There was a total of six such stone structures, oil wood piled high. Song Qiao added a fresh stack of dry oil wood to each and relit the wood. In the firelight, the surroundings became bright.

Lei Xinfeng saw that the ground was completely bare of anything, with puddles of water here and there. He couldn’t believe his eyes. “Senior, the heather gravels are found here? Can you find some for me?” He couldn’t see even a small speck of light.

“Okay, I’ll demonstrate.” He dropped his height to half a foot above ground and began to survey the area. After a bit, he stopped and took out a giant steel shovel. He stabbed it into the ground and flipped a big clump of soil toward the stone structures. Then he flew over and began to search through that mud.

Soon, he found a piece of heather gravel, a tiny stone the size of a fingertip. It was deep red. In a shovelful of mud, Song Qiao had only found a single heather gravel. Even so, he laughed. “This is all over the place, but when you start digging, you might not find any. If you take a shovelful of mud, most of it will be empty. I was lucky and managed to find one.”

Lei Xinfeng took the heather gravel. “It’s soft!”

“After coming in contact with wind, it will be as hard as steel. How is it? Can you find it quickly?”

Lei Xinfeng grimaced and shook his head. “I don’t think so… I’ll try though.”

Song Qiao took out a few steel shovels and passed them around. “In that case, we’ll have to rely on luck. This stuff isn’t bad; you can trade them for Yin Rings.” Everyone got excited at the last line.

Lei Xinfeng was still looking. It was his first time seeing a deposit of materials under a layer of mud, so he had no idea where to look. Slowly, he got used to the light here. Before the light source was six bonfires from the stone, it wasn’t very stable. It distracted him.

Squinting his eyes, Lei Xinfeng decided to focus on a single patch of mud. Slowly, he began to see traces of red light, but in the red firelight, he couldn’t be sure it really existed. If he didn’t concentrate, he wouldn’t have seen it anyway.

Lei Xinfeng stabbed his shovel into the mud and transported it near the fire. There was two heather gravel contained in that clump of mud. The others haven’t found even the shadow of that gravel.

Song Qiao was paying attention to Lei Xinfeng. After watching him make his first dig, he flew over and saw Lei Xinfeng extract two gravels. He couldn’t help but sigh. “Your luck is impressive, to be able to find two with your first shovelful,” he said.

Lei Xinfeng laughed and began to dig again.

After half a day, Lei Xinfeng found a few dozen pieces of gravel. Song Qiao only found seven, which Fengying, the worst of them all, only found one. Fengying’s head drooped, and an air of depression drifted with him

Song Qiao laughed bitterly. Originally, he’d thought that Lei Xinfeng might help them, but now he realized that even Lei Xinfeng was hard pressed to find these heather gravels. “Ah Feng, is this a bad spot?”

Lei Xinfeng nodded. “Yes. I’m still trying to think of a way to find a large gathering of these gravels. The thing is, this place has already been scoured clean. We’re digging for the remains of gravels that other didn’t find. There’s not much.”

There was even a light source here. A lot of people probably dug here before.

“Should we go elsewhere?” Song Qiao suggested though he didn’t think it would yield anything. Many people probably already search in the surrounding areas.

“Might as well,” Lei Xinfeng said. “This place is a used spot, and the only remaining gravels are few and far between. No matter how much we try, we won’t get much. Waste of time, waste of effort. Not worth it.”

Song Qiao concedes that point. The reason he brought Lei Xinfeng here was that Lei Xinfeng found a new vein at the Laka crystal site, allowing everyone present to profit greatly.

Lei Xinfeng called for Jin Daya, and the two of them set out to find a new deposit, armed with two torches.

They circled once and found many deposits for their effort, but each was tiny, only a few dozen each. A tiny amount is still valuable, however. Lei Xinfeng and Jin Daya emptied these deposits, finding a few hundred heather gravels.

After Lei Xinfeng came back, Song Qiao asked, “How is it? Did you find anything?”

Lei Xinfeng shook his head. “None. There were only a few small spots that yielded a little. Too little.”

Song Qiao sighed. “In that case, we’ll just dig as much as we can. Let’s take this rare chance and dig as much as we can. We can still store away whatever we got.”

“Let’s try our luck,” Lei Xinfeng said.

The next few days, no one really tried. They didn’t get much; they were so used to mining with Lei Xinfeng’s help that they felt that they were making no progress, and didn’t put any effort into digging.

Lei Xinfeng didn’t dig with everyone else, he took Jin Daya with him and wandered around the place. Their efforts yield decent amounts of heather gravel. Even tiny nodes had several dozens of heather gravel. If the nodes were big, there might be several hundred instead.

