Lighting Lanterns in the Mountains and Seas
Autor: Traversing Thousand Sorrows© WebNovel
Capítulo 1: Chapter 1 Spring
The red sunset was like a fierce beast plunging into the raging sea, incredibly brilliant. The silhouettes of the peaks cast strange and eerie shadows across the earth as if haunted by an unresolved sorrow.
As the wind-blown sand hissed past, not a blade of grass grew, and all one could see in the distance were the undulating desolate landscapes.
In a valley, a group of miners toiled ceaselessly, dislodging earth and stone from deep underground and filling up nearby gullies one after another.
At dusk, as the light started to fade, the scorching heat of the day softened while the vigilance personnel hidden around the valley worksite began to show signs of peeking out one by one.
A crude recliner made of broken wood planks was carried to the top of the hill by two men and set down. Lying on the chair was a gaunt middle-aged man with an air of premature decrepitude. Squinting into the sunset, he waved away the melancholy-looking people on either side, his greying hair swept by the wind revealing his sickly, exhausted demeanor, yet he was dressed more appropriately than anyone else there.
He wore merely the clothes of an ordinary person. As for the others, those miners, including the guards and those who had just carried him up, to say they were so poor that they had no pants to wear would not be an exaggeration. Most of them were covered in mere rags hiding their private parts, their bodies filthy and thin, with unkempt and dirt-streaked faces. There were no fat people to be found here.
The distinction between guards and miners, aside from the weapons in their hands, was a straw mask covering their faces and black cloth bands tied around their arms to distinguish them. The act of tearing an entire piece of black cloth into strips was considered a luxury in this place where resources were desperately scarce, the Land of Exile.
In the gully, miners dumped rocks and soil and carried loads back to the mine entrance. Their skin, the lightest shade of bronze, bore no resemblance to the pale cleanliness of the man on the recliner. Most of them were barefoot. Some truly had no shoes, while others hung straw sandals from their waists, preferring to wear their calluses rather than their footwear on the less stony paths. They had all grown accustomed to it, as the skin on their feet was thick.
Among them, one tall and one short individual seemed out of place.
Their height was only relative; the shorter one was not small compared to the others, but the taller companion was indeed exceptionally tall.
As the wind and sand struck their faces occasionally blowing away the hair covering their features, the dirtiness of their countenances and the untended beards could not conceal the youthful air about them.
While the other miners displayed a numb exhaustion from their labor, these two unusual ones were fixated on the middle-aged man atop the hill, observing him from afar. So engrossed were they that they did not notice someone emerging from the mine entrance and almost collided with him. The other miners instinctively stepped aside to make way, but the unusual pair almost bumped into the man.
The newcomer, Shen Youkun, briskly stepped out with his sleeves swinging. He was a man with fleshy cheeks, and even though his upper and lower garments did not match and were patched in several places, he was one of the only two people in this place with a complete set of clothes.
Shen Youkun oversaw this mining excavation. Known for his poor temper, he would readily resort to beating and scolding. The miners summoned by him were somewhat fearful of him, but his strength ensured that everyone had two dry meals to eat daily, and he had promised a reward after the work was done—a ration of grain!
Shen Youkun had previously been the top man here until the middle-aged man who now lay in the recliner arrived not long ago. Since then, his role seemed to immediately shift to that of a subordinate who bent the knee, and it was for this reason that the tall and short young men paid special attention to the middle-aged man.
They did not know this middle-aged man and had never seen him before in the Land of Exile, but they were familiar with Shen Youkun, even had some grudges with him.
When they accidentally encountered each other face-to-face, the two felt somewhat nervous, indeed not expecting such a direct confrontation. They quickly lowered their heads, letting their unruly hair cover their faces, with the tall one nodding and bowing as if to hide his height, a gesture of self-awareness.
Fortunately for them, Shen Youkun was not focused on them. Upon reaching the entrance of the cave, he looked around outside, his eyes quickly locking onto the middle-aged man on the hilltop. Impatiently brushing past the two with an unceremonious "Get lost," he strode between them, rapidly heading toward his target.
The numb miners only glanced back briefly, careful not to delay their march. Dilly-dallying might lead to accusations of slacking, and the Supervisor's whip would show no mercy.
The following tall and short pair exchanged glances, each silently relieved. The tall one with the load unconsciously patted his chest in a gesture of gratitude, thankful for the close call.
A mountain without vegetation is unsturdy.
As Shen Youkun climbed, the loose stones and sand clattered down. When he finally reached the desolately sitting recliner, he was out of breath, "Uncle, why have you climbed to the top of the mountain to face the wind? Your cultivation was only recently lost, and your body is still very weak. You are susceptible to the chill of the wind, and rest and recuperation should be your priority."
Gasping for air, he himself had been sent to this Land of Exile to fend for himself after his cultivation was also taken from him, having arrived a few years before his uncle.
His uncle, Qi Ziru, was lost in thought, staring at the last glory in the sky and muttered dreamily, "You said that we need to clear the area in East Nine Plain before we can act. Have you cleaned out all the people?"
Shen Youkun, instinctively ready to assure him, suddenly noticed that there might be a deeper meaning behind his uncle's words. Looking down at the mine that had already been busy with work for several days,
Shen Youkun swallowed his words and murmured, "Almost there."
