This place was full of peculiarities. If Pang Jian had been on his own, he would have gone ahead to scout it out without a second thought, but he had brought along an encumbrance. 

While Xi Ping claimed to have “innate spiritual bones,” having the cultivation level didn’t mean he had the skills; the number of established foundation cultivators Commander Pang had gone above his grade to kill couldn’t be counted. 

In the eyes of an old walker in the mortal world, someone with innate spiritual bones who had begun cultivating half a year ago was hardly any different from a baby holding a hand cannon. If he didn’t shoot himself when he met trouble, that would count as keeping his cool. 

But before Pang Jian could finish hesitating and reach a decision, Xi Ping, seeing that he wasn’t moving, simply went around him and pushed forward. 

Pang Jian pulled him back and glared at him ferociously: Where do you think you’re going? 

Hiding in the walls didn’t necessarily mean you were safe. Pang Jian wasn’t the only cultivator in the world who could use some means to pass through walls, and even Prince Zhuang’s south study had inscriptions to prevent walking through walls, never mind this kind of place where mysterious spiritual stones were hidden. Pang Jian pointed warningly at Xi Ping and walked forward himself. 

As expected, as the spiritual energy became plentiful enough to soak the stones, the Shu guard outside became stricter and stricter. Dense inscriptions blocked their way. 

Looking out from the wall, the inscriptions looked like light shining through from the other side of the wall, sinking in without weakening, forming a grating. 

They couldn’t get through this way. They had to turn back, unless they could shrink to the size of beans. 

If only Bai Ling were here, Pang Jian thought. 

Outside it was all Shu sentry posts. They couldn’t go that way, either. 

Xi Ping looked at Pang Jian: Shixiong, do you have another magic weapon in your pocket? Don’t keep it hidden. 

Pang Jian really did have one. He considered and, from his pockets that contained absolutely everything, took out a karma beast the size of a thumb. 

Normally, the karma beasts that accompanied Heaven’s Design Pavilion on official business were all like drawings on paper; they moved around on walls. Now that Xi Ping and Pang Jian were inside the wall, the karma beast became three-dimensional. 

Seeing a three-dimensional living karma beast for the first time, Xi Ping saw that this big-eyed lamp’s buttocks were rounder than its head and couldn’t resist trying to touch them. 

But the karma beast recognized him. Seeing him about to invade its territory, it jumped up and tried to bite him. Pang Jian quickly grabbed the sacred beast by the scruff of its neck while batting away Xi Ping’s paw, separating the two of them. 

Xi Ping was very regretful and gesticulated: How can this beast harbor resentment against me?

Pang Jian rolled his eyes. All the karma beasts in the world are avatars of one sacred beast. You don’t have a chance to clean up your act. Better be careful when you go to Heaven’s Design Pavilion. 

He put his hand over the karma beast’s eyes and silently mouthed something. Xi Ping saw Pang Jian’s eyes become identical to the sacred beast’s. 

Then Pang Jian took out a jade stamp stone and gave it to the karma beast. The little sacred beast picked the stone up in its mouth, wagged its tail at him, then cleverly wormed its way into a crack in the inscriptions. 

Xi Ping carefully observed Pang Jian’s eyes. He saw the reflections of changing inscriptions constantly flashing through them and knew that Pang-shixiong could borrow the karma beast’s eyes to scout ahead. 

Pang Jian’s vital weapon was called Barrier Dispeller; he himself could walk through walls and burrow into the earth, see all barriers as emptiness. If he knocked on a wall, he would know whether there was spiritual energy surging on the other side… All his powers seemed to add up to the words “dispelling barriers.” 

Shifu had said that spiritual bones you cultivated for yourself would often correspond to your Way of the Heart. Whether Pang-shixiong was using a bow or a knife, it was always with the notion of indomitably pressing forward, undisturbed by all evil spirits. 

Xi Ping was different. He had someone else’s spiritual bones, and the original owner had suffered bitterly and been full of profound hatred. He had been an old lunatic of a demon who liked to smash himself up periodically… There couldn’t be anything more unsuitable. Xi Ping wondered whether there would be a chance to swap them out later. 

As his thoughts were wandering, Pang Jian suddenly narrowed his eyes automatically; his beast’s pupils contracted sharply as though they had been swept by a strong light. 

The karma beast had passed through the inscription area! 

Xi Ping poked Pang Jian: What do you see? 

Pang Jian muttered to himself for a moment, then wrote the words “spiritual stones” on the back of his hand. 

The glow of the spiritual stones had been dazzling enough to make the karma beast’s pupils contract? How many must there be?

