Twenty Years at the Bottom of the Mine

At the age of fifty-two, my sect kicked me out.

"Your body's too frail to handle even an outer-sect servant's work. Why not go home and farm?"

I nodded. Nodding got me three low-grade spirit stones. If I didn't nod, I wouldn't even get those.

Blackstone Ridge, Seventh Mine. Mortals had been digging there for eight years. Anyone below the third level of Qi Refining lasted less than six months.

On my third day at the mine, I raised my pickaxe and aimed it at the crown of my head.

Old Liu handed me a bowl of water. It was warm.

He said, "This is my eighth year here. I wanted to die three times in my first year. The third time, I survived because someone handed me a bowl of water."

There was spirit energy in that water. Barely any. Every day, he secretly put a little in my bowl. He never told me.

Someone had scratched three marks into the wall with their fingers. The spaces between them were as wide as my fingers.

A token was hidden under Liu Dazhu's pillow. The character for "Order" was carved on the front, and there was a thumb-shaped hollow on the back.

Someone was speaking deep inside the mine tunnels. The voice came through the stone like a heartbeat.

I heard it.

Twenty years later, when I sent the entire mine soaring into the sky with my own hands,

I finally learned the answer to that question:

What can a mortal dig up after spending twenty years at the bottom of a mine?

The answer isn't spirit stones.