The white jade panel at the center of the hall recorded the main historical text of Yun County, while the four exhibition rooms around it displayed different objects, each illuminating and corroborating that history from various angles.
Exhibition Room 1 was filled with rows upon rows of obsidian tablets. Like the white jade panel in the main hall, they were covered in densely carved text, serving as supplentary annotations to the official history.
The records here were considerably more detailed and thorough.
Li Qiuchen even found, among the historical records concerning the ancient Yan Kingdom, a passage describing white mountain fangshi presenting the Hundred-Fruit Immortal Brew as tribute. The drink had beco a luxury item that swept through the upper echelons of the ancient Yan Kingdom, with everyone sinking into its appeal and being unable to pull themselves out.
The emperor had issued prohibition orders multiple tis, all of which eventually ca to nothing.
Hu Caiyi tugged at Li Qiuchen's sleeve and dragged him over to another stone tablet, pointing at the text on it for him to read.
This one recorded the history of the first great cold tide period, and there was indeed ntion of a fox spirit nad Hehua who had led disaster victims through the blizzard and guided them to the great mine pit.
The local people had addressed her respectfully as Elder Sister Hu or the Hehua Goddess, and built a temple in her honor. After the cold tide receded, her divine title even received official recognition from the Great Chu Empire.
Exhibition Room 2 displayed the various rare minerals produced by the great mine pit, as well as an assortnt of relics left behind from the ancient Yan Kingdom.
It was here that Li Qiuchen finally saw what Chen Baishan had described as a spirit stone vein.
The thing looked like clusters of colorful crystals growing out of what appeared to be a fossil of so ancient organism.
The lowest-grade spirit stones, also called slag, were what you got when you smashed that fossil to pieces. The crystals growing on the surface, and the inner core within, were the higher-grade stones.
According to the explanatory text beside them, the proper nas were spirit crystals and spirit marrow respectively.
There were also a number of other minerals on display that Li Qiuchen had seen at Boss Tang's establishnt. The veins in Yun County had long since been exhausted, and they could now only be extracted from the far more distant Border Wilds and transported back.
Exhibition Room 3 had bas-relief paintings along the walls depicting notable historical figures from various periods, the Hehua Goddess among them. It also displayed a considerable number of magical treasures and weapons used by ancient cultivators.
Naturally these items, like the exhibits in Room 2, were sealed behind locked cases that couldn't be easily opened. Should anyone develop improper ideas about them, the tal figure guards crouching in the corners might well find themselves awakened.
Several of the magical treasures had extraordinarily flamboyant designs, and the accompanying descriptions indicated they had all been widely renowned in their day.
They were certainly not the highest-grade treasures available, however. Yun County compared to the ancient Yan Kingdom's true capital or the gate of the Palace of Longevity was nothing more than an obscure coal pit.
Exhibition Room 4's displays depicted Yun County during that prosperous era.
There was a sand table model of the entire city, a scaled miniature of the mining district, docuntation of the shelter's construction process, and detailed descriptions of the tal figure guards and the land barges.
This room even contained the activation keys and operating manuals for the land barges, likewise engraved in stone.
After completing the circuit, it felt as though several hours had passed.
The barbecue from the previous al had long since been fully digested.
Li Qiuchen ca away deeply satisfied.
He had also co to understand the true purpose behind this museum's placent here.
In the eight thousand years of Great Chu's history since its founding, there had been three recorded great cold tides, each lasting several hundred years.
People sheltering in the refuge would be cut off from the outside world entirely. Without a museum to record history, civilization could easily deteriorate. By the ti the earth thawed and the doors were opened, the inhabitants of the shelter might well have regressed to a state of primitiveness.
Wasn't the Yun County of today already in a state of decline?
The jarring visual contrast between the Inner City and the Mining District was a textbook symptom of civilizational decay.
This wouldn't do. While he was still young, he needed to go and see a proper city.
If the opportunity ever presented itself, he would make a point of traveling through the Central Continent and seeing how far Great Chu had developed.
Li Qiuchen quietly set himself a long-term life goal.
Coming out of the museum, they returned to Tunnel 1.
This one led to the shelter that had been built specifically for the great cold tides.
Walking into the tunnel and looking down its length, Li Qiuchen nearly had a bout of claustrophobia.
Did he know what a corn cob looked like?
The tunnel before them was like an enormously long hollow corn cob, with individual compartnts packed along both sides like kernels of corn.
Not exactly eerie, but the sheer density of it produced a sense of suffocation.
The temperature inside certainly contributed to that feeling as well.
It felt exactly like walking into a steam room, the heat thick enough to take your breath away.
It was livable, technically speaking. Thousands upon thousands of single compartnts, the vast majority completely empty. Only a handful near the entrance to the tunnel had beds and bedding laid out.
These were presumably the exploration crews' own preparations.
A considerable supply of grain, oil, rice, and flour had been piled up near the entrance for ergency use.
Beyond that, there were mountains of tinned iron cans.
Li Qiuchen took one down, opened it, and had a sniff.
Mushroom preserves. The sa kind of grilled mushrooms he had eaten at the barbecue restaurant earlier, with a texture and size resembling king oyster mushrooms.
A specialty of the Mining District.