Qi Ziru appeared unconcerned, "You previously said that the people of East Nine Plain are difficult to deal with and that secrecy is hard to maintain without clearing the area. You said we needed sufficient resources to do so. You should know how difficult it is to bring things into the Land of Exile — even a piece of paper is hard to come by. Yet I still found ways to help you infiltrate the supplies. Now you've started excavating, and you tell me that the clearance is 'almost there.' How much is this 'almost'?"
Shen Youkun hung his head, somewhat hesitantly saying, "We've basically cleared them all out, just two left." Then he looked up again and said, "Merely two people, they're not worth worrying about."
Qi Ziru continued to stare at the horizon, still looking disinterested in everything, "Merely? You have control over so many people, yet these mere two individuals have prevented you from completing the sweep. I'd like to know what kind of 'mere' individuals these two are."
Shen Youkun was a little embarrassed, but at this point in the conversation, he also dared not hide anything and honestly confessed, "One is Shi Chun, the Master of East Nine Plain, and the other is his loyal follower, Wu Jinliang. The hundred or so men under their command in East Nine Plain have all been accounted for in my plans and sent into the city. Now, only the two of them are left on East Nine Plain. Without any eyes and ears left, given such a vast territory, they won't be able to detect the secret movements here."
Qi Ziru slowly turned his head, staring coldly at him, "So you're saying, the two not cleared out just happen to be the biggest leaders of East Nine Plain. What are these two's backgrounds?"
Shen Youkun sneered disdainfully, "Local natives. The circumstances of their ancestors are long since untraceable, their parents died in the struggle for water sources, and both grew up in East Nine Plain relying on the charity of many families. Two filthy beggars by birth, it's their luck to not have starved to death."
There was a distinctive loathing in his tone, as if he wished he could trample them into the mud.
Qi Ziru's eyes narrowed slightly, realizing that since his nephew had been demoted to this place, there might have been some unpleasant history with that Master.
The matters his nephew did not wish to speak of, Qi Ziru himself, given his current state of mind, did not want to inquire further, and he had his own judgments about the information already shared.
Although it was his first time arriving at the Land of Exile, he had long since understood the general environment here, and knew what the so-called local natives were like.
Those who struggled to survive here were either exiles or the descendants of exiles.
Those who were exiled here inevitably included both men and women. With the presence of both sexes and natural instincts coming into play, reproduction was unavoidable, and their offspring became the so-called local natives.
Resources were extremely scarce in this place. Whether they were exiles or locals, the biggest issue was actually survival. For necessities like food and water, conflicts often erupted, sometimes even fights over a single tree.
Anything that could be traded for "money" in the city tended to lead to conflicts.
Indiscriminate cutting and mining led to severe ecological damage, making most essentials for life lose their ability to regenerate, further exacerbating a vicious cycle of survival competition.
The so-called "money" didn't circulate in the Land of Exile, but only within designated cities where it could be used to purchase survival materials. "Money" was also known as "merit," and accumulating enough "merit" meant one could leave the Land of Exile through the city, obtaining freedom.
The so-called "city" was in fact the gate of this massive open-air prison, also a nexus between two worlds.
Similar cities were spread across the Land of Exile in multiple locations.
For an exile like him, who was being punished, even with enough "merit," direct escape was not possible. For example, if he were sentenced to ten years without a pardon, he couldn't leave on just "merit" alone before his term was up.
The people exiled here were mostly Cultivators, and before being thrown in, they were all subject to a cruel punishment: their cultivation was forcibly taken away, almost completely cutting off any possibility of further cultivation, at least during the exile, effectively reducing them to ordinary mortals. The punishment couldn't be called anything but cruel.
Without cultivation, surviving in this harsh environment was extremely difficult, and ordinary people would find it hard to endure until the end of their sentence.
The punished individuals thrown in here had nothing but the clothes on their back, not even a piece of paper was allowed.
The descendants of the exiles, whose crimes did not carry on to them, could directly escape this place with enough "merit," though amassing that amount was not easy.
Shen Youkun snorted twice and continued, "That Shi Chun originally had no surname, his parents were also unsure of their own origins, oblivious to their ancestral name. It is said he was born in spring, hence he was named 'Chun Tian,' which is a common naming practice among the lower class troublemakers of the Land of Exile. To them, a name is just a handle, with not much significance attached.
When Shi Chun was halfway through growing up, an exiled woman ended up in East Nine Plain. It's said she was very beautiful and was allowed by the locals to settle in East Nine Plain due to some acts of guidance. Whether out of gratitude or simply having nothing better to do, it is said that, finding the people on the plain simple-minded, she taught a few boys there how to read during her stay, including Shi Chun.
After staying there for about three years, the woman left and no one knows where she went or whether she had completed her sentence and been freed. No one even knows her name, and her origins are probably only clear to the administrators at the city gate.
Shi Chun regarded that woman as his teacher and out of respect, took the 'Shi' from 'teacher' to use as his surname. Since he knew some characters but had never actually studied, this made his name a joke and he was often mocked as 'Si Chun' for 'desiring spring.' Once that nickname spread and he understood the meaning, it was too late to regret, and he often got into fights because of it."
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