Book 10 Chapter 3 – Laka Crystal
SEPTEMBER 29, 2017 ~ EMILYEVELAN
Hongjie was the first one to get a piece of Qianye silver. Lei Xinfeng also found his own Qianye silver. He drew several dozen circles, enough for everyone, and then began to dig in his own circle.
Digging for Qianye silver is an interesting process. The rock here is flaky, so it came off in big chunks. After deciding that there was indeed Qianye silver within the chunk, the miner must take a small hammer and slowly break away the rock in flakes until he reached the Qianye silver.
Lei Xinfeng could accurately determine which chunk of rock contained Qianye Silver, so he quickly found one right.
The fossil of the ancient bug really did look like a leaf. Even now, it had a completely preserved shape, as if it was a metal. After extracting it carefully from the rock, the Qianye silver turned out to be a beautiful insect; it was thin and the size of a palm, with an intact head and body, and eight tiny legs.
In a short notice, Lei Xinfeng already extracted eight pieces of Qianye silver.
The others around him also began to see results. However, because the Qianye silver was so thin, it was easy to miss. During the process of flaking, it was likely to break open chunks of rock with nothing in it, or on the other hand, miss a piece of Qianye silver that was hiding between two flakes. For this reason, although they had the circles that Lei Xinfeng drew, their gathering speeds were inferior compared to Lei Xinfeng’s.
Generally, there were three to five meters between each circle, all the way into the interior of the tunnel. Lei Xinfeng gathered in the deepest areas and he lit a pile of oil wood both for warmth and for light.
Song Qiao carefully peeled away the layers of rock. He was slow but had the steadiest hands. He found that as long as it was within the circle that Lei Xinfeng drew, as long as he closely investigated any rocks he broke off, it would definitely have a Qianye silver within. In very little time, he obtained three Qianye silvers and damaged two more. The completeness of a sheet of Qianye silver is very important; its value drops immensely when shattered.
For this gathering, the sheet of Qianye silver belonged to whoever found it. Because there wasn’t a percentage taken away, everyone did their best.
When Lei Xinfeng obtained his tenth sheet, the runner-up was Song Qian, who had managed to gather five intact sheets of Qianye silver, as well as three broken ones. He was satisfied. In the previous times he came here, he only managed three intact sheets of Qianye silver in a day, with the rest being damaged. For this reason, he believed that Qianye silver is hard to obtain.
They were only staying here for ten days. After ten days, they would switch places to mine Laka crystals, the one Xin Zhaolun was most interested in.
Ten days isn’t very long when everyone was working hard and wishing that before they left, they’d obtain ever greater amounts of Qianye silver.
After some ten hours of labor, Lei Xinfeng gathered over four hundred intact sheets of Qianye silver. He had no broken sheets because he abandoned them as soon as one got damaged; he’d rather move on to the complete sheets of Qianye silver.
Every sheet of Qianye silver needed extreme patience to extract owing to its fragility. Lei Xinfeng carefully placed each sheet that he gathered into a small box. Because Qianye silvers are so thin, he could fit fifty in each box, and after ten hours, he’d filled eight of these boxes.
In the same amount of time, Song Qiao obtained a hundred sheets, along with four hundred more damaged sheets of Qianye silver. This discrepancy was hardly strange; Song Qiao did not have Lei Xinfeng’s ability to identify which layer the Qianye silver was in and got careless in his flaking. Even with so many failures, he was nonetheless happy. He had obtained much more Qianye silvers this time than his other two times combined.
The others also obtained a minimum of fifty or sixty sheets. Everyone was satisfied because according to Song Qiao, one sheet of Qianye silver could be traded for one or more Yin Ring. If they were lucky and met a Monarch that desperately needed the sheets, they could trade a sheet for two or three Yin Rings instead.
Eat, sleep, mine. In these ten days, no one dared to slack, except for Lei Xinfeng who could afford to set aside time to cultivate and rest. The others spent most of their time on mining. The chances of being able to mine this efficiently here were rare, and none of them were willing to abandon this chance.
Although Lei Xinfeng worked very hard as well, he still spent much less time than others; however, his gains were still vastly more than everyone else. His mining day was only around ten hours. He used the rest to cultivate and sleep, or practice with his Lightning Stamp and Chaos Wheel. Even mining for only ten hours a day, he still managed to gather five thousand intact sheets of Qianye silver over ten days.
Other than Lei Xinfeng, the next highest was Song Qiao, who obtained two thousand intact Qianye silvers, along with countless other broken sheets.
