Apart from the teammates who had co down with her, there were likely no other living people in this wretched place.
Yet the woman didn't spare so much as a glance at the two bodies, and simply kept pressing Li Qiuchen to move forward.
Her cold indifference only deepened his suspicions.
Crossing the iron chain bridge, on the other side was a narrow fissure in the rock. After roughly the ti it takes to burn one stick of incense, the paths around them suddenly beca considerably more complex.
Large caverns contained smaller ones, and passages ran in every direction without any discernible pattern, like moving through the bubbles inside a piece of cheese.
Signs of fierce fighting were already visible here.
The woman was frantic with anxiety, and in this space she could no longer tell which direction was which, with no idea where the others had gone. In the baking heat, her mind was nearly cooked through, and clear thinking was beyond her.
"Young friend, can you use your spiritual arts to..."
"Miss, spiritual arts aren't a cure for everything!"
Ordinary people tended to hold a naive and sowhat magical belief about powers and arts they didn't understand.
The sa way people believed in miracle redies that cured all ailnts.
As though a divine being's arts could fulfill any wish and solve any problem.
Reality was nothing so convenient.
Specific problems required specific analysis.
Li Qiuchen carefully examined the traces of combat around the area, studied the footprints remaining on the ground, and cautiously chose a direction.
After only a short distance, he ca across the body of one of the creatures the woman had called monsters.
Roughly three chi in height, vaguely humanoid in form, with long arms and short legs, profoundly ugly features, and almost no visible eyes.
These were not monsters. They were Ruru.
The blood ancestors of the Rakshasa ghost people, forcibly transford by the Palace of Longevity into a form suited for living underground and extracting ore.
He would never have expected that after thousands upon thousands of years, deep beneath the great mine pit in Yun County, Ruru people would still exist.
A genuine miracle of life, in its way.
Calling them monsters was fair enough under the circumstances, of course. After this many generations, who could say what they had devolved into.
Following the Ruru bodies further along, he finally heard the faint sound of human voices ahead.
Li Qiuchen pressed forward with the lantern, and suddenly felt a wave of cool air coming from sowhere in front of him.
A pale blue light filled the cavern, and over a dozen miners were huddled in a corner, barely maintaining their last remnants of life under the cover of that cold glow.
"Young Master!"
The woman who had been following behind Li Qiuchen cried out in surprised relief.
Young Master?
Li Qiuchen's eyebrow twitched slightly. You never ntioned any young master when you were begging
to co down here.
A young man in white clothes rose from among the group, equally surprised. "Huizhen? You're alive?"
"Alive, I'm alive! We found a way through, and I begged this young friend to bring
down to find you..."
The woman quickly passed over a water flask and at the sa ti hurried to introduce Li Qiuchen to the group.
The young man in white took the flask and drank two long gulps, then wiped his mouth and looked at Li Qiuchen. "May I ask this young friend's honorable na?"
"The surna Li."
Li Qiuchen observed without any change in expression the flask that he was holding without any intention of sharing, and the small blue orb floating at his side, and gave a mild nod. "This is not the place for conversation. If those who can still move are able to walk, I suggest we make our way back to the surface first."
The young man in white was delighted. "My deepest thanks, Brother Li. Everyone get up! Hurry, if we don't move now those creatures will co back for us!"
The assembled miners stirred at that, struggling to their feet one by one.
It was only at this point that Li Qiuchen noticed the carrying fras on their backs were heavily laden, suggesting the trip had yielded a considerable haul.
Well, of course. Nobody would endure conditions like these without sothing to show for it.
To have extracted that much material, they must have gone a considerable distance beforehand.
Looking at the exhaustion and vacant expressions on the miners' faces, even with the brief respite the magical item had provided, none of them had the strength left to haul those loaded fras.
The young man in white seed entirely unconcerned with this, however, and simply ordered the crew chief to push everyone to get moving.
The return journey was considerably harder.
Li Qiuchen moved easily because he had cultivation behind him, and the woman called Huizhen following close behind him didn't suffer overly much either.
The miners now, carrying a hundred-odd jin of ore apiece and trying to walk out of there, were genuinely putting their lives on the line.
They hadn't gone far before one of them gave out, stumbling and falling.
The ore scattered across the floor from the carrying fra.
Li Qiuchen looked down at it. Well now. That was good material.
The ore had a faint tallic sheen, shot through with veins of crimson fla-like patterning.
He had seen this mineral at Boss Tang's shop before, though in the form of refined ingots.
It was called the Separation Fire tal, also known as diamond sand. It had an exceptional affinity for the power of incense and divine wishes, and was one of the finest tals for casting and shaping divine statues.
In the museum in Tunnel 4, there was a golden statue of a guardian deity from the ancient Yan Kingdom era, cast from this sa material.
Extrely precious.
In the mont Li Qiuchen looked at the diamond sand, the young man in white fixed his eyes sharply on him in return, his expression carrying both anxiety and suspicion, as though he was genuinely afraid Li Qiuchen might attempt to seize it.
That was attributing malicious motives to an honest person.
He had co down here out of genuine goodwill to help, and here he was being regarded with suspicion. Truly...
It wasn't easy being a good person.
Li Qiuchen shook his head, stopped concerning himself with whether these people could keep up, and pressed on.
They were almost at the iron chain bridge when a bone-chilling sound erupted from behind them.
"Monsters! Those monsters are coming after us!"
The miners, already spent to their limits, imdiately fell into panic.
