The Black Iron Mine never slept.It didn't even pretend to.
Torches burned day and night, fed by cheap fire stones that smoked more than they burned. The air was thick. Not just dust—metal dust, stone dust, something bitter that sat in the throat and didn't leave. Every breath scraped.
Lin Mo was thrown into work without explanation.
"Tunnel Nine," the overseer barked, tossing him a chipped pickaxe without looking. "Quota's doubled. Miss it, you don't eat."
Lin Mo caught it.
"Understood."
Zhao Kai's memories stirred, uninvited.
Tunnel Nine was where weak outer disciples went when the sect didn't feel like waiting for them to die naturally.
Perfect.
The first day, Lin Mo mined.
Mostly, he watched.
Which tunnels collapsed too often.Which overseers lingered, pretending not to watch.Which disciples looked away too fast, or not fast enough.
And underneath all of that, where the qi gathered. Thin. Uneven. Like water trapped under stone.
By the third day, he felt it.
A faint warmth behind the rock wall near the tunnel's end. Easy to miss. Almost nothing.
Spirit ore.A small vein.Still hidden.
If it was reported, it would be stripped bare and redistributed upward.If it was mined quietly—
He would disappear.
Lin Mo kept digging somewhere else. The stone there was worse. Harder. Slower.
Now wasn't the time.
On the fifth day, someone finally tried.
Shift change. Guards tired. Tunnels loud enough to hide a scream.
A blade slid toward his stomach, low and careful.
Lin Mo twisted just enough. Not clean. He let the edge bite shallow and fell with it, clumsy, loud. Blood spilled. Too much noise.
Someone screamed.
The attacker froze.
That was all Lin Mo needed.
Elbow to the throat. Fingers around the wrist. The blade changed hands and went in once, then again, until the body stopped resisting.
No pause.Pauses got you killed.
He dragged the corpse into a ventilation shaft and went back to work with shaking arms.
By the end of the shift, no one asked where the missing disciple went.
That was the mine.
Night came without darkness. Just fewer people.
Lin Mo sat alone and forced qi through his meridians. It hurt. It always hurt. Progress came like rust scraping off bone, slow and ugly.
He checked his injuries.
Crude bandaging. Dirt still in the wound. Infection was likely.
Good.
Pain kept him sharp.
On the seventh day, the tunnel collapsed.
Not by accident.
Lin Mo felt it a moment before it happened. Overseers pulling back too cleanly. Formations humming where there hadn't been any.
Stone came down like a roar.
Someone screamed. Then stopped.
Rubble crushed his legs. His ribs snapped. Air left his lungs and didn't come back.
He suffocated slowly, vision narrowing, thoughts thinning.
So this was how they'd decided to do it.
The mirror ignited.
Pain tore through what was left of him as the body failed completely.
Death RegisteredCause: Structural CollapseSoul Damage: LightCompatibility: Stable
Lin Mo knelt in the void, breathing hard even though he didn't need to.
This one had been clean.
[Selectable Returns]▸ Low-Grade Spirit Stone × 184▸ Fragmented Crimson Ridge Tempering Method (Partial)▸ Black Iron Ore Essence (Unrefined)
He didn't rush.
Stones were safe.Ore essence was poison.
The method was knowledge.
"I choose the tempering method," he said quietly.
The mirror pulsed.
Choice confirmed.