Cheng Su had brought his men racing up, urging their horses on at every turn.
Over a hundred Demon Suppression Guards crowded the edge of the mining site, each carrying something on his shoulder: shovels, spades, crowbars, hammers and chisels for breaking rock. A few had brought horse-drawn carts to carry the wounded.
Still panting from the journey, Cheng Su spotted Yang Xiao first.
Yang Xiao had been standing at the edge of the pit for who knew how long, his back straight, his gaze fixed intently on the deep crater before him.
Was he looking for a place to start digging?
The thought crossed Cheng Su's mind, and he decided to go over and urge him not to rush, to take it slowly.
The blackstone mining site had been worked for decades. More than a hundred tunnels crisscrossed underground in overlapping layers, and after the collapse, no one knew what conditions were like below.
If they rashly dug down in one spot and it collapsed halfway through, they would only throw another dozen lives into the pit.
He had brought plenty of men, but by the time they eliminated the hazards and slowly dug their way through, those buried inside would already be dead.
"Three paces to the left of the third ridge on the eastern side." Yang Xiao pointed toward a slope. "Dig down there."
Cheng Su froze. "Lord Yang..."
"There are three people underneath. One is still breathing. The other two are dead."
Cheng Su opened his mouth.
How did he know?
The thought had barely surfaced when Yang Xiao pointed to a second spot. "Five zhang south, beneath that horizontal slab of bluestone. Seven people are huddled together there, four seriously injured."
"And don't move the bluestone. The moment it shifts, everything will collapse. Clear away