The sun had just risen. Its pallid light pierced the leaden-gray clouds, barely illuminating the chaotic camp on the outskirts of the mining area.
The biting wind swept snowflakes across the faces of people emerging from low shacks.
They clutched all kinds of tools: shovels, pickaxes, even crude homemade crowbars.
The crowd silently headed toward the gaping maw in the earth.
The air was thick with the smell of tobacco and breakfast, along with a faint, hard-to-describe stench of decay, as if it came from the depths of an abyss, mingled with the smell of frozen soil.
"Attention! Attention! Everyone, listen up! Today's buying price! Five-colored Stone, 400 nether coins per gram! 400 nether coins per gram! If you're selling, hurry up! We inspect and pay on the spot, fair to all! No offers accepted after today!"
The voice came from a loudspeaker nearby, playing a prerecorded message on a loop.
"Fuck them!"
A middle-aged man with a face full of chilblains and a scruffy beard spat bloody saliva into the snow and cursed hoarsely. "It was 420 yesterday! Those bastards would eat you alive and spit out your bones!"
"It's dropped! Dropped again! If it falls any lower, I'll have wasted this whole trip!" A companion beside him looked livid, his eyes filled with despair and anger. "This isn't even enough to buy a protective talisman!"
"Exactly! The deeper we dig, the worse the curse gets, and the lower the price falls! How are we supposed to live?" Another scrawny miner chimed in, his voice close to tears.
Most of them were ordinary people or low-level beginners. Every trip into the mine was a gamble with their lives; they could only hope the little Five-colored Stone they found would buy them the supplies and nether coins they needed to