Chapter 74 Kun Wu
This three-masted s.h.i.+p had been so badly eroded that it took Chen Fan a day"s work to drag it back carefully to Zhongyun city.
In the night, Chen Fan quietly opened the gate of the dock and controlled the electric eel to drag the boat into it. The whole base of the dock was made of cement and water could reach up to ten meters high during high tide.
This s.h.i.+p was 50 meters long and was an absolute masterpiece during the Qing Dynasty. The maritime trade was banned for a few hundred years during this Dynasty which left the s.h.i.+pbuilders feeling tormented.
After controlling the electric eel to pull off the s.h.i.+p"s wire rope in an extremely violent and cruel way, it then "rewarded" the s.h.i.+p with a few "furious charges" and "war tramples" until the eroded s.h.i.+p finally turned into a piece of junk. After getting the electric eel out, Chen Fan slowly turned the wheel and closed the two doors. When the gate was completely closed, he activated the water pump to drain out the seawater from the dock. The two diesel pumps that were 50 centimeters wide in diameter had to keep on pumping out the seawater for a long period of time before they emptied the dock.
Every good was worth its price. Due to the sealing performance of the dock that was very below standards, Chen Fan still needed to get a small water pump and place it in the doorway to ensure all the water that leaked in flowed back into the sea even after the high-power pump had completed its task.
Squatting on the concrete steps, Chen Fan looked greedily at the remains of the s.h.i.+p that was even more abstract than the drawings of the Dutch abstract artist, Mondrian. The tea and silk that had decayed a long time ago were not the targets that Chen Fan was concerned about. Instead, the silver ingots that were slightly corroded by the seawater that were sandwiched in between the teas and silks were Chen Fan"s true aim.
With a shout of joy, Chen Fan ran down the steps, picked up a few sycees that had 30 years of Daoguang printed on the surface and kept examining them in his hands. Five tons of silver seemed like a lot but it was actually only a small pile. Looking at the blackish silver ingots that were corroded by the sea water, Chen Fan couldn"t help but smile widely like a Ches.h.i.+re cat.
Of these pieces of silver, Chen Fan planned to keep a dozen as a collection and melt the rest of them in the furnace to sell as ordinary silver.
Although Chen Fan could double up the price and sell these antiques, he was worried that it would be the police knocking on his door first, not the dealers due to the sudden increase in the number of antiques in the market.
However, only somebody like Chen Fan, who was the black sheep of his family, could do something despicable like this. Although the silver ingots were not of the best quality and wouldn"t fetch a good price in the market, they would still be far more valuable than the melted pieces of silver if Chen Fan sold them off slowly.
Rubbing his hands, Chen Fan threw the silver ingots onto the concrete floor piece by piece and decided to melt them. To dig out silver ingots from a pile of rotten wood and corroded nails that were mixed with all sorts of decay was not easy. After a busy night of digging, Chen Fan walked over to the entrance of the dock and washed his hands that were covered in black dust until they were clean.
Wiping the sweat from his forehead, Chen Fan threw the sack in the corner of the wall and decided to sleep until noon.
.........
Twelve o "clock noon!
"Wake up you lazy pig, wake up you lazy pig..." Still fast asleep, Chen Fan was awakened by the alarm on his mobile phone.
"... Ha..." With a big yawn, Chen Fan rubbed his sleepy eyes, got up from the sack and headed to the back door after shaking off the dust from his clothes.
After stopping a cab, he went to the hardware market and spent 2,570 RMB on two pieces of corundum crucibles, a porcelain ladle, a long iron plier, a fire stove used for hotel use, two bottles of liquefied gas, two bottles of industrial oxygen, a connecting hose and four pieces of ceramic mold that can cast up to six kilograms of silver. After buying the apparatus, Chen Fan bought a few more barrels of distilled water and a lot of food and drinks to prepare him for the next five to six days of work.
The melting point of silver is very low, it only needs about 950 degrees to melt it into a pool of white water whereas the combustion of a mixture of gas and oxygen could achieve a temperature of more than 1500 degrees.
Because he bought so many things, Chen Fan spent 200 RMB and rented a Great Wall Wingle to transport the stuff to Sea Road. After refusing the driver"s help politely, Chen Fan carried all the things slowly to the dock by himself.
If he had to carry all those things a half year ago, he would have been afraid that he wouldn"t have been able to do it even if someone pointed a knife at his neck and threatened him. But now, the only effect on Chen Fan was that he was starving after the task and it was all because of the strength of the electric eel!
