Cha Ming nodded. He hesitated, then took away a tenth of the remaining pile, half as much as them. “My storage is full too,” he lied.
Bear One looked at him for a while, as if to say something. “You are new here. I guess it makes sense you didn’t bring enough storage rings.” He looked back at Bears Two through Five. “You guys go on ahead. I need to talk to Bear Six here. Alone.”
They did as he asked. Once they were out of sight, and due to the nature of their terrain, out of soul sight, Bear One spoke again. “Look, we are all part of a team. I know you have secrets—we all have them. But…” he said, pointing to the small mountain. “If you’ve got a way to take that, I don’t want you hiding that from us. Large storage treasures are expensive, I know that, but it is a big haul.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cha Ming said. He moved to walk away, but Bear One put his strong hand on his shoulder.
“Sure, you don’t know what I’m talking about,” Bear One said. “Just like I know you only had four of those garbage storage treasures and one good one, much less than we did. Yet you somehow stored three times as much weight as you should have been able to.”
Cha Ming’s eyes narrowed. He thought for a moment, then released the veil hiding his strength. His body cultivation climbed to the peak of marrow refining, and his qi to late core formation. Since the time for games was over, Cha Ming even released the seal on the Clear Sky Staff, allowing it to radiate the aura of a transcendent treasure. Then he walked up to the pile of life-leaching gold and stored it.
Bear One grinned. “See, that wasn’t so bad now, was it?”
“I could end you,” Cha Ming said. “End all of them. And no one would know what happened.”
“But you won’t,” Bear One said, still grinning. “It is not your way. I can tell.” Then he licked his lips. “That storage treasure. Can you hide it from them?”
Cha Ming hesitated, then nodded again.
“Then I have a business proposal you might want to consider. You see, when we are north of the wall, our storage treasures get inspected by Bastion’s city guard, so we have no choice but to sell it to them at a steep discount.”
“Your point?” Cha Ming asked.
“My point is that if you can smuggle what we find, we won’t have to pay taxes on them,” Bear One said.
Cha Ming shook his head. “They’ll notice if we don’t bring them ore.”
“Then it’s a good thing we will bring them record amounts,” Bear One said. “As for the rest of the ore, they don’t need to know about it. We all keep your secret, and in exchange for bringing the ore past the wall and depositing it in safe storage for us, you will get a forty-percent cut.”
“That seems like a losing exchange,” Cha Ming said.
“It does,” Bear One said, “but a sixth of the original amount is initially yours. In addition, we would need to pay a twenty-percent tax. But that’s nothing compared to the need to buy storage treasures. Here, they get very expensive. Those unstable ones they gave you? When they break, they won’t give you new ones. You will need to buy them, at many times the market price. Stable ones are even more expensive. They don’t let you take more than one storage treasure with you for a reason: They want to gouge you as much as possible while you are here. Hell, those vitality-replenishing potions they supply everyone are way overpriced too. We might not need to buy them, but those weaker miners? Well, let’s just say they are not here because mining is their life’s pursuit. They are desperate, and this city takes advantage of that.”
Cha Ming tapped his fingers on his chin as he thought on it. “We’d need a contract. To make sure no one goes against their word. I want the strictest confidentiality, both on my identity and my abilities.”
“Consider it done,” Bear One said. He activated his qi, and to Cha Ming’s surprise, a golden paper appeared before them. It wasn’t formed from the earth or metal qi as Cha Ming had seen him use earlier, but from a different, golden qi. “I’m a prospector. I use earth, metal, and karma to predict where to find the best ores. Contracts are part and parcel with that.”
Cha Ming grabbed the sheet of paper and noted all the clauses. He noticed six spots for signatures. Any signatories would be sworn to secrecy.
“All right, then,” Cha Ming said, signing with a drop of blood from his finger, his soul infusing the blood drop to authenticate the document with Pai Xiao’s presence. Bear One did the same.
“We won’t store anything beyond this pile this time,” Bear One said. “But next time we go out, we will do what we can to harvest as much as possible. With your strange ability to scare away beasts, and your storage abilities, we will be able to push much deeper than ever before. We’ll be set for life in a few months’ time.”
“I have a month,” Cha Ming said. “After that, I need to leave.”
“I can work with that,” Bear One said. They shook hands, and the two men flew off, chasing after the other four. Though Cha Ming needed to look for the Gold Source Marrow, he could hardly think of a better way to look for it. Besides, cultivation was expensive. He might as well make spirit stones while he had a chance.
Chapter 24: Exploration
“No beasts today,” Bear One said, grinning as he stored a portion of his ore. “Lucky.”
He was right. They’d been harvesting ore for weeks, and despite Cha Ming’s exceptional abilities at repelling
