37: Chapter Thirty-Seven: Different Paths

As the night deepened, the sky was completely dyed ink-black.

The bright moon in the deep mountains was exceptionally large and brilliant, hanging high in the sky like a nightlight left for the earth.

I don't know if it was the nourishing snake meat soup or if he had just gotten used to this routine.

Zheng Jing, who had slept for an entire afternoon and was fully prepared to suffer from insomnia again tonight, was surprisingly completely unaffected by the "iveco Symphony" and slept incredibly soundly!

The next morning.

Just as the horizon began to turn a pale, fish-belly white, everyone in the vehicle woke up one after another.

Regardless of whether their life pressure was heavy or light, no one wanted to laze in bed.

If you want to enjoy yourself, you can sleep in at home, but having come into the mountains, everyone naturally wanted to explore more areas and find more valuable items to trade for a decent life.

Several of them crawled out of the vehicle one after another, tacitly finding their own spots to relieve themselves.

After shivering in unison, they took their toothbrushes and washbasins to the nearby stream to freshen up.

When eating snake meat last night, everyone had casually agreed that the tasks of boiling water for tea in the morning and cooking dinner together in the evening would be rotated according to age, taking turns among Guo Jinjun, Boss Zhao, Zhao the Second, Guo Kui, and Zheng Jing, with a different person handling the chores each day.

Today it was Zhao the Second's turn; he didn't even bother brushing his teeth or washing his face, instead starting a fire early to boil water and tossing in a handful of tea leaves.

By the time everyone had finished washing up, it was ready to drink.

The group gathered together, took a few sips of hot tea, and chewed on two pieces of hardtack with the tea, simply finishing another breakfast.

After packing up their gear, the group each took their personal tools and rations, then scattered throughout the abandoned mining area.

Zheng Jing chose to head toward the ravine on the east side of the camp today.

This place was completely different from the relatively flat mining slopes of previous days; it was filled with scattered piles of rocks of varying heights, and broken ore left over from mining years ago was strewn everywhere.

The slopes were uneven, and both sides were overgrown with waist-high scrub trees and wild vines, their branches and leaves intertwined to block out the sky.

Because the path was particularly difficult to walk on, everyone subconsciously avoided coming here.

But for some reason today, Zheng Jing's intuition told him to head this way, that he wouldn't be wrong.

However...

Reality always slaps you in the face.

Having hacked his way through the brambles for over an hour, Zheng Jing hadn't received any response from the system.

As for the metal detector, that went without saying.

The temperature today was significantly higher than yesterday, and combined with the difficult path, it made Zheng Jing feel slightly feverish and stuffy all over.

"What kind of hellish weather is this? It's only the beginning of May and it's already this hot; what's it going to be like in the summer?"

Wiping the sweat from his forehead, Zheng Jing picked up his canteen and took a few large gulps.

Zheng Jing especially loved drinking tea, and before setting off, he had specifically asked Zhao the Second for some aged white tea to toss into his canteen to steep.

It was cool and exceptionally refreshing, instantly dispelling the heat from his body and making him feel much more comfortable.

After resting for a moment, Zheng Jing continued to walk slowly along the inner side of the ravine, and just as he stepped into a sheltered hollow, a bright light blob suddenly appeared on the radar interface in his mind, which had been silent for a long time, and the clear signal locked straight into the soil in front of his left foot.

"Finally, something good..."

Zheng Jing's spirits lifted instantly; he gripped his small hoe tightly, crouched down, and brushed away the messy dead grass and gravel on the ground, slowly digging into the surface soil from shallow to deep, following the sensed location.

Digging a hole also requires technique; you have to do the preparatory work first and can't just brute force it, because if there happened to be a rock underneath, what would he do if he broke the stick... no, the hoe?

After all, Zheng Jing only brought this one hoe when he came into the mountains, and if it broke, he would have nothing to use.

Zheng Jing turned the soil carefully, hoe stroke by hoe stroke, clearing away the surrounding gravel and debris bit by bit.

As the soil layer was continuously dug away, a warm, bright, silvery-white luster slowly revealed itself.

Fearing that hard objects would damage the silver piece, he simply put down the hoe and carefully used his hands to clear away the surrounding soil, peeling the entire object out bit by bit.

In no time at all, a piece of silver with a heavy texture and a pure, bright white color was completely revealed.

It felt heavy and substantial in his hand, and after a rough estimate, it was a full seventeen or eighteen grams!

And looking at the quality, there were absolutely no impurities, meaning this piece of silver didn't need to be refined at all.

Conservatively estimated, that's three hundred yuan in the bag!

Zheng Jing was instantly overjoyed and happily tossed the silver into his personal iron canister, listening to the crisp clinking sound, his lips couldn't help but curl upward.

"La la la... la la la, I am a little expert at selling newspapers."

Zheng Jing hummed a tune and continued forward with a jaunty, cocky step.

Before he had even walked five steps, the system in Zheng Jing's mind rang again without any warning, and the signal was even clearer than before!

Zheng Jing's eyes lit up instantly, and unable to suppress the surprise in his heart, he muttered happily to himself: "Not bad, not bad, although the road here is difficult to walk, the quality of the silver material in this place is actually much better than those mining slopes I stayed at yesterday and the day before!"

Zheng Jing sighed inwardly, confirming that his intuition was indeed correct; today was destined to be a big harvest.

But what Zheng Jing didn't know was that while the place he chose today would yield him a full harvest, it would also bring him a lifelong regret...