Mining Brings Me Joy

Ren Qing steadied his mind, listening closely to the sounds of digging echoing from the surrounding mine shafts, gauging their approximate depths from the distance.

Song Zongwu should have already dug past two thousand meters.

Next was the fist-marked mine shaft at around a thousand meters, followed by the slightly shallower claw-marked shaft.

Huang Ziwang's shaft was the shallowest, likely because his toxin's corrosive effect was mediocre, so it barely reached five hundred meters.

Ren Qing stared at the stone wall before him, gripping the iron pickaxe with both hands. The muscles in his arms began to swell slightly as he borrowed strength from his waist.

He didn't intend to hold anything back.

The main reason was that the difference in physique between the Half-Corpse Realm and the Martial Human Realm wasn't significant, not even matching the enhancement from body-reinforcing techniques.

Ha!

The iron pickaxe slammed down heavily.

A crisp clang rang out as the wooden handle snapped in two, the pickaxe head flying off from the residual force.

Fortunately, Ren Qing reacted in time thanks to his Double Pupils, or he'd at least have a nasty bruise.

"..."

The corner of his mouth twitched as he realized he'd still underestimated things.

Ren Qing swapped to a new pickaxe handle. This time, he didn't dare use too much force, so he only left a shallow dent in the stone wall.

He gradually increased his strength, but the pickaxe still didn't last long.

Ren Qing simply closed his eyes and focused on recalling, his entire body's muscles alternately tensing and relaxing as he occasionally mimicked the motion of striking.

The Information Flow gave Ren Qing exceptional control over his body—otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to wield the Great Miao Saber so effortlessly.

What he needed to do now was make his body learn how to swing the pickaxe.

In the neighboring mine shaft, Huang Ziwang noticed Ren Qing had stopped.

He couldn't help raising an eyebrow. For someone Song Zongwu had bothered to personally instruct, giving up so easily seemed unlikely.

He stopped spewing venom and leaned against the stone wall to wait.

After a moment, the sound of striking resumed, still unhurried.

Huang Ziwang shook his head with a smile and was about to continue digging when suddenly the rhythm of the strikes began to quicken, the noise growing louder and louder.

How is that possible...

His expression shifted to shock. Could the other party have already mastered it through practice?

Huang Ziwang waited a while longer, expecting Ren Qing to tire out soon, but instead, the speed broke through again.

He quickly spat out more venom to corrode the stone. If he got caught up by a junior who wasn't even a Forbidden Guard yet, he'd never be able to hold his head up again.

Ren Qing kept digging for over ten minutes before finally taking a break.

He noticed that while each swing of the pickaxe chipped off large chunks of rock, his arms were jarred painfully, and the skin on his palms had split open.

But every beginning is hard. Once his arms regained feeling, Ren Qing continued digging.

After stopping and starting for most of the day, his shaft had reached several meters deep, but the originally pale yellow rock layer had darkened slightly.

Ren Qing tested it with a shovel—sure enough, the stone wall had grown harder.

That meant to maintain efficiency, he had to keep improving...

He let out a long sigh, then focused his attention and buried himself in the digging. After a long while, the rhythm returned, even improving slightly.

Ren Qing also discovered a benefit to mining: the vibrations from the pickaxe were instinctively dispersed throughout his body.

The Human Skin Book involuntarily began to train itself, his skin tingling with a numbing sensation.

Ren Qing threw himself into digging with even more enthusiasm. He even saw hope of advancing to Skin Refiner without consuming his lifespan.

Whenever his stamina ran out, he'd eat some Pig Eyes to recover, repeating the cycle.

His intensity even spurred Huang Ziwang to stay in the shaft for a full five hours before finally leaving, cursing under his breath the whole way.

By the time Song Zongwu noticed something was off with Ren Qing, it was already deep into the night.

Ren Qing snapped back to reality and found he had no strength left at all. He collapsed onto the ground in a sorry state, his clothes soaked with sweat.

