Ren Qing steadied himself and listened carefully to the excavation sounds coming from the surrounding mine tunnels. From their distance, he could roughly infer how deep they were.
Song Zongwu had likely already dug more than two thousand meters.
Next came the fist-marked tunnel at around a thousand meters, followed by the claw-marked tunnel, which was somewhat shorter.
Huang Ziwang's tunnel was the shallowest. Perhaps his poison's corrosive effect was mediocre, as it had yet to reach five hundred meters.
Ren Qing looked at the Stone Wall before him, gripped the iron pickaxe with both hands, and felt the muscles in his arms swell slightly as he borrowed force from his waist.
He had no intention of holding back.
Mainly because the physiques of the Half-Corpse Realm and Martial Human Realm were not markedly different—perhaps not even comparable to Arts that enhanced the body.
Hah!
The iron pickaxe crashed down heavily.
A crisp impact rang out. The pickaxe's wooden handle snapped in two, and the pickaxe head flew away on the remaining force.
Fortunately, Ren Qing reacted quickly with his Double Pupils. Otherwise, he would have been left with at least a bruise.
"..."
The corner of his mouth twitched. He realized he had still underestimated it.
Ren Qing replaced the pickaxe. This time, he did not dare use too much force, leaving only a shallow dent in the Stone Wall.
He gradually increased his strength, but the pickaxe still did not hold up for long.
Ren Qing simply closed his eyes and recalled everything carefully. The muscles throughout his body tensed and relaxed, while he occasionally mimicked the motion of striking with a pickaxe.
The Information Flow gave Ren Qing exceptionally fine control over his body. Otherwise, he would not have been able to wield the Great Miao Saber so deftly with such ease.
What he needed to do now was let his body learn how to swing a pickaxe.
In the neighboring mine tunnel, Huang Ziwang noticed that Ren Qing had stopped.
He could not help raising a brow. Song Zongwu had spent effort teaching him—surely he would not give up so casually?
Huang Ziwang stopped spitting venom and leaned against the Stone Wall to wait.
A moment later, the knocking began again, neither hurried nor slow.
Huang Ziwang smiled and shook his head. Just as he was about to resume digging, the knocking suddenly quickened, its commotion growing louder and louder.
How was that possible...
Shock appeared on his face. Could it be that the other party had long since become so practiced that it came naturally?
Huang Ziwang waited a while longer. He had assumed Ren Qing would soon run out of strength, yet the speed unexpectedly broke through once more.
He hurriedly spat venom to corrode the Stone Wall. If he were overtaken by a junior who was not even a Forbidden Guard, he would never be able to hold his head up again.
Ren Qing excavated for more than ten minutes before choosing to rest briefly.
He noticed that although every swing of the pickaxe could knock loose large chunks of rock, the recoil left his arms aching, and the web between his thumb and forefinger had split open.
Still, all things were difficult at the beginning. Once feeling returned to his arms, Ren Qing continued digging.
After stopping and starting for most of the day, his mine tunnel had extended several meters. Yet the originally pale-yellow rock layer had darkened slightly in color.
Ren Qing tested it with a shovel. Sure enough, the Stone Wall had become harder.
That meant that if he wanted to maintain efficiency, he had to keep improving...
He let out a long sigh, then focused his attention and lowered his head to chisel away. After a long while, his rhythm recovered once more and even improved slightly.
Ren Qing also discovered one benefit of mining: the vibrations transmitted by the pickaxe gradually spread throughout his body by instinct.
The Human Skin Book was unintentionally tempered, and a numb, tingling sensation spread across his skin.
Ren Qing dug with even greater enthusiasm. He could even see hope of advancing to Skin Refiner without consuming lifespan.
Whenever his stamina was depleted, he ate some Pig Eyes to recover, repeating the cycle over and over.
Even Huang Ziwang, provoked by him, remained in the mine tunnel for a full five hours before leaving, grumbling curses all the way out.
By the time Song Zongwu noticed something strange about Ren Qing, it was already deep into the night.
