Chapter 176 (1/2)

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Chapter 176

The Mysterious Stalker

As they travelled in the deep underground tunnels, Chengfeng realised that he had no sense of direction, nor could he tell apart day or night. The only things that they could rely on right now were three things — The pickaxe in their hand, the squirrel within the cage and… light.

Su You grabbed a fire torch for himself, however, since he did not gesture the others to do the same, none of them dared to touch it. Chengfeng, on the other hand, was debating with himself on whether or not he should go back and retrieve the remaining fire torch that was left beside the elevator. But just as he was thinking, glistening blue light suddenly emerged from the tunnel in front of him. This light was cold but bright; It was the same light that was emitted from the crystals as they descended the mines.

It immediately caught Chengfeng's attention, but just as he was about to use his pickaxe to mine the crystals, Su You quickly stopped him. “Junior Brother Chengfeng, these crystals cannot be mined. They're used as a source of light for us to pa.s.s through. Furthermore, these are spirit stones, the ones that we're looking for are spirit jades. Just follow us, and you'll be able to start mining.”

Chengfeng was humiliated, but luckily he had thick skin. Moreover, under these dim lights, no one could see what his facial expression looked like.

The group followed Su You as they moved forward. After walking for about forty meters along the tunnel, something else caught Chengfeng's attention once again. They had arrived inside a giant stone cave, this stone cave was the size of an acre and was about eight meters tall. In between the stone cave stood tall and st.u.r.dy stone pillars, some of them even reached the top of the cave, whereas the others were short and jagged. However, all of these stone pillars were sparkling in a faint neon green light as spirit jades were wedged in between them. This stone cave already had a fair amount of cultivators mining through, each of them had occupied one stone pillar each as they exerted their utmost strength to mine the spirit jades on the top.

Chengfeng took note of how they mined, each time these people raised their pickaxe, they tended to chisel the part that was further away from the spirit jade. As they finally chiselled out a large piece of stone and spirit jade, they would change into the smaller tip of the pickaxe and gently chisel the entire piece of spirit jade out from the stones.

Su You had no intentions of stopping as he continued to pa.s.s through the cave, Chengfeng observed for a while, then quickly chased after Su You and the rest with their journey. Among the group, quite a few had chosen to stay as they began to mine the unoccupied s.p.a.ces.

After they had pa.s.sed through the giant stone cave, Chengfeng realised that the tunnel turned into eight diverging paths. Su You and Tianjun walked towards the tunnel that was the second to the left as Chengfeng tried to keep up with them.

Just like that, they had travelled hundreds of meters. After pa.s.sing through three giant stone caves that were similar to the first one, they continued forward. Until a stone cave that was so huge and so dream-like that Chengfeng could not even believe his eyes had appeared before them.

This cave's size was at least ten times bigger than the previous stone caves! The cave's walls were riddled with tunnels, where all of them were being mined into an upward slope. Every eight to seven meters would be another level of tunnels, and each level was surrounding the giant stone pillars that stood in the middle of the cave and extended to the other tunnels. Whereas the middle part of the stone pillars looked like spider webs as they extended into the other paths on the same level.

Chengfeng eyeballed the stone pillars and hypothesised that each of them would require at least ten grown men with their arms extended to fully surround them. As he lifted his head, he could see countless spirit stones embedded into the stone ceiling above him as they glistened brightly like a galaxy. These stone pillars all stood up high as they connected the ground to the ceiling, like giant heavenly trees. Each level of spider web-like stone paths was just like it's tree branches, while the glistening spirit gems looked like its fruits.

Surrounding each 'giant tree' and every level of 'branches' was seven to eight s.h.i.+rtless men as they swung hard with their pickaxe. The ma.s.sive cave was filled with echoes of metal to stone clinking.  As these clinking sounds combined, it felt as if it was a long, never-ending note.

Chengfeng was rendered speechless at the scene as he stood perfectly still, in awe with its magnificence while he thought to himself, 'So it's true that reading thousands of books is not equal to travelling thousands of miles! My mind has been utterly opened! If I did not see this in person, my mind could never have imagined such a sight!'

Chengfeng couldn't help but ask, “Senior Brother Su, are these… all Senior Brothers from the Spiritual Mountain Sect?”

Su You smiled, “They're mostly servants from the other heavenly courts, that or they're employed miners.”

“Employed?” asked Chengfeng puzzledly.

Su You nodded, “Many Senior Brothers of Hidden Brocade Court and Grand Senior Sister of Hidden Beauty Court do not come down here to mine minerals on their own, they would usually just employ long term miners or make their own servants come down and mine for them.”