"Who's there? What are you dawdling for?"
A shout suddenly rang out from the junction ahead. A figure wearing a woven mask emerged from a side passage and pointed at the two men, one tall and one short, in the dim light.
There was more than one passage in this mine-like tunnel. Since the exact location of their target had been unknown when excavation began, the local cultivators had spent a month or so digging haphazardly underground. Only after finding their target had they focused their excavation in one direction, leaving plenty of forks in the tunnels.
Naturally, the overseer had challenged them because the two whispering men had been so absorbed in their conversation that their feet had barely moved. Their dragging, loafing manner had been far too obvious.
As Wu Jinliang had put it earlier, weren't they being a little too brazen about this?
At any rate, both men froze at the shout. Seeing an overseer, they immediately bent at the waist, ready to rush over like fawning dogs and admit their fault. Their spontaneous reactions were perfectly synchronized.
But the overseer was genuinely angry at their blatant loafing. They were showing far too little regard for the overseers. He darted over and swung his whip straight at Shi Chun's face, intending to teach him a lesson.
Sometimes, people's tempers really were that self-centered.
Shi Chun found this deeply aggravating. As far as he knew, the miners and overseers alike had all been recruited by Shen Youkun. They merely had different duties, and none of them had a permanent rice bowl here. They were working together for a while, so why take things so seriously and offend people?
The startled Wu Jinliang did not react either, showing no intention of helping or intervening. This was a trifling matter; he trusted their chief to handle it.
Shi Chun's instinct was to dodge. He even wanted to strike back and show the man a thing or two, and nearly swung the carrying pole off his shoulder at him. But remembering their current circumstances, he restrained himself. He did not want to provoke the man and turn this into a major disturbance.
So he decided to let the man vent his anger and stood still rather than dodge.
Still, he could not simply do nothing and take a whip across the face. What if it disfigured him? He felt he might yet make a living off his looks someday.
He raised a hand to block it.
Whoosh-crack! The whip snapped, and Shi Chun grimaced in pain. He quickly withdrew his hand and looked. Blood was visibly welling from a welt on his arm. Fury shot three thousand feet high within him; he had not expected the man to strike so hard.
Half a layer of skin was gone. Wu Jinliang bared his teeth and grimaced too. It hurt just to look.
Though inwardly seething, Shi Chun gritted his teeth and endured it. He nodded and bowed to the overseer who had darted up to him, hoping to shrink a big problem into a small one, then make the small one disappear.
"Tell me, why were you dawdling?" The overseer jabbed his whip against Shi Chun's chest, then turned it on Wu Jinliang as well. "Don't want this rice bowl anymore, do you?"
"We weren't dawdling, we weren't," Shi Chun hurriedly said. "Calm down, good sir." He showed the man his bloody arm, hoping to evoke some pity and persuade him to leave it at that.
But the overseer's anger had not subsided. "Do you think I'm blind?"
"We really weren't dawdling," Wu Jinliang hastily said. "I twisted my ankle. That's why we were walking slowly."
The overseer pointed at his own ear. "So you think I'm not just blind, but deaf too? You were happily buzzing away the whole time. Think I couldn't notice? Fine. Still talking tough, are you? Fine, I won't make things difficult. I'll let you stand here and chat to your hearts' content, as long as nobody else objects. Go on. Keep chatting."
Both men's expressions changed slightly at that. They were already exploiting every opening they could find here. How could they stand around for everyone passing through to admire? Were they afraid people wouldn't notice them? It would be even more troublesome if Shen Youkun showed up. Were they really going to have to tie him up? Unless absolutely necessary, taking him hostage was not worth the trouble.
Shi Chun immediately cupped his hands in appeal. "Good sir..."
"Don't move!" The overseer cut him off, pointing his whip at the foot Shi Chun had been about to move forward as he bowed. "Didn't you hear me tell you to stand there and chat? Go on, keep talking."
Shi Chun stopped moving. His eyes fixed on the man from behind his hanging hair, then he tilted his head and gave Wu Jinliang a meaningful look.
Wu Jinliang dropped his load to the ground with a clatter. As the overseer abruptly turned to stare, he fell to his knees with a thud, tears and snot instantly streaming down his face. "I was wrong! I have elders to support and children to feed. I'm counting on the pay from this job. Please, sir, show mercy and let me off this once..."
Weeping, he shuffled forward on his knees and hugged the overseer's legs, pleading through his sobs.
Was he really so spineless? The overseer looked surprised as well. "Get off," he said, reaching to push him away, only to have his hand caught.
Still sniveling, Wu Jinliang hugged his way upward.
The overseer soon realized something was wrong. Without his noticing, both his hands had been pinned against his waist in the embrace. More importantly, he could not wrench free, even with force.
Sensing danger, he was just about to knee the man clinging to him when a sudden chill touched his neck. His eyes caught the metallic gleam beneath his chin, cold and bright even in the dim light. He could already feel the splitting pain at his throat.
Under that threat, he immediately stopped daring to move.
Shi Chun had produced a small knife from somewhere and pressed it to his neck. The load on his own shoulder had also been set down.
"What are you trying to do?" the overseer asked tensely.
"Shut up!" Shi Chun warned.
"Everything can be discussed..." the overseer whispered.
Moving behind him, Shi Chun raised the arm bearing the bloody welt and clamped a hand over his mouth beneath the mask, silencing him through action. The blade at his throat drew a clean, decisive line that sent blood spraying, giving him no breathing room to lash out like a cornered dog.