Song Zongwu looked somewhat helpless. Ren Qing had been reluctant before—how had he suddenly reached the point of forgetting to eat and drink?

But the mine shaft, now expanded over ten meters, was no lie, proving that even the increasingly hard rock layers hadn't stopped him.

Song Zongwu dragged Ren Qing and tossed him into the military tent. Within moments, thunderous snoring echoed from inside.

The next day.

Without needing Song Zongwu's reminder, Ren Qing first went into the forest to hunt a lone wolf, then grabbed some dry rations and plunged headfirst into the mine shaft.

Ren Qing could feel the progress of the Human Skin Book at a visible rate. Ordinary blunt force strikes probably couldn't hurt him much anymore.

Over the following days, he spent every moment either digging or cultivating, though he did manage to get acquainted with all the Forbidden Guards in the camp.

Most of the Forbidden Guards were rather cold toward him, some not even bothering to acknowledge him.

The Forbidden Guard who used claws to dig through the rock wall went by the nickname "Earth." His cultivation technique was similar to the Divine Feet Scripture, but under the erosion of his mutation, he had become half-man, half-beast.

Its appearance was like that of a soil rat, but its hands had completely transformed into beast claws.

To put it simply, it was the influence of the Eerie Object within the body, causing the cultivator to gradually change into something non-human—and permanently at that.

There was also a Forbidden Guard named Xu Shilin, whose technique could supposedly manipulate mist, but he was elusive and left no trace.

When Ren Qing had dug over a hundred meters, he began preparing to try the Great Miao Saber, but to be safe, he first practiced chopping on hardwood stakes.

Just as he was practicing his saber techniques, the camp suddenly became extremely noisy.

Ren Qing quickly sheathed his saber and walked over.

He saw that, led by a Forbidden Guard, a dense crowd of over a hundred people was heading toward Camel Peak Mountain.

Among them, yamen runners made up only twenty or thirty percent; the rest were mostly prisoners wearing shackles, along with some dressed as hunters.

Ren Qing noticed that the prisoners moved stiffly, as if under some kind of control.

The remaining yamen runners and hunters still retained their wits, but their gazes toward the leading Forbidden Guard were filled with terror.

Song Zongwu raised his hand to signal the crowd to stop.

Li Yaoyang smiled. As he opened his mouth, black insects surged from the prisoners' eyes, ears, noses, and mouths, finally crawling back into his body.

Dozens of prisoners collapsed to the ground as if their support had been cut, convulsing; some had even stopped breathing.

Song Zongwu's face darkened as he asked, "Li Yaoyang, I didn't tell you to bring these people, did I?"

"Old Song, don't worry about it. Considering how troublesome the Disaster Aversion Forbidden Zone is, I just allocated some extra manpower."

Li Yaoyang licked his lips and added, "These prisoners have been wasting away in their cells for too long, so I had to use unconventional methods."

Song Zongwu said no more. He knew in his heart that using prisoners instead of yamen runners would speed up the digging several times over.

Ren Qing couldn't help but frown, his gaze sweeping over the hunters.

Could Song Rong be mixed in among them, trying to use this as cover? But that would be impossible under the watchful eyes of so many Forbidden Guards, wouldn't it?

If that were the case, he would find an opportunity to use the Information Flow to catch him.

Song Zongwu had also realized the problem. He asked, "Why are there over a dozen hunters?"

"The mountain villages near the forbidden zone all need to be evacuated, so I temporarily pulled some hunters. I'll pay them in full."

Song Zongwu nodded. Among the Forbidden Guards present, aside from himself who was in the Yin Messenger Realm, the rest had all reached the Ghost Envoy Realm.

They couldn't let baseless fears delay the sealing of the forbidden zone. Besides, with Li Yaoyang's Gu insects, they could temporarily seal the Disaster Aversion Forbidden Zone with three techniques.

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