Yu Ziqing thought it over briefly before decisively ending the nesting-doll process of his thoughts.
He had once imagined this would be a blood-and-sweat mine, with fat-headed, big-eared overseers waving barbed whips and forcing the people they had bought to perform dangerous, backbreaking mining work despite barely having enough to eat. The death rate would be so high that they would need to keep buying people from traffickers.
Unfortunately, it was completely different from what he had imagined. And the waters here ran far deeper than he had expected.
Ordinary villagers who looked anything but ordinary.
Yet they happened to possess a rare resource, and in an absurdly high proportion at that.
What was more, no one had come to seize the place and take the mine.
Never mind. He would obediently heed Old Yang's advice, avoid meddling, and preferably not be overly curious either. Once his body had recovered, he would replenish his supplies and leave before spring arrived.
Following Er Han onward, he entered one of the Earthen Kilns he had first seen. The space inside was much larger than expected, and much emptier as well.
Deep within, waves of orange-red light shone out. The heat seemed to be controlled by some invisible force. Every few steps forward, the temperature climbed sharply. After only a dozen or so steps behind Er Han, Yu Ziqing had already begun to sweat.
"Er Han, you go on ahead. I'll wait here..."
He admitted defeat without hesitation.
"Huh..." Er Han looked utterly confused. He pointed inside. "You're not coming to take a look?"
"Forget it. Go put the things down first. I'll wait here."
Not quite understanding, Er Han continued inward with the tray. After another dozen or so steps, the heat warped the air, making his figure appear distorted. A few steps later, he could only be seen as a blurry phantom.
Yu Ziqing smacked his lips. Heh, this is an ordinary person?
Ridiculous.
Had they really never undergone any sort of cultivation?
A moment later, Er Han emerged from the blazing depths of the cave, his face neither flushed nor breathless. Judging by his expression, though, he looked exactly like someone regretting that he had not secretly eaten some of those Yellow Millet Cakes that resembled fresh magma...
"That thing is very precious, right?" Yu Ziqing could not help asking.
"It's not merely precious." Er Han immediately perked up with interest and licked his lips. "Only when we exchange ore with outsiders each year does everyone get a tiny bit."
"Then before..." Yu Ziqing stopped after asking the question, unsure whether it could even be asked. But without learning more and storing up more information, he felt deeply uneasy.
"Oh, they're exceptions. Grandpa said starving to death is the most miserable way to die. Although they committed a grave offense by secretly eating White Meat, it was because they were too hungry. Even in death, they should be made into full bellies. Those who starve to death become Starvation Ghosts.
"Although they can never starve to death again after that, they can never eat anything either. They can only endure their hunger forever. Even if they go mad from hunger, they still can't die."
Er Han paused, and a trace of terror appeared on his face at the thought of "unable to live, unable to die."
"Grandpa has a kind heart, so he let them die with full bellies. At least once they were dead, it was all over."
As he spoke, Er Han seemed to remember something. He quickly walked out of the Earthen Kiln and pointed toward a large opening in the northwest hillside. The entrance was ringed by a fence, with a huge net woven from vines fastened over it.
"Don't go there. There are quite a few Starvation Ghosts inside, and they're different from the ones we encountered before. They're all especially vicious.
"There used to be a river inside, where we could catch quite a lot of fish. We could also dig up plenty of bugs along the banks. Unfortunately, we can't go there anymore. I haven't eaten a bug in ages."
Er Han licked his lips, his eyes glowing at the mention of food.
"Starvation Ghosts..." Yu Ziqing's expression grew faintly strange, as though he had thought of something.
After circling the village, they arrived at the entrance to an underground cavern over three zhang tall. A short but powerfully built woman emerged from it, carrying a wooden log three chi thick and fully two zhang long.
Only after she had come out did Yu Ziqing see that the other end of the log was covered in clusters of huge, oyster-mushroom-like growths.
Yu Ziqing guessed that this was probably the village's main food source. After all, he had seen no fields of staple crops here, nor anyone growing vegetables.
The thick brown logs had also appeared earlier. They were probably cut down and used as firewood.
Er Han led Yu Ziqing into the cavern. They wound downward for roughly the time it took to burn an incense stick before reaching a vast underground space. Logs stood upright throughout it, their tops crowned with huge clusters of mushrooms spread open like canopies, releasing wave after wave of the distinctive fragrance of fungi.
Everything he had learned so far constituted Yu Ziqing's work for the days ahead.
Gather ingredients, then return to cook them. If nothing went wrong, this work would last at least three months, perhaps even longer. This winter would be a long one.
Yu Ziqing also hoped everything would remain peaceful. At the very least, he wanted enough time to recover, and ideally even put on twenty or thirty pounds.
Nearby, Er Han swung an axe and chopped mushrooms. The logs looked thick, but their roots were more like softwood and not very hard at all. This allowed Yu Ziqing to breathe a sigh of relief. He had genuinely feared he would not be able to do the work.
Just as the demonstration ended, Er Han suddenly rose and gazed warily into the depths of the Mushroom Forest.
Two breaths later, a log in the forest suddenly collapsed. A writhing, dark-red beast tumbled from the mushroom cap above and crashed onto the ground. The beast was thicker around than a person's waist and at least six or seven zhang long. Its body resembled a giant serpent made of linked rings, but its head clearly possessed the mouthparts of an insect.
