20: Chapter 20 Wealth Growth

Early the next morning, Li Xin had Chen Hu take the workers and equipment back to Shenzhen first, while he stayed in Shiqiao Town, intending to look around the surrounding area.

With a 240-meter detection range, the area he could cover was much larger. He wanted to see if there were any larger mineral veins in this region.

He headed north first, crossed a mountain, and arrived in a canyon.

The system Scan showed some scattered gold veins in the mountains on both sides of the canyon, but the reserves were not large, totaling only a few dozen kilograms.

He spent half a day performing the Extraction of all the gold from these veins.

[Cumulative Gold Refined: 445.2 kg]

Then he walked south, arriving at a hilly area.

The gold reserves here were much larger than in the north. The system showed that about 60-150 meters underground, there was a decent gold vein, over three meters wide and extending over 500 meters.

[Estimated Gold Content: approx. 3.5 tons.]

3.5 tons!

When Li Xin saw this number, his heart skipped a beat.

3.5 tons of gold, at current gold prices, was worth over 1.2 billion RMB.

But he didn't rush to perform the Extraction—this vein was too deep, the deepest part being 150 meters down; he would need to drill holes to reach the ore.

Li Xin thought to himself, "This is so troublesome! It's still just a small gold mine now; what if I encounter a large gold mine? I won't be able to handle it! Sigh."

---

[Ding... Detected host's concern. To allow for happy gold-snatching, the system is now updating to a new version.]

[Progress 1%... 5%... 25%... 50%... 70%... 95%... 100%]

[Ding... System version update complete...]

...

[Gold Search and Refining System 2.0]

· Core rules are as follows:

1. There will be no pop-up prompts during the treasure hunting process. You can only deduce the location of treasures based on external clues, and then start the system to perform a Scan and lock in point-by-point.

2. Within the system Scan range, all gold mines and rare treasures will be automatically identified, with no blind spots or omissions.

3. Once a treasure is confirmed by scanning, you can touch the ground and silently recite to collect it. No drilling or mining is required; it is directly refined/stored into the storage space.]

---

[Gold Search and Refining System 2.0]

[Host: Li Xin]

[Current Level: 6]

[Detection Range: 240 meters]

(Note: Every 10kg of gold refined adds 5 meters to the detection range)

[Gold required for next upgrade: 500kg]

[Current cumulative gold refined: 445.2 kg]

[Armed Squad: 5 people]

---

"Hahaha... This came just in time. System, I love you to death." Li Xin jumped up happily, laughing towards the sky.

[Ding...]

[Collected small gold mine, obtained gold: 3.5 tons]

[Current cumulative gold refined: 3.952 tons]

Then he went back, collected the gold mine he had just discovered, and continued moving forward.

After walking for about another two hours, the system Scan prompted another vein, with reserves of about 800 kilograms.

[Ding...]

[Collected small gold mine, obtained gold: 800kg]

[Current cumulative gold refined: 4.752 tons]

[System upgrade conditions met!]

[Upgrade? Yes/No]

"Upgrade."

[Upgrading... Upgrade complete.]

---

[Gold Search and Refining System 2.0]

[Host: Li Xin]

[Current Level: 7]

[Detection Range: 240 meters → 490 meters]

(Note: Every 10kg of gold refined adds 5 meters to the detection range)

[Gold required for next upgrade: 5 tons]

[Current cumulative gold refined: 4.252 tons]

[Armed Squad: 5 people]

---

By the end of the day, he had discovered a total of about 4.5 tons of gold reserves.

Adding what was left before, he had nearly 5 tons of gold in his hands. Now, after the upgrade, he still had over 4 tons left.

Li Xin sat on a large rock, looking at the distant mountains, and suddenly felt a sense of unreality.

In his past life, he was a poor wretch carrying bricks on construction sites. In this life, in less than a month, he possessed over 4 tons of gold.

But he knew this was just the beginning.

Global gold reserves exceeded 50,000 tons. The amount he had was not even a fraction of that.

He stood up, patted the dust off his body, and walked towards Shiqiao Town.

Returning to the hotel, he took out his phone and saw a message from Yang Hong.

"Li Xin, when are you coming back? I have something I want to talk to you about."

Li Xin replied: "Coming back tomorrow."

Then he sent another message to Chen Hu: "Returning to Shenzhen tomorrow. Help me check where there is a place in Shenzhen to safely store a large amount of gold."

Chen Hu replied instantly: "Understood."

The next day, Li Xin took a bus back to Shenzhen.

He didn't go straight back to school but went to find Yang Hong first.

Yang Hong was waiting for him at a coffee shop near the school.

"What's wrong?" Li Xin sat down and ordered an Americano.

Yang Hong pushed up his glasses, his expression not looking good: "That outsourcing project had some problems."

"What problems?"

"The client said my crawler crashed their server. Not only did they refuse to pay, but they also want me to pay for damages."

"Crashed it? Is it serious?"

"Not serious, just too many requests in a short time, the server load was too high, and it went down for about ten minutes." Yang Hong sighed, "But they said they lost hundreds of thousands in transaction data and want me to pay 50,000 yuan."

"50,000?" Li Xin frowned, "Did you sign a contract?"

"I did. But the contract didn't clearly state the division of responsibility in this regard." Yang Hong smiled bitterly, "I was careless."

