The extras crowded around him and hurried toward the center of the stage.
The gongs and drums beat in his ears as urgently as a sudden downpour, tightening the heart, while the huqin carried an indescribable sorrow and desolation, as though recounting the miners' hardships.
The martial clown played by Lei Xiaosan came onstage and first led the extras playing miners in picking up the mining tools from the ground, then listlessly scraping a few times at the scenery rocks representing mineral veins.
Their movements were sluggish and their spirits low, as though they had exhausted all their strength.
Some extras even straightened up from time to time, swaying as they wiped away nonexistent sweat, or pounded their lower backs and groaned in pain.
They labored like this for a little while.
The martial clown played by Lei Xiaosan gently set his pickaxe on the ground and slowly straightened. His brows knitted and his face full of misery, he sang to the miners, "We mine each day like beasts of burden, earning too little to feed our kin. Where lies that boundless path to immortality? Must we spend our lives as frogs within a well?!"
An extra came forward and steadied Lei Xiaosan, saying with a mournful face, "Captain, we've been digging in this cave for three days and nights without a drop of water or a grain of rice. The brothers are nearly collapsing from exhaustion. Please, have mercy and give the word. Let us rest a little!"
Just as had happened to Cui Jiuyang earlier, streams of information about the current plot's background poured into Lei Xiaosan's mind.
But he had little experience in the jianghu, and faced with such a complicated situation, he could not quite react in time. He could only follow the plot background in