After cleaning up for half a day, Song Qiao led the group on another trip to the next mining spot.
The Laka crystals node was far from the location of the Qianye silver. Although it was on the same mountain, it was all the way on the other side. It took two days to reach it.
When Lei Xinfeng arrived at the node, he immediately understood that this stone required the miner to dig into the wall along veins. Countless people around came here, with rubble scattered all over the place. The entire wall was pocketed with tunnels, some deep and some shallow. The rubble on the ground piled into a small hill.
“Haha, it’s a famous spot for Laka crystals mining. Many Monarchs came here,” Song Qiao said. “Everyone, be careful. If you see someone, do not engage. There are many newly ascended Monarchs that come here to gather Laka crystals for their Hidden gates.
“Others are like Xin Zhaolun, Ninth Ring Sages who came to prepare materials in advance prior to their ascension.”
Lei Xinfeng understood that these Sages were like him; they were all Sages that believed that they could ascend. People like Jin Daya would never come and dig Laka for no reason. They had no hope of ascending, and they were already satisfied with becoming a Ninth Ring Sage.
Laka crystals were a kind of crystal that must be mixed with Biyasi and the Empty Crystal in order to create the main frame of the Hidden Gate, which is also why Laka crystals were a material that Monarchs needed no matter what.
It was a green crystal as thick as a pinky finger, and as long as one inch. It’s buried within the rocks in clusters. Either no Laka crystals were found, or a whole cluster of it appeared all at once. That’s why there were holes of all sizes in the walls. Everyone who came here relied completely on luck. Even if they dug randomly, they could still find crystals.
Lei Xinfeng peered closely at the wall, but he could not see any light. The wall was completely empty of ores, and not a speck of light could be seen.
“It seems this place has been scoured clean…I don’t know if there’s any more,” Lei Xinfeng said regretfully. Xin Zhaolun became nervous.
“Clean? Ah Feng, are you serious?” He showed a hopeless expression.
Song Qiao smiled. “It would be strange if there’s any left. This layer has been empty for a long time. Follow me, I know where we can find more.” He flew up parallel to the rock face. Everyone followed him
There was a huge cave just out of sight. It looked like a dog gnawed on it; the walls sunk into the cave unnaturally. It was around ten meters high and twenty meters wide at the largest, a very large cave mouth.
Song Qiao laughed. “Once, a Monarch found a massive vein and dug out this tunnel. He used these Laka crystals and traded for all the materials he needed for the Hidden Gate. He got enough for three Gates. Afterwards, we call him the Monarch of Three Gates. Everyone else uses one gate, and he uses three! He used the remaining Laka crystals to amass a large amount of Yin Rings and raised an army of subordinates, all Ninth Ring Sages.”
Xin Zhaolun couldn’t believe it. “Three Hidden Gates? How much materials would that take? Terrifying!”
“Three Hidden Gates,” Song Qiao confirmed. “With so many Gates and subordinates, he could continue to gather materials. Wealth begets wealth, and he’s a very wealthy man. He’s quite famous among Monarchs.”
“He found the vein here?” Lei Xinfeng asked.
“Correct. He tunneled in, and until now, this supply of Laka crystals still haven’t been exhausted, despite so many people coming here. Alright, let’s go search ourselves. We’ll relying on you again, Ah Feng,” Song Qiao said, and then cracked a joke. “Perhaps we’ll be able to find a large vein and get rich too!”
It was a pleasant thought, but as Lei Xinfeng wandered in, he found that this place has been cleaned out too. Of course, since as soon as a vein of Laka crystal, an essential material for Monarchs, was found, it was simply unrealistic to expect much to be left.
A long way into the tunnel, Lei Xinfeng still hadn’t found anything, not even a small node. “Let’s go out instead. This part of the wall has been scoured clean, but I believe that as long as there are still Laka crystals here, I can find it.”
Everyone agreed and followed Lei Xinfeng out.
Lei Xinfeng decided to utterly ignore this section of the wall and flew further along. Soon, he reached an ice wall that blocked his path. “Destroy this wall; let’s look on the other side.”
Song Qiao went himself, destroying the part of the ice layer that was connected to the rock. Soon, they came to another wall with some scattered shallow holes.
Xin Zhaolun looked worried. “Someone dug here already, but only a little. Maybe there nothing here.”
Here’s another chapter to show that I have not died. I’m just really busy. Ignore the mistakes; they should be fixed as Blacksheep starts catching up.