As night fell, some of the Puppet Humanoids that had been working continuously for several days needed to enter the Spirit Stone pillars for replenishment.
"First shift, sixth shift, replenish after one hour! Move it! You Spirit Stone guzzlers!"
The overseer shouted loudly—even the Spirit Stones consumed by two shifts of Puppet Humanoids charging for an hour were still less than what he needed to cultivate for a day.
That said, the overseer had not received his full allotment of Spirit Stones for quite some time... His monthly wages consisted of Spirit Banknotes and physical Spirit Stones. But recently, he could obtain only about half as many Spirit Stones as before. The rest was issued as an allowance in the form of pipeline spiritual energy.
But the spiritual energy from the pipelines was impure and of terrible quality. Although there was plenty of it, it still needed to be purified a second time before use... Rounded off, that meant he was losing out!
There was not a single Spirit Banknote missing... But that thing could only be spent. It could not be used for cultivation!
"Once another year passes and the mining ban is lifted, things should get better, right?"
The overseer thought to himself.
To protect the Spirit Stone Veins from being over-mined and exhausted, the alliance periodically imposed bans on Spirit Stone mining.
"We shouldn't have produced so many things that eat Spirit Stones just for the sake of convenience!"
"a-230385, I have an hour of replenishment time. Would you like to come with me?"
A female Puppet Humanoid came up to a-230385 and asked openly—but before a-230385 could respond, another female Puppet Humanoid had already walked over and asked the same question.
"a-230191, I was the first to ask a-230385." The first female Puppet Humanoid spoke