The other four were rubbing their hands expectantly.
They hopped into the cavern, which measured a full thirty feet wide at its narrowest point. Like the earth they’d dug through, the walls were made of shale, though this one was unbroken by the constant digging on the outside.
“Do you think it’s safe down here?” Cha Ming said, glancing worriedly at the walls. “The plates might shift again.”
Bear One shook his head. “The tremor has already passed. It will be at least two more days until the next one. We have half a day to wander.”
Cha Ming accepted the answer and followed the experienced men down the tunnel. The fissure didn’t run straight; it went deeper. Soon they discovered ore sticking out of the walls. Cha Ming moved to collect some, but Bear One shook his head.
“If we dig into the walls, we might destabilize the tunnel,” Bear One explained. “The risk is great, so we do not dare dig unless the value is high.” He shook his head as he looked at the ore, which was of a similar grade to what they’d found earlier. “This is the least of prizes we can find down here.”
They walked for hours, refusing to consider even more valuable ores. At one point, they passed a vein of life-leaching iron, a high-grade ore that could be used to forge late-core treasures. Apparently that still wasn’t valuable enough. The men didn’t pause in the slightest. Cha Ming’s heart pounded in anticipation.
Finally, when it seemed like they’d need to turn around and gather that last vein, the fissure opened up into a cave. The cave was a full two hundred feet wide and circular, with many fissures leading out in different directions. At the center of the cave was a crystal that jutted out from the ground below. Cha Ming’s heart raced as a thought crossed his mind: Was this the Gold Source Marrow he’d been searching for all this time?
It turned out not to be. Despite the matching aura, whatever was down here wasn’t on the same grade of existence. Elemental Source Marrow, he’d realized, was of a transcendent nature.
“Spirits around us, what a wondrous sight,” Bear One said, sighing in amazement as he walked up to the crystal column.
“What is it?” Cha Ming asked, walking up beside him.
“It’s crystalized gold evanescence,” one of the men said.
Cha Ming was surprised to discover that it was Bear Four who said it, and not Bear One. The man had little talent for mining, ores, or smithing.
Seeing the men look at him questioningly, Bear Four shrugged. “I read about it in an old book. They say it’s one of the best things to purify one’s metal qi. Just holding a piece will make your qi so sharp you can cut peak-core treasures with it.
“How much do you need?” Bear One asked.
“I can only handle a little,” Bear Four said awkwardly. “A fist is more than enough, and this? This is a small mountain. A fist weighs a hundred thousand jin, and this mountain is much more than we can carry.”
“Its value is great,” Bear One said. “I have not heard of this crystal ore, but I can tell its worth from its treasure halo.” As a prospector, he had the ability to evaluate metallic materials and treasures. “Tell me, Bear Six, how much can this storage device of yours take?”
The men looked at him expectantly. Thus far, he’d revealed something akin to twenty times the size of peak storage treasure. Normally, physical space was most important, but when the weight in a storage device grew too large, it destabilized.
“Let’s find out,” Cha Ming muttered.
They approached the mountain, Bear One doing so first. He took out a strange instrument, which looked a bit like a hammer focus, though it was smaller and brighter. It transformed into a tiny hammer with a sharp edge. Bear One tapped the crystal, which let out a sharp hum. He repeated the tapping, until finally, a thumb-sized piece broke off. He picked it up one handed with great difficulty and handed it to Bear Four. The air around the swordsman came to life as his power oozed out from within him and into a thin one-millimeter aura.
Cha Ming whistled. “Pseudo domain. Not bad.”
Bear One gave him an appraising look and nodded.
“Yes, this is a very valuable treasure indeed,” Bear One said. “Let’s hurry up and extract it.” He walked up to the crystal and began pounding at its flaws with his little hammer, breaking off tiny pieces with each strike. Cha Ming collected them as they fell. The hammer blows grew louder and louder, and the chamber seemed to tremble.
After breaking off several hundred pieces, Bear One frowned and looked up. The shaking didn’t stop. “It shouldn’t be so,” he muttered. He waited, but instead of abating, the shaking grew even more violent. The ceiling above them began to crack, and to everyone’s surprise, jagged rocks started poking out from the ground.
Cha Ming’s heart grew cold. “The demons weren’t scared of us. They were scared of this. The quaking isn’t over.”
Bear One nodded gravely. “We need to get out of here as soon as possible. It is not safe.”
Outside, rocks could only fall from precipices overhead. Remaining underground where the earth shifted unpredictably, however, was suicidal. The slightest shift in the earth would crush them like meaningless bugs.
The six men flew into action, Bear One leading the way. Cha Ming brought up the rear. All around them, the walls and ceiling of the tunnel began to crack, crumble, and fall. Ore, which they’d previously ignored for fear of destabilizing the tunnel, began to drop from the