Pang Jian hesitated a moment, then shook his head—he couldn’t be sure for the moment, either. 

Behind the protection of those heavy inscriptions was an astonishingly large storehouse full of white spirits, stacked up like bricks as far as the eye could see. If you ran into someone who liked counting things like General Zhi, on seeing this sight, he probably would have counted himself numb on the spot. 

The blue jade was arranged much more carelessly, never mind the jade stamps, which were piled up at random, the rock snow on them not even cleaned away. 

Miners handling spiritual stones definitely wouldn’t be this slipshod. All the big spiritual stone mines had very strict oversight for the extraction of spiritual stones—there were rules for how to handle the stones, for how to see if they were up to standard, for how to weigh and inventory them. There was layer upon layer of checks, with no room for error. Moreover, there were people who came to collect rock snow; the miners usually turned a blind eye to this. The rock snow was the miners’ income. No one was going to turn their nose up at money. 

So where had these spiritual stones come from? 

Just then, the karma beast suddenly shook its head, as if sensing something, and began to run again. 

With countless priceless spiritual stones over its head, it slipped between the inlaid inscriptions for maintaining temperature, maintaining humidity, and fireproofing. It ran for a full li, then stopped. 

There was big pit. The ground was recessed by a full hundred chi. The bottom of the pit was a perfect circle dozens of zhang in diameter, polished bright, clearly manmade. 

Apart from abhorring evil, karma beasts, because they moved around in writing and murals, were also unusually sensitive to arrays. 

This was a secret…array? 

Pang Jian frowned—arrays were driven by spiritual stones. Putting an array in a spiritual stone storehouse amounted to putting a tinderbox in a barrel of oil. Ordinarily speaking, in a major spiritual stone storehouse, you couldn’t have anything but some specific types of inscriptions. 

What was this tinderbox…this array for? 

The little karma beast ran down along the rim of the pit and cautiously made a big circle around the bottom, from time to time carefully avoiding something. Then it seemed to understand the invisible array. Measuring its steps, it walked to the center and spat out the jade stamp in its mouth. 

The karma beast was passing through the ground. The jade stamp it spat out was as good as inlaid directly in the floor. The array activated at once. 

Next, a beam of light so fast neither man nor beast could react pierced the karma beast’s body. It instantly vanished into thin air. 

Pang Jian’s vision swam, but soon after, the karma beast was released once again—it had just been caught in a transport array. 

Pang Jian only had time to take one look when the karma beast came out of the array before his link to the sacred beast was cut off because of the distance. His beast’s eyes changed back to human ones. Pang Jian shuddered. 

Xi Ping had never seen such an expression on Pang-shixiong’s face before. There was something indescribable mixed in amidst the confusion. For a moment, he even thought that Pang Jian’s soul had departed! 

But before he could ask him about it, Xi Ping’s spiritual sense suddenly sounded an alarm. Perhaps because the little karma beast had touched the array in the storehouse, the inscriptions in front of the two of them were alerted. The inscription characters surged. 

The guards at the storehouse door abruptly became vigilant. Across the wall, they turned in unison towards the place where the two of them were hidden. 

Xi Ping grabbed Pang Jian and ran for it. 

Behind them, blue light bubbled up from the inscriptions like the tide coming in. The light surged in pursuit of them, pointing out the thieves to the guards. 

The guards gathered on the other side of a thin wall and tossed talismans and weapons at the wall as though they were free.

Pang Jian had just gotten his soul stirred by some wild fox demon; he allowed himself to be pulled along by Xi Ping. This was Xi Ping’s first time experiencing such an event. Seeing the guards surround them, he instinctively ran deeper into the wall and stumbled over something—a stone hidden inside the wall that had an inscription carved on it. It trapped the two of them in place like a vine. 

Almost at the same time, a rumble went outward from inside the wall. The sound quickly went from low to high, as though a Cloud Soaring Flood Dragon were coming their way. Xi Ping turned his head in that direction and saw a huge black figure fully a zhang tall rolling towards them. 

The corners of his eyes twitched, but his feet were trapped. He couldn’t do anything. 

With lighting speed, Xi Ping turned over his hand and took out the hither seal. Then he extended his arm, hooked his wrist backwards, and, in the direction the black shadow was coming from, placed a stamp in the middle of the wall—when they had encountered the first Southern Shu guard, he had left a stamp in the wall like this, in case of future need. 

This time it worked! 

The two seals joined. The black shadow was just approaching—it was a big statue with a human head and a scorpion body. It was jostling through the wall, its face savage. 

