Chapter 103

“You really haven’t told anyone else about this?” Kraft rubbed his forehead. His cousin Laien would never have imagined being accidentally exposed halfway across the kingdom—sometimes fate was just that strange.

But given their relationship, exposing him wouldn’t be right; he hoped Teacher Anderson would discover the issue himself before gathering a full set of eyes, ears, mouth, nose, hands, and feet.

“I understand—you didn’t mention your identity. There are so many minor nobles clustered around Wendeng Harbor—who knows which one you mean?” William stifled his laughter. He’d held this story inside for a long time, and finally having a suitable moment to tell it satisfied his urge to confide.

“Since we’re already here, why not first check their usual activity zones, then return to the village to find that old Gori who sounds like the heretic leader?”

He’d encountered many such cases of last-minute retreat; the key to persuasion was simplifying the task, breaking it into clear small steps, and emphasizing it would take only a moment. For example, telling a sailor to just hold onto that rope for a short while while he quickly arranged someone to relieve him.

Then… then who could accurately say how long it had been without a timer?

“Just walk straight down, to where they’ve walked hundreds or thousands of times, take one quick look, then come back up. Total time? About two mugs of beer. How’s that?”

Kraft still hesitated; some instinct troubled him, suggesting all factors were connected, that a single governing source unified countless interlinked elements, and that disparate manifestations all pointed to one core issue—the origin of all scattered phenomena.

Without understanding the underlying patterns, no inference was possible—just as ordinary people struggle to link diarrhea, myocarditis, and convulsions, three seemingly unrelated bodily symptoms, when in fact all three might indicate the same pathogen.

His problem was not knowing what the “pathogen” was; this missing key shattered every fragile clue, preventing them from being pieced together, leaving him unable to implement any targeted preventive measures—and for a moment, he seemed almost neurotic. He briefly opened and closed his spiritual senses—still found nothing.

“Oh, don’t be like that. Do you think finding a heretic leader will change the fact that we’re here for the mine?”

“Alright, I’ll go first—only as far as their usual activity zone.” Kraft pulled out a torch, brushed away the surface ash from the firepit to reveal the buried flame, and lit the oil-soaked tip of the wooden stick. “Kup, you stay outside with Yin Feng. The cave’s too dark and narrow—no need to crowd in together.”

This wasn’t Kraft’s first time entering a mine shaft; during earlier investigations, they’d visited many similar ones. The longest had lasted roughly three generations; the shortest, about the same duration—only a few years since opening. Regardless of length, human traces never remained preserved along the descent.

On one hand, the rock structure itself resisted alteration; on the other, the locals had never realized such a perfect cave could collapse.

Even after experiencing one terrible disaster, they’d provided no support structures for the new mine, or perhaps didn’t know where artificial support was needed. These caves resembled tunnels drilled through rocky mountains by tunnel boring machines—far superior in structure to human-built mines, appearing utterly secure to laymen, making it impossible to imagine how a collapse could occur.

Humans walked through them as if they’d always been built for them, designed to guide toward minerals buried deep in the rock strata.

The torchlight cast flickering shadows across the ochre cave walls; the rocks everywhere were the very material forming the hills—hard to find a single stone of any other kind, only yellow rock mountains and their thin, weathered, similarly colored soil layers.

Generally, they’d walk for a long while through these rarely changing yellow strata until the mineral’s color began to bleed onto the walls. At first, it was barely noticeable—often mistaken for the torch’s flame about to die, casting a reddish, veiled glow, while clothes and skin remained unchanged, as if overlooked when painting a canvas.

The slow-witted wouldn’t notice until the hue deepened, as if the rock’s veins had been severed, dark red seeping outward, drowning both origin and path. Kraft felt as if he’d pierced the skin of some colossal creature, entering its dermis, surrounded by blood-soaked tissue—these caves were pathological channels, fistulas, not natural formations.

They glowed too vividly red, causing visual fatigue and labored breathing, like walking through a river of blood. In a sense, that wasn’t entirely wrong—they were high-quality hematite; where the pickaxes struck, iron content was even higher, darker and more oppressive.

“Iron ore—no different from before, just better quality.” Slight disappointment, not severe.

The woman who’d led them here worked here too, swinging her pick against the already thinned rock wall, dislodging a few fragments. After stripping the surface, the underlying layer remained stained red.

“May I ask—does anyone in the village know about the old mine’s condition?”

“Everyone who knew what was inside stayed inside. So did those two outsiders and their belongings.” The sturdy woman set down her pick, jammed the torch into a notch carved into the wall, and revealed a shallow layer of crushed ore in her basket. “He pays people to work, sends his own men to haul it away, and forbids the men from speaking of it.”

“No one ever slipped a word?”

“Maybe someone did—but he pays well, and if he finds out who talked, he pays extra to the informant. Everyone’s watching.” She squinted, wiping away sweat and dust, then swept scattered fragments into a pile with her foot. “My husband’s an honest man—just works, takes his pay. Maybe some sneaky fellow told his family.”

“If you’re interested in that, better drop the idea now—no one can break through those rocks.”

“Thank you.”

“If you can add a few more copper coins, I can ask around for you.”

William reached for his purse—but pulled out two black silver coins. He hadn’t listened past “no one can dig through,” and what he offered was clearly not payment for gossip. No one noticed, but the captain had already walked further inward, past the two talking, reaching the edge of the mining area.

“I have an idea.” He held the torch straight out, pushing its light deeper into the rarely trodden dark—here, no obstructions, no marked boundaries, no difference in mineral abundance.

“Both mines are in the same small hill—can’t be that far apart…”

He took a few more steps; the torch’s glow nearly detached from the group behind, connected only by a faint outer halo. Those insignificant steps, in darkness, stretched into an unsettling psychological distance. “Two silver coins—take us a bit further in. Maybe they connect deeper down?”

“No.”

“No!”

Two voices spoke in unison. Kraft and the sturdy woman locked eyes, sensing in each other’s gaze a fleeting, inexplicable resistance—its origin unknown.