaggeringly half-buried on the edge of the riverbank, protruding a section of soil surface, waiting to trip people.

Su Mingyuan held this piece of doghead gold, squatting in the river, and didn't speak for a long time.

The current parted on both sides of his knees, making a swishing sound.

The gold sand at the bottom of the river shimmered under the sunlight, and the hole poked out by the shovel in the distance was still spewing black crude oil. The air was mixed with the fragrance of green grass, the smell of petroleum, and the cool breath of river water.

Absurd.

Too absurd.

"What kind of luck... on earth did I run into?"

Su Mingyuan's voice was a bit hoarse. He looked down at the heavy piece of doghead gold in his arms, and then looked up at this picturesque realm of no one.

Underfoot was petroleum, in the river was gold sand, and the stumbling block was doghead gold.

Twenty-four hours ago, he was still squatting in a rented room worrying while counting the last five yuan, thirty-four cents, wondering whether to sleep under the overpass or in the park after being driven out tomorrow.

And now—

In the upper right corner of his vision, the blue numbers were still ticking quietly.

[02:34:51]

Less than half an hour.

Su Mingyuan slowly stood up, holding the doghead gold in front of his chest, standing soaking wet by the riverside.

He stared at that string of countdown, licking his chapped lips.

A question surfaced in his mind—

After the countdown returned to zero, would he be teleported back?

If so...

He looked down at the piece of doghead gold under his arm, and then looked at the grassy area not far away that was still bubbling with oil.

His gaze changed.

No longer the confusion, self-deprecation, and resignation from before.

But a dangerous, precise light that only appeared when a hunter discovered prey.

"How much of this gold can I take away?"