As though foreseeing it, Wu Jinliang rolled clear before the blood sprayed down.
The overseer struggled with every scrap of his cultivation, but was forced facedown onto the ground. Shi Chun pinned his lower back firmly with a knee. With a crack, the hand covering his mouth twisted and snapped his neck.
The overseer's prone body was still twitching when Shi Chun, having wiped the blood off his knife, stood up. He looked deeper into the mine, where faint footsteps were approaching. "Someone's coming. Get him out of here, quick," he said quietly.
That was also why he had killed the overseer so decisively. People were constantly passing through here. Once he got tangled up in trouble, he would have no room left to maneuver.
There was no time to hesitate. Wu Jinliang hastily scooped up the overseer, whose body was still moving slightly, and ran, darting into the side passage the man had emerged from.
Shi Chun quickly hid the knife beneath the cloth covering his groin, then pulled a woven mask from the bottom of a carrying basket and put it on. He swiftly tied a black strip of cloth around his arm, picked up the overseer's whip, and hurriedly stacked both loads together at the side. Turning, he swept a leg across the ground, sending dust billowing over the blood.
He had just waved a hand and used magic to settle the dust when two men dressed as overseers came striding toward him.
Neither had intended to speak to Shi Chun as they passed. Even the two loads stacked beside him did not concern them. But an unusual scent made them stop one after the other, their nostrils twitching.
"Blood!" one said in a low voice.
The other nodded and looked around. Both quickly turned toward Shi Chun at the side of the passage.
Unhurried, Shi Chun raised his arm, the blood on it still wet, and lowered his voice slightly. "I was playing with the whip. Caught myself by accident."
He was not pretending to be calm. He truly was untroubled.
Seeing his injury, the two overseers relaxed, though they also looked somewhat surprised.
Before they could ask more, Shi Chun spoke first to change the subject. "What are you two doing?"
One overseer explained, "Judging by the excavation progress, there shouldn't be much earth left to remove. We want to discuss it with Mr. Shen. There's no need to carry it all that distance outside. We could dump it straight into the other side tunnels. It would save time and effort and speed up the digging."
"That makes sense." Shi Chun nodded in agreement and raised a hand to wave them on.
The two overseers promptly strode away.
After watching them go, Shi Chun looked back into the depths of the mine. He thought that explained why no miners carrying heavy loads had come out for a while.
Wu Jinliang appeared from the side passage immediately afterward and hurried over to him. "Buried him. Everything all right?" he asked quietly.
"It's all because you wouldn't stop babbling and whispering. Otherwise, where would this trouble have come from?" Shi Chun pointed at the stacked loads beside them, signaling for him to shoulder them and leave.
Wu Jinliang was rather unwilling. "Why am I always the one playing the laborer? Isn't it time we took turns?"
Shi Chun spoke as he walked. "Are any of the overseers as tall as you? Afraid people won't recognize you?"
That single sentence left Wu Jinliang speechless. It was indeed true. Someone that tall would stand out far too much among the overseers; he could not blend in.
In fact, his height had already aroused suspicion among the other miners earlier. They were not blind; they could hardly avoid being suspicious. But Shi Chun, posing as an overseer, would appear along the way and confirm that Wu Jinliang was a late arrival, naturally putting their doubts to rest.
They dealt with suspicious overseers in the same manner. When someone was too suspicious to be handled, their solution was simple: kill him outright.
At any rate, once the two had figured out the personnel here, they had slipped straight in. They did not stubbornly hold their ground; they hid when they needed to hide and avoided people when they needed to. Sometimes they stayed together, sometimes they split up. Shi Chun alternated between miner and overseer, slipping through every crack and switching identities with ease to handle whatever arose.
As Shi Chun put it, the Eastern Nine Plains were his damn territory!
In short, neither of them had done any work at all. They had been roaming the underground mine, scouting it out and treating the other side's manpower as though it did not exist. Their audacity had indeed reached the point of near-open brazenness.
Of course, they had not come entirely unprepared. They had long since settled on their approach: bluff their way through if they could, and run if they could not!
Still, Wu Jinliang, trailing behind him, sighed. "Another one down. If we keep this up, there'll be fewer and fewer people. They'll have a hard time not noticing."
"Can you shut your mouth?" Shi Chun turned to demand. It was also a reminder. Was this a place for chatting? They had nearly gotten into trouble just now.
He had barely finished speaking when he quickly turned forward again. A figure came flashing toward them, moving so fast he nearly collided with the pair.
The newcomer was another masked overseer. He paused briefly to avoid them, then was about to hurry on.
Why such a rush? Shi Chun sensed something off about the overseer's reaction. He would not let any chance to gather information slip past. Immediately extending an arm to block the way, he asked, "What's the hurry?"
"They've dug something up. I need to notify Mr. Shen." The newcomer tossed out a perfunctory reply, pushed the blocking arm aside, and hurried away.
"Dug something up?" Shi Chun murmured. He turned back, and he and Wu Jinliang stared at each other, both surprised.
Hadn't they already dug the thing up? Wasn't it that skeleton of unknown significance? Was that worth making such a fuss over?
Both instantly realized there might be something else to it. Since they were already here, they naturally did not want to miss out. They darted into motion together and headed straight for the end of the mine.