"Did you hear, the volcano erupted over at Daisetsuzan."
"I heard about it, it was said that the scene was so frightening that all the surrounding towns activated emergency shelter notices, and now even the railroad to the Great Snow Mountain is closed."
"Heh heh heh..."
"What are you laughing at?"
"Nothing."
"Wait a minute... Carrying all that luggage, you're not going to work? Where are you going?"
"To the Great Snow Mountain!"
The worker with the backpack turned around and said, "And the volcanic eruption, and the diamonds, I heard they're all being grabbed like crazy over there!"
"Fake it..."
"Hey, hey, so do you know why McMan quit his job straight away, because he picked up a 5-gram colorful diamond over there, and it ended up fetching 300,000 dollars at the auction house, and after deducting the tax there was still 260,000 dollars in his hand, and I heard he grinned like a fool all day long that day, and now he's already gone back to his hometown to marry his wife and build a house, and hear he's even bought a farm. "
The man instantly struggled with his face for a moment, then said with a bit of a grimace, "Wait, take me with you, surely you've found a way to sneak in, I'll take half the traveling expenses!"
...
"Day One, Containing the Disaster, Recovering the Diamonds..."
"The next day, contain the disaster and recover the diamonds..."
"Day three, recycling diamonds..."
"Day four, recycling diamonds..."
"Day 5, recycling diamonds..."
The Bishop of the district slowly looked up from his report and looked at the group of Divine Punishers in front of him.
"You're told to go support the disaster area, and half of the month you end up picking up diamonds half the time?"
The captain explained, "That volcano stabilized that day, and then an economist reported the real disaster to us."
"Along with the molten rocky volcanic ash spewed out, there were countless diamonds."
"Half the mountain range is covered in those transparent crystals, and even village towns a dozen kilometers away can pick up the shiny stuff."
"And then word somehow got out to the outside world."
"The Tianxue Mountain Range, which we roughly cleared, still had tens of thousands of treasure hunters lingering in it by the time we left."
"Even with the closure of the railroad over there, there are still untold numbers of treasure hunters trekking in from out of town every day."
The Bishop of the ward was silent for a moment, "That kind of stuff, a lot of it?"
"Very much so..."
The Divine Punishers carried in a large box and then opened the lid, letting the dazzling light reflect all over the hall.
"The weight of this box is a whole 5 tons, and there are 3 more boxes like this one, if this batch of diamonds goes into the market, the diamond processing industry will go straight out of business, and this one is the real disaster of this eruption."
"Even so, the price of primary color diamonds has fallen from the original 20,000 a gram to 1,000 a gram, and colorless diamonds under 3 grams are now worthless."
"It went from being a high-end luxury item to a premium ground-up item that everyone can afford overnight."
...
A month later, the treasure-hunting craze had finally subsided a bit.
And then the news that had been so strenuously suppressed, that's how it spread.
I wonder how many hesitant people clammed up and then hated themselves for missing the opportunity to get rich.
The Tensnow Mountains turned into a very popular tourist attraction for active volcanoes, and even many years in the past, people could pick up diamonds from time to time when they visited the area.
...