12: Chapter 12 Places Others Don't Want

The wind in the rift grew hotter the further down it went.

Lu Jin pressed his fingertips against the gray-iron soil layer, his palms clearly feeling the heat pushing up from the depths of the earth—steady, long, and carrying the dull pulse found only in the depths of the mineral layers.

He raised his hand and waved.

"Digging Squad, cut downwards."

"Transport Team, leave supports, collect fallen sand."

"Ambush Squad, seal the entrance, erase tracks."

As the bone clacker sounded, over seven hundred Gray-tailed Burrowing Rats scattered instantly.

Above the surface, the Unified Exam trial had barely begun for half a quarter of an hour, and the Collapsed Star Mining Field was already in chaos. Firelight, thunder-bolts, stone spears, and wind blades exploded continuously from the distant mineral vein areas, and the leaderboard suspended in the sky was refreshing rapidly.

[Real-time Leaderboard]

[Ji Mingxiao: 41]

[Lu Jingyao: 36]

[Lin Ce: 29]

...

[Lu Jin: 0]

Many candidates were looking up at the board.

Only Lu Jin didn't look a second time.

The Abandoned Zone beneath his feet was considered unlucky even by the poorest teams. The area around the rift entrance was chillingly empty, with only a few crooked warning steles buried in the ash, as if forgotten for many years.

As soon as the Tunneling Rats' front claws hit the ground, they gouged an opening in the gray-iron soil layer.

With the "Underground Tunneling" ability, the rat pack was astonishingly fast in this crumbling layer. The front four specialized in opening the path, the rear rows trimmed the slopes and cleared debris along the edges, and further back, two teams of Transport Rats dragged bone ropes and mineral hooks, clearing the excavated rubble to both sides in heaps.

The Red-Eyed Rat ran at the very front.

It didn't scurry around randomly; it kept its ears pressed against the cave wall, listening the whole way, and occasionally flicked its tail, causing the Tunneling Rats to immediately cut half a foot to the left. Three times in a row, the positioning was astonishingly accurate.

Lu Jin followed it down into the rift.

The grayish-black slope extended all the way into the underground, and beneath his feet was full of loose mineral beams and collapsed iron-gray soil. The wind from the depths carried a dry heat, blowing against his face like it was being scrubbed by sandpaper.

When they had dug to the sixth zhang, a Tunneling Rat in the front row suddenly stopped.

The soil layer beneath its claws suddenly sank, revealing a ring of blackened stone edges.

Lu Jin's eyes shifted, and he raised his hand to press down.

"Don't break through, cut along the edge."

The rat pack immediately changed course.

The loose soil peeled away in circles, and soon, a section of an old well wall was revealed. The well wall was built of black stone; the stone surface had long been scorched and cracked, but the edges still retained dense, circular grooves, like some kind of ancient structure for ventilation and heat conduction.

Half a foot further down, fine gray sand slid out with a "whoosh."

The sand shimmered with an iron luster as it hit the ground. The grains were fine, and touching them with his fingertips gave a cold, heavy sensation. At the bottom of the sand, there were bits of dark red stardust, as if it had been refined by fire many times.

A Gray-tailed Burrowing Rat instinctively wanted to gnaw on it, but Lu Jin kicked it away and squatted down to grab a handful.

tawan iron sand.

Good stuff.

This sand could stabilize tunnels, strengthen bones, and serve as a base material for bone-iron composites. If the batch of Fire-Maned Mastiff bone armor fragments and fire-patterned blades were mixed with it, their hardness could be upgraded by at least one level.

The Transport Team was already starting to get restless.

Lu Jin gave the order directly: "Separate into three piles."

"Collect fine sand into bags, pick out the stardust separately, and don't break the black stone ring."

The rat pack quickly got busy.

They used their front claws to scoop the sand and bone armor fragments as shovels, pushing the tawan iron sand into temporary leather bags sewn from Fire-Maned Mastiff hides. Those leather bags had originally held fire liquid; now cleaned and dried, they were just right for storing the tawan iron sand.

