Darkstone Code

Chapter 1115 - 1113: The Trick

"What is this?"

The mayor looked curiously at the peasant dirtying the floor under his jurisdiction, watching as he continually spilled soil from that damned basket, and placed that damned, glowing thing on the table.

"It’s gold!" the mayor remarked, feeling a bit emotional. He covered the lump of gold with a handkerchief and squeezed it; it was hard.

After briefly examining it, he exclaimed again, "A natural gold nugget!"

"And it doesn’t seem to have a low purity. Where did you find it?"

The peasant mentioned the location where he discovered it, emphasizing that it was found on his cultivated farmland. He had to stress this point because, in essence, the item should legally be considered his property.

The mayor shook his head at the peasant, "You’re very lucky. You can keep it, or you can hand it to me, and I’ll give you a reward that will satisfy you..."

Not long after, a staff member from City Hall, with a somewhat peculiar expression, quickly walked out of the office building. He didn’t even bother with greetings between colleagues, as if affected by something, walking quickly forward.

Once he left the vicinity of the City Hall office building, he took off running!

Three days later, Gadon heard the news that a large gold mine had been discovered on the land under his jurisdiction, and he stated that the provincial government would handle the matter properly.

A week later, the whole world knew that a potentially very substantial gold mine had been discovered in Nagariel.

This news immediately made everyone envious and jealous of the local rulers of Nagariel. Gold, unlike other metals, doesn’t need much to be valuable. A gold mine with a large reserve and high purity means getting rich!

Some geologists once again put forward their previous speculation that such a geographical environment in Nagariel was bound to contain vast reserves of various mineral resources, such as precious metals. This seemed normal.

They were not shocked by the discovery of a large gold mine in Nagariel; they just felt that the ignorant Nagariel government of the past had obstructed the initial development, or else the Federation wouldn’t have had the benefit.

The latter was their true thought, sour and annoyed but had to admit that the Federation got rich!

Perhaps to allow more people to witness this scene, the Provincial Governor of Gadon in Nagariel invited many reporters to the site of the native high-purity gold mine discovery to conduct on-the-ground shooting.

They saw vast areas of rocks exposed to the air, hiding the golden glitter of gold. To thank these reporters from all over the world for coming such a long way to shoot these scenes, the local government gave each of them a small hammer, allowing them to conduct a brief mining operation on a massive rock.

They pounded on the rocks, chipping away pieces of stones, and amidst exclamations, they kept finding golden ores from the rocks.

That feeling... was fantastic!

Everyone harvested several pieces of gold ore. This was more commemorative than giving them money or other gifts because it was gold ore they personally mined.

This also made them realize how easy it was to mine those gold ores—

"I just swung the eight-pound four-sided hammer they gave me against that surface rock for a while, and quickly found these little beauties among the shattered stone debris (Picture 1) (Picture 2) (Picture 3)!"

"Mining them posed no difficulty, an unprofessional miner like me could easily handle it, I am truly envious of these people!"

Such reports were everywhere; gold was gold, despite seeming not so valuable, but gold was always gold.

Since ancient times, gold has represented wealth. It doesn’t just have monetary valuation; it embodies wealth!

Through social and cultural evolution, it has turned into a societal symbol equating to wealth!

This led many professionals to realize that this was a damn open-air high-purity abundant mine!

The day the reports came out, gold prices saw a drop.

There was no help for it; the increase in the world’s gold stock naturally led to a short-term decrease in gold prices. Perhaps it would rise afterward, but currently, its price was set to decline.

More crucially, the total assault of silver against gold seemed to have begun. During that week, another obscure small country announced giving up gold reserves in favor of silver reserves.

Meanwhile, a private equity fund also announced that they would be selling all their gold, converting to silver reserves, and held an optimistic view of silver’s future.

With one up and one down, the disparity became more than a little!

Now came the explosion of a substantial open-air wealthy mine discovery, with gold’s closing price dropping by 2.7% on the day, nearing the top ten historical single-day drop records.

While silver went up by 2%.

An invisible undercurrent was sweeping across the world. Many in the financial industry seemed to sense a strange trend.