The two of them gathered bit by bit, and by the time it was time to leave, Lei Xinfeng and Jin Daya had gathered several thousand heather gravels. Lei Xinfeng sighed. “It’s not enough. If it’s a normal vein, we could have gotten several dozen thousand, or even hundred thousand pieces of heather gravel. I don’t know what we could use these few thousand for.”

Jin Daya laughed. “Don’t be so upset. Old Ying and Old Hu combined didn’t even manage to reach a hundred. We gathered much more than they did.”

Lei Xinfeng didn’t care. “I understand now. This place is trash. It’s not worth coming.”

“Even if this place is trash, you still wouldn’t be able to find a place like this. If Senior Song didn’t take us here, you wouldn’t even have been able to find a trash mine by yourself. Even this amount of heather gravel can be traded for a lot of Yin Rings.” Jin Daya was satisfied.

“I don’t even know what it’s used for!”

“It doesn’t matter, just keep them. Since you know it’s something valuable, don’t waste them lightly. When you do need them, you can save a lot of time and effort.”

At that, Lei Xinfeng thought of that bone he found, and how it was the material most suited for crafting the Lightning Stamp. Originally, he had no idea what it was used for either. Now, he had a positive view on material with unidentified uses. He put them all away into his Hidden Lun space.

The existence of the Hidden Lun space is a blessing in of itself. If it didn’t exist, none of them would have been able to gather so much material. In this new world, the thing that surprised him and made him the happiest was the Hidden Lun space. With the Hidden Lun space, it was like having a mobile home with everything we needed.

The two of them returned to the group.

Song Qiao never gave up. “Ah Feng, did you find anything?”

Lei Xinfeng shook his head. “This is definitely an abandoned mine. No one will come here. Nothing in the surroundings except some tiny nodes. Worthless.”

Song Qiao sighed again. “I was greedy. Come, let’s go back.”

Xin Zhaolun smiled. “We gained a lot already. Haha, I never thought that I’d get so much Laka crystals. It’s all worth it for me.”

The way back was easy and they didn’t need to take a long journey. Besides, it was already too late if they decided to take the mundane back. Since the wind is extremely powerful in the sky, they couldn’t fly.

However, with the Song Qiao’s Hidden Gate, all that was required to go back was to open it.

The destination of the Gate was the yard of the place in which they lived. In a few minutes, they were already back at Hanya Castle.

There weren’t a lot of people at Hanya Castle. Everyone else was still out gathering.

As Song Qiao walked out of the Hidden Gate, he thought of something and said, “Ah Feng, where did you mine your Purple Crystals?”

Lei Xinfeng smiled. “We didn’t mine them, we picked them out of a stream of magma.”

“Biyasi…Oh, I understand. You went underground, right? Can you give me the location?”

Lei Xinfeng looked at Xin Zhaolun. That mining spot was found by Xin Zhaolun. He couldn’t just give it away on his own.

Xin Zhaolun didn’t mind. He gathered enough materials. Plus, Song Qiao was a Monarch, and there was no way he wouldn’t agree. Song Qiao even took them to his mining spots, so it was only fair to reciprocate.

After Song Qiao memorized the location, he nodded. “I owe you one…no, two. I can help you twice in the future.”

Xin Zhaolun thought it was all worth it. Perhaps a Monarch did whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, but a Monarch’s promise was something valuable. Very few of them will go back on agreements. As long as they promised, they will do their best to fulfill it, and with a Monarch’s strength, it was something that could be counted on.

After getting the location, Song Qiao left, but not before pulling Lei Xinfeng into his room and talk for half a day.

After he left, Xin Zhaolun asked Lei Xinfeng, “What did Senior Song say?”

Lei Xinfeng smiled. “Senior Song wanted to set a time to meet up and go mining, but I said I was too weak. We agreed to have him find me when I reach Eighth Ring.”

Everyone showed a hint of envy; this was a Monarch they were talking about! How much material could they gather? He didn’t even need to spend time looking for spots; he only needed to follow.

“When Senior Song comes pick you up, take me with you!” Xin Zhaolun said.

Lei Xinfeng agreed. He also wished to help Xin Zhaolun. They were practically brothers, and he had helped Lei Xinfeng a lot in the past too.

Xin Zhaolun said, “I got everything I needed from here on this trip. When it’s time to leave, we leave. Until then, let’s cultivate as much as we can. This place is very effective. Don’t waste any time!”

And so passed an arc. Song Qiao left, and the title is called leaving. In another novel, they will spend the entire next chapter leaving, but given the strange naming convention that this one uses, we can’t be sure.

Also, whoever said that two of the three idiots are going to die… Ha! They didn’t!

Now time to do my homework again. Someone kill me. Don’t expect more than a chapter a day until this busy period is over.