A Novice's Troubles

"You, stop looking around. You there—I'm talking to you. Get over here!" The overseer at the cave entrance pointed at Yue Qianchou and barked without ceremony. Only then did he realize everyone ahead had already gone in, and he hurried over.

The overseer held up a bronze mirror and shone it over him. A flash of white light passed across its surface.

Could this be a magic artifact? Before he could figure it out, the overseer shoved him into the mine tunnel. "Dressed up like a proper human, aren't you? Next!"

He heard the overseer behind him, but gave it no further thought as he surveyed the mine tunnel. It was pitch-black. How were they supposed to mine Spirit Stones in an environment like this? He slowed his pace and walked in. Once his eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness, he had not gone far before he heard several people running deeper into the tunnel beside him. Had gold ingots fallen up ahead? He truly had to admire them—running in a place like this. As he shook his head, he suddenly noticed scattered points of light on the tunnel walls.

What was this? As he moved forward, the scattered lights grew more numerous, thickly carpeting the walls around him and even the ground beneath his feet, making him feel as though he were walking down an avenue of starlight. Only upon drawing close did he discover that they were glowstones. They clearly had not been installed by human hands, but had formed naturally. That also answered his earlier question—why they could mine Spirit Stones in the cave without any lighting.

Standing at a junction where several mine passages branched apart, he was deciding which way to go when more miners rushed anxiously into the various tunnels. Though he did not know why, there had to be a reason everyone was in such a hurry. With that thought, he no longer hesitated. He picked a tunnel at random and strode inside.

The mine extended deep underground. The farther he went, the more large and small intersections he found, tangled together like a spiderweb. This place was like a maze. He was genuinely worried that if he ran too far in, he might not be able to find his way out. Then he frowned, shook his head, and laughed as he cursed himself for being an idiot. Since the terrain sloped downward, all he had to do to get out was walk uphill.

From many tunnel entrances, he could already faintly hear people digging. Not knowing where exactly he should mine, he chose a passage where the sounds were louder and slipped inside.

"Clang, clang, clang..." Following the noise around a bend, he saw a basket on the ground, already containing several low-grade Spirit Stones, one of them even a mid-grade stone. A miner was swinging his pickaxe with all his strength.

"Heh! Not bad, not bad. You've already got something." Yue Qianchou smiled warmly. As he spoke, he took off the basket on his back and looked around with his pickaxe in hand, preparing to find a place to start.

The clanging suddenly stopped. He turned around and saw the miner watching him warily. He nodded and smiled again, but it was obvious the man did not welcome him. His smile became somewhat awkward.

"Get out. I found this vein first." The miner's words were anything but polite. Yue Qianchou felt a little angry. Damn it! They were both miners—what gave this guy the right to drive him out? But he could not gauge the man's cultivation, which clearly meant the other man was stronger than his Qi Refining Level Five.

Forbear a small grievance, or you'll spoil a grand plan. Though he was unhappy, for the great undertaking of stealing Spirit Stones, he decided to swallow this insult. He shot the man a glare, picked up his basket, and turned to leave with a dark face.

What followed was exactly the same. Every small tunnel had one person mining inside, and whenever they saw him, they rudely declared, "This is my territory. Get out!" What discouraged him most was that nearly everyone he encountered had a cultivation level somewhat higher than his. He had a bellyful of rage, yet could not find anyone to vent it on.

Now he finally understood why those people had run as soon as they entered the mine. They were afraid that Spirit Stone veins they had discovered before would be claimed by others, so they had rushed in first to stake their territory.

In a fit of anger, he headed for the deepest part. Who knew how many years this mine had been dug? After walking for a long time and turning through countless bends, he finally reached the end of the tunnel.

"Damn it! No one's going to drive me away from here!" After cursing, he set down his basket. Holding the pickaxe tightly, he could not help growing excited. The dead end before him seemed to show Spirit Stones already waving to him.

He raised the pickaxe with both hands and swung down hard. Clang!

"Fuck!" Yue Qianchou let out a strange cry, tossed the pickaxe aside, and raised his hands, numb from the shock, with a sigh. Shaking them out, he picked up the tool and tested the surrounding tunnel walls. Clang, clang, clang—everywhere was as hard as stone. No wonder the sounds of mining he had heard were like blacksmithing. He had simply been too impatient.

After trying a few more times, he did not know whether to laugh or cry. This was not mining at all! It was clearly drilling tunnels through a mountain of stone. He had never known that Spirit Stones grew in places like this. The Qingguang Sect's enormous demand for Spirit Stones relied on people here digging them out bit by bit. Though he had heard there were several other Spirit Stone mines elsewhere, the miners there probably did not have it any easier.

He tried channeling True Qi into the pickaxe. Clang, clang, clang—it actually started to dig in. Yue Qianchou was overjoyed. Throwing himself into it, he began digging desperately.

Being enthusiastic about work was a good thing, but failing to produce results was often the most painful thing of all. He dug for more than half a day. Let alone a Spirit Stone, he did not even see a single hair. With his True Qi being continuously consumed like this, his income could not cover his expenses. If this kept up, before he mined a single Spirit Stone, he would work himself to death.

He was not the sort to charge ahead blindly. He stopped at once and decided to first figure out where the problem lay.