In the time it took for half an incense stick to burn, the Transport Team had piled up a dozen bags of tawan iron sand by the well mouth.

The faith lines were also stabilizing bit by bit.

Lu Jin could clearly feel that the rat pack's emotions in this underground area were very similar to those in the Dead Ash Mine. Awe was rising, restlessness was subsiding; once this bunch of creatures smelled the scent of "being able to survive," they would be more docile than anyone.

A whistling sound suddenly came from above the rift.

A few flying familiars swept across the zenith, their wing gusts sweeping dust downwards. Someone glanced towards the edge of the rift, and a sneer drifted down with the wind.

"They really dug into the Abandoned Zone."

"Is this guy crazy?"

"Hanging a zero on the leaderboard, when the time comes, there won't even be a place to cry."

Lu Jin didn't even lift his head.

The Red-Eyed Rat, however, looked up at the top of the rift and let out an extremely low grinding sound from its mouth.

Lu Jin glanced at it.

"Remember their scent."

The Red-Eyed Rat's ears flicked lightly, and it turned and charged into the deeper cave.

The old well wall was just a shell; there was a path inside.

The black stone ring broke into two sections further down, and a slanted gap opened at the bottom, with hot wind blowing out from it. The Tunneling Rats continued to cut downwards along the gap; the soil layer became increasingly dry, and there were more and more red veins in the ore.

At the ninth zhang, the cave suddenly brightened.

It wasn't fire.

It was fungus.

An entire patch of grayish-white fungus was clinging to the black stone wall. Each cluster was the size of a fist, with dark red fire patterns curled at the edges, and the surface pulsed, as if breathing. When the hot current in the cave blew, those fungal clusters would light up with tiny sparks, the specks quickly dimming again.

The Gray-tailed Burrowing Rats all stopped in unison.

A few adult rats couldn't help but lean forward. As soon as their nose tips touched the mycelium, the short hair around their mouths curled up with a "hiss," scaring them into immediately shrinking back.

Lu Jin squatted down. He didn't touch it directly with his hand, instead using a piece of bone blade to pick away the outermost layer of mycelium.

As soon as the bone blade touched it, a layer of gray fire formed on the surface, but it didn't burn intensely; it was like warming bones over a gentle fire.

The wanji ember furnace trembled slightly in his Sea of Consciousness.

The black fragments also grew hot in response.

Resonance.

It was even more obvious than the incense ash in the ruined altar.

There was finally a glimmer of real brightness in Lu Jin's eyes.

grey fire fungus.

This thing could be eaten, raised, and used as sacrificial material. Gray fungus was cold-leaning, while grey fire fungus was dry-leaning; growing together with the underground heat veins, it perfectly filled the gap of the monotonous food and insufficient heat sources in the Dead Ash Mine.

"Don't eat it raw."

"Scrape it off, pile it by the heat vent."

The Digging Squad continued to expand the cave, and the Transport Team used bone armor fragments to scrape off the grey fire fungus bit by bit, piling them into three small heaps. The Ambush Squad stood guard in the back, resetting the excavated black stone rings on both sides of the cave entrance to block light and wind.

Soon, the first batch of grey fire fungus was slightly shriveled by the hot wind, and the dark red fire patterns on the surface slowly softened.

An Ambush Rat with an injured front leg was signaled by Lu Jin to go over and try a bite.

It stiffened at first, then the fur all over its body puffed up slightly, and a string of low purring sounds rolled out from its throat. Looking at that front leg again, the wound that had originally been scorched and cracked by fire liquid was actually closing at a speed visible to the naked eye; at the very least, it was no longer bleeding.

The rat pack suddenly became restless.

Lu Jin raised his hand and pressed down.

"Eat by team."

The bone clacker sounded one short and one long; the Transport Team went first.

Another sound, and the Digging Squad rotated in.

Finally, the Ambush Squad.

