Chapter 18 – Struggle for the Mines
Before Lei Xinfeng even arrived, they already began fighting.
“Since they’re fighting already, let’s all go,” Xin Zhaolun said. “Don’t let a single one escape, or there’ll be trouble.”
“Alright, let’s go!” Lei Xinfeng said.
He was about to go when Xin Zhaolun stopped him. “Ah Feng, you can just watch.”
Song Qiao agreed. “Just watch on the side and tell your subordinates to go.”
He was instantly looked down on by everyone present. Lei Xinfeng grimaced. “Alright, Uncle Ying and Uncle Hu can go. Uncle Jin, stay here with me.”
Even Hongjie attacked. It didn’t matter who got the mine, but since they already began fighting, they couldn’t leave a single mouth alive to talk. A crowd of people rushed in, leaving only two behind. It was already an eight versus six battle, but the scariest thing was that there was a Monarch present. The sixes Sages’ only hope of survival, escaping, disappeared.
When the battle first started, Yi Zhong and his friends were on the losing side, but the tide turned instantly when their reinforcements arrived. Together, they suppressed the six already present and began beating them viciously.
However, at that time, Song Qiao joined. He didn’t attack directly, but instead cast some strange effect. The opponents’ bodies suddenly became stiff and slow and was instantly destroyed by the seven enemy Ninth Ring Sages.
People kept dying. The survivors’ eyes were red with desperation. It was difficult to escape. Another Eighth Ring Sage died, leaving behind two Ninth Rings and one Eighth ring. It didn’t take long to kill three of them.
Song Qiao never stopped his tricks, stopping his targets’ movements one by one, moving on when they died.
The last three knew that they were in deep trouble and began to run away. However, it was already too late. Two of them were cut down instantly, leaving just one Ninth Ring Sage, face full of hopelessness.
With their power, even if they met some strong enemies, they shouldn’t have lost so badly, and at least could have escaped. Who knew that five of them would’ve been killed so easily? He opened his mouth. “I’m from the Hailong (Sea Dragon) family! I am…”
This time, Song Qiao attacked directly. “Die!”
There was a loud sound of an explosion. That person looked at the hole in his chest, and looked back up as if disbelieving. A single word came out of his mouth. “…Monarch!” He finally realized why his team was wiped out so quickly.
Inside a group of people that was mostly on par with his group was a Monarch. Originally, they thought they could have a quick fight, and then escape, but who knew that they would all die so easily?
None of them escaped. The last Sage understood too late, and the message would never be sent.
“What did that bastard say?” shouted Song Qiao.
Xin Zhaolun wasn’t stupid. “What? I didn’t hear anything.”
“Me neither,” Yi Zhong said.
“I was at the back, so I heard nothing,” Lei Xinfeng said, even as he thought to himself, “Who could the Hailong family be, to make a Monarch so nervous?”
Song Qiao’s mood improved slightly and nodded. “Good. We must hurry and harvest as much copper crystal ores as possible.”
Lei Xinfeng didn’t understand. “Ore? Where?” All he saw was a broken ice littered all over the floor, without a solid place to mine.
Song Qiao laughed. “It’s in the ice layers. I’ll wager that you’d never have imagined that there’d be ores in the ice?”
Lei Xinfeng nodded. “That’s weird. Why would there be ores in the ice?”
“Copper crystal ore, or Fengmo copper, is extremely light. It floats in water. Perhaps thousands of years ago, this was all water so it wouldn’t be strange at all for copper crystal ores to be here in the ice layers.”
There was an ice cliff here, comprised completely of ice. Layers in the cliff surface could clearly be seen, and the copper crystal ore would be found in one of them. The ore was about ten meters from ground level. It was a good thing that Lei Xinfeng could fly now. Although he still wasn’t very good, he could still float ten meters above ground near the cliff face.
The ice wasn’t clear. It was a murky grey-black color as if muddy water was frozen instantly. On this cliff, the color of every layer was different. It seemed that there were about a dozen or so bands, extending out on both sides, like a muddy rainbow plastered on the cliff.
“I see,” Lei Xinfeng said.
“Let’s dig quickly! We only have a few days before we have to leave!” Song Qiao said.
Xin Zhaolun said, “Yes, five days is fine. Let’s keep resting at a minimum and mine as much as we can!”
Lei Xinfeng realized that this Hailong family is definitely a group to keep on the good side of. Since they killed six of their practitioners, there will definitely be bad blood. The only way to avoid that is to leave as soon as possible after they get what they came for before the Hailong family could know it was them.
“Alright, let’s start too,” Yi Zhong said.
The group of people immediately flew up to the cliff and began to dig.
Lei Xinfeng couldn’t wait either. He began to look at the cliff closely, and immediately found differences within. He found a few dim blue lights illuminating the inside of the cliff. He immediately flew to the cliff. It was roughly ten meters above ground. The layer itself was between two to five meters wide. It was quite thick compared to the others.
