Abandoned Mine

Chapter 55 – Abandoned Mine

"Ouch!"

Xu Miao didn't remember how high he fell from the collapsed ground. He only recalled that he activated the Qi Barrier and the usual body strengthening to protect himself from the fall impact.

Looking around, Xu Miao couldn't see anything as there was no light. He looked up to see the hole that he had fallen from, but it wasn't there anymore. No light or anything could be seen in the darkness.

Xu Miao circulated a few strands of Yang Qi to create a small fireball to see the surrounding. As soon as the light was lit, he found himself in a tunnel. Traces of human-made structures, such as wooden ceiling, walls, and pillars, were everywhere. However, they looked archaic and worn as if they had been there for several hundred years.

By reflex, Xu Miao muttered a meme line with Gandalf's voice, "I have no memory of this place."

*RUMBLE*

As if the abandoned mine didn't like the meme, the tunnel shook. Dirt fell from nearby soil and a landslide followed.

Xu Miao's legs automatically moved, running inside the mine toward a location where the ceiling and the walls looked sturdier.

*BOOM*

Dark soil and stones fell onto the place where Xu Miao had stayed a few seconds ago.

The entrance hole had collapsed and sealed a way out of the mysterious underground mine.

'Seriously!?'

Xu Miao was shocked that he was trapped underground. Now, he could only enter the mine to search for an exit.

Despite being in a crisis, Xu Miao wasn't panicked. He kept his cool and followed the path while using his mini fireball to light the way.

The abandoned mine tunnel was linear at first. After a few minutes of walking, Xu Miao found himself in a wide room. Cart railways, rusty carts, broken mining tools, and craters of unknown rocks were everywhere, but none of them had been arranged in order.

Because of the dark and the wide-area, Xu Miao summoned more mini-fireballs to illuminate the room.

As soon as the room was lighted up, a horrifying scene could be seen.

Dried corpses and skeletons of goblins, trolls, and unknown monsters scattered on the ground. Traces of combat was still present as arrows and knives got stuck on the corpses and bones.

Yet, Xu Miao was unperturbed. He took out his magic dadao and began chopping the dried corpses and bones, searching for leftover loot.

Within five minutes, Xu Miao found what he had been looking for, a monster core.

'Free loot!'

The young master didn't care about potential danger. He cut more dead bodies and skeletons to find monster cores, treasures, or usable items.

Unfortunately, Xu Miao could only secure 107 monster cores in this room. The arrows and knives were no longer usable as they had decayed through time. Judging from the corpse condition and the rust on metal weapons, they were at least several decades old.

Now, Xu Miao packed 180 cores in his leather bag. Since each monster core's size was the same as an adult's thumb and weighed a kilogram. He could no longer carry them normally anymore. Without a spatial ring, carrying these items became an issue.

'Can my system inventory hold these balls? Can I stack all of them in one slot?'

Xu Miao didn't return his magic dadao to the inventory. Since he was aware that his actions were being watched, Xu Miao crouched and panned his system screen on the ground. Then, he opened the inventory menu while the semi-transparent monitor lined with the ground level.

One of the monster cores was shoved into the inventory. It occupied one of the slots.

Xu Miao pushed another one into the same slot, hoping that the item would stack.

<<Ding >>

The second monster core went in. The inventory slot showed a monster core icon with a number [2] on the box's bottom right corner.

The experiment was a success. Xu Miao managed to solve his item problem.

'I should have done this a long time ago.'

Without hesitation, he shoved the rest of the monster cores into the inventory. Now, he didn't have to worry about carrying a heavy bag of small crystals.

After storing all monster cores, Xu Miao looked at the mysterious ores in the broken craters. He picked one of them and examined it.

'I can sense Qi from these ores. What are they, system?'

<<Ding >>

<<These are raw demonic stones.>>

'Oho? Raw demonic stones? So, the Qi I sensed were Demonic Qi?'

Xu Miao's eyes glittered. He freed up space in his system inventory by taking out a magic knife. Then, he shoved a raw ore into the available inventory slot.

Trying his luck, he grabbed another ore and tried to add to the same inventory slot.

*WHOOSH*

The ore went in.

"MUAHAHAHAHA!!"

All of a sudden, Xu Miao burst into laughter. He grabbed the raw ores and stacked it into the ore slot. Sometimes, the ores were incompatible and Xu Miao couldn't stack it with the others as they were ordinary stones. However, more than half of them were demon ores.

After three hours, Xu Miao ransacked all craters. The demonic ore icon had [392] number on it, showing the total of ore pieces that he had looted.

"More! Where are the ores!?"

The young master forgot about the crisis. He looked around and found five more passages. Without caring if these paths were dangerous or not, Xu Miao wielded his magic dadao and magic knife, walking to the left-most tunnel. He picked the path randomly.

