Translator: AstralGhost Editor: Kurisu
“Who is it!?”
Li Tieniu’s face suddenly changed as he turned around rapidly, his hands grasping the shovel tightly.
Over ten people suddenly stepped out from the shadows, and a mocking laugh rang out. “Keke, I already told you, Li Tieniu, that you’re a careless person. As expected, you’ve still gone and made such a blunder. Did you really think that you’ve concealed yourself flawlessly during the day?”
“Gasp!”
Li Tieniu’s heart sank as he turned around. The people behind and before him were people who were among the top experts in the mine. If it was just one or two people, he would not be fearful of them. However, he was not a match for so many people at all. Not to mention, two of them were experts in the top 2,000!
“How did you all find out?”
Li Tieniu’s face was twisted with anger. He felt that he’d covered his tracks very well in the day and didn’t display any flaws at all.
“Take a look at him; do you think he looks familiar?”
Shi Yun smiled lightly. With a clap of his hand, a person emerged from behind the group.
“You were beside me during the day, but I didn’t display any actions that were out of the ordinary. How did you know?” Li Tieniu asked with interest.
In that moment, he was suddenly not nervous anymore. Instead, he was more curious as to how he was caught. In any case, these people came for the Star Cloud Metal and Metal Essence. Since there weren’t any such ores here, there naturally would not be any conflict nor anything to fight over.
“From childhood, I’ve never forgotten anything that I’ve laid eyes upon. After digging here for five years and hearing the sound of the shovels meeting the soil, I’ve long learnt to differentiate between the sound the shovel made while hitting the Star Illumination Stones,” Wei San said with some pride.
Li Tieniu’s face stiffened. Getting caught this way was indeed not an injustice. He was throughly convinced of the result. Even so, Li Tieniu had an ugly expression on his face. It was indeed his bad luck to be standing beside a person with such incredible memory.
Shi Yun stood out and said with a half smile, “Li Tieniu, as long as you leave now, I’ll take it that none of this ever happened.”
“Haha, did you guys really think that you’ve won? You can’t really believe that I’ve dug up the Star Cloud Metal, right?”
Li Tieniu suddenly started laughing so hard that tears were almost coming out of his eyes. At the same time, he moved aside, revealing the ores behind him.
Seeing Li Tieniu behaving like this, Shi Yun and the rest suddenly had a bad feeling. But when they rushed forward and saw the silvery white ores, their expressions turned exceedingly ugly as well.
“Didn’t you say that it’s definitely the Metal Essence or the Star Cloud Metal?” Shi Yun turned around and looked at Wei San with hostility.
“My Lord… I really didn’t know! To my knowledge, only the Star Cloud Metal and the Metal Essence can remain unharmed under the sharpness of the shovel!” Wei San backed up with panic.
‘What the heck, this daddy here doesn’t have x-ray vison!’ If not for him being weaker than Li Tieniu, why would he come to these people and give them the news?
“Trash!”
“Pa!” Shi Yun directly slapped Wei San across the face, causing a loud, crisp sound to ring out through the tunnel.
Shi Yun thought for a moment, and suggested, “In any case, ores that can block a shovel made of frigid steel means that its sturdiness is still very high. Perhaps its a precious ore. How about this, let’s all dig it out together and hand it over to the quarry manager.”
Everyone thought for a moment, and nodded. They were already here, and they couldn’t possibly return empty-handed. Since no one could verify its value, there was naturally no need to fight each other to the death. If they bit and clawed at each other like dogs over a valueless ore, that would be the funniest tragedy.
“Clang!”
Numerous shovels rose and landed, stabbing into the soil.
The silver white ore, which was originally only the size of a face basin, slowly revealed itself, quickly becoming the size of a car.
“This ore is so huge?!”
The longer the group dug, the more disappointed they felt. Apart from it being hard, they didn’t feel anything strange about it at all.
“Eh? There’s more!”
A horse cart-sized ore had appeared on the wall of the tunnel, but as they cleared the soil around it, more and more of the ore appeared!
“What a tough ore, it looks like one huge piece, but it’s actually numerous ores connected together. There’s basically no way to seperate it into individual pieces.” Shi Yun gasped with shock as he looked at the cracked shovel in his hand. In contrast to his shovel, there wasn’t even a single mark on the silver ore.
“Let’s just report this matter to the quarry manager. With just our cultivation, it’s unknown just how long it’ll take us to dig this ore out. We can only let the manager send more people to dig it out together. Besides, if this ore is really a treasure, our efforts will definitely be recognized.”
Li Tieniu’s mouth twitched uncontrollably as he looked at the huge ore before him. With a shake of his head, he directly tossed his shovel aside, not wanting to dig any longer. Just how much time would they need to dig this stupid thing out?
Everyone also stopped digging, and nodded their heads in agreement. Although the Heaven Domination Sect was very domineering in their actions, they were also very fair. The disciples and the sect leaders were very united, and there was no need to worry about a higher up stealing another disciple’s credit.
Shi Yun and Li Tieniu directly turned around and left hurriedly towards the surface level. The others stayed behind to keep watch.
“Sir Manager, we have something to report.”
Under the lead of a few outer court disciples, Shi Yun and Li Tieniu were brought outside a luxurious room.
“Oh? If it isn’t something that satisfies me, the few of you can prepare yourselves to dig here to your death.” Wei Shibing’s voice sounded out cooly, like the frigid wind.
Although Wei Shibing had the title of the quarry manager, he was only an ordinary disciple of the sect. The quarry manager would be swapped every 10 years; the position was only considered as a simple sect mission for the disciples.
Normally, Wei Shibing would not even show his face, and would spend all his time cultivating instead. Now that he’d been disturbed from his cultivation, his attitude was naturally extremely cold.
