“Sleep in the mine tunnel?” Cheng Li looked at Yuan Mu and Uncle Zhao as she asked.
Yuan Mu hesitated for a few seconds. “What if they make us mine at night too?”
Cheng Li’s eyes widened. “We have to mine at night too?!”
“To avoid accidents, I think they’ll force us to work around the clock,” Yuan Mu said, his gaze sharp. “If they can come here and rob others, then others can just as easily come rob them.”
Understanding dawned on Cheng Li. “Then we should still build one. As long as we can barely lie down and sleep in it, that’s enough.” The bathrooms were communal anyway, so they did not need to worry about that.
“I’ll go look for materials and see if I can find some metal plates.” As soon as Cheng Li finished speaking, she released her ability to search for nearby metal.
Seeing this, Uncle Zhao chose the opposite direction from Cheng Li. “I’ll go look around too.”
Yuan Mu stayed where he was, cleaning up the broken debris and trash on the ground.
‘There’s something big here!’
Cheng Li’s eyes lit up as she lunged forward and hugged the huge chunk of metal lying inside a pit.
“Let go. We saw that first.”
The smile on Cheng Li’s face froze. She turned around in disbelief and looked at the two men and one woman behind her. “What did you just say?”
“Losing an arm wasn’t enough, huh? Didn’t expect your ears to be broken too. Tsk tsk, how pitiful,” the woman sneered harshly.
“We’re short on time. Don’t waste words with her,” another person said as he stepped forward and reached for Cheng Li.
Cheng Li dodged to the side, avoiding the hand reaching toward her.
“I saw this first.” Cheng Li had no intention of backing down.
“If that’s the case, then we’ll just take it from you.” Mockery filled the man’s eyes. The next moment, he threw a punch at Cheng Li.
The speed of it startled her. She hurriedly dodged aside. “You can have it then.”
The instant she finished speaking, she turned and ran.
She was confident she could beat that man, but exposing her strength in public was not a good idea.
Especially when her own safety was not guaranteed, hiding her true abilities was the smarter choice.
Cheng Li picked up several lumps of metal that had been burned beyond recognition. As she walked back, she quietly controlled her ability, thinning and widening the metal pieces. By the time she returned to the pit, the slabs had already become evenly flattened sheets. Piecing them together into a metal roof would not be a problem.
Looking at the leveled bottom of the pit, Cheng Li turned to Yuan Mu. “How did you get down there? And how are you getting back up?”
Yuan Mu shot her a sidelong glance without saying a word and continued with what he was doing.
Cheng Li rubbed her nose awkwardly. It seemed she had asked something she should not have.
She silently went to move stones instead. Missing one arm, she could only carry them by cradling or hugging them against herself. Her clothes had already been filthy to begin with, but now they were completely beyond saving.
Yuan Mu’s gaze drifted toward her from time to time. His lips pressed into a thin line, and suddenly a thought surfaced in his mind: ‘Why hadn’t I met her when I still had all four limbs intact?’
The moment that thought appeared, Yuan Mu startled himself and inexplicably felt a little guilty.
“There’s no sun here, and no rain either, but there is wind. Actually, living in a pit isn’t too bad. I’ll fill the pit in a bit higher.” ‘That way it’ll be easier for Yuan Mu to get in and out.’ Cheng Li silently added in her heart.
Uncle Zhao agreed with Cheng Li’s idea as well. “Sounds good.”
“No need to fill it in. We can just make a few steps,” Yuan Mu said.
Cheng Li thought about it for a moment. “That works. Then we can keep the part above ground lower and save both time and effort.”
In the end, neither time nor effort was saved. Yuan Mu insisted on thickening the walls until they were half a meter thick. Cheng Li and Uncle Zhao hammered and compacted them until they became extremely solid, unlikely to collapse easily.
By the time the shelter was finished, it was already the following evening.
After working nonstop for an entire day and night, the three of them were utterly exhausted. After drinking a bottle of nutrient solution, none of them even had the energy to talk before collapsing straight into sleep.
