Su Wei slowed down and stopped in front of a relatively flat rock outcrop.
He turned off the engine and took off his helmet.
The cold air instantly filled my lungs.
The rock outcrop beneath our feet peeked out from the snow, its gray-black surface covered with ice shards.
Su Wei squatted down, took off his gloves, and placed his right hand on the rock surface.
Substrate Analysis LV1 initiated.
The light screen lit up in my line of sight.
The data stream spreads outwards from the point of contact, penetrating the snow layer and topsoil, scanning the underlying rock structure.
The scanning radius is thirty meters.
The data popped up.
The substrate is granite, homogeneous, and has extremely low porosity. No mineralization signals are observed.
normal.
The starting point of the F-3 Fault Zone projection on the manual is about eighty meters northeast of this location.
He is still some distance from the core zone.
Su Wei stood up, put his gloves back on, and mounted the snowmobile.
The engine roared to life again.
He followed the broken line he remembered, stopping, getting out of the car, pressing his hand, and scanning at intervals of about two hundred meters.
The second point.
Granite, homogeneous, with no abnormalities.
The third point.
Su Wei pressed his fingers against the cold rock surface.
The data stream from Substrate Analysis LV1 penetrates the permafrost layer and extends downwards.
Five meters, eight meters, twelve meters
The data suddenly changed.
A fracture surface appeared in the homogeneous structure.
A clear low-density band cuts in from the northeast at an angle of about 65 degrees and is about 30 centimeters wide.
The mineral composition of the rock mass on both sides of the fracture surface is differentiated.
The silicon content increased sharply, and the iron content was abnormally high.
Signals from quartz veins.
Su Wei's finger paused on the rock for three seconds.
He changed his position, moving fifty meters to the southwest, and scanned again.
The signal is still there.
The orientation of the fracture surface is exactly the same as F-3 marked in the manual.
Su Wei stood on a hillside where the temperature was minus eleven degrees Celsius, the wind making the hood of his down jacket flap loudly.
The goggles were pushed up to my forehead, and the cold wind blew directly onto my face, making my cheekbones tingle.
He continued to advance southwestward along the projection direction of the fault zone.
One scanning point every 200 meters.
Fifthly, the signal is enhanced.
The seventh point is that the width of the quartz vein expands from thirty centimeters to nearly fifty centimeters.
At the ninth point, a clear pyrite signal was detected in the associated minerals.
A whole line.
Starting from the location of the infrastructure pit, the route extends southwestward, traversing the entire permafrost zone at the foot of the Pillar Mountain.
Su Wei scanned a total of fourteen points, covering a distance of approximately 1.8 kilometers.
Mineralization signals of quartz veins were detected at eleven of the points, and the signal intensity was highly consistent with the description of the F-3 Fault in the manual.
At the last three points at the end of the fault zone, the signal begins to weaken and gradually disappears.
The tail of the mineralized zone ends up in that area.
Su Wei rode on the snowmobile, the vibrations of the idling engine transmitting from the seat to his thighs.
1.8 kilometers.
Eleven effective mineralization points.
If the gold grade in the core section is close to that of the three ore samples tested in the laboratory (8.74 grams per ton), then the potential reserves of this vein are...
He didn't continue calculating.
It's not that I can't calculate, it's that I'm afraid to calculate.
Or rather, calculating it wouldn't make any sense.
Su Wei took the GoPro out of his backpack and turned it off.
The entire recording was not turned on today, not even for a second.
He sat on the snowmobile, unscrewed the thermos, and took a sip of hot water.
The water temperature had dropped to around 40 degrees Celsius, leaving only a slight warmth.
The moment the hot water slid down my throat, the lingering excitement still coursed through my veins.
A 1.8-kilometer-long vein of gold-bearing quartz, of extremely high quality, lies beneath one hundred acres of land under his name.
Legally, all of these belong to him.
Parsons confirmed it.
Howard is also confirming this. Two independent law firms have reached the same conclusion.
But then what?
Su Wei screwed the thermos back on and stuffed it back into his backpack.
A cold wind swept down from the ridge, carrying ice crystals that rustled against the waterproof fabric of the jacket.
Mining.
The real problem begins here.
What happens between the discovery of a gold mine and the production of the first gold ingot?
Su Wei had never worked in mining in his previous life, but he still had some basic common sense.
The first step is exploration.
This wasn't the kind of exploration where he just ran around the mountain with Substrate Analysis and that was it; it was a proper geological exploration that met industry standards.
Core samples were drilled, a geological report was prepared, and submitted to the state mining administration for approval.
This alone requires hiring a licensed geological engineering company, with costs starting at US$500,000 and a cycle of six months to a year.
Then comes the environmental impact assessment.
Alaska has some of the strictest environmental regulations in the United States.
Gold mining involves the treatment of arsenic-containing tailings, prevention and control of groundwater pollution, and impact assessment of wildlife habitats.
The preparation and approval process for environmental impact assessment reports takes another six months to a year.
Next comes the mining permit.
The process involves federal and state approvals, a public comment period, hearings, and solicitation of stakeholder opinions.
If an environmental organization raises objections, the process can be extended indefinitely.
Finally, there's mine construction.
Ore processing plant, tailings dam, transportation roads, power supply, worker camp.
Building a mining infrastructure from scratch in the Alaska wilderness requires an investment of tens of millions of dollars.
How much money was in Su Wei's account?
Two million eight hundred and fifty thousand.
It continues to shrink.
The firing range project is costing over 200,000 yuan a month. Howard's legal fees were just reduced by 50,000 yuan. The lab testing fees are still outstanding.
Two million eight hundred and fifty thousand, to develop a gold mine that could be worth tens of millions or even hundreds of millions.
The phrase "a drop in the ocean" is an understatement.
Moreover, money is only one aspect of the problem.