The northwestern border, Tianshan Mountain.
The whiteness stretched on forever, from the highest mountain tops to the deepest abyss, as if that was the only color left in this world. Snowy mountains rose up in rows, each more magnificent than the next. Everywhere one turned, they were met by great ice cascades over a hundred meters tall.
Tianshan used to be a windy region, but the breakout and stabilization of the spiritual essence had made one improvement in the climate—it was no longer gusty. At least they didn't need to worry about blizzards.
After four years of changes, the fault in the ice sheets of Tianshan had settled down; they now lay thick and solid over the ground, forming a layer of densely packed snow. It was thanks to this tough surface that they were able to avoid much casualty in their march.
Bai Yunsheng led the procession with a long sword on his back and wearing a thin Taoist robe only. Both his handsome face and his straight and tall figure made him look very trustworthy. However, the coldness in his eyes had kept others from getting too familiar.
"Whee…"
As they marched on, a shriek rang out suddenly, and before anyone could react, a shadow approached from above at a tremendous speed. Hooked talons grabbed a man by his shoulders, and with a yank, the guy was five meters over the ground.
"Help! Help!"
The man was terrified and struggled violently.
Clunk!
The sword left its sheath like a roaring dragon, and silver light struck down at an angle like flashing stars chasing the moon. With a slicing sound, the thing was in two halves.
Plop! Entrails and blood splashed all over the ground. The blood was so hot that it sizzled and steamed on the snow.
Only then did the scared crowd see what had attacked them. Lying on the ground was a giant bird with a wingspan of nearly eight meters. It was covered in white feathers all over its body, except for its sharp golden talons. The bird's head alone was as big as a wash basin—imagine how ferocious the entire bird would look.
"New species! New species!" A specialist tumbled near and examined the bird. "Take it with us to the base!"
"Yes!"
A few soldiers carried out the order.
"Thank you, Priest Bai. We're so lucky to have you with us. We can't open fire randomly in this place; it may trigger an avalanche." One of the men in charge also expressed his gratitude wholeheartedly.
"Just doing my job." Bai Yunsheng was equally curious about the animal and asked, "You haven't seen this bird before?"
"No. The environment of Tianshan was too harsh for us to venture here. All we could do was to observe from the perimeter. We did discover some mutated snow rats, snow leopards, and cedars, but never a raptor of this size."
"Compared to human society, nature is more about cold logic. Since the top of the food chain has emerged, it means an ecosphere has already been established in Tianshan," said another specialist in amazement.
The team moved faster after the minor incident and managed to rush to the valley Gu Yu and Xiaozhai had once visited before sunset.
The cold air had once been blocked out of this place and the green valley enjoyed spring all year round. However, after Gu Yu removed the Seal of Patriarch Sa, the spiritual essence ran amuck and the valley was destroyed by an avalanche.
After a four-year recovery period, the green land had returned, which was a great surprise for the scientific research team. After all, no one wanted to work in a harsh environment.
They briefly set up for the night and busied themselves with all the work the following day. Like Lu Yuanqing once before, Bai Yunsheng had little to do other than playing the human detecting machine.
Early one morning.
Sitting on a stone on the ridge while caressing his long sword, Bai Yunsheng couldn't help but let out a soft sigh. "Well, I'm still not used to this one."
The ancient sword was gone and this one was temporarily made from materials they had in the monastery. He had only just integrated with the Sword Seed and could not yet store the sword inside his mental space. When that time came, he wasn't going to put a crappy sword in there.
"Priest! Priest!" Just then, someone hurried up the ridge with a stone in his hand, saying, "Please have a look at this mineral."
Oh?
Bai Yunsheng took it and saw that the stone was green, translucent, and without any impurities. He then injected a streak of spiritual essence and searched the interior, concluding, "The hardness is incredible. Is it the green jade stone?"
"Yes. It is what Mr. Gu's Flaming Cloud Needles were made from. We have explored around the lake and found quite a few. We thought we should bring it to you for a look."
"The feature of this mineral is quite distinct. Use this one as your benchmark. I don't think you can go wrong. Come to me if there's something you can't identify for certain."
"No problem. I'm off, then!"
Less than two hours after that man left, someone else called him. This time, it was the lead researcher of the scientific team. Bai Yunsheng responded with due respect and went down to the lab, where a few specialists were standing in discussion around a few rocks.
"Priest Bai is here… Priest, please have a look at these minerals. Are they any different from the spiritual stones of Tianzhu Mountain?" asked an old man in a hurry.
