4: Chapter 4 The First Sacrifice

The furnace fire flared up, and the entire underground sacrificial site seemed to come alive.

That Gray-tailed Burrowing Rat, so thin it was nothing but skin and bone, dissolved almost the instant it fell into the furnace mouth.

There was no blood, no bone fragments, only a wisp of grayish-white smoke swallowed by the firelight. Immediately after, the lines of dark red text on the furnace wall began to change rapidly.

[Sacrifice: Gray-tailed Burrowing Rat Corpse]

[Rank: Low]

[Extracting sacrificial properties...]

[Select one of two basic kin traits]

The dark red firelight wandered across the surface of the furnace wall like patterns carved by an invisible hand.

The first line of text floated up.

[Ember Breeding: Gray-tailed Burrowing Rat reproduction efficiency slightly increased, juvenile survival rate increased, tolerance to ash and slag environments enhanced]

Closely following it, the second line of text also lit up.

[Underground Tunneling: Gray-tailed Burrowing Rat forelimb strength increased, stratum perception enhanced, digging speed increased, identification of collapses, dark layers, and cavities enhanced]

Two traits.

One favored reproduction, the other favored survival and pathfinding.

Lu Jin did not rush to choose.

He stood before the furnace, reading every word, his eyes calmer than the furnace fire.

The surrounding Gray-tailed Burrowing Rats were still lying prone, their noses pressed against the ash, even their breathing had softened.

They obviously did not understand what the words on the furnace wall meant, but they instinctively felt that the black fire before them would determine how they would live from now on.

Lu Jin looked up and glanced at this Dead Ash Mine.

Collapsed on all sides, barren of resources, there was almost nothing edible on the surface.

The biggest problem for the rat pack now was not quantity.

It was poverty.

It was hunger.

It was also weakness.

If he chose "Ember Breeding" now, the rat pack's numbers would pile up faster, but this place lacked sufficient food and safe zones.

Gray-tailed Burrowing Rats could only scrape by on slag and bone fragments in the cracks to barely stay alive; if there were twice as many, they would only die faster.

And in seven days, the competition for resource nodes would begin.

That wasn't about who could breed the most.

It was about who could survive to seize the resources.

Would Lu Jingyao make a move?

He definitely would.

That group of people at school was also waiting to watch him crash and burn.

What he lacked most right now was not rats.

It was a blade.

More accurately, it was a path that would allow his weakest kin to demonstrate their value.

Lu Jin's gaze fell back onto the line "Underground Tunneling."

Gray-tailed Burrowing Rats were weak individually; they could not fight head-on.

Rushing out to clash with popular kin like the Flame-Scaled Lizard Dragon would be no different from throwing their lives away.

But they could dig.

If they pushed the act of "digging" to the absolute extreme, even trash could become soldiers.

Tunnels, ambushes, collapses, storing food, stealing paths, covering the rear.

The underground was originally the only place where these rats could fight for their lives against others.

Lu Jin raised his hand and pressed it against the line of dark red text.

"Choose Underground Tunneling."

The furnace fire roared and coiled!

The line "Ember Breeding" was blown away like it had been scattered by an ash wind, extinguishing on the spot.

The four characters for "Underground Tunneling" suddenly flared bright, transforming into a string of fine, dense fire patterns that flew out from the furnace wall and plunged fiercely into the center of Lu Jin's brow.

The stinging pain flashed and vanished.

Immediately after, those fire patterns dispersed from his Sea of Consciousness, transforming into countless grayish-red threads that connected to the rat pack in all directions.

In the entire Dead Ash Mine, all the Gray-tailed Burrowing Rats shuddered simultaneously.

"Squeak—!"

A shrill, ear-piercing rat screech suddenly exploded throughout the mine.

The Gray-tailed Burrowing Rats that had been crawling on the ground rolled over in droves, their forelimbs digging desperately into the ash, as if something had been forcibly shoved into their bone joints.

Their claw tips turned black rapidly, their finger bones elongated section by section, and their brittle incisors gained a layer of grayish-bright luster.

Most obviously, their whiskers stood up one by one, as if scorched by fire, trembling slightly.

