Digging the Heavenly Emperor's Unparalleled Eons

Su Ji walked up to the shack, lifted the tattered animal skin serving as a door curtain, and stepped inside.

The lighting in the room was dim, filled with a sour stench of mixed sweat and dirt.

Seven or eight bare-chested men lay haphazardly on the ground, snoring like thunder.

Su Ji found a corner against the wall and, mimicking their posture, lay straight down.

Instantly, he could feel the hard, freezing ground.

He closed his eyes and began to sort through all the information he had gathered today.

In his mind, Su Jiu's voice echoed again, this time carrying a hint of lingering fear.

"Senior brother, it's a good thing we didn't resist..."

"Even Soul Formation cultivators are treated as mining slaves..."

Su Ji gave a mental grunt of agreement.

"It's just that I don't quite understand... If they don't need ascenders, they could just kill them. Why go through so much trouble?"

"For a mining area like this, if they didn't seal away spiritual energy, a single Soul Formation cultivator could easily handle all the work, right?"

Su Ji shook his head. "If you can think of this, do you think the master of this mining area couldn't?"

"Whatever exists is reasonable."

"The way this mining area operates is absolutely the optimal solution."

"Then what do we do now?" Su Jiu's voice carried a bit of confusion. "Are we really going to mine here for hundreds of years?"

"Should we try to make contact with that Zhao Tianyang?"

"I feel like there's something weird about him..."

"If he had the chance, he would probably choose to rebel, right?"

Su Ji continued to shake his head. "I specifically observed that Zhao Tianyang when he was drinking tea..."

"I didn't see a Spirit-Locking Ring on him."

He somewhat suspected that Su Jiu's brain had been damaged when he healed her.

How could she ask such a stupid question?

Right at this moment.

Clang!

A distant, muffled bell toll rang out from an unknown direction.

Inside the shack, the men who had been dead asleep sat up violently at almost the exact same time, like awakened marionettes.

Their movements were perfectly uniform, yet their faces maintained that same hollow, numb expression.

Regarding Su Ji, this sudden new face, they merely threw a casual glance before losing interest, getting up on their own, and filing out of the room.

Su Ji also stood up and walked out of the shack.

Outside, Zhang Kui's tower-like figure was already waiting.

He didn't rush them, just stood quietly until the other two newcomers also emerged from their respective shacks.

"You three, follow me."

Zhang Kui was concise. He turned and walked toward the direction of the mining pit.

He seemed to give the newcomers some special care. Leading Su Ji and the other two, he didn't head directly down into the bottomless depths of the pit, but stopped at a relatively flat, shallow area with exposed rock formations.

"Newcomers get a one-month adaptation period."

Zhang Kui pointed at the area.

"This is where you will be working for the next month."

The eighth-grade Golden Core prodigy, who had been slapped half to death earlier, seemed to have recovered from the initial blow.

A bit of the arrogance belonging to a prodigy resurfaced on his pale face.

He looked at the exposed rock layer with its black veins, then looked down at the rusty iron pickaxe in his hand, and frowned deeply.

They wanted him to use this mundane object to do such vulgar labor?

He casually tossed the iron pickaxe onto the ground, producing a crisp clatter that drew everyone's attention.

He walked up to a piece of black-veined iron ore that was as tall as five or six men and took a deep breath.

Forming his fingers into a sword gesture, the eighth-grade Golden Core inside his body roared to life, mobilizing what little spiritual energy he had left and gathering it at his fingertips.

"Sever!"

He shouted fiercely, his fingertips drawing a sharp stream of sword qi that howled through the air, slashing viciously against that piece of black-veined iron ore!

However, the expected scene of flying crushed stone did not occur.

That sharp sword qi, which would have been enough to cleave ordinary mountain rocks in half, vanished silently like a clay ox entering the sea the moment it touched the black-veined iron, completely swallowed up.

It didn't even leave a single white scratch on the surface of the ore.

The arrogance on the Golden Core prodigy's face froze instantly.

He looked at his fingers in disbelief, then at the completely undamaged ore. "If it weren't for the Spirit-Locking Ring's interference..."

Before he could finish his sentence, an undisguised sneer came from the side.

"Heh."

Zhang Kui stood with his arms crossed, his weather-beaten face full of mockery.

"Don't play these petty tricks."

"Did you think you were the only one who considered using spiritual energy?"

He walked up to the ore and patted it with his large, palm-leaf-like hand, producing dull thuds.