Bai Yunsheng saw that there were eight of them in total and they looked pretty much the same in appearance as what they had in Tianzhu. He then examined each one in turn. After eliminating the five stones that had no fluctuation of spiritual essence, he looked closely at the remaining three.
He said after quite a while, "You're right, they are spiritual stones. In fact, the reactivity of spiritual essence in them is even higher."
"By how much?" asked the old man immediately.
"Um…" He weighed them in hand hand again and picked one out. "This is 1."
He then picked a second one. "This is 2."
And then the last one. "This is 3."
"3? That's more than twofold?" The researchers were all surprised.
The government was able to improve their database thanks to the experience gained in the previous development projects. The reactivity of the spiritual stones found on Tianzhu Mountain was set to be 1 as a base line. Tianshan had just turned out to be a treasure land with its scores as high as 2 and 3.
"I don't think we should be too specific with the categorization. Simpler and more common categories will work better," said a specialist.
"How general do you want to make it? Grade One for a 1 and Grade Two for a 2?" This idea was rejected by another specialist at once. "We might discover higher numbers in the future—maybe as high as 10 or 20. What then? Grade Ten and Grade Twenty?"
"How do you think we should categorize it, then? Can any common people understand that complicated system you invented?"
The several old men began a heated argument and completely ignored Bai Yunsheng.
Blinking, Bai Yunsheng automatically removed himself from the lab. However advanced a cultivator he might be, he had no say over the scientific matters.
***
The next few days passed like so; they had gathered pretty much all the required data of the mineral veins.
First of all, the reserve of the green jade stone was about 5 400 tons, which was relatively scarce. Then, there were the spiritual stones, whose reserve was 25 400 tons in Tianzhu Mountain and around 23 700 here.
After extracting a large number of samples, they were able to figure out the ratio: about 40% had a reactivity of 1, another 40% had 2, and 20% had 3, which was the most reactive spiritual stone discovered so far.
As for the categorization, the complicated finally lost to the simple one, which was very straightforward: Grade One, Grade Two, and Grade Three.
According to Bai Yunsheng's estimation, nature had to go through so much trouble to produce Grade Three spiritual stones, so it would be at least another century before they could find things like Grade Nine stones, which should not concern them right now. Hence, the simple categorization.
The scientific research team was exhilarated. The final development project was indeed promising! Phoenix Mountain was good for farming, Tianzhu Mountain was a mining area, Emei was farming again, and Tianshan was also a second mine.
The green jade stone was known for its hardness, making it a wonderful material to refine instruments. The spiritual stones here had no additional attribute and were purely used for consumption and supplementation.
They had thought these two would be their only discoveries until the ninth day, when a survey team found a third type of mineral in an area further away from the valley.
"This…"
Even Bai Yunsheng was noticeably amazed by this new discovery. The mineral in his hand looked more like an ice crystal than a stone.
It looked like a blossoming flower, with twelve ice petals arranged around the center in a radial pattern. It was semi-transparent and silver in color, shining brightly under the sunlight.
This stone had hardness no worse than the green jade stone's, and more importantly, he could feel coldness as he held it in his hands. It clearly had an ice attribute.
"What is the reserve?"
"We made some preliminary survey. The stone is scattered around the area and extremely rare. There is about a ton in total."
"A ton?"
Bai Yunsheng was astonished at first, but soon felt relieved. Things were valued in proportion to their rarity. So, it was only natural that something this precious would be very scarce.
Immediately after that, he was struck by an idea. This mineral was ice-attributed and his Cold Moon Sword Manual also took its idea from the cold moon. A sword made from this material would be ideal for him.
'Tsk!'
All men had their hobbies, and with a hobby came weaknesses. Bai Yunsheng valued the sword above his life, making the sword his advantage as well as his emotional flaw. This stone was too valuable for the team to make any decision. If he really wanted it for himself, he would have to make the monastery ask for him.
Sigh…
For a moment there, he was overwhelmed by various emotions. On one hand, he was concerned with the inseparable tie between the monastery and the government; on the other, he was ashamed of his selfish desire.
While he was still going over this in his head, a specialist said, "Priest, since you're here, how about naming the mineral for us?"
"A name…" He was a little taken by surprise, but did not refuse. "I think we'd better follow the simple way. Let's call it darkice mine."
***
A month soon passed, and before anyone realized, it was early February.
Snow was still falling in Heishui Province, devouring all the streets and houses. Even tower blocks were half submerged in the snow. Back at the end of the previous year, the government had estimated that after the snow melted, the farmlands would lose their fertility completely and would no longer be arable.