"What do you plan to do?"

"What else can I do? Pay it." Yang Hong shook his head helplessly, "But I don't have 50,000 yuan. So I wanted to borrow some from you."

"No need to borrow." Li Xin said, "I'll cover this 50,000."

"No, I have to pay you back for this money."

"Then just consider it startup capital." Li Xin looked at him, "Once the company is up and running, we'll deduct it from your shares."

Yang Hong was silent for a while, then nodded: "Okay."

"Also," Li Xin took a bank card out of his pocket and pushed it in front of Yang Hong, "There is 500,000 in here. Take it to register the company, rent an office, renovate; and buy some office supplies, etc."

Yang Hong was stunned: "500,000?"

"Tell me if it's not enough."

"It's enough... it's enough." Yang Hong looked at the bank card and pushed up his glasses, "Li Xin, what is this..."

"Don't think too much." Li Xin smiled, "I believe in your ability. As long as you make the product well and get the company running, this 500,000 is just a drop in the bucket."

Yang Hong took a deep breath and put the bank card away: "Don't worry, I won't let you lose money."

"I know."

The two chatted about the startup for a while longer. Li Xin sent Yang Hong off, then called Qiang Zi.

"Qiang Zi, when is Tie Zhu's breakfast shop opening?"

"Next Monday. Why, are you coming?"

"Yes. I'll bring him an opening red envelope while I'm at it."

"Okay, I'll tell him."

After hanging up, Li Xin called Luo Maifa.

"Maifa, how is your dad's company doing recently?"

"Pretty good. The new truck has arrived, and we've taken a few big orders. We should be profitable this month."

"That's good. By the way, help me ask your dad something—does he know anyone in Shenzhen who can help handle a batch of gold?"

Luo Maifa was taken aback: "Gold? Where did you get gold?"

"Don't worry about where it came from, just ask your dad if he has a channel."

"Okay, I'll ask for you."

Ten minutes later, Luo Maifa called back: "My dad said he knows someone in Shenzhen who processes gold and should be able to take it. But the price might be a little lower than the market price."

"How much lower?"

"About five to ten yuan lower per gram."

Li Xin thought about it; this price was acceptable. Although it was a bit of a loss compared to selling in Dubai, it saved the trouble of going abroad.

"Okay, help me set up an appointment to meet tomorrow."

"Okay."

The next day, Li Xin followed Uncle Luo to meet a person named Boss Chen.

Boss Chen was in his forties, chubby and fair-skinned, and spoke very kindly. He opened a gold processing factory in Shenzhen, specializing in the processing and wholesale of gold jewelry.

"Brother Luo said you have gold to sell?" Boss Chen poured a cup of tea for Li Xin.

"Yes." Li Xin took a one-kilogram gold bar out of his backpack and placed it on the coffee table.

Boss Chen picked it up to look at it, then used a small instrument he carried with him to test it.

"99.99% pure gold, very high quality." He nodded, "How much do you have?"

"I have fifty kilograms for now."

Boss Chen's eyes lit up: "Fifty kilograms? That's quite a lot. Where did it come from?"

"That's not convenient to say." Li Xin smiled, "Boss Chen, are you buying or not?"

"I am. But the price will be ten yuan lower than the international gold price."

"Eight yuan."

"Nine yuan."

"Deal."

Boss Chen made a call and summoned an accountant to weigh and calculate on the spot.

Fifty kilograms of gold, at the current gold price of 270 yuan per gram, minus nine yuan, was 261 yuan per gram.

Fifty kilograms was 13,050,000 yuan.

Boss Chen transferred the money on the spot, and Li Xin's phone received a bank text message.

[Your account has received: 13,050,000 yuan.]

Adding the money already in his account, he now had over 15 million RMB in his domestic account. There was also over two million USD in his Dubai account, equivalent to about 15 million RMB.

Total assets were nearly 30 million.

But this was only a small part of what he could cash out. He still had over 4.2 tons of gold in his system space, worth over 100 million.

However, he didn't plan to cash out all of this gold. He wanted to keep it, with some for system upgrades and some as reserves.

Walking out of Boss Chen's factory, Li Xin took a deep breath.

Thirty million.

Less than a month after his rebirth, he had gone from a penniless student to someone sitting on 30 million in cash and over 4 tons of gold.

But this was just the beginning.

He still had 4.2 tons of gold in his system space, then he would search for enough gold to upgrade the system to a very high level. The detection range would expand from 490 meters to several kilometers, tens of kilometers, or even hundreds of kilometers.

By that time, he would find all the gold mines and treasures in the world.

Grasberg, Muruntau, Sukhoy Log, South Deep... These world-class super-large gold mines would all become his targets.

And those legendary treasures—the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Holy Treasury, Zhang Xianzhong's sunken silver at Jiangkou, the Nazi gold train, the Amber Room, the golden city of El Dorado...

Thinking of this, the corners of Li Xin's mouth curled up slightly.

He took out his phone and sent a message to Chen Hu: "Help me book a flight to Indonesia."

"Boss, when?"

"Next Monday."

"Okay."

Li Xin put his phone into his pocket and looked at the sky in the distance.

Indonesia, Grasberg Gold Mine.

That was one of the largest gold mines in the world, with reserves exceeding 2,000 tons.

That was where he was going.