Chapter 43: Success
At this point, Su Su and the other three had no reason to hesitate over anything Doudou or Qin Xiaoxia said. Whether they could change their lives depended on this one chance.
Ignoring the wind and rain lashing their faces, the four rushed out of the woods toward the wire fence Qin Xiaoxia had knocked down earlier.
The distant mine pit was pitch-black, and the tremors beneath their feet had gradually stopped.
A terrifying presence lay ahead, but no one backed away. Instead, they quickened their pace.
"Quick, quick, quick! Over there!"
Su Su had sharp eyes. She could just make out an enormous crater where the mine pit had been, with a dark figure still standing in its center.
In the darkness, Qin Xiaoxia's eyes shone with a light that stabbed at the mind. Even in the dark, Jenny and the others could not meet his gaze.
"Mr. Qin, how are you?"
The mine had completely collapsed, leaving a huge crater of rock and earth at least four or five meters deep. Su Su and the others had no way to get down.
The rain kept pouring with a relentless hiss.
Rainwater had washed back into the crater, turning it into a small lake.
To the four onlookers' astonishment, all the water in the crater swirled around Mr. Qin, as though a whirlpool had formed in the pool.
Only then did they notice the many people floating every which way on the surface, turning with the current.
Visibility was too poor to tell whether Jack and Joseph were among them.
Qin Xiaoxia was not in good shape. Forcing his magic to explode and blast open the collapsed mine tunnel had put a strain on his body far beyond its limits.
His muscles were strained all over, and at least a whole swath of his capillaries had burst.
Unlike last time, however, his magic had not run dry, so he could still force himself to keep going.
But he was also splitting his attention to spread his magic and sever the connection between the raw mother crystal and the corrupted mine pit.
Seeing Su Su and the others run over, Qin Xiaoxia breathed a sigh of relief.
"I'm fine. I've dealt with the Corrupted Crystal Mine, but your friends may not be in very good shape."
Su Su hurriedly translated his words for Jenny and the others.
Qin Xiaoxia's right hand, held against his chest, kept trembling. Magic gathered continuously in his palm as he gripped a blue crystal that struggled without cease.
With each layer of purple magic wrapped around it, the crystal's struggles weakened, until it finally fell completely still.
"Get ready, you four. I'll throw the people down here up to you. Find your friends first."
With that, Qin Xiaoxia grabbed the ankle of a naked man lying by his feet and flung him toward the four on the "shore."
The tremendous impact knocked all four of them over. Before the two girls could get up, they realized they had caught a burly naked man-and Jenny's hand was right on his private parts.
"Aaah-mmph..."
Jenny had barely begun to scream before Su Su covered her mouth.
"Shh! I didn't scream, did I? It's not like you've never seen one before!"
Mark and Joey had none of the girls' fussiness. They rolled straight back up to check who had been thrown to them.
Joey turned the man's face toward him and leaned close for a look. It was a vicious-looking man with a scar.
"It's neither of them."
"Then put him aside for now. There are plenty more down here!"
Qin Xiaoxia called out, waited for the four above to get ready, then threw up the next man.
There were quite a few, and Qin Xiaoxia threw them faster and faster. The people above could not catch every one, and several went tumbling away.
Apart from the seven who were already beyond saving, all ten remaining men were thrown up.
Fortunately, Qin Xiaoxia eased the force of his throws. With the rainwater and soft mud cushioning their landings, they should be all right.
Using the downpour to wash the mud from the naked men's faces, the four frantically turned faces toward them, trying to identify their friends.
"I found Jack! But he isn't breathing!"
"Joseph's over here! He isn't breathing either!"
"Oh... are they dead?"
Jenny stood to one side with her hand over her mouth, her voice thick with tears.
"Stop crying and do something! Didn't you study first aid?"
Mark's roar cut short the girl's rising distress.
"Right, right! Put them facedown so they don't choke on the rain. No, wait, they're already not breathing. We need to give them rescue breaths... right, do they still have heartbeats?"
Jenny's words were as frantic as her movements.
But their savior finally arrived.
Qin Xiaoxia leaped out of the crater and landed right beside them.
"Don't bother with first aid. They aren't dead. Take your friends and these two men. We need to leave now-the rain's about to stop!"
With his body in such poor condition, his magic had begun to fall into disorder, and he could no longer maintain the Reaction Formula for the downpour much longer. Once the rain stopped, they would lose their cover and could easily be discovered.
Taking Jack and Joseph was a must. He was bringing the other two because they were the most badly injured, beyond what ordinary human souls and bodies could heal on their own.
Leaving them alone would mean certain death.
As for the remaining six, they were merely in something like a deep coma. So long as they were not left unattended indefinitely, a hospital could save them.
Qin Xiaoxia lifted the two most seriously injured men, one in each hand, while Jenny, Su Su, and the other two carried Jack and Joseph away.
The rainwater parted beneath their feet of its own accord, keeping them from stepping into holes.
A little over a minute after the group left the scrapyard and reached the woods, the torrential rain abruptly stopped.
Apart from the mud covering the ground, even the clouds overhead had thinned.
The three police officers and Old Ode thought there had been an earthquake and hurried out of the house in a panic.
But shortly after they came outside, the ground stopped shaking, almost as though they had imagined it.
After only a few dozen seconds in the rain, the cold forced them back inside for shelter.
As for going to check the mine pit, no one brought it up.
Only Old Ode kept peering in that direction. But a storm this heavy not only blocked his view; even people standing right beside each other had to shout to make themselves heard, let alone hear anything happening at the mine.
And he did not dare go over on his own.
Before long, however, the rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun.
One moment, the four inside were shivering around the stove, warming themselves and complaining. The next, they fell silent along with the rain.
Suddenly, it was quiet enough to hear a pin drop.
After about twenty seconds, Old Ode finally could not help breaking the silence.
"Shouldn't we go check the mine?"
The atmosphere that night was unnerving to an almost absurd degree, and a nagging sense of foreboding kept twitching at their nerves. Still, strictly speaking, no actual crisis had arisen that warranted calling for backup.
Everyone had been deliberately avoiding the subject of the mine. Over the past two days, even the rumors circulating at the police station had started to sound convincing.
But as police officers, they could hardly keep making excuses now.
The three officers and Old Ode, four men in all, took flashlights and trudged through mud and standing water, their footing uneven. Skirting heaps of debris and rubbish knocked down by the wind and rain, they headed toward the mine a little over a hundred meters away.
All of them were wearing Old Ode's old clothes and looked exactly like a group of frightened civilians.
With so much rubbish and clutter in the scrapyard blocking their view, the mine still looked like a patch of darkness from a distance.
When they got within about fifty meters, they could finally see a little more clearly.
"That looks like... a small lake?"
One of the middle-aged officers spoke uncertainly.
Old Ode, meanwhile, cried out and ran straight toward it.
"Where's my crystal mine?!"
P.S. Thanks to readers All Roads Lead to Hopping and Reading Wanderer for their 100-coin tips~
I still owe you one chapter today. If I don't post it in a bit, I'll make it up tomorrow! -_-, I celebrate Children's Day too, you know~