"Do you know what this thing is called?"

"Black-veined Iron."

"That's what it's called nowadays."

Zhang Kui's gaze swept over the three of them.

"It has another name."

"Immortal-slaying Iron."

Immortal-slaying Iron?

Su Ji's heart stirred.

In his mind, Su Jiu's voice also carried a bit of surprise.

"Slaying immortals... what a massive boast."

Zhang Kui seemed very satisfied with the trio's reaction. He grinned, revealing two rows of stark white teeth.

"This stuff is naturally born with a property that repels spiritual energy."

"It automatically absorbs and neutralizes all spiritual qi that comes near it, until it is either destroyed by the spiritual qi, or... the spiritual qi is exhausted by it."

"Even without the Spirit-Locking Ring, your meager cultivation wouldn't be enough to fill the gaps in its teeth."

The Golden Core prodigy's face instantly turned deathly pale.

Zhang Kui ignored him and continued on his own.

"Do you know what this stuff is used for?"

He paused.

"Immortal-piercing Crossbows."

"Using the iron core smelted from this Immortal-slaying Iron, mixed with over a dozen rare materials, the forged crossbow bolts are impossible to defend against with any myriad of spells once fired."

"If a hundred million bolts were fired at once..."

A complex expression surfaced on Zhang Kui's face.

"It is said that they are enough to nail to death those high and mighty... True Immortals."

"However... our three mining areas can only hand over ten thousand catties a day."

"And a hundred catties of iron can only smelt the iron core of a single bolt."

True Immortals...

These two words made Su Jiu, inside Su Ji's mind, fall into a brief silence.

"Do you understand now?"

Zhang Kui turned around and looked back at the deathly pale prodigy.

"Here, spiritual energy is useless!"

"Only this flesh and blood can withstand the baleful aura of this hellhole."

"Only raw physical strength can swing this hoe."

He kicked up the iron pickaxe from the ground. The pickaxe traced an arc in the air and landed with a clatter at the Golden Core prodigy's feet once again.

"So, don't think of yourself as some big shot."

"Pick up your tool and do your work obediently."

The Golden Core prodigy stood stiffly in place.

He looked at the rusty iron pickaxe at his feet, then looked at the figures in the distance numbly swinging their tools.

His Dao heart, which had been revered by countless people and surrounded by countless halos in the lower realm, shattered completely with a crisp crack at this moment.

His final dignity, his final pride, was crushed to dust by this cruel reality.

After a long time, he slowly, very slowly, bent his back.

That once perfectly straight spine completely collapsed at this moment.

He reached out the hands that had once formed supreme hand seals to summon the winds and thunder of heaven and earth, and with an almost trembling posture, he picked up the iron pickaxe from the ground.

Then, he walked up to the ore that had devoured his very last hope, raised the pickaxe high, and smashed it down with all his might!

"Clang!"

A piercing sound of clashing metal rang out.

Sparks flew in all directions.

The incredibly hard Immortal-Slaying Iron ore only lost a tiny fragment the size of a fingernail.

He, however, was caught by the immense force of the recoil. The webbing between his thumb and forefinger split open, and blood streamed down. He staggered back several steps and landed heavily on his backside.

He looked at his bloodied hands, then at the virtually unchanged ore.

His once bright eyes completely lost all their luster in that instant.

"Ah!"

A roar mixed with endless despair and unwillingness erupted from deep within his throat.

Like a madman, he leaped up from the ground, raised the pickaxe once more, and frantically, haphazardly, smashed it against the ore.

"Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!"

The dense strikes rained down like a violent storm, yet they seemed so powerless and ridiculous.

His companion stood off to the side, watching his crazed demeanor with a face full of sorrow, yet completely powerless to help.

Su Ji watched all of this in silence.

He did not speak.

He simply walked over to another slightly smaller piece of ore.

He gently placed his hand on the surface of the ore and closed his eyes.

His divine sense silently spread out.

He recalled the general principles of the Desolate Meteor Sword.

Act in accordance with the natural grain.

Everything in this world has its own underlying structure.

Mountains have veins, water has currents, and trees have grains.

This Immortal-Slaying Iron was naturally no exception.

Let alone ten pounds, even a hundred or a thousand pounds would not be a strenuous task.

Oh no...

Could he actually be a one-in-a-billion mining genius?

The Heaven-Digging Emperor who rules alone across the eons?