When Ren Qing came back to his senses, he discovered that he did not have even a shred of strength left. He could only lie on the ground in a miserable state, his clothes soaked through with sweat.
Song Zongwu was somewhat helpless. Ren Qing had been reluctant before, so how had he suddenly reached the point of neither eating nor drinking?
Yet the mine tunnel stretching more than ten meters could not have been faked. That showed that even the increasingly hard rock layers had failed to stop Ren Qing.
Song Zongwu dragged Ren Qing into the military tent and tossed him inside. In the blink of an eye, thunderous snoring erupted from within.
The next day.
Without needing Song Zongwu's reminder, Ren Qing first went hunting in the mountains and forests for a lone wolf, then brought some dry rations and plunged headlong into the mine tunnel.
Ren Qing could feel the Human Skin Book progressing at a visibly rapid rate. Ordinary blunt strikes would likely find it difficult to injure him now.
Over the following days, he spent every day either excavating or cultivating. However, he did get to know every Forbidden Guard in the camp.
Most of the Forbidden Guards were rather cold toward him and could not even be bothered to acknowledge him.
The Forbidden Guard who dug through rock with his claws went by the nickname Earth. The Art he cultivated resembled the Divine Feet Scripture, except that under the erosion of Aberration, he had already become half-human, half-beast.
He looked like a ground rat, while both hands had completely turned into beast claws.
Put simply, the Eerie Object within the body affected cultivators, gradually transforming them into something inhuman—and it was permanent.
There was also a Forbidden Guard named Xu Shilin. His Art seemed capable of manipulating mist, but he himself appeared and vanished like a phantom, leaving no trace.
Once Ren Qing had excavated over a hundred meters, he began preparing to try the Great Miao Saber. But to be safe, he first practiced slashing hard wooden stakes.
Just as he was practicing his saber techniques, the camp outside suddenly became extraordinarily noisy.
Ren Qing hurriedly sheathed his saber and walked over.
He saw that under the lead of a Forbidden Guard, a dense mass of more than a hundred people was approaching Camel Peak Mountain.
Yamen Runners made up only twenty or thirty percent of them. Almost all the rest were prisoners wearing shackles, while a few were dressed as Hunters.
Ren Qing noticed that the prisoners walked stiffly, as though they were being controlled by something.
The remaining Yamen Runners and Hunters still retained their wits, but their gazes toward the leading Forbidden Guard were filled with fear.
Song Zongwu raised a hand, signaling for the crowd to stop.
A smile appeared on Li Yaoyang's face. As he opened his mouth, black flying insects poured from the prisoners' eyes, ears, mouths, and noses before finally burrowing back into his body.
Dozens of prisoners collapsed to the ground as if they had lost all support, twitching violently. Some had even ceased breathing.
Song Zongwu asked with an ugly expression, "Li Yaoyang, I did not tell you to bring these people, did I?"
"Old Song, don't mind it. Considering how troublesome the Disaster Aversion Forbidden Zone is, I transferred more manpower here."
Li Yaoyang licked his lips and added, "This group of prisoners wasted away in their cells for too long, so I had no choice but to use extraordinary measures."
Song Zongwu said nothing more. He understood as well that having prisoners replace the Yamen Runners could speed up excavation severalfold.
Yet Ren Qing could not help frowning tightly, his gaze sweeping over the Hunters.
Could Song Rong be hiding among them, trying to conceal himself in plain sight? But beneath the watchful eyes of so many Forbidden Guards, that did not seem realistic.
If that was truly the case, he would find an opportunity to use the Information Flow to root him out.
Song Zongwu also realized the issue and asked, "Why are there more than a dozen Hunters?"
"The mountain villages near the Forbidden Zone are all being relocated, so some Hunters were temporarily drafted. I will pay them enough silver."
Song Zongwu nodded. Other than himself, who was in the Yin Messenger Realm, all the Forbidden Guards present had reached the Ghost Envoy Realm.
They could not delay sealing off the Forbidden Zone over a groundless fear of a snake in a cup, especially when Li Yaoyang's Gu Insects could temporarily seal the Disaster Aversion Forbidden Zone using three Arts.
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