"A bug!" Er Han cheered. Wrapped in a blast of force like a powerful arrow, he shot forward and instantly began battling the giant insect.
Yu Ziqing stood far away, following the sudden sensation in his heart as he looked deeper into the cavern.
On the distant stone wall, a black figure lay motionless. Its skin was parched, its hair sparse, and its belly sunken as though all its internal organs had vanished. It looked like a dried corpse.
It seemed to merge with the surrounding stone wall. When it sensed Yu Ziqing's gaze, it slowly raised its head and gradually revealed a mouthful of sharp teeth. Like a gecko, it pressed itself against the wall and began creeping toward him.
Reflections of Yu Ziqing began to appear in its pitch-black eyes. Its frozen, ferocious expression seemed to bloom with boundless malice, driving its interlocking limbs faster and faster as it approached him without a sound.
"A Starvation Ghost?"
Yu Ziqing was startled. Er Han had only just told him there were Starvation Ghosts nearby, and he had already encountered one.
He glanced at Er Han in the distance, who was wrestling with the insect with nothing but meat in his eyes. Yu Ziqing immediately understood. The giant insect must have discovered this Starvation Ghost and startled it, causing it to tumble down suddenly.
But the instant that thought passed through his mind, Yu Ziqing looked again and immediately rejected it.
No. It was not an ordinary Starvation Ghost. It was a Hungry Ghost.
An ordinary person like Er Han, who could laugh loudly while wrestling a giant insect, had not noticed the Starvation Ghost. There was even less reason for him to possess the ability to detect it.
Only a Hungry Ghost could cause him to sense its presence first without Er Han noticing it.
Once certain, Yu Ziqing slowly drew his rust-locked short sword and quietly watched the Hungry Ghost, murmuring, "I don't want to kill you. Don't court death."
He had made no preparations, yet the rust binding the sword to its sheath fell away like dust stirred by a gentle breeze. A wisp of nearly imperceptible black light slowly seeped through the gap like water escaping from a crack.
Er Han, still fighting the giant insect amid flying rubble and splintering logs, sensed nothing.
But the Hungry Ghost, which had been speeding closer and closer, seemed to feel a fatal danger. Its body, flying along the stone wall, suddenly stopped. An invisible, terrifying pressure crushed all four limbs and its torso against the wall, forcing a human-shaped depression into the stone. It could neither flee in terror nor cry out.
Seeing its body grow thinner and the light in its eyes fade, Yu Ziqing looked at its abdomen, sighed inwardly, and sheathed the short sword. The terrifying killing intent that only the Hungry Ghost could sense abruptly vanished.
"Your five viscera and six bowels are all gone, yet there's no bloodlust on you. You clearly haven't harmed anyone or shed blood.
"If you had lost your reason, you could never have held on until now. That was no easy feat. Why give up all of a sudden and turn onto the evil path of harming others?
"Once you take that step, there will be no turning back, nor any day of release.
"Do you truly want this?"
Yu Ziqing murmured softly, but the Hungry Ghost heard every word.
The Hungry Ghost stood there blankly for several breaths before seeming to awaken with a start. A trace of complexity flickered in its dark eyes, and then it vanished into the darkness in an instant.
Yu Ziqing tucked the short sword back into his robes and shook his head.
If anything else had appeared just now, Yu Ziqing would not even have considered showing mercy. He would have immediately... called Er Han to save his life.
Unfortunately, it had been a pitiful Hungry Ghost. Unless necessary, he truly did not want to kill it. During the time after he had first come to this world, he had crossed paths with Hungry Ghosts before, and his ability to survive his first month in this world had also been closely connected to them.
"Anyone else bullying me would be one thing, but you're a Hungry Ghost too. How dare you come looking for trouble with me? Is your brain broken?"
"It would be one thing if people from Great Qian's Langya Academy came to bully us. But now, even any Tom, Dick, or stray dog dares to come looking for trouble with us?"
Not far from the mountains where Jinlan Mine was located lay the place where Yu Ziqing had once destroyed the evidence of a corpse.
The remains of the fire had already been scattered by the wind. With the heavy snow of the past few days, almost no traces of what had happened here could be seen. Only a few fragments of the Shepherds' bones that had not yet burned to ash remained, buried beneath the snow.
A Black Goat standing as tall as a person, its four limbs packed with sinew, cursed and grumbled while chewing on the bone fragments left behind by the Shepherds.
A moment later, the Black Goat's face twisted into a revolting expression, as though it had eaten a mouthful of filth. With a retch, it spat the chewed bones onto the ground. Wisps of scorching heat flashed across them and vanished.
Charred marks from the burning also appeared inside the Black Goat's mouth.
The lean figure beside it, his face covered by a black robe, let out a soft exclamation at the sight.
"Such intense and pure solar energy could never belong to the people of Great Qian's Langya Academy. They look down most on those brawny men whose Blood Essence surges like a dragon and burns like the sun. With the Wasteland undergoing such a great change, the people sent here must be led personally by a Dao Practitioner. Those brawny men would not be among them.
"Besides, even if this truly were Langya Academy, they would not have handled things so... crudely."
Thanks to League Leader Wei Someone, and thanks as well to Baishui Changqing, Yanyan 2011, and Daocao W for your 10,000-point tips. Thanks also to all our new and longtime readers for your tips, and thank you all for your affection and support. I bow in gratitude.
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