The cave was suddenly filled with the sounds of tiny gnawing. The grey fire fungus clusters were eaten away bit by bit, but the red light in the rat pack's eyes grew brighter the more they ate, and their fatigue was clearly fading. A few young rats that had originally been shivering in the back also poked their heads out, surrounding a small piece of fungal meat and gnawing until their faces were covered in gray fire.

The leaderboard was still refreshing in the sky.

The line with Lu Jin's name still hung at zero.

But by his feet, over a dozen bags of tawan iron sand had already been piled up, and seventy percent of the three large patches of grey fire fungus had been cleared.

Deeper inside, that heat vein was still there.

He stood up and walked inward along the direction where the hot wind was strongest.

At the end of the excavated mineral layer was a natural rift. The rift was not wide, only allowing one person to pass through sideways, but a continuous stream of heat waves was spraying out from inside. The walls were scorched black, and in many places, a layer of gray-bright, glaze-like shell had grown. Along his feet were fine red mineral flow patterns, winding all the way into the deeper darkness.

Several half-buried stone slabs stood beside the rift.

The stone slabs were very old, but the edges were trimmed very neatly. They were carved with circles of inward-converging patterns, which were somewhat similar to the fire rings of the altar beneath the Dead Ash Mine. Further down, there were a few carved lines that looked like claw marks—three short and one long, arranged neatly.

bone clacker.

Lu Jin's pupils shrank slightly.

Someone here had used a command rhythm similar to that of the rat pack.

Underground civilization.

As soon as this thought crossed his mind, the wanji ember furnace in his Sea of Consciousness hummed slightly, the dark fire on the furnace wall seemingly licking something silently.

Lu Jin did not rashly explore deeper.

The Unified Exam had just begun, and the meager assets he had were not enough to touch unknown ruins. What he should do most right now was to turn this entire heat vein and fungus area into his own outpost first.

"Take this heat rift as the center."

"Open three layers of cave chambers."

"The upper layer for injured rats, the middle layer for sand storage, the lower layer for cultivating fungus."

"Make the cave entrance narrow, keep one line for the main path, and bury all other paths with false layers."

Upon hearing the order, the rat pack scattered immediately.

The Digging Squad cut outwards along both sides of the heat rift, opening up circles of semi-circular side chambers. The Transport Team dragged the tawan iron sand to the middle layer, using bone ropes and black stone rings to enclose the material storage area, and pressed layers of iron sand and wet ash at the cave entrance, making the supports as hard as stone slabs. The Ambush Squad followed the path they had come, backfilling the shallow pits and erasing most of the claw marks, leaving only a few intentionally shallow tunnel traces.

The Red-Eyed Rat ran back and forth at the very front, occasionally letting out short chirps, and the batch of Ambush Rats behind it actually followed its repositioning, guarding the most suitable dark crevices and slope corners.

Lu Jin stood by the heat rift, feeling this temporary outpost take shape bit by bit.

The leaderboard overhead was still lagging behind in an unsightly manner.

Yet he was not in the slightest hurry.

Those red and blue dots on the surface looked lively, but there were too many people fighting for them, and they were more troublesome to defend. These few things beneath the Abandoned Zone, however, could provide all the food, materials, and shelter he needed for the next few days in one go.

The tawan iron sand could strengthen supports and tools.

The grey fire fungus could bridge the food gap and also heal wounds.

The natural heat vein could serve as a warm nest, dry cave tunnels, for cultivating fungus, and for hiding people.

This was the real first pot of gold in the Collapsed Star Mining Field.

A handful of crushed ash suddenly fell from above.

Lu Jin looked up.

From the direction of the outer shallow cave, a few very faint human voices came; they were somewhat muffled through the soil layer, but clear enough.

"The rat hole is right here."

"I told you that loser wouldn't go to fight for surface points; he would only dig underground."

Another female voice rang out coldly.

"The entrance has been freshly turned, the heat is still there, follow it down."

Lu Jin's eyes darkened.

Someone had followed the shallow cave down.