The first taste had been quite good, but eating this every day...
Of course, when circumstances genuinely forced you to eat this, you wouldn't have any room to be choosy.
"Young miss, let's make do and rest here for a bit."
Hu Caiyi looked at the worn-out bedding and instinctively bit her lower lip. "You brought my own bedding, didn't you?"
"I brought it."
"Good... no, not good!"
Hu Caiyi watched Li Qiuchen produce sheets from his storage bracelet and suddenly rembered sothing, panic flashing across her face. "It's... it's just the two of us sleeping here, isn't it?"
Could she please stop phrasing things in such ambiguous ways?
"I'm obviously not sleeping with you, young miss."
Li Qiuchen answered patiently. "Sa as always. I'll keep watch at the doorway. Sleep without worry."
"No, that's not what I ant... it's just that this ti it's only you and ..."
Hu Caiyi stumbled over her words.
"This is a case of an unmarried man and woman alone together in a room! If word gets out, my reputation will be finished!"
Li Qiuchen thought to himself that for soone so young, she had a remarkably busy mind.
"Young miss, you're overthinking it. What reputation did you ever have to begin with?"
"What?"
Hu Caiyi blinked, and when she processed it she imdiately took offense.
"A person's reputation is not sothing to joke about! Take back what you just said!"
Li Qiuchen looked down at the sheet in his hands. "Very well. Then shall I take this back too?"
"What?"
"What kind of respectable young lady has an unmarried man lay out her bedding?"
Hu Caiyi had no response to that.
"This... this one doesn't count, you're the steward, it's your duty to..."
"Yes or no, are you sleeping?"
"Yes."
The young miss was finally cooperative.
Though only for a little while.
Hu Caiyi lay on the bed turning from side to side, then kicked the blanket off with one foot.
"It's no good. It's too hot in here. I can't sleep."
"Take your socks off."
Hu Caiyi pulled off her socks, revealing her bare white feet, then lay face-down on the bed and still couldn't sleep.
"It's so hot..."
"If only soone could tell
a story, then maybe I could fall asleep."
Li Qiuchen glanced at her. "A ghost story?"
"Absolutely not!"
Hu Caiyi scrambled upright, her tail bristling. "If you dare tell a ghost story I'll bite you!"
"A fox spirit story, then?"
"Anything with foxes is off the table too! I'm completely tired of those!"
"Demon-slaying tales?"
"No! Not listening!"
"Ancient mysteries and strange cases?"
"No! Not listening!"
"A romance between the living and the dead?"
"No... actually, that one's fine."
Sure enough, regardless of the era, girls always wanted to hear love stories.
Li Qiuchen picked out a relatively short one from the archive stored in his mind and began from the beginning.
After a while, he turned to look, and found Hu Caiyi already curled up in a ball, sound asleep.
Making a living isn't easy.
Li Qiuchen thought to himself that he was only being this accommodating because she was a girl. If she were a boy and dared claim he couldn't sleep, he'd have had him running laps until dawn.
In an underground space, it was difficult to gauge the passage of ti.
Li Qiuchen erged from his ditation and found a fluffy tail flickering back and forth in front of his nose.
Then it was instantly pulled back.
Hu Caiyi had woken up. She was damp with sweat, her little face flushed and rather endearing.
"What were you just doing?"
"Nothing much. Just curious."
Hu Caiyi's eyes darted about and she changed the subject.
"I wonder when I'll finally pass the illusory realm trials and start cultivating. After that I won't have to worry about temperature changes anymore."
"The basic physical exercises the inner hall provides are quite effective for that. You've just been too lazy to apply yourself."
"Practicing too much of that will build muscle, won't it? I absolutely do not want to end up musclebound."
Caring about one's appearance was simply part of being a woman.
"Is there anything to eat? I don't want the provisions they have here."
"I brought pastries."
"Just pastries?"
"And fruit."
"What else besides pastries and fruit?"
"Boiled eggs."
"Now that's more like it."
Hu Caiyi nodded with satisfaction and looked Li Qiuchen up and down. "I've noticed you have quite a lot of admirable qualities."
"All part of the job."
"Have you ever considered coming to work for the Hu household as a steward?"
"No, I haven't."
Hu Caiyi's expression soured again.
"Can you not be so blunt about it?"
"Boss Tang recognized my potential when no one else did. I owe him that."
"Now that's a much nicer way to put it."
After breakfast, the two of them went back to wandering.
Strictly speaking, beyond the museum there wasn't much of particular scenic interest.
But the industrial structures themselves, so visually at odds with their surroundings, were impressive simply by existing.
Tunnels 1 through 4 had all been converted from old mine shafts into shelters, though only Tunnel 1 was currently open.
From Tunnel 5 onward, all the way through to Tunnel 15, the shafts had been backfilled, with their entrances permanently sealed.
Notice boards had been placed at each entrance explaining what backfilling was, and clarifying that the interiors contained only earth and rock with nothing of value, and were not to be opened under any circumstances.
Looking at those notice boards, Li Qiuchen could tell sothing particularly foolish had definitely happened in the past.
How did that saying go?
Behind every absurd rule, there is invariably an absurd incident that made it necessary.
[NEXT CHAPTER]
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