With the secret out, Su Qing had thankfully converted the basket back to wooden armour and was openly tossing rocks into his storage space.
Mei grumpily went back to mining, slowly chipping the rock away.
Without the motivation of being ahead of her friends, now she just felt like it was tiring and boring.
She somehow didn't notice she was still the fastest of her friends... by a thin margin.
"Su Qing, aren't you actually pretty strong? I see you beat up the bandits like nothing back then." Mei said. "Stop picking up the rocks and help me!"
"Eh?! But fire is scary!"
"Yeah right. So scary that you have to pick the glowy fire rocks all up."
"It's for safety..." Su Qing retorted, but was unable to convince even himself.
Mei stared at him yet again.
"Fine!"
In a disgruntled fashion, he walked beside her and began to hack at the walls.
Mei simply took a seat to the side, watching.
"You're not mining anymore?" Su Qing asked.
"Er..." Mei began thinking of an excuse. "As a friend, you betrayed my trust, so this will be your apology!"
Su Qing whined sadly.
Hehe. Mei leaned on the wall smugly.
She glanced outside of the tunnel for a moment, where Shan Qiang stood. If he asked, she was going to say since she was a spirit master, this counted as her putting in hard work.
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With a cracking sound, Su Qing's pickaxe shattered the rock before him. A strange reverberant sound rang out, light coming out from a small section in the wall.
He peeked inside, seeing a strange mole-like creature with fuzzy black fur the size of a pig curled up around a chunk of Fire-veined Iron, asleep.
Eh? Su Qing stared at it with surprise. With how he was seeing with qi sense, shouldn't he have sensed its soul from outside?
He probed a little deeper and realised that a strange aura around the mole would divert his qi sense. It was only when he was up close would he finally be able to overwhelm that, finally seeing it.
"Mei Xiu! Come here!" he said. "There's something there!"
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"Hmm?"
Mei, who had been daydreaming snapped out of it, walking over.
"There's a mole thing over here!"
"Huh?"
As Su Qing made the hole bigger and bigger, Mei stared in surprise at the strange animal. Unlike the ones at the tournament, it didn't have weird nose tendrils and was rather chubby, making it surprisingly cute.
Inside the little cavern, the mole had dug out, the walls were covered in what looked to be metal dregs, a faint metallic smell permeating the air.
The chunk of metal in its paws was covered in bite marks.
Mei took out her wooden axe and poked at it. The mole made strange sounds as it gripped onto the ore harder.
From behind, she heard footsteps. Shan Qiang had heard their discussion from outside.
"A mole?" his voice echoed.
Marching in, he readied his mace. Before Mei could react, he had already swung his weapon at the creature- only for a strange force to deflect the attack.
With a resounding sound, it crashed into the wall, crushing the rock into chunks, sending up clouds of rock dust.
The mole let out a shrill screech of terror, before diving into the ground, digging through the rock as if it were water.
"Drat, it got away!" Shan Qiang cursed. "Was that some kind of protective artefact?"
"You're horrible! Why would you do that!" Su Qing shouted. "He didn't do anything!"
"Hmph. You might think they're cute, but they always go around eating up the ores. See that slag there?" Shan Qiang pointed towards the walls. "That used to be Fire-veined steel. Now it's shit. Literally."
Mei: ...
"But it's normal to be hungry!" Su Qing said.
"This affects our primary source of income. Besides, these moles attack us too. We get attacks from their stronger cultivators from time to time, targeting our disciples. It's not a peaceful world down here."
"But... he didn't do anything..." the little spirit trailed off.
Shan Qiang shook his head as he picked up the remaining chunk of ore, stashing it into his spatial bag and walking out.
...
"Sad, isn't it?" a voice suddenly came from behind her.
Mei jolted, turning around, seeing that it was Shi Xin.
"Huh?"
"A vicious cycle of enmity siring enmity, both sides suffering." the grey spirit said. "If they saw beyond species, a little diplomacy would suffice."
"Uh... okay?"
Without elaborating, Shi Xin left as well.
What. Did those two "old men" think heading out mid-conversation was cool or something? Weirdos.
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A brief trek through the caverns later, the group came across a middle-aged chubby man with a huge backpack. He wore the Sundered Earth sect's uniform, grey with lines of red down the middle, along with a pair of glasses.
The man waved to them.
"Welcome, visitors! Are you in need of supplies? I have all sorts of things on sale. Food, drink, equipment, medical supplies, you name it!"
He tossed the backpack off the ground, which promptly expanded into a small building, two metres tall and 4 metres across. Inside the various shelves protected by glass, various goodies could be seen, accompanied by price tags.
Whoa! That was actually pretty cool. Mei didn't know storage artefacts could be used that way. She stared at the items curiously.
A large bag of dried mushroom biscuits... 20 jade?! Wait, all the things in here were crazy expensive!
Even qi lanterns were priced at 200 jade, spatial bags up to 3000 jade.
"These... aren't these a little expensive?" Xiuying said.
"Haha, we can't help it, young lady. It's not easy to transport resources this far down and we don't get many customers." he laughed. "I'm a staff member of one of the sect's exchange centres, so you're unwilling to buy anything, you can still exchange ore for sect tokens with me."
"Here."
Shan Qiang handed him the chunk of metal.
The shopkeeper weighed the Fire-veined Iron for a moment before willing it to split, handing back 20% of the ore. He scribbled something on a piece of paper, then handed it over along with 16 shiny black coins.
"These receipts show that the ore you're taking out has been accounted for." Shan Qiang explained. "And these coins are the sect's tokens, used at the exchange centres. They're each roughly worth a jade."
Mei stared wordlessly at the tiny chunk of leftover metal. What the heck were they even going to do with that?