The crisp sound of bone breaking called Pang Jian back to himself. He abruptly turned his head and saw that Xi Ping’s hand, which he hadn’t had time to withdraw, had been crushed to bits by the statue. 

Next, the statue hit the spiritual seal and was transported right to where the other seal was. 

And the young master really didn’t make a sound! 

So fast his hand nearly became a blur, Pang Jian threw out a handful of talismans, temporarily suppressing the inscription on the ground. Then he scooped up Xi Ping and escaped the trap, flying in the direction the statue with the human head and scorpion body had gone. 

Just then, three ke passed. The talismans on Xi Ping abruptly lost effect, and he once again returned to the state of being unable to see or hear and being forced to hold his breath as Pang Jian pulled him through the wall. When he saw the light of day again, they had come to the border between Southern Shu and Chu’s encampments. 

Xi Ping came up out of the ground, staggered, and fell onto Pang Jian. His back was soaked with cold sweat. 

Pang Jian stuck a spiritual stone into his mouth, put him over his shoulder one-handed, put a stealth talisman onto the two of them, then flew back to Great Wan’s government ship like a swallow. He landed right on the third deck and passed through the wall. 

Before he had steadied himself, a figure came towards them, snatched Xi Ping away, and pushed Pang Jian aside. 

Normally, Xi Yue looked like a delicate-featured youth, but now, as soon as rage appeared on his face, it instantly took on a demonic look. His sharp teeth seemed about to pierce through his lips…before they were startled back by Xi Ping’s gasp. 

Xi Ping lay powerlessly in the half-puppet’s arms, wave after wave of black passing in front of his eyes. Despite this, he still spat the spiritual stone into his remaining intact hand to take a look at it. Almost inaudibly, he whispered, “…a jade stamp. So damn stingy.” 

Pang Jian, frowning, inspected Xi Ping’s crushed hand. “Doesn’t your hand have spiritual bones? What’s going on? Are they this brittle?” 

Xi Ping’s spiritual bones were hidden bones attached to his real ones, and these hidden bones saw breaking the real bones as a good thing. With a bitter smile, he said almost inaudibly, “Maybe they…they…have a taste for this…” 

Spiritual bones all had their own peculiar tempers. It was like a birthmark on someone’s ass; however well you knew a person, it was still unsuitable to insist on asking about the details. So Pang Jian didn’t follow up. He rummaged in his mustard seed for elixirs. 

He heard Xi Ping suddenly curse. He seemed to go into convulsions—these pestilential hidden bones had begun putting on a performance of “the dead coming back to life.” Growing the bones back hurt more than having them crushed had in the first place! 

For a while, Xi Ping’s consciousness cut off. Then he was woken by the pain. He crushed the spiritual stone in his mouth with his tongue; at some point, it had already turned to powder. 

Xi Yue, wearing the dragon-taming chain, didn’t need him to speak an instruction. He immediately took out a white spirit and fed it to him, then quickly put him on the bed. 

“His bones and flesh are healing. It’s not a big problem… Ah, this little devil.” 

Like a distressed cub, Xi Yue pushed Pang Jian’s hand away. He let out a sharp hiss. 

Fine. Before, he’d trembled as soon as he saw Pang Jian and didn’t even dare to move. Now he dared to scratch him. He hadn’t grown taller for nothing. 

Pang Jian didn’t squabble with the half-puppet. He clicked his tongue, withdrew his hand, and stood still with his arms crossed. He said to Xi Ping, “You’re doing pretty well, kid. You haven’t even cried. Plenty of guts.” 

“Damn it…hss… If…if my mom were here…I guarantee…I’d be howling so loud that n-no rooster would dare to crow within three li.” Xi Ping, clenching his teeth, pulled out a towel and wrapped up his injured hand. “What…what would be the use of crying to you? Ah…Forebear Yue, have a heart. You want me to comfort…you, in my condition?” 

Hearing this, Xi Yue clenched his teeth and forced back his tears. 

Xi Ping’s gaze was unfocused from pain, his breath coming too short to pass through his throat. He rambled as though raving, “Too unreliable…you’re too unreliable, Lao Pang… Next time I go out pilfering, I’m not taking you…” 

Pang Jian: “…” 

Apologies for holding up your business. 

In about an incense stick, the lump of crushed bones and flesh at the end of Xi Ping’s wrist at last had the bare outlines of a hand. The sharp pain was over. He gradually adjusted and could finally take air into his lungs. 

Xi Yue helped him drink half a cup of clear water. Xi Ping drank two mouthfuls, then shook his head and dodged. “I don’t want that, pour me a cup of wine—listen, Lao Pang, what the hell did you see back there?” 

