The sky was just beginning to lighten, and the distant sound of roosters crowing could be heard intermittently.
Duan Rong, with his face covered in dirt, crawled out from a hole in the ground, his head, face, and neck all smeared with fine soil debris.
With a shovel tucked into his waist, he climbed up as Ximen Kankan and Liu Shushan sat there catching their breath, both with beads of sweat on their foreheads, looking quite fatigued.
Several days had passed, and the inner rooms on both sides of the main hall were piled high with the dug-out soil debris.
Initially, it was manageable; the tunnel wasn't long and Duan Rong's excavated debris was easy for the two of them to carry out. But as the tunnel grew longer, their workload doubled.
The tunnel was narrow, and carrying a basket full of debris took a lot of energy. The key was that Duan Rong was digging quickly, and the two had to take turns to barely keep up with his pace.