It wasn’t just Li Tieniu and Shi Yun who felt a chill run down their hearts. Even the few honorary outer court disciples who’d brought them in were trembling with fear. They knew clearly that those words had not only been meant for Li Tieniu and Shi Yun, but for them as well.
The few disciples immediately turned to look at Li Tieniu and Shi Yun hatefully. They shouldn’t have taken such a huge risk for just a little bit of benefits!
Shi Yun gulped nervously, and said, “Sir Manager, we found an unknown ore with incredible sturdiness. Even using the shovels made with frigid steel, we can’t even leave a mark on the ore with our full strength.”
Complete silence followed; not a single sound came from behind the door. Everyone had large beads of sweat on their brows, and felt like they were sitting on pin cushions.
“Gchi!”
Under the gazes of the crowd, the door swung open noisily. A youth who looked around 18 years old stepped out from within and surveyed the crowd coldly.
The youth was clad in a fine robe made from Ice Crystal Silkworms, which was impervious to fire and water. A hair crown was set in his hair, and an ancient sword hung on his waist. His entire demeanor was cold and quiet.
“Lead the way,” the youth said blandly.
“Yes!”
Shi Yun and Li Tieniu’s heart palpitated fiercely as they took the lead at the front. At this point, they could only pray that this ore was some kind of special treasure. Otherwise, only misfortune awaited them.
The group hurried through the complicated passageway, and arrived back in the tunnel. At this time, the surface of the silver white ore had already been cleaned. Numerous fine patterns could be seen on its surface, just like a naturally formed rune.
“This is the ore you mentioned? Interesting!”
Wei Shibing revealed an excited face, causing Shi Yun and the rest to heave a sigh of relief.
“Sir Manager, this is the ore. It’s also incomparably hard!” Li Tieniu said gruffly.
“That’s because your knowledge is too lacking.”
Wei Shibing smiled lightly in response as his Zhenqi congealed into a palm. With a simple grab, the shovel flew into his hand.
“No matter how hard an ore is, as long as one’s strength is great enough, it will easily split even if one is holding a broken sword,” Wei Shibing said disdainfully. What would the bunch of bumpkins know? Gathering his Zhenqi, he forcefully hacked the shovel towards the ore!
The shovel had been mixed with frigid steel, and was shaped like a hammer. On one end of it was a sharp spike, while the other end was round like a hammer.
Before the eyes of the crowd, the shovel that was clearly only 10 jin heavy suddenly seemed as heavy as a mountain in the hands of Wei Shibing!
“Wielding the light as if heavy! As expected of an official disciple of the Heaven Domination Sect!”
“This is simply too powerful! If this strike was aimed at me, there’d be basically no way for me to dodge it. A disciple of the Heaven Domination Sect is really too strong! I must enter the sect no matter what!”
Everyone exclaimed with shock as they saw this scene. The strength that Wei Shibing had displayed was simply too terrifying!
“Dang!”
A loud sound rang out, causing everyone’s ears to go numb for a moment.
It was like a thunder had sounded right beside everyone’s ears. Those with weaker cultivation immediately covered their ears and screamed in terror!
“Lord Manager is so powerful! Just this mere stone is simplicity itself for Lord Manager to—”
One of the lackeys who recovered quickly enough hurriedly jumped out and prepared to kiss a*s. But before he could finish his sentence, the words were stuck in his mouth.
“Die!”
A shade of red flashed across Wei Shibing’s face. It wasn’t clear if it was due to his exertion of strength or shame. ‘Are you blind? Can’t you see that this stupid ore is completely fine?’ In that moment, Wei Shibing cursed coldly and sent a slap directly at the annoying as*-kissing face.
Waves of energy continuously blasted towards that person. With his face still marked with shock and fear, his entire body was blasted into smithereens, turning into blood mist.
“Boom!”
A deep palm imprint had even appeared in the wall behind where the man was standing before, reaching one meter deep. Even the prints of the palm could be seen clearly.
“Gulp!”
Everyone was shivering like a group of frozen cicadas as they swallowed collectively. Nobody dared to raise their heads and look at Wei Shibing’s face.
“Interesting! I want to see just how hard you are!”
“Dang!”
Wei Shiping grabbed the sword with his right arm, and in an instant, a powerful energy rose into the air, rippling with shocking waves of energy!
The crowd only heard a single sword keen as a dazzling white light flashed before their eyes.
After a long time, the group finally recovered and looked up.
“Drip, drip!”
The sound of liquid smacking against the stone ground rang out in the quiet tunnel. The sword in Wei Shiping’s hand was gone, and only the hilt which he held onto was left. Numerous pieces of broken sword fragments lay everywhere, and the skin on his hand was torn open. Large droplets of thick and sticky blood constantly flowed out of the wound.
“HAHA, go and gather 10,000 people over here for me and start digging!”
Instead of the rage that the group was expecting, Wei Shibing burst out with a crazed laughter. Looking at the broken sword in his hand, his excitement could not help but soar.
His sword was not something that a useless shovel that was mixed with small amounts of frigid steel could compare with. It was made with tungsten alloy, and even a normal person could pick it up and cut apart one-meter-thick frigid steel block with ease. It was something that he’d spent large amounts of sect contribution points to obtain.
But against this wall made of ore, it actually broke apart so crisply. For such a tough metal, even if it didn’t have any other properties, just its hardness was top tier. Losing a low-grade sword to it was nothing much at all. If he dug it out and presented it to the guild, he could get whatever sword he wanted!
“Yes!”
The few honorary outer court disciples who’d come along with them hurriedly left.
“No, I got to report this matter to the sect immediately!”
Wei Shiping paced about in the tunnel anxiously for a long time before his figure suddenly flashed and disappeared, leaving Li Tieniu and the rest standing there, looking at each other awkwardly.