Chapter 79: The Black Iron Mine

At this hour, dawn had already broken.

Yun Qing took out a piece of charcoal, mixed in a bit of mud, and disguised herself as a dark-skinned girl before entering the city.

At the Lingcang County pharmacy, Yun Qing inquired about the price of Qi-Replenishing Pills, Body-Tempering Pills, and all the medicinal ingredients listed in her pill recipes. After a careful calculation, she found that if she bought all the raw ingredients and used her alchemy station to refine them, she could earn thirty taels of silver and gain fifty crafting experience points for every first-tier Qi-Replenishing Pill; each first-tier Body-Tempering Pill would net her two taels of silver and fifty crafting experience points. Of course, this did not include the cost of charcoal and energy. If those were counted, along with the wages of an alchemist and the failure rate, the profit margin for Qi-Replenishing Pills was not particularly high.

As for the Body-Tempering Pills, the earnings were low because most martial artists could simply consume the raw ingredients and achieve nearly the same effect without needing to refine them into pills. The pills were mostly for convenience and show—only those with money to burn would spend on such things, when eating meat was far more satisfying.

Lingcang County had established teams heading to the Blackiron Mine, each led by an innate expert. The road to the mine was said to be fraught with dangers, and joining a team was safer, but it required a fee of one hundred taels of silver. Yun Qing decided not to join; not only did she wish to save that money, she also hoped to make some profit along the journey.

She did not linger in the county for long. After converting her inexpensive possessions into level-two energy, gathering the required materials, and refining some Qi-Replenishing Pills to sell, she exchanged all her silver for more ingredients and set out for the Blackiron Mine.

She had hoped to earn more silver in the county, but although pill refinement was quick, converting herbs into level-two energy was not; buying medicinal herbs for energy conversion was not cost-effective, and contaminated wild vegetables and grasses were not available for purchase. She would have to gather those herself.

After ten days of travel, she finally reached the outskirts of the Blackiron Mine. Along the way, she sold Qi-Replenishing Pills, purchased ingredients, and crafted more pills to sell, successfully upgrading all her silver-dependent skills. Her farmland and homestead were also fully expanded.

She now had a stockpile of Qi-Replenishing Pills in her system inventory, and her mastery of auto-refinement had reached proficiency. At this level, she could refine ten pills at a time in just two minutes.

Qi-Replenishing Pills were expensive; Yun Qing had not been willing to consume even one herself, especially since she hadn’t needed to replenish her internal energy quickly. Using them for cultivation to gain mere dozens of combat experience points seemed too extravagant.

She had also tried manual pill refinement. Unlike the system’s ten-minute progress bar, manually refining a batch of Qi-Replenishing Pills took an hour with all the preparation and processing—and two out of three attempts would fail. Although the manual method yielded significantly more crafting experience, she could not bear to waste the time and materials. She resolved to practice more once she had awakened her spiritual sense.

Her mastery of the Body-Tempering Pill had not even reached the basic level, and she agreed with the general sentiment—nothing tasted better than meat.

Most people could reach the Blackiron Mine in less than ten days, but Yun Qing was delayed by her need to collect and convert large amounts of toxic materials into level-two energy for alchemy, which also raised her gathering skill by two levels.

Through planting trees on her farmland, she had finally managed to construct a fence around her cave dwelling. However, she lacked enough materials to reinforce it, and buying large quantities of stone and ore could expose her storage pouch. She decided to address the stone issue once she reached the Blackiron Mine.

Cautiously, she arrived safely at the mining region without drawing any hostility, nor had she made any new friends.

Currently, her character level was 32, crafting 33, gathering 33, and combat 32. After ten days of practice, her Body-Tempering Technique had become more proficient and precise, allowing her to use her internal energy more skillfully and gain more experience, though the experience required to reach level 33 was also much greater.

As for her long-desired culinary practice, she simply had not found the time—she purchased all her food and ingredients along the way.

Traveling, she often encountered others heading to the Blackiron Mine. Occasionally, she ran into wild beasts or soul corpses; those she could handle became her experience and materials, while those she could not, she evaded by hiding in her cave dwelling.

During monster hunts, Yun Qing came to appreciate the usefulness of Liuliu. No matter what she killed—be it in the trees, underground, or at a distance—Liuliu would bring her the corpses. All Yun Qing had to do was use her gathering skill on the bodies, collect what was needed, and toss the rest into the energy converter.

At the edge of the Blackiron Mine, she could see the scarred and deformed mountains, riddled with wounds from endless mining. Many summits had been sliced in half, leaving little greenery, and everywhere there were half-extracted, impurity-laden iron ores.

The rivers flowing down from the mountains were no longer clear springs, but white, turbid streams thick with fine mineral dust. Without measurement, Yun Qing could sense the poor air quality and see dust motes drifting through the air.

This sight made Yun Qing’s heart ache inexplicably; environmental destruction existed even in this other world.

She had no right to criticize others for overexploiting resources for profit—after all, she herself had come to the Blackiron Mine for its ore. She could only hope that, once the minerals were exhausted, people would put effort into restoring the environment. Of course, having taken the ore, she would willingly do her small part as well.

After making a brief circuit of the mine’s perimeter, Yun Qing learned that most of the mines here were controlled by a handful of powerful factions. They extracted the ore and sent it to nearby refineries for initial purification before transporting it elsewhere.

These factions also hired temporary labor—miners and blacksmiths to refine the ore—providing food and lodging and paying wages monthly.

Alternatively, individuals could act independently. For a certain entrance fee, one could search for resources in abandoned mines, though active mines were off-limits to outsiders.

Those who tried to make a living on their own could collect scraps and sell them to the relevant factions, managing a meager existence.

But why only a meager one? Here, there was nothing but mines and a ruined landscape. Aside from cheap minerals, everything—food, water—was expensive.

Some people, unwilling to pay high prices for purified water, had to boil the cloudy river water and let the sediment settle before drinking it.

If Yun Qing were to sell food and water here, she could make a tidy profit. After all, her purification skill could cleanse water. But only selling a little on the sly would go unnoticed; selling in bulk over time would threaten the interests of the major factions and reveal the vastness of her storage pouch. Before her cave villa and fences were reinforced, this would invite hostility, monster sieges, and the destruction of her home.

“Liuliu, the dust in the mines, the polluted water and air—all of these cause chronic harm to the body. Why do so many in Lingcang County say that few who go to the Blackiron Mine ever return?”

Liuliu replied with utmost seriousness, “That question is beyond my authorized range of answers. Perhaps you could try asking in a different way?”