..............................
After installing the fire stove, Chen Fan added water into a pot, placed it on the stove and started his first "melting" experience.
Of course, the first thing he melted was not silver. Instead, he "melted" three packets of KSF instant noodles with eggs. The "fierce" fire that was produced with oxygen, managed to boil the water in less than a minute.
Squatting on the ground, Chen Fan slurped up his noodles in a large white porcelain bowl while looking at the silver ingots in the cauldron that were slowly melting under the fire. As he finished eating the egg noodles, the silver ingots in the two cauldrons had also turned into white water. After flipping over the few pieces of silver ingots that were left with the iron pliers, Chen Fan s.h.i.+fted back into waiting mode once again.
After ten minutes, Chen Fan stirred the contents gently with a ceramic ladle, causing the impurities to rise up slowly. Then, he skimmed out the blackish impurities, clamped the crucible with the pliers and poured the silver molten into the four molds by the side.
One pot can cast two molds of five kilograms. If there were two pots and four molds, Chen Fan would need to have 250 pots to melt all five tons of silver.
"250?" Chen Fan cooled the mold in water and twitched his mouth. "250 it is. I could do it without any pressure."
Melting five tons of silver was monotonous but also exciting work in a way. After casting 200 pieces of s.h.i.+mmering silver until eleven o"clock at night, Chen Fan finally wrapped himself in the newly purchased blanket and slept.
"200 pieces of silver equals 2,000 catty, equals one million grams and 395,000 dollars..." There was a smile on Chen Fan"s face for the whole night.
After three days of hard work...
Chen Fan finally melted all five tons of silver after emptying the fourth can of gas.
However,... What made Chen Fan annoyed was that after the five tons of silver had been reprocessed, the weight loss from the impurities that were removed was more than 1,000 catty, and this meant that Chen Fan "s wealth had shrunk by 2.2 million.
"Bah, what kind of lousy extraction skill is this?" Chen Fan spat his saliva in disdain towards his ancestors and activated the two high-power pumps to fill the dock with seawater. After maintaining a balanced pressure between the internal and external environment, he walked over to the winch and turned the shaft with all his might to open the steel door which was two centimeters thick.
After the extraction of silver was completed, Chen Fan decided to dump all the waste into the sea with the aid of the electric eel. He didn"t want to take the risk of leaving the waste in the dock should someone find it thus destroying his dreams of success due to the electric eel being exposed.
After opening the door, Chen Fan leaned against the wall and s.h.i.+fted his consciousness to the electric eel that was not far away. By controlling the electric eel to swim in through the channel, Chen Fan used the huge body of the electric eel to push the waste out of the dock little by little.
"Ah"
As half of the waste was being pushed out, Chen Fan suddenly let out a cry as if something had been thrust into the back of the electric eel. "What the h.e.l.l?" Chen Fan stopped his work in confusion. The skin of the electric eel was very slippery, not to mention that it was also very thick. Logically speaking, all the ironware that was on the s.h.i.+p had been corroded by seawater into a pile of junk so there shouldn"t be any sharp things that could pierce the electric eel"s skin!
After using electromagnetic induction to scan the body of the electric eel for two rounds, Chen Fan found out that the culprit was actually a ghostly dagger that was 30 centimeters long.
"It must be a treasure since it didn"t corrode even after it was immersed in seawater for nearly 200 years!"
Without any hesitation, Chen Fan took off his clothes, jumped into the water and pulled out the dagger from the electric eel"s back. Although the wooden handle of the dagger had decayed badly, the whole blade was still intact without even a trace of rust.
"What is this?" Chen Fan was stunned when he saw the black knife that was carved beautifully with many Wisteria Sinensis. Not to mention its absolute beauty, there were two traditional characters carved at the place where the handle and blade were connected.
"Kun... Kun Wu?" Chen Fan was puzzled. Why isn"t it Mo Ye or Yu Chang?
After climbing up to sh.o.r.e, Chen Fan slashed at the silver ingot next to him with the dagger immediately as he wanted to try out the sharpness of the blade that didn"t look sharp at all.
Kachang!
With a slash, the blade of the dagger that was five centimeters wide, surprisingly cut the silver ingot in half.
"Oh my G.o.d..." In disbelief, Chen Fan looked at the dagger as though a piece of gla.s.s was about to shatter.