Shattered Lands: Book 8 of Painting the Mists

by Laplante, Patrick

  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 to not need them, but only because his body cultivation was special, granting him deeper pools of vitality and faster regeneration.

  Soon they arrived at a large crack in the ground. They looked at the fissure solemnly, unsure about how to proceed. There, within the cracked earth, was a chunk of something Cha Ming had only read about: life-leaching gold. The emerald metal glittered brightly for everyone to see; it also increased the strain on everyone’s vitality. Despite the drain, however, they didn’t move away. Such a deposit was extremely rare and had a correspondingly high value on the exchange board.

  “Do you think we’ll have time to take it before the demons come?” Bear Four asked, looking around worriedly. As a combatant with not many auxiliary skills, he was their first line of defense against the denizens of the canyon.

  Bear One looked around worriedly. “This is worth more than we’ve gathered in the past month. We should at least try and take whatever we can.”

  “All right,” Bear Two said, nodding. “Move quickly.”

  “Pai Xiao, Bear Five,” Bear One shouted. He waved them over. “We’ll have to approach this one differently. Life-leaching gold is extremely heavy, so we’ll need to limit our extraction range and speed. Once we pull it out, we’ll need to send it out farther away for processing, so it doesn’t wear away at us as we work. Even Bear Five won’t last long if he’s near it.”

  Cha Ming nodded. They began shifting the earth, slowly but surely pulling out small golden clumps from the ground. Despite their small size, each fist-sized clump weighed around 10,000 jin. Whenever they managed to work one to the surface, Bear Two was the one to retrieve the ore, using the unusual slurry around his body to surround the ore then pull it way from the tired miners for retrieval later.

  Half an hour passed, and the small pile grew substantially in size. They continued digging, but Bear One often had them stop to look over his shoulder. “Stop,” Bear One said. They did so and noticed that their surroundings had grown eerily quiet. Each one of them had the distinct impression they were being watched.

  Then Cha Ming saw them: black spiders with metallic legs, crawling along the cliffside. They chittered as they walked, and gravity didn’t pull them down—they were moving sideways toward the cliff.

  “Incoming,” Bear Four said, drawing his sword. Bear Two held his tentacles in a defensive pose, and Bear Three joined them.

  “We’ll finish this final pull and gather what we can before fleeing,” Bear One said. “Those are shattered remnant spiders, dangerous demons. They’re not uncommon, but even ten of them are a threat to our group.”

  Cha Ming nodded. There were twenty in total.

  As he worked to pull out as many golden chunks as possible, however, he noticed they’d only gathered around a tenth of the deposit. Did they really need to leave it there? Unfortunately, there was little he could do about it, at least, not without exposing his hand.

  “Look out!” someone shouted. It was Bear Four, the swordsman.

  Cha Ming glanced up and noticed that three spiders had broken through their defensive line. Further, it seemed some others had arrived—small crowlike birds with vicious glowing violet eyes swooped down and pecked at their defenders. They cawed, and as they did, the spiders fought harder and faster.

  Seeing their dire situation, Cha Ming mulled over his options. He could eas
ily destroy all these creatures, but he preferred to avoid violence if possible. They were the ones intruding on beast territory, after all.

  Then he had an idea. There was a way out of this that didn’t expose his cultivation. “Keep mining,” Cha Ming said, stepping toward the demons.

  Bear One began to protest, but his piercing blue eyes seemed to catch a hint of what Cha Ming was planning to do. He looked to Bear Five, who looked at Cha Ming uncertainly. “Well, you heard the man. Keep digging.”

  They obeyed.

  Cha Ming didn’t draw his staff, nor did he summon sigils or formation flags; instead, he opened his eyes. Violet rings appeared around his irises. They were accompanied by his Eyes of Pure Jade, and to his surprise, a thin golden ring had also appeared there unknowingly. He glared at the demons, and his eyes burned as he did. The demons, including the ones Bear Four and Bear Two had been fighting with, froze. Then, to everyone’s surprise, they shivered. They gave a light bow—at least, it seemed like a bow when given by these creatures—to Cha Ming, whose eyes glowed bright violet. Each bow he received caused the Demon-Subduing Intent in the eyes to grow stronger, and the strain on them to increase. When the last of the demons retreated, he shut them, exhausted. The demons didn’t double back, however. They’d admitted his superiority, and they wouldn’t dare take that back.

  “What are you all gawking at?” Bear One yelled, seeing that the demons were all gone. “Bear Five, keep helping. Bear Two, move that ore out.” Then he looked to Cha Ming uncertainly. “Bear Six, are you all right?”

  Cha Ming was kneeling down on one knee, massaging his temple. What the hell just happened? he thought. When did using my eye techniques become so taxing? Did it have to do with the mysterious yellow circle that had appeared around his irises? He reached out to Huxian but got no response. His frown deepened at that—they should be able to talk anywhere on the continent.

  “Bear Six?” Bear One said again.

  “I’m all right,” Cha Ming said. “Give me a moment.”

  They continued mining, and his headache faded in seconds. Then, grinning, he joined Bear One and Bear Five in extracting the life-leaching gold. Soon they had a small mountain of it sitting prettily off to the side. Bear One walked up to it and retrieved a tenth of the mountain. The others did the same, one by one, until half the mountain remained. Cha Ming raised an eyebrow.

  “Do not misunderstand,” Bear One said. “We split everything evenly, and that still applies regardless of what you did. Unfortunately, we’re all out of storage space.”

  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 demons, they usually encountered a
wave or two by the fourth ore pocket.

  Today, they’d claimed five pockets, with not a single demon to be seen. They’d wandered deeper than ever before, ten miles into the uncharted zone. Would today be the day? Would they find the Gold Source Marrow at long last? The more they gathered, the more convinced he grew that the source of it all—and the likely location of the Gold Source Marrow—was below the ground. He’d soon need to separate from the group in order to find it.

  Cha Ming stored the remaining ore after the men took their cut. Their storage treasures were filled to bursting, and he was the only one with enough space. They’d never asked for the details behind his storage space—anything was fine as long as he could smuggle for them and they had a contract in place to ensure delivery. Their faith in contracts bordered on religious, and Cha Ming saw no reason to convince them otherwise.

  “Should we go deeper?” Bear One wondered, looking to Cha Ming.

  “I don’t see why not,” Cha Ming said. “If we encounter demons, I’ll scare them off. There’s bound to be more ore around here since the demons haven’t dared show their faces.”

  Their strange behavior confused him, but who was he to complain if wealth landed on his lap? The men nodded, and they flew out in their usual positions, protecting Bear One as he surveyed the land.

  They traveled another three cautious miles, rounding several jagged and broken cliffs before Bear One stopped them. He looked around, confused, before tapping his foot on the ground. “Here,” he said, frowning. “But be careful. There’s something strange going on. I can feel it.”

  The men exchanged worried glances. Bear One’s hunches weren’t ever wrong.

  Cha Ming took his position beside Bear One and Bear Five. This far out, even he felt exhaustion as his vitality left him, like a steady leak in a used faucet. He placed his hands on the ground and churched the earth, which, for some reason, was free of debris. No rocks had fallen down from the tall cliffs behind them, as the quake had been unusually light.