A few of the weakest young rats could not withstand it, convulsed a few times, and passed out cold.

But the majority held on.

Lu Jin could clearly feel that the faith, which had originally been scattered, panicked, and driven by hunger instincts, suddenly stabilized a notch.

It was still weak.

But it was no longer like sand.

It was more like a pile of ash that could barely be molded into shape.

New text appeared on the furnace wall.

[Kin trait equipped: Underground Tunneling]

[Current kin slot: Occupied]

[Note: Once a trait is equipped, it cannot be removed without loss; subsequent replacements require sacrificial overwriting]

Lu Jin stared at the line "cannot be removed without loss," a flash of understanding crossing his eyes.

As expected, it wasn't something one could just click around on.

Every choice would leave a price.

This actually made him feel more at ease.

If he could really just swap things however he wanted, this furnace would eventually make him soft.

"Get up."

Lu Jin spoke.

The voice was not loud, but following the pull of the divine domain, it fell clearly into the ears of every Gray-tailed Burrowing Rat.

The rat pack climbed up one after another.

The look in their eyes as they gazed at Lu Jin was already somewhat different from before.

The awe was deeper, and they were more focused.

Lu Jin raised his hand and pointed toward the collapsed mine wall ahead.

"Dig."

With a boom, the rat pack moved.

It wasn't the chaotic, swarming rush from before; they had clearly divided into front and back ranks.

The slightly larger ones in the front rushed over first to break the soil, while those behind cleared stones along the crevices, constantly throwing the debris backward.

As their whiskers trembled slightly, it was as if they could sense in advance where the soil was loose, where hard rock was hidden, and where digging would cause a collapse.

The speed was at least twice as fast as before.

No, far more than that.

Ash flew, gravel tumbled, and a new tunnel was extending forward at a speed almost visible to the naked eye.

Lu Jin did not just stand there watching.

He pressed down along the perspective of his divine domain, directly attaching his perception to those few tunneling rats at the front.

Darkness.

Stuffiness.

The resistance felt when the front claws scraped away the ash, the rough texture of the rock strata, the subtle changes in cold and heat in the air—all were clearly fed back into his consciousness.

This was "stratum perception."

Vague, but sufficient.

He could even roughly judge which side was emptier behind, which piece of the mine wall had wooden beams buried in it, and which spot would risk collapse if dug too deep.

This was not just about digging fast.

This was about giving a group of the weakest rats the qualifications to turn the underground into their own hunting ground.

For the first time, something other than coldness truly surfaced in Lu Jin's eyes.

Worth it.

This step had not been a mistake.

A Gray-tailed Burrowing Rat scraped a black-gray ore out of the mine wall and was about to gnaw on it instinctively, but Lu Jin suppressed it with his divine sense.

"Don't eat it."

The rat shuddered, stopped abruptly, lowered its head, and dragged the ore backward.

Another tunneling rat dug out half a piece of rotten wood and did not chew on it randomly either, but dragged it to the side.

Lu Jin swept a glance over them, and a realization formed in his mind.

Once the trait was equipped, it did not just improve digging power; it also provided a bit of basic executive capability.

At least under the constraint of his divine sense, these rats finally started to look like "kin" rather than mere wild beasts.

This was crucial.

Without discipline, no matter how many tunnels there were, they would just be a pile of scattered sand.

Lu Jin began issuing commands directly.

"Ten to a group."

"Front row clears the path, back row clears the debris."

"If you see intact timber, collect it first; stack black ore separately, leave the bones for last."

At first, the rat pack was still a bit chaotic.

When orders were passed down, they often had to pause for a beat before anyone reacted.

Lu Jin was not in a hurry.

He repeated the same instruction three times.

If they got it wrong, he would interrupt and press down again.

Once, twice, three times.

Half an hour passed, and the entire newly dug tunnel had already advanced nearly twenty zhang.

Beside the mine wall, the first batch of decent supplies had been piled up.

Forty-two pieces of black-gray ore.

Seventeen pieces of rotten wood.

Twenty-nine sections of half-rotted beast bones.

There were also a few mineral cores with higher hardness and a metallic luster on the surface that had been picked out separately.

The harvest was not huge.

