Chapter 350: A Chance to Leave Fortune Star!
【Looking at the mining pick before you and the gray, dusty mine, you felt a strange sense of déjà vu.】
【Starting in the human world, carrying sandbags by the river.】
【Starting in the Real Realm, doing hard labor in the mines.】
【Fate could be so eerily similar.】
【But this time, you weren't suffering.】
【With the cultivation level of the Sixth Rotation of Qi Transformation, you had infiltrated a group of ordinary people as a laborer. The work was nothing more than a leisurely stroll for you.】
【Of course, working wasn't the goal; you were just lying low while gathering information.】
【Year eight, age thirty-two.】
【Extracting trait tag…】
【Extraction successful!】
【"Someone Is Copying My Face" (Green Rare): You can copy your face onto another person, but you need their consent.】
【Adjust trait tag?】
【Yes/No】
"This trait tag is useful!"
Chen Yi immediately thought of his five Simulation Clones, all of whom were old men. They were supposed to be his clones, but in reality, they looked nothing like him.
If it were before, he might have looked like them when he got old. But now, with the "Wolverine" trait tag, he wouldn't age at all.
"Let's swap out 'Knight's Safe Zone.' With 'Wolverine,' who needs that thing anymore!"
He was all about the new and shiny.
【You chose Yes.】
【You replaced "Knight's Safe Zone" with "Someone Is Copying My Face."】
【You made your clones wear your face. As your clones, they had to obey your orders unconditionally, so they could only agree.】
【On the surface, in Mine Number One on Fortune Star, you diligently played the role of "an amnesiac laborer from out of town."】
【In private, you were quietly making moves.】
【The Winged God Church, under the guise of "atonement," forced the humans living on Fortune Star to do hard labor for them, mining ores.】
【These ores weren't ordinary metal. They were Source Stones.】
【Think of them as the Spirit Crystals of the Void Realm.】
【What was sealed inside the Source Stones wasn't the Immortal Qi used by cultivators, but a kind of energy called Source Energy.】
【This energy could be used in various cultivation scenarios, like formations, powering large artifacts, or cultivators absorbing it to restore their True Qi.】
【So, Source Stones were the hard currency among Real Realm cultivators, usable as money.】
【On Fortune Star, there were countless mines like this.】
【The entire planet was like a universe-sized Source Stone covered in a layer of dirt.】
【The Winged God Church's management was even worse than the Black Stone Gang at the docks.】
【They didn't use whips to drive the miners; that would mean their own people had to suffer the wind and sun. Too much trouble.】
【They set a daily mining quota for everyone, collected it on time, and if you failed, they'd give you a severe beating—but not kill you.】
【If you kept failing, they'd slightly lower the quota.】
【If you met the quota every day, they'd slightly raise it.】
【In short, they made sure you worked until you were completely exhausted every single day.】
【The mines were heavily guarded by the Guardian Knight Order, and formation traps were secretly laid. No one could escape.】
【At first, two members of the Guardian Knight Order were always by your side.】
【This was arranged by White Priest Locke to keep an eye on you, to see what fortune you might have.】
【Over time, those two slacked off, often just glancing at you from a distance.】
【After even more time, they simply did their daily check-in, took a look at what you were doing, and then slipped away.】
【Without their surveillance, you started using your "Unlimited White Porridge" ability to help your suffering human compatriots.】
【In this place, forget about eating your fill.】
【The Winged God Church's principle was, "A hungry dog is easy to train." If you were full, you'd start thinking nonsense. If you were hungry, you'd only think about one thing—when can I get my next meal?】
【So the miners here were even worse off than the starving villagers of Liu Family Village.】
【A bowl of your porridge meant more to them than words could express.】
【Especially since drinking your porridge could also restore their strength.】
【"Drink up, Old Zhang. Don't let the alien races see, or it's gone."】
【Old Zhang was a fellow worker in your mine shaft.】
【He was over fifty and had spent a full thirty years in Mine Number One.】
【The best years of his life had been spent alongside the dust.】
【Because of a clerical error by the registrar, Old Zhang's quota had been mixed up with that of a younger man with the same name, Little Zhang.】
【For the past few days, Old Zhang had been working himself to the bone, day and night.】
【What?】
【An appeal?】
【The Winged God Church never made mistakes! Got it?】
【Old Zhang could only swallow his grievance in silence.】
【The workload increased, but the food rations didn't. Old Zhang was now lying in a corner, barely alive.】
【Seeing the bowl of white porridge in your hand, the skin-and-bones Old Zhang started to choke up.】
【"Th-this, where did this come from?"】
【"Don't ask. It can save your life."】
【"Yes... yes..."】
【Old Zhang wolfed down the bowl of porridge.】
【After he finished, you casually dug a small hole in the ground and buried the porcelain bowl.】
【Beside you, Liu Ying was shielding you both from others' sight.】
【After a bowl of porridge, Old Zhang felt as if he had come back to life.】
【He immediately tried to kowtow to you.】
【You held him back.】
【"No need for that. If you're hungry in the future, just come to me. Just don't tell anyone else."】
【"Thank you, benefactor! Thank you, benefactor!"】
【One by one, your white porridge was handed out to all your fellow workers.】
【The workers in Mine Number One were still toiling away in hardship, but every night, they ate their fill.】
【Since you arrived, no one had starved to death.】
【This even made the Winged God Church wonder if their food rations were too good.】
【Everyone kept their mouths shut in silent agreement. Even when they knew in their hearts, they never spoke of your ability to conjure white porridge out of thin air.】
【Leaking the secret was impossible.】
【Because here, a chasm as vast as the heavens existed between humans and alien races.】
【The alien races didn't trust humans.】
【And humans wouldn't pin their hopes on betraying their own kind for some benefit from the alien races, because everyone knew it was impossible. Generations had proven it time and again.】
【Old Zhang said that when he was young, he was actually a cultivator. He hadn't been training with a rogue cultivator master for long before the Winged God Church caught him to dig in the mines.】
【So he had some basic understanding of cultivation.】
【"What they call a third-class star is a planet with no Immortal Qi. A second-class star has a thin amount of Immortal Qi, and a first-class star has an abundance. I heard from my master that there's also a special-class star, supposedly home to legendary figures."】
【"Fortune Star has no Immortal Qi. Where did your master's cultivation, and those Winged God Church people's cultivation, come from?"】
【"I don't know how the Winged God Church people cultivate, but my master wasn't from Fortune Star.】
【His starboat was damaged while passing by Fortune Star, so he landed to make repairs.】
【He didn't expect the alien races on this planet to treat humans so harshly. They tried to capture him on the spot.】
【My master had to run, wandering around Fortune Star for a while.】
【I met him during that time. He saw that I had talent, so he took me as his disciple and asked me to help him gather materials to repair the starboat.】
【In the end, my master was still caught by the Winged God Church people and died fighting them. I was caught too. Sigh..."】