That evening after the stone breaking ceremony, Jiang Yue and Yu Nianzhen sold their two boulders to the Stone village for three hundred gold coins.
They could have probably earned a lot more if they extracted the iron ore before selling, but they chose not to do so as a show of goodwill.
In this way, the villagers could take the three hundred gold coins as the cost of mining and since they could later sell the extracted iron at several times the cost, the loss of three hundred gold coins didn't seem like much.
"The two are travelling to Fengying city for the recruitment?" Chief Guan asked as he led the two boys towards the edge of the village.
Although the village had lost three hundred gold coins to the two boys, chief Guan was in a good mood.
The new mine was very rich in iron, which meant that the village would prosper in the next short while and selling the iron from the two boulders that the boys had excavated would earn a neat profit for the village.
He expected to extract at least two to three tonnes of iron from the two boulders and if the iron was sold to steel refiners in Fengying city, it would not be hard to make at least six hundred to seven hundred gold coins in profit which was enough to buy a few more cultivation pills for some villagers who had seen no progress for several years. The gold could also support the children if any of them were lucky enough to be recruited by the Sea Cloud Sect in the coming selection.
Chief Guan was very happy when he thought of this and he smiled happily whenever he looked at the two boys.
"Yes." Yu Nianzhen answered, but this was just an easier answer rather than the true answer.
After talking about it, Jiang Yue and Yu Nianzhen had decided not to join a sect if they could help it.
Joining a sect or cultivation family would allow them to gain a lot of resources, but they would also be bound to the sect or family. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing to be tied to a sect or family, but neither of the two welcomed the idea.
In their past lives, both had been the heads of powerful families and while that gave them a lot of power, it also came with a lot of responsibilities. In this life, both wished to live more freely and because of that, they didn't want to join any of the already established orders.
However, they both knew that they may have to if they couldn't find a way to gather enough resources to meet their cultivation needs which was why they planned to arrive in Fengying city several months before the recruitment to explore their options.
"With your talent, the two will soon become famous." Chief Guan continued as he looked at the two in admiration.
He had tried to make things hard for Yu Nianzhen during the stone breaking ceremony and as a result, the other had effortlessly wielded the two thousand kilograms pickaxe and dislodged a boulder that was only slightly smaller than the one Jiang Yue had broken apart.
He had thought that the two boys had awakened low-grade heaven meridians, but after their performance during the ceremony, he had begun to think that he had still underestimated their talent. He didn't consider divine meridians since such kinds of legendary meridians were only known to powerful elders in the big sects, but chief Guan suspected that the two may have opened high-grade heaven meridians which meant that they had opened all three heaven acupoints of each of their five meridians.
Chief Guan had never met anyone who had opened a single heaven meridian and at the back of his mind, he was now subconsciously afraid of the two boys and wanted them to leave his Stone village as soon as possible.
He didn't even entertain the thoughts of currying favour because he had begun to suspect that his initial thoughts were wrong and the boys did indeed have a big background.
"The two will stay here tonight." Chief Guan said as he pushed open the door of a small room.
The room only had one stone bed and since they were only thirteen, the chief didn't feel anything wrong with letting them share a room and bed.
After he told the two about supper and bathing water, chief Guan left and Jiang Yue quickly closed the door behind him.
"What is it?" Yu Nianzhen asked as he looked at Jiang Yue curiously.
He had noticed a quickly concealed excitement as soon as Jiang Yue entered the room and the speed at which he had closed the door showed an urgency that he hadn't seen since the days of escaping from Han city.
Instead of answering the other's question, Jiang Yue removed something from underneath his robes and when Yu Nianzhen saw what it was, he also couldn't help but feel excited.
"It's pointing at the bed." Jiang Yue said as he showed the treasure compass to Yu Nianzhen.
He had felt it heat up as soon as they entered the room and now that it was out, the brass needle had turned gold and it was pointing straight at the bed.
The two quickly threw the beddings on the only chair in the room and then carefully ran the compass on top of the bed while carefully observing the needle.
"It's this point." Yu Nianzhen pointed to a spot about fifty centimetres from the foot of the bed.
"What should we do?" Jiang Yue asked as he looked heatedly at the place
The treasure compass had not reacted during the stone breaking ceremony, which shows that it didn't think of the iron ore as treasure, but something within the bed had triggered it and the boys couldn't ignore it.
"Break and compensate." Yu Nianzhen said simply.
This was the first time that the treasure compass had reacted since they got it almost four months ago and he was very eager to know what had made it react.
In the face of treasure, they didn't care about being polite, especially since a stone bed could be replaced for less than a gold coin.
After making the decision, the two didn't delay any longer and they removed their outer robes and used them together with the beddings to pad the spot to cover the breaking noise.
When that was done, Yu Nianzhen used a little of his strength to punch the bed causing spiderweb cracks to spread from the point of impact.
However, the cracks weren't deep enough and since Yu Nianzhen didn't dare to use more of his strength for fear of damaging whatever was within the stone bed, it took a few hits before the bed cracked open to reveal the stone's interior.
The stone was solid for the most part, but it had several air pockets and one of those pockets contained a white substance that looked like condensed milk.
"It is stone milk." Yu Nianzhen said happily as he looked at the substance.
"Stone milk?" Jiang Yue asked.
Unlike Yu Nianzhen, he didn't like reading and if he could help it, he left the matter of reading to the other.
This habit had been ingrained and carried over from their past life where even for school, Yu Nianzhen had always taken the task of reading school books and later explaining everything to Jiang Yue.
"It is a heaven and earth treasure that is birthed from old stones. From the looks of it, this one is only one hundred years stone milk, but it is a treasure nonetheless." Yu Nianzhen said happily as he removed a jade bottle from his clothes to collect the milk.
The stone milk looked like a single large drop, but the two soon realised that the single drop was made up of about one thousand small drops.
"This smell…" Jiang Yue shouted in excitement as he took a deep breath of the stone milk's fragrance.
The stone milk smelled like actual milk, but it had a subtle scent that he couldn't place and when the smell entered his body, Jiang Yue felt an almost imperceptible change in his body.
Yu Nianzhen nodded excitedly before he spoke, "stone milk is very useful for body tempering and meridian strengthening."
The maximum force value that a divine meridians cultivator at the peak of the meridian awakening realm could wield was ten thousand kilograms, but such a force is a burden to the body and cannot be used often.
It was because of this burden to the body that cultivators in the meridian awakening realm required body tempering pills and meridian strengthening pills to ensure that they wouldn't damage their bodies when exerting force.
Stone milk had the combined effect of a body tempering and meridian strengthening pill and the cost of a drop of the lowest grade one hundred years stone milk was in the thousands.
However, the cost was only a minor issue since there were a lot of families and sects that could afford it, demand was the main problem.
Stone milk was very rare and even a stone mining village like Stone village may not encounter it for several thousand years.
"We are saved." Jiang Yue said happily as he threw himself at Yu Nianzhen in excitement.
Yu Nianzhen naturally embraced the other as his lips turned up in a brilliant smile that made his eyes shine like obsidian crystals.
Yu Nianzhen didn't know how much stone milk they needed for their cultivation, but no matter the case, finding the milk had solved a pressing problem and if they were lucky, the quantity would be enough for themselves and sale.
Subconsciously, Yu Nianzhen began to card his fingers through Jiang Yue's soft hair and the other sighed in comfort as he drilled deeper into the warm and familiar embrace.