They all have their special abilities, Cha Ming thought. I should probably show them something to make them trust me. He thought for a moment before summoning his Clear Sky Hammer, purposefully showing the hammer form before having it morph into a staff. He intentionally suppressed the power of the staff—at least, as much as he could—and used it to crush rocks into tiny pebbles, which he had orbit around him as a loose shield. Whenever he saw larger ones, he had his staff glow white hot and literally melt through the large boulders.
Beside him, Bear Two and Bear Four worked as a team. Bear Four cut through rocks with a rain of thin swords from the safety of a misty bubble, a mass of swirling steam that batted away at the boulders as they fell, redirecting the large ones and simply absorbing the smaller ones in the writhing slurry. The strange mixture of liquid and gas came from Bear Two, who used it as an extension of his body. A total of eight tentacles swatted, crushed, and batted the stones Bear Four couldn’t destroy.
They crushed, dodged, cut, and traveled, running through the deep gouges in the Shattered Lands at Bear One’s direction. Ten minutes passed before Bear One gave a two-handed signal, causing the others to cluster around him. As they did so, Bear Two changed up his shield of steaming slurry; it expanded above and covered them like a shield. Bear Four moved to the outside, using his swords to cut apart rocks too large for Bear Two to bat away.
“Bear Five, Pai Xiao, with me,” Bear One said. The mountainous man joined Bear One near a fissure in the ground. They both placed their hands on the ground, and the land began to heave.
Cha Ming soon realized what they were doing—whatever was happening that caused the lands to shift, they were accelerating it. With his attunement to earth and metal, he could sense a rich ore deposit below. He put his hand on the ground and urged the earth to shift in tandem with the others.
As land poured out, the topmost layer of rock plunged back into the earth. A central pillar roughly six feet in diameter rose up from the ground. Soon enough, large stones that were much heavier than the earth they dug up began appearing. Bear One moved those off to the side and continued his sifting, returning anything not of value into the earth to make room for more valuable ore.
“Bear Three, partial refinement,” Bear One said. “Pai Xiao, join him if you can.”
Bear Three, who’d been waiting with his spiritual hammer off to the side, began beating the rocks. Tinging sounds filled the air as the hammer struck pieces of ore, knocking aside large amounts of less valuable rock, revealing valuable metal deposits.
Cha Ming joined him. He used the Clear Sky Hammer to strike stones in tandem with Bear Three breaking apart the rocks just as quickly as the experienced refiner. With his help, they finished processing the pile, and from start to finish, their extraction took ten minutes.
“Time to go,” Bear One said once the last of the ore rocks were broken apart. The five approached the ore pile with practiced ease, each taking a sixth of the pile and leaving one for Cha Ming, who stored it in one of the lesser storage rings, completely filling the unstable space. They flew off again. By now, the quake had stopped, and they flew easily through the chasm littered with fallen rocks.
“Every few days, this area suffers a large earthquake due to shifting tectonic plates,” Bear One explained. “Precious ores are constantly forced to the surface from deep beneath the ground. Every time a seismic event takes place, we must track down exposed ores as quickly as possible.” He put his hand to his forehead for a moment, then opened his eyes toward the northwest. “There,” he said. “Dig.”
They all went to work this time. No matter what their affinity, each of them were body cultivators and had ample strength to move away debris. Small lights appeared on the ground, demarcating the area where the rocky overburden needed to be removed. Bear Two was most efficient at this, using the steaming slurry surrounding his fat body to push aside rocks. Cha Ming summoned the Clear Sky Staff in pillar form and used it to smash aside the lighter debris, forcing it out of the area. Then, joining Bear Five and Bear One again, they began extracting the ore like before.
The ore deposit was deeper this time. Bear Three processed it as it came out, and it took twenty minutes to completely extract the deposit. Though it took twice the time, the value of this deposit greatly exceeded that of the previous one. Due to the weight of the ore, Cha Ming could only fill three of his four cheaper rings before moving to the last, more expensive ring, which held his tools. Then, hesitating, he stored the rest into his Clear Sky World.
They moved again, deeper into the Shattered Lands. As they did, Cha Ming felt an increasing drain on his vitality. Bear Four, the swordsman, began to show the first signs of fatigue. He popped a high-quality vitality-replenishing pill in his mouth, which brought color back to his face.
“We were quick this time,” Bear One said to Cha Ming. “With you here, we could avoid fighting by working fast. We might even have time to get a third deposit this time, assuming we don’t find strong demons.”
The atmosphere in the group changed as they traveled deeper, their members taking vitality-replenishing pills one after another. Only Bear Five seemed