But for the destitute Dead Ash Mine, this was the first batch of capital they could accumulate.

Lu Jin's gaze swept over those ores and rotten wood, and he had already started calculating in his mind.

The timber could support tunnels, build nests, and make obstacles.

Although the ore lacked sufficient sacrificial properties, it could serve as auxiliary material, accumulating over time.

Needless to say, the bones could provide the rat pack with a temporary supplement of food and could also be raw material for the next sacrifice.

He was finally no longer completely empty-handed.

In the mine, the digging continued.

A Gray-tailed Burrowing Rat's front claw suddenly stiffened, its whiskers trembled rapidly, and it let out a shrill cry toward the side.

Lu Jin instantly pressed his divine sense over.

Behind that layer of rock, it was empty.

Not a normal soil cavity.

It was some kind of more regular hollow structure.

"Stop."

The rat pack paused in unison.

The few in the front row still maintained the posture of their front claws embedded in the rock wall, not daring to dig even a single stroke more.

Lu Jin looked at that mine wall, his eyes darkening.

A naturally formed cavity would not be this regular.

It was either an old tunnel.

Or, something else was buried there.

He did not let the rat pack rush through, but instead tilted the digging angle slightly to the side.

"Cut from the left."

"Leave support, you are not allowed to break through head-on."

The rat pack turned immediately.

Gravel was peeled away bit by bit, and the mine wall became thinner and thinner as they dug.

Soon, something obviously different in color from the surrounding rock was exposed.

It was not ore.

It was stone.

The surface had traces of manual polishing.

Lu Jin's eyes flickered; he personally lowered his divine sense, guiding those few tunneling rats to continue cutting toward the edge.

A moment later, an entire stone face embedded in the mine wall was finally revealed, covered in a thick layer of ash, yet one could vaguely see carved patterns.

A ring.

Fire lines.

And a tiny furnace-shaped mark.

It was almost exactly the same as the stone slab pattern under the offering table.

Lu Jin did not let them dig it out completely right away.

He first had the back row of the rat pack clear the surrounding area, pile all the newly dug gravel and wood debris to the sides, and brought in more Gray-tailed Burrowing Rats to support from the bottom up to prevent the entire rock layer from suddenly collapsing.

This was the first time he had truly managed his divine domain as his own territory.

Not just a glance and be done with it.

But clearing it inch by inch, accumulating it bit by bit.

The rat pack got busy; dust rolled in the tunnel, and the sound of claws scraping against gravel merged into a single noise.

Those Gray-tailed Burrowing Rats, which originally only knew how to fight for bones and snatch slag, under his command, had actually managed to build a rough but effective digging system.

The front row excavated.

The middle row transported.

The back row stood guard and piled materials.

Slow, but steady.

Lu Jin stood at the high point of the wind shaft tower, taking it all in.

The suffocating pressure that had been forced upon his chest all day finally had a place to land.

School withdrew funding.

The Lu family cut off supplies.

Everyone said his path was a dead end.

But from the moment the black furnace awakened until now, just one short night, the Dead Ash Mine had already begun to move.

It was not that a wasteland could not be cultivated.

Trash kin were not born to be jokes.

As long as the direction was right.

Even the worst hand could be played into a path of survival.

In front of the mine wall, the Gray-tailed Burrowing Rats responsible for cutting the edges suddenly retreated in unison, their shrill cries filled with obvious terror.

With a soft "boom-crack" sound.

The last thin layer of rock broke.

A large amount of ash fell with a rustle.

The thing hidden behind the mine wall was finally revealed in its entirety.

That was not an ordinary old tunnel.

It was a damaged altar buried by the entire layer of ore.

The altar base had collapsed for the most part, with only one corner remaining in its original shape.

The surface was covered in cracks, with a few extinguished black stone pillars embedded around it, and in the center was a familiar circular groove, as if something was supposed to be enshrined there, but had now been forcibly dug away by someone.

In the very center of the altar, half a stone tablet was stuck crookedly in the ash.

On the face of the tablet was only a single ancient character, damaged to the point of being almost unrecognizable.

Fire.

Lu Jin's gaze fixed upon that damaged altar.