The young man in white frowned sharply and turned to Li Qiuchen. "Brother Li, I can see you are no ordinary person. If you have any ans at your disposal, please employ them now. If we cannot drive back these creatures, I fear none of us will leave this place alive."
That was not necessarily true.
Seeing no response from Li Qiuchen, the young man gritted his teeth. "If Brother Li saves us from this place, the Golden Valley Trading Company will see that you are generously rewarded!"
Of all the tis to say that, at least tell
what generous actually ans.
Li Qiuchen shrugged. "I'll do what I can. Lend
that shovel."
The young man in white stared, sowhat at a loss, as Li Qiuchen took an iron shovel from one of the nearby miners.
"Brother Li, do you not have a proper weapon on you?"
Li Qiuchen said without much patience, "What kind of question is that? I had no idea anything like this would happen. Who wanders around carrying a weapon for no reason?"
This was a county seat, not the wilderness.
He was a genuine student of a prestigious county school's inner hall, a real scholar. Was he supposed to go swaggering down the street with a blade every day?
By this point the creatures had co pouring out of the tunnels, and sure enough they were the sa degenerated Ruru people as before, moving on all fours, faces contorted, resembling completely feral beasts.
Incidentally. Did you happen to dig up their ancestral hall or sothing? Where else would all that diamond sand have co from?
These Ruru were not the combat-enhanced Rakshasa form they had been later modified into. Individual combat effectiveness was roughly equivalent to one and a half wolves, and their body structure was not particularly suited for fighting.
Li Qiuchen gripped the iron shovel with both hands, charged forward, and sent one flying with a single blow.
The miners behind him scrambled in a disorderly rush onto the iron chain bridge, and with so many bodies crowding it at once, the bridge began to sway violently. Soone instinctively grabbed at one of the side chains, and the searing heat instantly blistered their palm. They lost their balance and tumbled off the bridge.
"AAAAAH!"
A long, agonized scream echoed down through the chasm.
"Slow down!"
The young man in white was incensed.
People dying was one thing. But if the ore went down with them, his losses would be enormous.
Even unrefined diamond sand in its raw form was worth its weight in gold on the surface.
But moving slower ant the pursuing creatures wouldn't slow their pace to accommodate.
Watching Li Qiuchen alone flailing away with an iron shovel and making little headway against the creatures, the young man in white cursed inwardly, turned, produced an enormously wide-barreled fire-lance, aid it at the mouth of the passage the creatures were flooding out of, and pulled the trigger.
A thunderous boom, and over a dozen creatures were blasted apart by the iron pellets that spewed from the barrel.
You had that thing this whole ti and didn't use it?
Li Qiuchen was quietly furious, but then reconsidered. In those narrow caverns, firing a weapon like that might well have ant killing the creatures and killing everyone else in equal asure.
Hang on, where did you produce that weapon from exactly? Natural talent?
Oh, a storage bracelet. Of course.
Interesting what he'd chosen to keep in that storage bracelet, though, making the miners carry all the diamond sand rather than putting it in there.
Genuinely curious.
Seeing the creatures apparently endless in number and himself of limited usefulness, the young man in white glanced back, confird that most of the miners had crossed the bridge, gritted his teeth, activated his blue orb, and pointed it at the passage entrance.
The blue orb exploded instantly, releasing vast quantities of frost and sealing the entrance completely shut.
"Move!"
"Right!"
Li Qiuchen made no attempt to linger, knocked back the remaining Ruru with a sweep of his shovel, and fell in close behind the young man in white.
Past the iron chain bridge and a short distance further was the lift.
With the prospect of escape finally in sight, relief broke across every face involuntarily.
But after everyone crowded their way into the lift, an alert tone began sounding.
Beep beep beep.
"What's happening?"
The young man in white was completely baffled.
Li Qiuchen helpfully explained, "Overweight."
"What in blazes, it was working fine when we ca down. How can this few people possibly overweight it?"
The young man cursed and fud, then looked up and noticed Li Qiuchen standing in the doorway of the lift. A thought occurred to him, and he said, "Brother Li, would you perhaps be willing to remain behind..."
"Of course. Go on ahead."
Li Qiuchen stepped back out of the lift.
But the beeping didn't stop.
"You! All of you, get out! Leave the ore!"
The young man kicked and shouted and drove out four or five more people, and still it persisted.
The overweight was clearly the ore, but he refused to part with it.
Eventually nearly everyone had been ejected, leaving only himself, Huizhen, and a handful including the crew chief.
The lift finally stopped beeping.
"Brother Li, please bear with us a mont."
The young man in white sounded genuinely earnest about it.
"No trouble at all. The creatures shouldn't catch up that quickly. We'll just wait a little longer."
Li Qiuchen smiled and waved him off, carrying himself with gracious magnanimity, watching as the lift doors closed and began their slow ascent.
The mont the lift doors shut, the young man in white's expression turned dark.
"This excursion has cost us dearly."
"Young Master..."
"Huizhen, what do you know about the boy you brought?"
"He appears to be a student from the academy, undergoing so kind of trial here."
"Student, my foot. Couldn't even produce a proper spell. Wasted my father's treasure for nothing."
The young man in white said coldly, "He saw our diamond sand. If he talks and lets word get out..."
"Young Master, you're not..."
"Once we're back on the surface, blow this lift shaft!"
[NEXT CHAPTER]
Reviews
All reviews (0)