It seemed now that they had been too optimistic, for the snow did not intend to melt at all. The new estimation was that Heishui Province and the neighboring two states of Tsar would stay a frozen zone all year round. The snow would probably only stop falling during the summer months.
To Phoenix Mountain, this was the fifth year of the new era, but for most of the people, the new world had only just begun.
It seemed everything had become unrecognizable overnight. That old master talked about starting over again. Yes, life could take a new start, but how about the years that they had already lived?
Under Phoenix Mountain, the square.
The project was completed in time. It didn't really involve all that much work. The scenic area had been very well built, with most of the buildings they needed already there. All the project did was some minor makeover and rearrangement.
Right now, the workers had lined up in the square like a month before, waiting for Old Shui to speak.
"I don't give lectures and none of you like bullsh*t. The first agenda today: paychecks!"
Old Shui waved his hand and two underlings carried four suitcases up. They opened with a snapping sound, revealing wads of pink notes.
"Come up when your name is called. Huang Fa!"
"Yes!"
A man in his forties ran out and took a wad of notes with quivering hands.
"Liu Li!"
"Here!"
"Zhang Guang!"
"Yo!"
A dozen names were called when it was finally Liu Ziming's turn.
He took the money with the same conflicted emotions as everyone else and returned to the line with a head blank from all the excitement. With the deteriorating environment and growing number of migrants, more and more people were reluctant to put their money into the banks.
In their minds, it was entirely possible that they would wake up one morning and find all banks closed! Hence, cash was so much more important than bank cards now, and every household made sure they had some at home.
Old Shui knew perfectly well of this mindset. This seemingly show-off act had played right into their expectations.
The workers received their money in turn, which took quite a while. Old Shui then said, "Now, the second thing. I said at the beginning that there will be another project after this one. You have all done a great job and we will consider you lot first for that. Of course, it's totally up to you whether or not you want to take it. The signing up starts now. Anyone wants to go on working for us, stand to the ri—"
"Bigger, bigger, bigger…"
'Hm?'
Old Shui paused and turned to look up at the mountain, for a strange shouting was coming from that direction, and the words did not come out very right either.
"Bigger, bigger, bigger… bigger, bigger, bigger… don't stop, don't stop! Bigger! Bigger!
"Hahahaha! I finally made it!"
"Boom!"
Gosh! It felt like an earthquake, and even the square shuddered. Somewhere on the mountain, dirt and smoke surged into the air as if something had smashed down from above, making an enormous pit in the ground.
The blast expanded, destroying everything in its way. It seemed the forest was going to be crushed when a breeze blew out from deeper inside the mountain, easily offsetting the force.
"Enough!"
"Wow! That was awesome! Awesome!"
There was then a tittering and a figure galloped down the mountain. Yup, it galloped!
The feet barely touched the ground and the figure flitted across the air like a fairy. In an instant, she was at the foot of the mountain and landed in the middle of the square with a swirl. She turned out to be a pretty young woman.
'Hm?'
She had come down here to play (more like running away for her life) and was surprised to find all the people gathering here, but the surprise was only in her eyes for a second. The next moment, she put on an indifferent look she copied from certain fellow.
Smack!
Old Shui covered his eyes with a hand with a smack, wanting no part of this.
But the rest of the people did not know her as he did. Staring at her open-mouthed, they were silent for quite a while before a young man said in a shaky voice, "I-Immortal!"
"Immortal! They are real!"
"The fairy has come to our mortal world… sob…"
All hell broke loose. Some cried, some laughed, and some yelled. The cultivator of the legends had just showed up in front of their eyes and they could finally get the emotions they'd suppressed so long off their chest.
Liu Ziming kept his eyes wide open. A volcano seemed to have exploded in his stomach and the flame had run up his throat and burned his mouth dry. Something was tickling at his heart.
There really were real immortals in Phoenix Mountain!
"Silence!"
Standing with her hands behind her back, the woman raised her voice above all the hubbub and swept her eyes across the crowd. Anyone that felt her eyes on him shuddered, growing all the more reverent at this imposing aura.
"I was travelling the world when I found this spiritual mountain and decided to settle down here for the time being and study the profound knowledge."
By now, Old Shui had hid himself in a corner and covered his ears—he had to save himself from her horrendous story. He did the right thing. The lady then said with a straight face, "Fate has brought me to you. From today on, remember me by this title: Patriarch Sky-turning!"