Cheng Li slept on one side by herself, while Yuan Mu and Uncle Zhao slept on the other.
They had only slept for an hour when the harsh clang of a gong rang out.
In the dim darkness, Cheng Li and Yuan Mu opened their eyes at the same time.
Cheng Li got up first. As she walked outside, she pounded her aching lower back with her fist and muttered, “Disturbing people’s sleep… may your family line end with you.”
Yuan Mu: “……..”
Sure enough, when Cheng Li operated the rock drilling machine, the star pirate stood behind her with a gun in hand. His gloomy eyes were full of scrutiny, as though he would shoot her dead the moment her work failed to satisfy him.
Suppressing her exhaustion and drowsiness, Cheng Li handled the drilling machine so skillfully she nearly became the star worker of the entire site.
The people nearby kept glancing at her sideways, inwardly thinking, ‘You’re disabled and still working this hard. Doesn’t that make the rest of us look worse than a cripple?’
Grinding their teeth, the others secretly increased the machine power and sped up their drilling, competing against Cheng Li.
But they quickly discovered that they actually could not outperform this disabled girl.
It was simply unbelievable!
It had to be because her husband had secretly modified her drilling machine. Otherwise, how could they possibly lose to a one-armed cripple?!
Cheng Li had no idea what the others were thinking. A Blue Key Stone had appeared to her front left, and she was hesitating over whether or not to dig it out.
“What, can’t keep going anymore?” Seeing her slow down, the star pirate immediately barked viciously.
Frowning, Cheng Li pointed toward the spot where the Blue Key Stone was located. “The rock here is harder than the other areas.”
The star pirate’s eyes lit up at once. “Quit the nonsense and dig faster.”
A dark glint flashed through Cheng Li’s clear eyes. Suddenly, she pushed the drilling machine’s power to maximum.
Bang!
With an explosive crash, shattered rocks and metal fragments blasted outward in all directions.
Prepared in advance, Cheng Li instantly ducked low.
The nearby star pirate, caught completely off guard, only managed to raise an arm to shield his face.
A rapid series of clanging impacts rang out, followed by the metallic scent of blood spreading through the air.
Cheng Li lowered her head to check herself and found that she was unharmed. As for the injured person…
She looked up and met the star pirate’s gloomy face, along with the murderous glare in his eyes.
The pitch-black gun barrel aimed directly at her head.
Cheng Li shrank back slightly before abruptly pointing ahead. “Look, it’s a Blue Key Stone!”
The star pirate’s attention was instantly diverted. He turned toward where Cheng Li was pointing and sure enough saw a blue stone there.
Cheng Li had never seen such a shade of blue before.
A pure, ultimate blue.
It was tiny, only the size of a soybean, yet resting in the filthy hand of the star pirate, it appeared even more pristine and immaculate.
It was breathtakingly beautiful.
Cheng Li stared blankly at it. It was even prettier than the crystal cores inside zombies.
The star pirate was stunned as well, frenzy filling his eyes. When the surrounding people started looking over, he viciously glared at them. “What are you staring at? Get back to digging!”
With that, he turned and left without another glance.
Cheng Li was surprised. Normally, in a situation like this, shouldn’t they keep digging to see if there were more nearby?
“Blue Key Stones usually appear alone. Once one appears, there won’t be a second one within dozens of meters,” Yuan Mu’s voice came from behind her.
Cheng Li turned her head. “No wonder he left so decisively.” It was just that her situation seemed to be a little different.
Yuan Mu looked at the heavily damaged drilling machine, then swept his gaze over the bloodstains on the ground. Finally, his eyes settled on her. After confirming that she was uninjured, he quietly let out a breath of relief before resigning himself to repairing the nearly scrapped drilling machine.
Cheng Li walked toward the rock wall where the Blue Key Stone had been dug out and casually reached out to touch it.
The empty sleeve on one side brushed across the stone wall as if unintentionally.
Beyond where others could see, a Blue Key Stone the size of a pea slipped from her sleeve opening. Moving upward from below, it adhered itself to the stump of Cheng Li’s severed arm and stopped moving.