Pang Jian paused. The cynical smile evaporated off his face. 

He covered the door and window with anti-eavesdropping talismans, appropriated Xi Ping’s wine, tossed it down in one gulp, and only then slowly began: “The people impersonating evil cultivators last night to sneak into Shu’s encampment were from Great Wan’s Mining Office. You already know that. Because you got involved, and because the Chu encampment overheard the disturbance and came to get in on the fun, they probably withdrew in haste without reaching their goal.” 

Xi Ping blinked sweat off his eyelashes. “What were they looking for? That underground spiritual stone storehouse covered in inscriptions?” 

“That storehouse is full of spiritual stones that have been very crudely handled. The rock snow wasn’t even wiped clean,” Pang Jian said gravely. “I didn’t see an exit in the storehouse. I only saw a transport array.” 

“A transport array? Connected to the origin of the spiritual stones?” Xi Ping’s thinking had been pared incomparably keen by pain. He asked at once, “So the karma beast went into the array to investigate? Where do the spiritual stones come from?” 

“The karma beast lost contact with me as soon as it left the array. I only took a glance. But even at a glance, I couldn’t fail to recognize that place… It had been taken to the southern mines.” Pang Jian looked up and said with emphasis, “There are people in the spiritual stone mines selling us out to another country, secretly conveying large quantities of spiritual stones to the Shu encampment.” 

Great Wan’s southern mines were truly full of activity. Not only were the evil cultivators hung up on them, there were also neighboring countries eyeing them covetously. 

But more than these affairs of state, what always interested Xi Ping before anything else were the expressions and tones of voice of the people around him. He found that when Pang Jian said the words “southern mines,” they were said between his teeth. 

What kind of a place could a person take a hurried glance at and be unable to fail to recognize? 

If he didn’t go home for three months and some of the potted flowers in the Marquis Manor’s rear court changed, he still couldn’t guarantee that he would recognize it at a glance. 

Xi Ping suddenly remembered Tai Sui Liang Chen inadvertently revealing that Pang Jian was the son of a miner from the southern mines—his whole family had died in a mine collapse! 

He gave a start, temporarily set aside even his injured hand, and asked, “Can you just steal spiritual stones from the mines? Aren’t they counted?” 

“They are.” Pang Jian’s expression became even more grave. “There are often impurities in spiritual stones, and rock snow unevenly distributed. If you only make an inventory and record weight, it’s easy for there to be discrepancies. In order to prevent embezzlement in the mines, the volume of extracted spiritual stones is reckoned by the state of the spiritual energy surge—the activity level of the spiritual energy in the mines has to match precisely with the volume of spiritual stones that leaves the mines. There’s no way to fake it. If even a single low-grade jade stamp is missing, it has to be investigated… There’s only an exception in one circumstance.” 

Xi Ping had a premonition of what he was going to say. 

Pang Jian said, “A mine collapse.” 

During a mine collapse, the mine caved in, the spiritual stones bounced around, and surveillance lost effect. 

Xi Ping held his breath. “Do mine collapses happen often?” 

The corners of Pang Jian’s lips twitched in an unsuccessful sneer. “Occasionally.” 

Spiritual stone mines weren’t like other places. Apart from a great array, comparable to something from Xuanyin’s inner sect, there couldn’t be any other arrays placed in the mines. Even inscriptions had to be used with the greatest caution. Safety measures for miners were in fact not even as good as those for the factory workers beside the Moon Plated Gold gold smelting furnaces—supposing that the factories were willing to activate the arrays. 

If a miner hadn’t experienced a handful of mine collapses, he wasn’t worthy of being called an “old miner.” All they could do was carry all kinds of protective talismans, do their best to hold out if a minor mine collapse occurred… If they encountered a major catastrophe, it would be up to fate. 

Despite this, every year large quantities of laborers dreamed of going south to work in the mines. The selection process was strict enough for a military exam. The mines paid well, and adding in rock snow to subsidize household expenses, you could buy a house and settle down after working there for a few years. Even if your luck was bad, and you died in a mine collapse, your wife, children, and elderly relatives would have support in the future… Moreover, in the Land of Turmoil, Great Wan’s miners counted as “superior people.” Even if you could get the same salary working in a street stall listening to people’s overbearing shouts, how could it compare in dignity to holding a bowl of noodles in the mines and pitying the Turmoilers? 

But looking at it now, how many of those occasional mine collapses had been naturally occurring, and how many had been man-made? 

From outside the window came a crew member’s shout. The garrison relief ships were leaving the Chu post.