Based on the limited scraps of common knowledge from his previous life, he was certain of one thing: things like gold and gemstones had veins and directions, and Spirit Stones surely worked by the same principle. The glowstones found everywhere should be accompanying ore for Spirit Stones.

These spiderweb-like tunnels had surely been dug by miners in the past. Since they had stopped digging here, did that mean there were no more Spirit Stones ahead? He did not understand enough to judge. He wanted to find someone to ask, but the miners here would probably give the same answer whether he asked or not—no one would tell him. What a headache!

"Fuck! How could I be so stupid?" Yue Qianchou smacked his forehead in annoyance. Wasn't Sister Bai's fox clan expert at digging tunnels? If he asked her, would he not understand? He cautiously checked his surroundings. Once he was certain no one was nearby, he picked up his tool and vanished in a flash.

"Sister Bai, save me! Uh..." Yue Qianchou had only shouted a few times after returning to his own territory before his voice abruptly cut off. A forest had suddenly appeared before him. Bamboo swayed among the trees, and a familiar melody drifted from within. If he could not still see the purple chaos around him, he would have suspected that he had gone to the wrong place.

Uneasily, he walked into the forest. A delicate, emerald-green bamboo cottage appeared before his eyes, built in an exceedingly antique style. A ring of bamboo fencing surrounded it, and within stood a small bamboo pavilion. In it, a peerless beauty dressed in snow-white robes played the zither and sang softly. Who else could it be but the White Fox?

Relieved, Yue Qianchou looked around again and smiled in satisfaction. Watching the White Fox sing and play, he could not help admiring her. As expected of someone in the arts—her sense of beauty was a cut above ordinary people's.

The forest encircled the bamboo grove, and the bamboo grove encircled the cottage. The surroundings were tranquil and secluded. He had never imagined that the things he had thrown in a few days ago would be transformed by the White Fox into this in such a short time. The arrangement was perfectly balanced, a feast for the eyes.

Grinning, he walked in. Though the White Fox did not even raise her head, with her late Tribulation stage cultivation, she surely knew he had arrived. Yue Qianchou walked up to the pavilion and called, "Sister Bai!"

Unexpectedly, the White Fox ignored him and did not even lift her head. Yue Qianchou's heart skipped a beat. She had an issue with him? He had no idea how he had offended her, but this was not good—he was about to ask her for help.

Yue Qianchou sat down beside her with a cheeky grin, craning his neck as he said, "Yo! Whose beautiful lady is playing the zither here? Fair lady, this humble scholar greets you. Fair lady, fair lady, fair lady..."

To be honest, after this little brother had thrown her in here, she had not seen even a shadow of him for days. It made her feel as if she had just escaped imprisonment, only to be trapped again. How could she not be angry? But faced with this shameless fellow, she truly had no way to deal with him. If she ignored him, he would keep calling her beautiful lady without end.

The zither music abruptly stopped. A faint blush rose on the White Fox's pretty face. She raised her head and said angrily, "So you still remember you have a Sister? Then don't come back if you have the ability... Are you mining Spirit Stones?" Her last question came when she noticed the tool in Yue Qianchou's hand.

Yue Qianchou froze. The White Fox's words gave him a strange feeling, like a wife living alone at home finally seeing her good-for-nothing husband after several days. The thought flashed past, and he avoided the important point as he replied, "Sister truly has eyes like torches. You saw through it at a glance..." He then told the White Fox about being punished and sent to the Spirit Stone mine to do hard labor, though he concealed the matter of falsely accusing Wu Baoru. That was understandable—no one wished to publicly reveal their own despicable and shameless side.

What he meant was that because he had offended the Qingguang Sect Master, and now that his master was dead, he had immediately suffered the Sect Master's retaliatory blow and been sent to the Spirit Stone mine for hard labor. If he failed to complete his assignment, he would face severe punishment.

"For the master of a sect to be so narrow-minded." The White Fox frowned and stared at the smiling face opposite her. "With the Golden Pearl, you can leave the Qingguang Sect, and no one can stop you. Have you come to ask me for help?"

"Ha ha! Sister is brilliant. You knew before I even said it." Yue Qianchou laughed.

The White Fox gave a faintly reproachful look, but still took the Mountain-Piercing Claws from the scented pouch at her waist and tossed them to him.

Yue Qianchou hugged the item and grinned from ear to ear. He rose to leave, but suddenly remembered something and asked, "At the mine entrance, I saw Qingguang Sect disciples holding a bronze mirror and shining it over me. Sister, do you know what it's for?"

"It is merely a very ordinary magic artifact, nothing particularly useful. If someone has secretly absorbed spiritual energy or hidden Spirit Stones on their person, it can easily detect them. Spirit Stone mines of the major sects throughout the Cultivation World use them. Why are you asking?"

"Nothing. Sister, if I put Spirit Stones inside the Golden Pearl, can that magic artifact detect them?" Yue Qianchou asked again.

The White Fox gently shook her head. "It generally cannot even detect Spirit Stones stored in a storage pouch. The space inside the Golden Pearl should be even harder to detect."

"Oh!" Yue Qianchou let out a breath of relief and nodded. "You scared me to death. Since it can't detect them, I can rest easy. Sis, I'll be going now."

"Ah... you..." The White Fox was stunned for a moment. This bastard had asked all that because he intended to steal Spirit Stones. Did that not mean she had helped a tyrant do evil? The moment she came to her senses and wanted to stop him for an explanation, he had already vanished without a trace.