Descent into the Mines.
The flickering light of torches cast long, distorted shadows along the jagged stone walls as Alex and the group of 59 cultivators marched deeper into the mine. The entrance had seemed ordinary at first, just a simple mining shaft long abandoned by its original owners, but the further they ventured, the more it became clear that this place was anything but normal.
They could all feel it in the air, a thick flame qi.
It buzzed against their skins, heating their blood with every step they took deeper into the mine. This mine couldn't be easy to work in.
All of them concluded in their minds.
In the first place, it wasn't ordinary people that mined the resources here, many of them were prisoners of the empire, people that have committed one or two crimes that didn't warrant their deaths. They are usually given the chance to rot in imprisonment till their time sentence runs out, or they can opt to reduce their time by working in such places like this.
