Novel Bin Chapter 73 Treasure Again
Chapter 73 Treasure Again
If Chen Fan had to choose some words to describe his current mood, he would definitely choose ’ecstatic’, ’overjoyed’, ’elated’, and ’delighted’ to express his feelings. This strong sense of happiness wasn’t from the 3 million RMB he had gotten from last evening’s machine tools transaction with Zhang Xueyang. Neither was it from Chen Fan following Lei Feng and doing the good deed of placing the torpedo into the whale shark’s stomach and then giving it to the PT boat base stationed near Zhongyun City.
Honestly speaking, if someone had offered a good price to buy this torpedo, Chen Fan would not hesitate to sell it off. He would not feel any mental pressure even if the other party was a terrorist using the torpedo for a suicide attack.
The origin of this strong happiness could be traced back to the day before when the electric eel brought the three machine tools and the torpedo back. Last morning, the eel grabbed the three machine tools and the torpedo without explosives on each of its four claws, and swam toward Zhongyun City. When Chen Fan stopped at fifty nautical miles west of Jeju Island to hunt the poor whale shark, he accidentally discovered a shipwreck at the bottom of the sea.
Shipwreck... What does discovering a shipwreck imply? It means that there must be lots of goods or jewelry on the shipwreck. Every ship voyage during ancient times involved high risks and depended a lot on luck, so it had to carry highly profitable goods to make the risk worthwhile.
It was evident that the captain of the shipwreck wasn’t nuts. When Chen Fan controlled the eel to go near the shipwreck and then use its electromagnetic induction to detect the goods on the ship, the image that Chen Fan got almost made him faint from joy. Other than the decayed tea leaves and silk in the cargo hold, there was also around five tons of silver on the 50-meter long and 12 meter wide barque.
Five tons... Silver was around 3.95 RMB per gram in the current market. Five tons equals 5 million grams, and 5 million grams multiplied by 3.95 RMB equals 19.75 million RMB. It’s almost 20 million RMB... how could such an astronomical figure not set Chen Fan on fire?
Chen Fan immediately shifted his thoughts back onto his own body. Then, he quickly switched on the computer and marked the electric eel’s location on Google map. After memorizing the location, Chen Fan did not bother to close the website. He straightaway controlled the eel, with the whale shark in its mouth, to swim quickly toward Zhongyun City. After that, he inserted the torpedo into the whale shark’s belly
and secretly sent it to the PT boat base before contacting Zhang Xueyang to transact at the seaside, and then received the 3 million RMB easily.
The first thing that Chen Fan did after getting the money was to buy a 1,500 meter long nylon rope which was as thick as a child’s arm. He had the two delivery men throw it into the sea without feeling pressured by the look in their eyes which said "you’re an idiot". After the men were gone, Chen Fan got the eel to grab the nylon rope and rushed to the shipwreck location.
Since there was too much silver in the shipwreck, and the bulk of it was mostly in decayed bags, Chen Fan decided to bring the whole barque back. After letting the eel be the "treasure keeper" temporarily, Chen Fan went to the intermediary companies to see if he could buy a warehouse near the seaside so that he could hide the shipwreck there when the eel brings it back.
There were two types of seaside warehouses. One was built on land and used for keeping goods. The other type was built by the sea using steel, with the exit extending into the sea. It was used for docking ships, and was similar to a garage.
Chen Fan wanted to buy the second type. After going to a few bigger scale intermediary companies in the city, Chen Fan quickly zeroed in on the information of one of those.
"Due to poor management, I have decided to let out a 1,500 square meters enclosed dock by the sea.
Contact number: XXXXXXXXXXX (sincere buyers only)"
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"Young man, 1.5 million RMB is really the lowest that I can go!" Wearing a thick gold chain on his neck, a forty-plus year old man with a big belly and a crew cut hairstyle said as he tapped on the seventy by twenty meter metal dock behind him. "Look at the material, they’re all pieced together with original 0.8 centimeter steel plates. This steel material alone cost me more than 1 million RMB, and there is also cost of the land and cement."
"Come on, we’re both locals, there’s no need to cheat me." Chen Fan tapped on the silver-painted iron sheet. "Let’s calculate based on 1 RMB for a pound, your dock couldn’t possibly use 1 million pounds of steel materials."
"Well..." The man touched his chin and said, "There’s also the transportation fee from the steelyard, labor cost, painting cost..."
"1.3 million RMB. Are you selling or not?" Chen Fan couldn’t be bothered to talk more. If the dock had been located in the city, 3 million RMB would have been reasonable, but it was near the sea...
"Young man, this price really won’t do..." The man pulled a glum face. "At least...at least 1.4 million RMB..."
"Alright, bye." Chen Fan walked off.
"Hey, hey young man, don’t go..." The man quickly ran forward to grab Chen Fan’s arms and said in a fawning tone, "Let’s discuss, let’s discuss further!" In the end, Chen Fan got the dock at 1.3 million with his relentlessness.
After getting the man to sign the transfer document and the intermediary to stamp on it, Chen Fan asked for things such as the land certificate and ownership certificate, but he couldn’t be bothered to do the transfer of ownership. Chen Fan was now powerful and bold. If the man dared to do come up with any tricks, Chen Fan would not let him off! All the documents were in his hands anyway so there was no way the man could get away with it.
The silver steel dock had been used by the man previously to dock cargo ships. Other than having sufficient space inside to unload goods, the part adjoining the sea had a thirty-meter long and ten meter deep gully dug out by a water excavator. After changing the locks of both the front and back doors, Chen Fan took a cab back to Bolin Gardens and shifted his thoughts onto the electric eel again.
It was strange. According to Chen Fan’s assessment of the shipwreck, there was no reason it would sink. Other than being corroded by seawater all over, there was no other damage. The puzzling thing, was that it sank, and it was during the Qing Dynasty. Nonetheless, these superficial questions did not stop Chen Fan from plundering the treasure.
Even if a few gods of the sea, like Poseidon from Greek mythology suddenly appeared now holding a trident sitting in a golden horse carriage, Chen Fan would not hesitate to electrocute them with high discharge before swallowing them alive.
After swimming a few times around the shipwreck, Chen Fan controlled the eel to use its claws to spread the rope on the seabed before flipping the shipwreck to the left so that it laid on the rope. After going around the shipwreck and twisting it tightly with the rope, the electric eel grabbed the fifty-meter-long shipwreck like an eagle holding onto a lamb and swam toward Zhongyun City with all its might.