Surface resources were fine for a starter camp. They were not enough for a real workshop.
Austin wanted iron for gears, copper for wire, and stone that could carry a heavy roof. All of it lay below Sunset Peak. So, on a clear morning, he put on his hemp apron and safety goggles and picked up his High-Frequency Thermal Plasma Pickaxe.
Pug stayed on the porch. The huge three-headed hound had eaten half a roasted sheep and saw no reason to move. His left head snored. His right head snapped at a fly without waking.
Austin marked a square behind the cabin with blue chalk.
“Three meters wide. Spiral steps around a solid center column. Riser height eighteen inches, tread depth twenty-eight. Built to code. No ladders.”
Ladders were slow, awkward, and bad for carrying ore. Stairs cost more work at the start and saved trouble every day after that.
He lowered the pick. Blue fire ran along its twin heads. The stone parted with a clean crack, and his spatial inventory pulled the block away.
For four hours, he cut down through the mountain. He left broad steps, scored grooves into each tread, and fused the rough walls smooth. At thirty meters, the granite turned purple. At forty, a low hum rose through his boots. “Fifty hertz buzz in solid rock?” Austin muttered. “What hack tuned the audio down here?”
At fifty meters, his last cut opened into darkness.
Austin caught himself on the edge and looked down.
A vast cave lay below him. Blue crystals crossed its walls and hung from the ceiling. Every few seconds, light moved through them in a slow pulse. The air smelled of cold water and metal.
His display identified the deposit.
Austin tapped a crystal with the back of his pick. It rang for several seconds without a crack.
“That is good stock.”
He also saw gravel piles, wet seams, and black corners where a worker could easily break an ankle.
“Bad job site.”
Before mining anything, he ran copper wire down the stairs and fixed quartz lamps along the cave walls. He kept the cables high and marked the walkway. Then he closed the main switch.
White-violet light filled the cave.
On the surface, Gu Qing, Elder Mu, and Elder Zhao were approaching with a cart of spiritual peaches. The flash from the shaft sent all three men flat onto the path.
“The Ancestor has opened the palace beneath the world!” Gu Qing cried.
“Fetch the chronicle!” Elder Mu shouted.
Elder Zhao held on to the peach cart and tried to remember how breathing worked.
Below, Austin checked the last dark corner and nodded. Then he noticed a thin stream running from a crack near the blue vein. It vanished into a lower fissure.
He set a marked stick in the stream and wrote the water level on a scrap of wood. A mine that changed the mountain’s drainage could flood itself or dry out the farms above. He did not know how the spirit vein affected the water yet, so the first reading was only a baseline.
“Lights first. Water readings second. Crusher third.”
He took one more look at the huge blue crystals.
“Then we see what this mountain can produce.”