Small fireballs still rotated around Xu Miao, lighting the pathway. He looked at everything for monster cores and raw ores. The corner of pillars, the dirt, the ceiling, and the dead bodies were searched as if Xu Miao was a new Skyrim player who collected every lootable item.

Xu Miao lost track of time while he was exploring the underground mine and collecting ores. 12 Hours later, his stomach roared and snapped him back to his senses.

'Huh? When was the last time I ate something?'

Xu Miao secured a place to sit down and have his meal. It had been more than half a day since he was teleported into this world. He started to get tired.

'I guess I have to sleep here. Oh well…'

Xu Miao took out his prepared food packages and water bottles from his inventory. He rested in the mine for now. Before he went to sleep, he didn't forget to drag a few broken craters to cover his body, camouflaging himself with the environment in case there were harmful monsters nearby.

…

4 Hours later, Xu Miao woke up. He didn't spend a long time in the Isolation Training Space since he only absorbed energy from refined stones, which he had stored in his inventory. His Qi in his dantian was replenished and increased a bit.

.

*********************************************

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[Stored Qi]

Yang Qi: 90,164

Yin Qi: 39,120

.

*********************************************

.

No spare refined spirit stones were left in Xu Miao's inventory. These backup Qi strands were his source of power.

Xu Miao still had demonic ores in his inventory. If he were to spend all of the stored Qi, he could still absorb those demonic stones and convert them like how he converted Wei Yuan's energy. However, he wanted to keep them to himself for now, just in case he could find a way to use them other than absorbing its Qi directly.

After packing his weapons and supplies in the inventory slots, which had been freed after all refined stones had been used, Xu Miao continued exploring the mine.

Xu Miao found several rooms with more corpses and traces of battles. Again, he looted everything useful.

After Xu Miao found the fifteenth room, he stumbled upon a blockaded door. Over a hundred skeletons and dried corpses of humanoid monsters packed in front of the entrance as if they had gathered to siege the sealed room.

Sitting skeletons with horns in rusty armor faced the opposite direction of these dead monsters. They seemed to be warriors who had stood and protected the sealed room until death.

Attracted by the sealed door, Xu Miao inspected the area after he looted all the monster cores and ores.

'What were you guys trying to enter, and what were you lot trying to protect?'

Xu Miao peeled off the dead bodies and broken barricades to create a path to the sealed door. After an hour of hard work, he reached the suspicious area.

The narrow passage entrance was blockaded by stones and old wood, which seemed to be deliberately made in urgent.

Xu Miao patiently dug through the stones and barricades, making his way to the other side of the tunnel. When he got through, he found another long passage, but it led to a dead-end.

'Huh? I'm sure these guys are protecting something.'

Xu Miao scanned through the section behind the barricade to see what they were protecting or what the monsters tried to reach.

In the dead-end tunnel, several dried skeletons laid around. Xu Miao couldn't say that they were humans as two horns extended from each of their skulls.

'These dead bodies, were they demons?'

Most bones in the abandoned mine were either grey or white. However, these skeletons glittered in rainbow colors. Illuminated by Xu Miao's wisp-like fireballs, the glowing and glittering bones were like jewels under the sunlight.

Xu Miao's eyes shone. He had never seen shining bones before, so he thought that these people's dead bodies should be something valuable. He stored one of the dead bodies into his inventory.

Then, a skull with two curvy horns image appeared as the item's icon. The description in the menu said, "Skeleton of Oni Priestess."

'Oni priestess? An oni? A Japanese ogre?'

Xu Miao recalled a monster oni from Japanese folklores. An oni was a giant ogre with two horns, red skin, and long fangs that extended out of its mouth. Because of the cultural influence of the country, it usually wielded either a long katana or a long spiked mace and wore samurai plate armor.

The remnant clothes of these dead bodies also resembled kimono, which didn't belong in a deep mine. As Xu Miao examined closer, many of these skeletons hid sheathed short swords for self-defense.

Xu Miao picked up some of the tantos and unsheathed them. All of them already decayed, showing rusty broken blade and core.

Not giving up searching for usable items, Xu Miao stripped these dead bodies, looking for monster cores or any hidden treasure.

'Oh?'

He found several white crystals, which was at the same size as a monster core. However, they were from these dead onis. There were 23 of them in total in this sealed section.

<<Ding >>

After storing one of the crystals, the inventory identified the items for Xu Miao.

Refined Demonic Stone

Xu Miao's eyes glittered. He found more valuable items.

"HAHAHA! I'm rich!"

After collecting all the white orbs, Xu Miao planned to free some spaces in his inventory to store these glittering skeletons, hoping to bring them back to the outside world.

*Click*

While Xu Miao was busy sorting his inventory, one of the abandoned katana in this room moved. It unsheathed itself, revealing its sinister dark light.