Chapter 166: Harvesting Dark Gold

In the Yinjian, after occupying the dark gold mine, Lu Daoguang returned with a small squad of heavy-armored paper soldiers.

The corpse-driving craftsmen from the Jiang family of Xiang Prefecture were the same; after all, besides Jiang Henian, weren't the others still considered captives or, rather, surrendered soldiers?

"Flap~ flap~"

A giant paper eagle flew across the sky, with the Yinjian's eerie terrain and all sorts of seemingly dangerous areas below.

Although this was not his first time riding the paper eagle, Lu Daoguang still felt somewhat nervous.

After all, in a place like the Yinjian, one might be targeted by terrifying anomalies and lose their life at any moment.

Fortunately, the army of paper soldiers had already scouted a relatively safe route on the way here, and soon the paper eagle successfully arrived above the military camp.

"Whew~ finally back!"

Stepping down from the paper eagle, Lu Daoguang's legs were trembling slightly, but he quickly straightened himself up.

Because those corpse-driving craftsmen were behaving even more miserably than him; their originally angry, aggrieved, and fierce expressions had now become somewhat cautious and timid.

Because they had just seen clearly the figures of nearly twenty thousand heavy-armored paper soldiers inside and outside the camp.

"Click, click, click."

Accompanied by the landing of the paper eagle, the surrounding heavy-armored paper soldiers came directly here to take away the collected dark gold.

Although it was a dark gold mine, Lu Daoguang had searched every corner, and the total amount of dark gold found was only close to one hundred catties.

In the end, he even separated those corpse-driving craftsmen to interrogate them, but the amount of dark gold mined was just that much.

And after smelting, the nearly one hundred catties of dark gold looked only the size of two bricks; such a small amount really couldn't be considered much.

"Master Lu, what should we do next?"

Jiang Henian looked at the surrounding soldiers and saw that they didn't seem to have any intention of coming over to take the other clansmen away for confinement, so he immediately asked Lu Daoguang.

"Ahem, you all go back and rest first. Remember, except for the room assigned to you, you are strictly forbidden from running around elsewhere; otherwise, if you are beheaded by these soldiers, you'll have only yourself to blame!"

Lu Daoguang coughed twice to put on airs, then gave Jiang Henian a stern warning.

In reality, as long as they didn't run out of the camp, it was basically fine, but Lu Daoguang wouldn't explain that to him.

"Yes, yes, yes! This subordinate understands!"

Jiang Henian agreed obediently, then ran to the side of Third Aunt to try and help her to his room to rest.

"This old woman can still walk on her own!"

However, this Third Aunt didn't appreciate his fawning, and as for the others, they still looked at him with the eyes of a traitor.

"Hmph!"

As these people bypassed him, they also deliberately snorted coldly, as if doing so could draw a line between them and him.

The cold glares of his clan relatives, coupled with Lu Daoguang's suppression, made Jiang Henian feel like crying without tears.

"Didn't you all admit defeat and surrender too?!"

Although he really wanted to shout this sentence fiercely at the others, in the end, he didn't say a single word.

Finally, Jiang Henian had no choice but to return to his room dejectedly to rest; as for the fate of the others in the clan, that would depend on how that lord arranged it.

——————

"The amount of dark gold obtained is still a bit low!"

Lin Feng, who was originally pondering how to improve the jade talisman carving, also saw the dark gold finally obtained by the heavy-armored paper soldiers and couldn't help but shake his head.

"Next, I still need to create two Ghost Gates, connecting to Black Stone Mountain and the dark gold mine respectively. Besides, the number of miner paper soldiers is not enough; I need to make another batch."

As the main material for making the highest-level talismans, Lin Feng estimated that each Black Jade Dark Gold Talisman would likely require over two hundred grams of dark gold.

That is to say, one catty of smelted dark gold could only make two high-level talismans; one hundred catties of dark gold could only produce about two hundred talismans in the end.

This didn't even account for those that failed during the final fusion; if one counted the potential failed talismans, it would be a stroke of luck to end up with one hundred talismans!

"Burning money! No, that's not right, it's basically burning gold!"

"Failed talismans should still be able to have the dark gold re-extracted, but even so, the cost required to make one high-level talisman is still somewhat terrifying."

"No wonder there wasn't much relevant insight in that old Daoist's booklet; I'm afraid he hadn't actually made many of them himself..."

Thinking of that old Daoist's appearance, Lin Feng couldn't help but complain inwardly; after all, how could an ordinary anomaly-controller obtain large amounts of Yinjian black jade and dark gold?

Even those corpse-driving craftsmen didn't dig up black jade and dark gold to use as consumables, but to forge them into special corpse-nurturing coffins that could be passed down.

"Forget it, money is something that doesn't have much use for me anyway."

Finally, Lin Feng shook his head and continued to focus his attention on the mechanical blueprint in his hand; if he finished this thing, he would be able to directly obtain carved black jade talisman bases in the future.

——————

In Yun Prefecture, the Corpse-Collecting Paper Soldier was taking three disciples to collect corpses in some remote villages and towns.

Nowadays, these places had been left with a large number of civilian corpses after being looted by barbarian soldiers.

"Master, they were too ruthless!"

Goudan carefully dragged out the corpse of a woman holding a child, while speaking to the Corpse-Collecting Paper Soldier, who was dealing with several charred corpses.

"These bastards aren't even human!"

On the other side, Goudan also carried some corpses out from inside a house; these were the corpses of children only a few years old.

But now, they had either been pierced through the body by sharp weapons or had half their bodies gnawed off directly by wolf-beasts.

"..."

Xiaohui was silently digging a grave pit outside the village to bury the fragmented corpses; the scenes she had just seen almost made her vomit.

Logically speaking, she had already come into contact with all kinds of corpses and had long since overcome her initial psychological barriers.

But the massacre-like scene in this village still made her face turn pale, and she was still shaken with fear.

"Master! Master! There's a survivor!"

Suddenly, Shitou ran out from a stone house; hearing his words, Goudan and Xiaohui hurriedly ran over.

"These few kids were lucky to hide in the cellar and weren't discovered by those barbarians!"

Following the direction of Shitou's finger, they saw an opened cellar, inside the narrow space of which a few half-grown children were huddled together.

"Master, why don't you take them in as well, old man?"

"Yes, yes, yes, Master, that way I'll have junior brothers and sisters too!"

"……"

Seeing the Corpse-Collecting Zhiren approach, Shitou hurriedly spoke up, for children of this age would certainly not survive in a place like this on their own.

"Click-clack."

The Corpse-Collecting Zhiren looked at the children hiding in the cellar who felt extremely terrified and nodded.

These homeless children with no way to survive were the very targets Lin Feng had set for it to take as disciples.

"Hahaha, that's great!"

"Quick, quick, hurry and come out; as long as you kowtow to our Master, from now on you will be my, Shitou's, junior brothers and sisters, and let's see who dares to bully you again!"

Seeing the Corpse-Collecting Zhiren agree, Shitou and the others were immediately overjoyed and hurriedly shouted to the few people huddled in the cellar.