They didn’t know what it was, but they could feel that some big things were happening.

Meanwhile, the continuous increase in silver on the financial market and the good news triggered the entire market’s enthusiasm; trading volumes began to grow gradually, even some foundations not interested in silver started to stockpile some silver.

The amount wasn’t huge. For one, there were no goods; secondly, they still had some concern about silver.

A metal costing one to two dollars per ounce, its price increased almost ten times, why?

This situation felt off, yet the market had more of those irrational, thoughtless retail investors.

They never analyzed why something would go up or down; they only pondered one thing—why hadn’t they bought it?

Yes, before it rose, while it rose, why hadn’t they bought it, what stupid thing had they been doing?

This trending rush was unstoppable, so much that before the financial crisis a few years ago, someone published a book called "Tips to Become a Billionaire – Chasing the Rise and Fall."

This book, regarded as a joke by experts, sold very well among retail investors who saw it as a key to the Holy Hall of Wealth, only to lose everything.

Retail investors were always the ones taking over from bankers and institutions; they always thought they did the right thing, but in reality, they never stopped being wrong.

Constantly, financial scholars attempted to use this book to dissect financial trends, which was also what all capitalists wished to see because... they needed someone to take over.

Just like now, silver’s price from its start to now had gone through the most terrifying profit margin stage, marking the end of what could be termed a miracle, yet retail investors continued to enter the market.

Why?

Partially due to retail investors’ lack of systematic knowledge and understanding of finance, they couldn’t make heads or tails of what they faced.

Secondly, their blind trust in various stock brokerage companies and brokers ensured that as long as those brokers could persuade them, they would naively believe those people were right.

Silver was still on the rise, albeit slowly, with everyone thinking it would surely break through twenty dollars, or even twenty-two dollars, then slowly decline.

But does that even matter?

From the current angle, even if that were true, the return rate wouldn’t hit ten percent, but if something went wrong, the loss would exceed ten percent!

But who cares, no one cares. Compared to the minor silver buy-ins from the foundation, the financial market’s retail investors were genuinely insane, dreaming they could embody an era!

In March, temperatures started to rise, the outdoor temperature in Bupen climbed back above ten degrees, and in Mariluo, the extreme cold also warmed back to about one or two degrees, or even two to three degrees.

For Mariluo people, this low temperature is the normal temperature; they don’t even feel this is an issue.

The severely disaster-stricken Mariluo didn’t hear gunfire this spring; before the spring planting, they always enjoyed some small-scale conflicts.

Although termed as armed skirmishes or collisions, it was more like a ritualistic collision, akin to a priest-like practice.

This year there was none, as all the warlords were cleaning up the aftermath, and the puppet central government of Mariluo even popped out, hoping for the basic humanitarian aid from the international community.

Money, materials, food; they needed it all.

The ultralow temperature froze their lands, delaying this year’s spring sowing, which also meant an entire year of food scarcity.

The cold killed off a lot of wild animals, many plants as well; food became a life-threatening commodity.

The international community responded actively, though Mariluo wasn’t the only place suffering from the snow disaster; other countries were affected too, with society at large debating silver, gold, and the snow disaster.

"The snow blocked our progress; we likely have to wait until after April to resume moving north as planned."

"From the current timeline deduced, we might arrive at our designated location from May to early June."

In the command conference room of Darkstone Security Company, the management officers were reporting on Mariluo’s work to Lynch.

Before him was a Mariluo sand table model, reduced onto a massive table, providing a clear view of the terrain’s rises and falls.

This was to allow the command headquarters to make more precise arrangements, sometimes staying up all night, eyes could blur with contour lines, possibly making faulty judgments.

"Are our newly trained employees ready?", Lynch asked while looking at the sand table, which had many small flags inserted.

The logistics department head nodded, "Yes, they’re all ready, able to head north anytime."

Lynch contemplated the sand table, then after a while, said, "I need you to ensure that Sapphire reaches the predetermined location by early June, as it relates to a whole series of our plans."

The commanders looked at each other but kept silent.

Lynch pursed his lips, "At all costs!"