Lei Xinfeng took out his Chaos Wheel, not to test the power, but to use it destroy the ice.
It was as if a maelstrom of destruction embodied appeared in his hands. As soon as it touched the ice, the ice that was as hard as steel was crushed utterly.
He laughed inside. It worked! The Chaos Wheel was more effective than any other mining tool, and he could adjust the power at will. With that, he began to destroy the ice later, raining countless fragments of ice down on the floor. Soon, he had a large tunnel.
He saw a few chunks of black rocks land on the floor of the ice layer. He immediately put out a net to gather the rocks. In just a few moments, he had a whole pouch of copper crystal ore, all of them the size of a fist.
There were at least several hundred ores gathered here. Lei Xinfeng used his Chaos Wheel to harvest the majority of it. He was only interested in these large veins. Jin Daya could mine the rest.
Lei Xinfeng flew out again. This time, he spotted two blue glows. He beckoned Fengying and Shihu to him and gave them instruction. “Uncle Ying, you mine there. Uncle Hu, you there. After you finish, come find me.”
What Lei Xinfeng really wanted to do was to find the ores. He already understood that his eyes were different than others’. Only he could see the glows that the ores emitted. As long as he was in an ore-rich environment, then he could identify the spots where the ores were most numerous. No one else could do the same.
The band of ice layer was almost two thousand meters long. He walked along the layer. As soon as he found a glow, he marked the spot and had Jin Daya, Fengying, and Shihu mine. They were all his subordinates, so all the ores they mined are his.
Along the wall they went, and the ores they mined increased steadily.
Jin Daya was surprised. As long as it was a spot that Lei Xinfeng pointed it, it would be filled with ores all gathered together. Their efficiency was unrivaled.
In the meantime, Song Qiao was floored. Even though he was a Monarch, he still could not compete with Lei Xinfeng and his subordinates. He couldn’t find the large veins, so he just destroyed everything. There was bound to be some ores here and there, but it wasn’t much, and the efficiency was terrible.
After a day, Xin Zhaolun and Hongjie joined Lei Xinfeng’s mining operation. By then, Lei Xinfeng didn’t even need to dig. The combined efforts of the five miners rivaled the speed at which he could identify veins.
As for Yi Zhong and friends, they were on the opposite side of the cliff. They had no idea of the speed that Lei Xinfeng was mining. Only Song Qiao knew, and soon, he and Lei Xinfeng revised their agreement so that he would mine at the places Lei Xinfeng pointed, and he would keep those ores, but nothing else.
Song Qiao regrets nothing. After mining out several veins in a row, he was all smiles. With his power and speed, he could quickly mine out the areas that Lei Xinfeng pointed out. The efficiency was way higher than he’d ever imagined possible.
The five days passed in a heartbeat. None of them slept, and the only thing they ate was dry rations. They wasted not a second. Later in the mining operation, Lei Xinfeng got faster in finding veins and opted to just mark the spots and move on while the other five mined fiercely.
In just five days, they pretty much emptied out the entire deposit.
Lei Xinfeng calculated that all together, they gathered almost fifty thousand ore chunks, or ten thousand a day, with the combined efforts of his team of four.
Everyone else also had good results, especially Song Qiao, who mined eleven thousand ores in those five days.
On the other hand, Yi Zhong’s group mined less than five hundred chunks of ore over those three days, after all, how could they possibly have good results if they mined blindly?
Song Qiao saw that they had no time left and quickly retreated with everyone else. They didn’t go to the Ice Cave and instead traveled to Hanya Castle directly.
Lei Xinfeng returned to his room and fell asleep as soon as he found a suitable spot, as did the others. None of them had slept for the past five days while working as hard as they could. Even if they were practitioners, they could still feel exhaustion.
It was not until two days later that they woke up and ate a large meal.
“Is everyone done resting?” Song Qiao asked.
“Yes, we’re done,” replied Xin Zhaolun.
Song Qiao eyed Lei Xinfeng. He loved this kid the most, especially his impressive ability to find ore veins. He nodded. “Alright, since everyone is rested, we shall go to the Ice Cave! There are more ores for us to mine!”
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(Just trying to stay true to the raw)
Holy shit they’re jerks. Kill them or chase them. Nope, straight to killing. Gleefully. Still, that was a beautiful curb stomp.
Obligatory mining gif.
I have two projects and a test coming up in the next week, so I’ll have to take a break. Depending on how much I procrastinate, you’ll still see chapters. (Please don’t pray for me to procrastinate no matter how much you want your chapters, I really need my grades!)
(Totally did not just finish this chapter in the middle of class, nope.)
I enjoyed this chapter. Minimal dialogue, so I don’t have to spend a bunch of time interpreting their words and finding speech tags that don’t sound repetitive. Just pure action. Yum.