The noise

The cold, hard metal blade pressed against his palm without even a leather glove for protection. Rough cracks in the stone kept rubbing against his hand, and sharp stone chips scraped his flesh repeatedly as he applied force. His forearm muscles strained to their limit, veins throbbing, while a numb ache spread up his arm to his shoulder. Every extra bit of downward pressure sent a tearing stab of pain through his palm. Tiny beads of blood seeped along its creases, mixing with frozen dirt and smearing stickily over his wounds.

The rock was wedged deep in the frozen earth and would not budge. Lu Heng clenched his back teeth and bore his entire weight down on the hunting blade's handle, continuously exerting his waist and abdomen until his hips ached. His feet dug two shallow pits in the mud beneath them, and meltwater seeped down his trouser legs into his cloth shoes, chilling his bones stiff. His wrists trembled under the strain. Several more scratches of varying depths appeared on his palms, their burning pain stabbing straight into his nerves. The moment he relaxed, his whole arm ached and swelled with fatigue until he could barely lift it.

He could only keep adjusting the hunting blade, prying at different cracks. Small stones tumbled down one after another, landing with dull thuds in the snow by his feet, but the main mass of rock remained firmly rooted. After struggling for nearly an hour, Lu Heng had to straighten up and let his arms hang, shaking his hands vigorously to ease the aching. When he spread his palms to look, they were red and swollen all over, crisscrossed with bloody scratches. Even a light touch made him suck in a breath of pain.

Scattered rocks lay buried beneath lingering snow all over the mountain. No wind stirred across the bleak, gray frozen ground; only fine flecks of ice drifted slowly through the air, making his solitary working figure look frail and bedraggled. There was plenty of stone, enough to reinforce the cave's drafty walls. After catching his breath briefly, Lu Heng shook the muddy snow off his palms, gripped his hunting blade, and pried loose a medium-sized rock to one side. As the rocks toppled and rolled apart, a length of blackened wood slid out, coated in mud and sand, and he quickly caught it.

The wood was about half an arm long, its charred bark covered in fine, silvery-gray lightning patterns. It felt refreshingly cool to the touch, entirely different from the wind-dried deadwood in the mountains.

[Item: Half-Section Lightning-Struck Wood]

Grade: Black iron

Description: A remnant of ancient wood struck by heavenly lightning, containing a concentration of its distinctive pure yang wood energy. It can dispel cold, baleful energy and counter cold mutated monsters such as Cold Stiffs. Dense and hard, it can be inlaid into a Shelter or made into small accessories to ward off cold corruption.

Lu Heng gripped the wood, brushing his fingertips over its uneven lightning patterns. The tearing pain in his palms slowly subsided, and his heart filled with a sense of unexpected good fortune. Lightning-struck wood had long featured in many legends about warding off evil, and all sorts of stories regarded it as the bane of sinister forces. Coming across it among these rocks today was truly rare luck. Pure yang wood energy flowed through his limbs, dispelling the bone-piercing chill accumulated over half a day's labor. He wiped the wood clean, tucked it into his shoulder bag, and gripped his hunting blade again to dig deeper for stone.

While prying loose rubble deep in the rock layer, he exposed two protrusions beneath the soil. He swept away the snow and loose mud, revealing an ordinary rough wooden treasure chest and another clad in dark metal-a Black Iron-Level Treasure Chest. Dried silt coated the chests, and their corners bore smooth marks left by prolonged scouring from flowing water, as though a flood had washed them down and buried them here long ago.

Lu Heng's brow furrowed tightly. The surrounding frozen earth was dry and hard, and only scattered flurries had fallen over the past few days. There was no way a mountain flood could have formed. These marks could only have come from flooding in the distant past.

If the flood had occurred before he arrived in this frozen land, then everything he had long believed would be utterly shaken. He had always thought this survival world had only come into existence after everyone arrived, yet the marks before him clearly proved that this land had already existed on its own for long ages.

Countless questions circled in his mind, but there were no clues at hand to verify any of them, no one to confide in, and no way to investigate the truth. Lu Heng sighed softly, suppressed his confusion, and bent down to dig away the frozen earth around the chests, dragging out the ordinary wooden one first.

The clasp opened with a light pull. Flatbreads and dried coarse grains were neatly stacked inside, with two boxes of self-heating hot pot hidden in a compartment. Ordinary wooden treasure chests mostly yielded only basic dry provisions. Finding ready-to-eat cooked food meant his luck today was truly exceptional.

After putting away all the supplies from the wooden chest, he hauled over the heavy black iron chest and forced open its metal clasp. Five items were neatly arranged inside, and his bracelet brought up item panels at the same time.

[Item: Spy Bug]

Grade: Black iron

Description: Can connect to a Shelter's energy core to continuously monitor the surroundings within a designated range. When linked to an alert component, it can identify dangerous mutated creatures in the footage, immediately sound an alarm inside the Shelter, and generate real-time danger warning markers.

Looking at the small, gray-black, insect-like device, Lu Heng understood. This was the equivalent of a surveillance camera, complete with danger alerts. It could not have been better suited to guarding the cave.

[Item: Portable Growing Box]

Grade: Black iron

Description: The box has a built-in insulated soil-storage structure and can be placed inside a Shelter. Suitable for growing various cold-resistant edible plants, unaffected by outside snowstorms or low temperatures.

[Item: Load-bearing, anti-slip protective gloves]

Grade: Black iron

Description: Soft inner lining cushions friction, while the abrasion-resistant outer layer withstands cuts from stone chips. Prevents scratches and frostbite to the hands during work while also distributing pressure during exertion, reducing the burden on the arms when prying rocks or carrying heavy objects.

Quarrying barehanded earlier had left his hands covered in wounds. These gloves addressed his biggest difficulty with the work perfectly, and Lu Heng took to them at first glance.

[Item: Mud-Clearing Anti-Inflammatory Pill]

Grade: Black iron

Description: Can be taken orally or applied externally. Quickly soothes redness, swelling, and inflammation in abrasions and cuts, prevents wounds from festering and becoming inflamed from the cold, and accelerates the healing of damaged flesh.

Each of the five supplies served its own purpose. Security, cultivation, protective gear, and healing were all covered, perfectly matching his current survival needs, and Lu Heng felt even more fortunate. He carefully packed the self-heating hot pots, dry provisions, and everything from the black iron treasure chest into his leather shoulder bag. As his fingertips rubbed the protective gloves, a great weight lifted from his mind. He would no longer have to endure sharp rubble scraping his bare hands.

He still needed a huge amount of stone for the walls, so he did not head back. Instead, he put on the brand-new gloves and continued clearing the rock pile with his hunting blade. The gloves kept out the icy stone chips and noticeably cushioned the strain. The aching in his arms diminished considerably, and his quarrying became much more efficient.

He set his sights on a huge, square block of bluestone. That single piece would equal three or four ordinary stones. Lu Heng wedged his hunting blade into a crack beneath it and slowly applied force, never expecting that ancient floodwaters had long since hollowed out the bottom of the rock layer. The frozen surface looked hard, but the foundation beneath was completely empty.

After only two or three pushes, the soil beneath it abruptly collapsed. Deprived of support, the entire block of bluestone slid down with a crash, tumbling several times along the slope and smashing through swaths of loose rock in its path. The rumbling spread along the entire mountain ravine, and the impact sent snow flying everywhere.

Lingering echoes reverberated back and forth through the mountains. Lu Heng's body abruptly stiffened, every muscle tensing in an instant as his gaze suddenly sharpened.

That had made far too much noise.