Pig Seven dug away at the crude lodestone with all his might. Lu Xiaotian sat cross-legged at the mouth of the vast hole they had excavated, a purplish lodestone floating before his chest. Dense vortices wriggled tightly across its surface, making it look like a lifelike little beast. The beast was formed from hundreds, even thousands, of fine vortices, each one constantly drawing lodestone power from within the rock.
Once the vortices dissolved and absorbed the lodestone power, they channeled it out through their opposite ends, forming wisps of purple mist that floated above Lu Xiaotian's left palm. As time passed, the mist grew denser and denser. When it reached a certain thickness, a drop of purple liquid condensed in his palm and fell. Lu Xiaotian took out a small bottle and caught it.
Pig Seven dug in and out by himself, occasionally hauling rocks out from inside. Even a Sumeru Ring had limited capacity; there was no way it could hold the huge quantity of magnetic, exceptionally hard rocks. At this point, even Pig Seven, a formidable Deity-Void Realm cultivator, could only bustle back and forth like an ordinary mortal. Yet the seemingly boisterous Pig Seven showed remarkable tenacity. Though the work was extremely tedious, he had kept at it for years without saying a word.
"Brother Lu, I truly have to hand it to you. You've sat here for years without moving, and you haven't even shifted your backside once." Exhausted, Pig Seven dropped onto the ground in the cramped passage and panted. After several years of work, they had only dug out one lodestone from the mountain, with another buried even deeper. There was no better way than to dig through it inch by inch. Later on, though, Pig Seven focused solely on digging, while Lu Xiaotian