Chapter 103: A Minor Disagreement

"You really haven't told anyone else about this?" Kraft said, pressing a hand to his forehead. Cousin Lane would never have imagined the secret would slip out unintentionally halfway across the kingdom; sometimes fate is just that strange.

But given their relationship, exposing him would not be right. He hoped Master Anderson would discover the problem himself before gathering a complete set of eyes, ears, mouth, nose, hands, and feet.

"I understand; after all, I didn't mention the identity. Small nobles cluster around Wenden Port; who knows which family is being referred to?" William suppressed his laughter. He had been holding this story in his belly for a long time; it was rare to find a suitable occasion to tell it, and his urge to confide was satisfied.

"Since we are already here, how about we first check the area where they usually operate, then return to the village to find that old Gori who sounds like a cult leader?"

He had encountered many cases of backing out at the critical moment; the key to persuasion lay in making the matter sound simple, breaking it down into clear small tasks, and emphasizing that it would only take a moment. For instance, telling a sailor to just hold onto that rope in place for a short while, and he would arrange for someone to come up and relieve him as soon as possible.

And then... then who could say exactly how long without a timer?

"Just keep walking, go to the place they have walked through hundreds or thousands of times, take a quick look, and come back up. All together, it should take about two beers' worth of time. How about that?"

Kraft was still hesitating; some kind of intuition troubled him, pointing out that various factors were connected, that a single governing source would integrate many associations into one bundle, and that different manifestations would point to a single crux, which was the source of all scattered phenomena.

Without understanding the laws operating behind the scenes, inference was impossible; just as ordinary people would find it hard to link diarrhea, myocarditis, and convulsions—three unrelated things in different parts of the body—when in fact all three could indicate the possibility of infection by the same pathogen.

His problem lay in not knowing what the "pathogen" was; this key point shattered various clues that could not withstand scrutiny, making it impossible to piece them together into a whole, so naturally there was no way to take any targeted preventive measures, leaving him looking somewhat neurotic for a moment. He briefly opened and closed his spiritual senses once, but still found nothing.

"Oh, don't be like that. Does going to find a cult leader change the fact that we came for the mine?"

"Alright, I'll go first, and we'll stop at the place where they usually operate." Kraft drew out a torch, brushed away the ash on the surface of the fire pit to expose the buried flames, and ignited the oil-containing accelerant at the head of the wooden stick. "Kup, you and Yin Feng stay outside; it's too dark and narrow in the cave, not worth squeezing in together."

This was not the first time Kraft had entered a mine; in previous investigations, they had visited many similar mines. The longest had been in use for about three generations, while the shortest was roughly comparable, having only been opened for a few years. Regardless of length, traces of human activity were not inherently preserved along the downward path.

On one hand, this was because the rock structure itself was difficult to alter; on the other, the residents here had never before realized that such a perfect rock cave could collapse.

Even after experiencing a terrible disaster, they had provided no support structures for the new mines, or perhaps they simply did not know where human-made support was needed. These caves were like tunnels drilled by a shield machine through a rocky mountain; their structure far exceeded that of mines built by humans, appearing perfectly safe to an untrained eye, making it impossible to imagine how a collapse could occur.

Humans walked through them freely, as if the passages had always been designed for them, intended to guide toward the minerals buried deep within the rock layers.

The torch cast flickering shadows spread across the yellowish-brown cave walls. Everywhere were the rocks that provided the main material for the hills; one would hardly find a stone of any other kind here, only yellow rock mountains and the thin, same-colored soil layers weathered from them.

Generally, they would have to walk for quite a while through the rarely changing yellow rock layers until the color of the minerals stained the cave walls. At first, it was not obvious; most of the time, it seemed as if the torch was about to burn out, the illuminated view turning reddish and veiled with a gauzy mist-like sensation, while clothes and skin did not change color, as if overlooked during the painting of a canvas.

Dull-witted people would only notice when the color gradually deepened, as if the veins of the rock layers had been severed, with dark red hues surging and flooding both the path behind and the road ahead. Kraft would feel as though he had drilled through the skin of some enormous creature, entering the dermis, while the surroundings were blood-dipped tissues; these caves were pathological structures like sinuses or fistulas, not something that should be classified as "naturally formed."

They were so red they were almost blinding, causing visual fatigue and making breathing feel sticky, like walking through a river of blood. In a sense, this was not entirely wrong; this was a decent quality of hematite ore, and where the sound of pickaxes striking came from, the iron content would be even higher, and the color even darker red and more oppressive.

"Iron ore, no different from the one before, except the quality is better." A slight disappointment, nothing serious.

The woman who had led them here was working here, swinging her pickaxe at the rock wall that had already been thinned, causing a few fragments of ore to fall. After stripping away the surface layer, the rock layers were still stained red.

"May I ask a question? Is there anyone in the village who knows about the situation in the original old mine?"

"Those who know what's inside stayed inside, along with those two outsiders and their belongings." The sturdy woman set down her pickaxe, placed the torch in a groove chiseled into the cave wall, and showed the shallow layer of ore fragments piled in her basket. "He paid people to hire workers, arranged for others to transport the ore away himself, and even forbade the men from talking about it outside."

"Really, no one secretly mentioned it once?"

"Maybe, but he pays well for the work. If he told people that there's money to be made for reporting who talked outside, everyone is watching." She squinted, wiping away a mixture of sweat and mine dust, and used her foot to sweep the scattered ore fragments on the ground into a pile. "My husband is an honest man; he just works and takes the money. Maybe some slick character secretly told his family."

"If you are interested in that, you should give up the idea soon; no one can break through those stones."

"Thank you."

"If you can add a few copper coins, I can help you ask around."

William reached for his money pouch but pulled out two black silver coins instead. He had stopped listening from the moment she said "no one can break through"; what he offered was clearly not a fee for running errands and gathering news. In a moment no one noticed, the captain walked deeper again, passing the two people he had been speaking with, and arrived at the edge of the mining area.

"I have an idea." He held the torch level and pushed it forward, forcing the light a step further into the depths rarely visited by people. There was nothing to block the way, no lines drawn, and no difference in the abundance of minerals.

"Both mines are in the same small hill; it can't be that big..."

He took a few more steps until the circle of light from his torch almost detached from the group behind him, connected only by the faint outer halo. Those few insignificant steps in the darkness seemed stretched out, breeding an uneasy psychological distance. "Two silver coins, take us a bit further inside. Perhaps they connect at a deeper level?"

"No."

"No!"

Two voices rang out in unison. Kraft and the sturdy woman who had spoken in sync exchanged glances, noticing a fleeting, confused reluctance in each other's eyes, not knowing where it came from.