Chapter 1721: On the Gem Mine’s Awareness and Tact
“That’s right!” The short-haired woman clapped her hands, speaking with excitement. “I’m sure this direction is correct!”
The bald, burly man pondered seriously for a moment before nodding. “That possibility can’t be ruled out.”
“It’s hard to know what Zone 019 was like a hundred years ago, but it definitely wasn’t as developed as it is now. If a mining company had an incident, they must have had ways to cover it up.”
“However…”
“However, it feels off,” Xu Huo said. “If Master Solan’s goal was this, she wouldn’t have waited until a hundred years later, right before her death, to do it.”
“Whether it was investigating her father’s death or uncovering some possible conspiracy, with her influence, she could have done it while she was still alive.”
“Maybe the mining company’s backing was too strong. She couldn’t have succeeded alone, and even if she went public, she wouldn’t have gotten evidence. So she had to use this method. Even if she ultimately failed, at least it would cause some trouble for Tiantianle,” the short-haired woman immediately said. “Besides, who’s to say the players who came to Dingding Flower Town to kill people weren’t sent by Tiantianle?”
Xu Huo fell silent for a moment. Although he didn’t believe the painting was in Tiantianle’s hands, he agreed with the general direction. So he said, “I plan to head to the mining area first and take a look around. What about you two?”
The bald, burly man had already been there. After a brief hesitation, he said, “I’ll go to Tiantianle.”
The short-haired woman agreed with him.
“Good luck to you both.” Xu Huo didn’t say much more. He took out a prop and left Dingding Flower Town, heading straight for the city where the mining area was located.
The distance between the two places was considerable. It was completely dark by the time he arrived. However, the mining area belonged to Tiantianle, and non-employees were not allowed to enter.
Getting in wasn’t easy. Not only were there robots patrolling the perimeter, but there were also flying instruments monitoring the sky. Nearby players who merely approached were warned off.
Xu Huo temporarily bought a set of camouflage clothing specifically designed to counter sky-sensing instruments from the Message Collection Terminal. He opened a space passage, avoided the robots, and entered the mountains.
This entire mountain range was under the Tiantianle Mining Group. Some mines had been sealed off, while others were still in operation. The sealed-off areas had fewer patrol robots, but many places were still equipped with surveillance instruments, making it impossible to guard against them all.
He couldn’t damage these instruments, or the surrounding robots would rush to support immediately.
Xu Huo crouched in the canopy of a large tree for a while, quickly figuring out the positions of all the nearby surveillance instruments. The sparse instruments couldn’t cover every corner. Besides, even with overlapping monitoring, it was normal for a sudden gust of wind in the woods or a small animal passing by to trigger the instruments.
In this way, he spent some effort to tour all the sealed-off mountain peaks.
Two of the mountains had experienced collapses. Metal structures had been erected outside to help stabilize them, and they were still there. Judging by their positions, they should be the widely rumored death sites of Solan’s father on the Message Collection Terminal.
However, Solan had never been to this place, nor had she verified the exact location. Even the rescue workers at the time couldn’t say where it was. Solan’s father wasn’t the only one dug out of the mountain; it was only during the final identification that his parents and wife were notified.
The nearby mine shafts were still accessible. Inside, they were full of patched-up traces, just like the mine shafts near Dingding Flower Town. It was also clear that some of the earliest support materials weren’t very good.
As Xu Huo walked deeper along the heavily dust-laden mine tunnels, he continuously extended his spiritual power to inspect further in. He didn’t find any valuable clues, but he did discover several sealed-off underground fissures. Judging by the marks on the cracks, they had been there for some years.
No wonder accidents happened. Such large fissures underground proved that the mountain itself wasn’t stable. With even a slight minor earthquake, no one could predict what changes might occur.
Xu Huo reached out and touched the metal plates sealing the fissures. The people of Zone 019 hadn’t sealed the cross-section of the fissures for mining convenience. Instead, they had built movable walls of metal plates next to them, merely covering the fissures.
After a brief pause, he walked along a few other mine tunnels and found that this fissure ran evenly through the base of the mountain, intersecting with several main tunnels. The areas covered by metal plates weren’t just one or two.
Xu Huo made no comment on this “money over life” behavior. He took a rock sample from deep within different fissures, packed it up, and then exited the mine shaft.
The forest outside was pitch black. Across half a mountain, he could still see light coming from the peak ahead. Over that peak should be the mines still in operation. If they had been mining for over a hundred years, the mountain should have been hollowed out long ago—unless the ground beneath was packed entirely with gemstones.
The active mines were hard to enter, but Xu Huo circled around and found a robot workshop at a closer location.
The robot workshop was where robots recharged and changed shifts. Mining now didn’t require many people, so only robot maintenance workers and emergency staff lived there. At this hour, they had already rested, but their open Message Collection Terminals hadn’t been shut down. Inside, there were settings for the next work cycle, which happened to involve replacing the concentrated mining tunnels. Thus, Xu Huo also saw the fissure locations marked on the map.
This fissure ran adjacent to the sealed-off mines, parallel to the one he had just seen. Judging by the work diagram, it seemed these ores were indeed dug out from these fissures.
Aside from the higher accident rate, anyone would have to praise these gem mines for being “aware and tactful.”
After checking the surrounding area again, Xu Huo took a watch terminal as he left.
This watch terminal was already activated and didn’t require authentication to view its information.
However, the emergency worker only dealt with minor collapses, unstable mine shafts, or robot command errors—all tedious tasks with nothing too valuable. As for “commercial secrets” like the quality of gemstones that could be mined, occasional instances of exceptionally high purity, or naturally formed peculiar gems, those were outside his needs.
What was interesting, though, was that some fragmented gems naturally resembled human teeth. With a little modification, they could be used—some people with peculiar tastes liked to use gems to create puppets, with bones being part of the custom order.
Of course, such natural occurrences were very rare; most were factory-customized.
Based on the information in the terminal, Xu Huo went to another mining area not far away. Only one-third of this mining area belonged to Tiantianle, with the remaining two-thirds owned by three other groups. However, upon entering, he found that beneath all the fully mined mountains, there were the same ground fissures.
Could it be that all the mines in Zone 019 were based on such fissures?
There wasn’t even a whisper about this on the Message Collection Terminal.
(Chapter End) Source: /txt/35960/32914487