Chapter 48: Pure Hard Labor and the Kill Line
The lunch provided in the mine was far from lavish: a bowl of rice, a strip of salted meat, a serving of pickled vegetables, and a bowl of soup.
The rice was coarse brown rice. The salted meat was a small strip of salted pork about 2 fingers wide. The pickled vegetables were strips of pickled radish, and the soup was a bean soup made from several kinds of beans. They were all common foods.
However, aside from the rice, the salted meat, pickled vegetables, and soup all gave off the same impression: so salty they could kill a salt merchant.
They were unbearably salty and bitter.
Even Chen Ming, who was not picky about food, could not help frowning as he forced himself to eat. The more experienced miners brought their own black bread and water, crumbled the bread and chopped the meat into the soup, then mixed it all with water before eating it together with the rice and pickled vegetables. With the help of those extra ingredients and water, they barely managed to finish this strange work meal.
A newcomer like Chen Ming, who found the meal almost impossible to stomach, originally wanted to slip away. Unfortunately, the Supervisor caught him and directly gave him a few lashes, forcing him to finish the excessively salty and bitter food.
After hurriedly swallowing his meal, Chen Ming picked up his basket and mining pick again, turned on the soul tool lamp on his helmet, and reentered the mine.
He had already completed his daily quota, but now it was no longer just about earning more money. He had another purpose in mind.
Chen Ming had already realized that he possessed an unusually strong adaptability. He could gradually change himself according to his environment. He suspected this was his Golden Finger, but he still had not tested it properly.
The Yin Wind Stone mine was a harsh environment that constantly tempered the body and mind. Chen Ming wanted to see whether his adaptability would be stimulated further here.
Holding the mining pick, Chen Ming carefully controlled the fluctuations of his spirit power while mining, trying to reduce unnecessary consumption.
Whenever his spirit power dropped by about 30 percent, he would find a place to sit down and slowly recover using his Meditation Method.
After several more hours, Chen Ming had developed a slight sense of how to reduce the waste of spirit power during labor, but he still had not noticed any obvious change in his adaptability.
After all, the time was too short.
No matter how strong adaptability was, it could not complete an evolution in less than a day. Chen Ming estimated that he would be spending the next few months in the Yin Wind Stone mine, so he planned to slowly observe the changes in himself during this period.
Following the rhythm of his biological clock, Chen Ming returned to the main hall after about 3 more hours and exchanged the ore he had mined for money.
This time, he had not overworked himself, only digging out about 60 catties of ore. He found the same Supervisor again and quietly slipped 1 silver coin into the pile of ore.
For every 100 catties of ore, one could earn 1 gold coin. This time, Chen Ming received 6 silver coins, which he calmly tucked away. After taking a short rest and eating a little, he returned to his room.
Chen Ming slept dreamlessly.
Early the next morning, he woke up. Without even washing up, he wrapped himself in a black robe and went straight to the marketplace to look around.
He had read many stories in his previous life about protagonists finding hidden treasures in markets. Although he did not expect to encounter that kind of luck himself, he was still curious about what was being sold here.
After circling the market several times, nothing truly caught his eye.
What the low-level Evil Spirit Masters here sold was either Spirit Beast meat and bones or all kinds of shady trinkets. It was normal enough for Evil Spirit Masters to sell such things, but the quality was poor and the prices were absurdly high.
In this place, even the meat of a 10-year Spirit Beast cost at least 1 silver coin per jin, yet that kind of flesh barely had any effect on cultivation. As for the rarer things, or the items made through evil methods, the prices were even more outrageous, as though the sellers feared they weren't ripping people off hard enough.
At first, Chen Ming thought those prices were aimed specifically at newcomers like him.
But after watching for a while, he realized that everyone was being charged the same.
After carefully examining the goods and comparing them with the knowledge in his mind, Chen Ming discovered that most of the items were made using the formulas from the basic Evil Spirit Master introductory books. However, the quality of the finished products was poor and their effects were weak. Some medicines even seemed to have exaggerated claims while hiding obvious side effects.
Clearly, although the Holy Spirit Cult had a systematic structure for low-level Evil Spirit Masters, people without ability could not even afford to study.
Education in the douluo world was expensive.
Low-level Spirit Masters with poor ability could only barely maintain basic food and shelter even after working an entire month. If they were unlucky or ran into a little trouble, they might not even be able to sustain that much.
Sometimes, Chen Ming could understand why some people in the cult resorted to robbery.
Without extra income, even after decades of cultivation, they might still never escape this cycle.
The Holy Spirit Cult did not support idlers. One either had ability and talent, worked like an ox, or became someone else's resource. The Holy Spirit Cult would never suffer a loss.
In essence, this already carried a faint sense of a "kill line."
However, compared to the intricate systems designed by capitalists, the society of Evil Spirit Masters was still somewhat more direct.
At the very least, Evil Spirit Masters did not refresh at dawn like crops, and there were not that many talented people on the continent willing to join the Holy Spirit Cult just to be exploited.
Even if the Holy Spirit Cult was ruthless, it could not endlessly harvest its members like cutting grass. Otherwise, it would eventually face a crisis where no successors remained.
If they had a choice, Chen Ming believed that most low-level Evil Spirit Masters would rather be ordinary people or ordinary Spirit Masters. Unfortunately, outside the cult, the identity of an Evil Spirit Master was taboo, and once exposed, the consequences would be severe.
After taking a simple round through the market, Chen Ming compared several stalls and finally found one that bought miscellaneous items. He sold all the useless odds and ends he had looted before for 7 gold coins.
Although their market value was roughly 10 to 11 gold coins, Chen Ming could not be bothered to set up a stall himself just to sell them piece by piece.
.....
[Check Out My Patreon For Advance Chapters On All My Fanfics!]
[[email protected]/Eldryx]