"What a creepy place," Traveling Buddha grumbled. He pushed at one of the metal supporting pillars in the tunnel. "The pillars are rusted. This place isn't going to suddenly collapse and bury us with it, is it?"
The mine was an illegal mine left behind by pirates many years ago. The pirates weren't going to properly set up a mine. They would simply capture some slaves and then force them to work for nothing in an awful environment, selling the ore that was mined on the black market for funds to boost their equipment and power.
In the Outer Frontier, many large pirate groups had essentially stopped being bandits. They had fleets and even shipyards, becoming military-like interest groups, powerful and brutal.
Xia Fan jokingly said, "Don't you guys basically consider yourselves manifestations of Buddhas? Why are you afraid of a sudden collapse?"