Jakes Story 2, ch 5

Jake trudged down one of the underground side paths he’d taken countless times before.  He paused along the way to mark yet another day on the wall.  Over ten years had passed since he’d come to this place.  That was depressing but at least the plan he’d come up with was almost ready.

“Hey Jake, why are we going this way?  I thought we were going to that new vein we found last week.”  Jake turned and regarded his workmate.  Not for the first time, he wondered if this creature was his friend, or could even be trusted.

“Slim, remember the rule?  You can come, but don’t ask questions.”

“Oh yeah, boss.  Sure thing.  But can you please, please call me Sandman Slim?”

“No.  That’s a weird name and nobody else calls you that.  If you bring it up again, I’m going to just call you by your real name.”

“Oh okay, forget I said anything.”  He muttered, “Should have never told you my real name.”

Jake shook his head.  He’d had this conversation thousands of times over the last nine years. As he walked he glanced at Slim.  The creature was not human, but he claimed that he had been in the past.

Slim looked like as much of a monster as Jake did, which was to say, completely.  He was a tall, gaunt, emaciated creature with big eyes, no nose, blocky teeth, and thick, square nails on his too-long hands.  According to him, a hundred years ago he’d been an orthodox cultivator in a small sect that had been destroyed by a rival, unorthodox sect.  As one of the only survivors, he’d been cruelly cursed, mutated, and banished from the land.

Jake was still a little skeptical about his story, at least the part that Slim had been a normal human in an orthodox sect.  All he knew for certain after over seven years of working together was that Slim was at the second stage of Gold Body Refinement.  When they’d first met, Slim had been at the first rank of Gold Body Refinement. Like Jake, he’d been slowly getting stronger in this place.  Most of the other prisoners were, too.  Jake had a very different way to grow in power, though–a fact he’d been keeping a careful secret.

Of course, now that he knew more about this world, his desire to escape was stronger than ever.  As it was, he would have grown in strength much faster if he weren’t trapped in this subterranean prison.

That thought reminded him about something he’d heard the day before.  “Hey Slim, didn’t Zhang Lie finally get past his bottlneck?  I thought he said as soon as he achieved the third stage of Gold Body Refinement that he was going to attack Lady Brima.”

Slim scoffed.  “That was some pig shit he said years ago.  After Tuomasi tried it a year ago and lost his arm, everyone is pretended they never said nothin.’”

Jake nodded.  Tuomasi was a thoroughly unpleasant demonic cultivator. Actually most prisoners of the Web Burrows were.  But the arrogant, angry man was a fully fledged Foundation Pillars cultivator with a reforged body.  He was one of the most powerful prisoners of the Web Burrows.

Over the last nine years, Jake had reached the fifth rank of Gold Body Refinement, which was both highly disappointing, but also a great achievement.  He was still progressing faster than the other prisoners, but that was because he had such a vastly different path to power than they did.

His greatest achievement during this time hadn’t been related to his cultivation base at all, though.  He was actually on his way to train his new ability further.

The Web Burrows seemed to be ancient.  It seemed to consist mostly of caverns connected by handmade tunnels, then mines built off these connection tunnels that burrowed even deeper.  The tunnels had been hewn out of solid rock.  If there was an entrance to this prison, Jake had never seen it.  Maybe it was past the restricted area that nobody got past, where Lady Brima lived.

Jake had no idea how deep this place was beneath the surface.  Digging through the rocky walls was labor-intensive and  exhausting, but possible for all the prisoners with the celestial iron picks they’d been given.  Even so, digging a tunnel to escape was pointless.  Trying to head up too far would just result in running into an impenetrable wall, and digging in one direction didn’t accomplish anything except eventually running into bigger, more dangerous caves with demon beasts that would be happy to find a would-be escaped miner for a snack.

“I think we’re almost here,” said Slim.

“Yeah I know.  I’ll go ahead just in case there are any crawlers.”

“You got it.  Let me know when it’s clear.”

Jake drew the carved sword from his belt that he’d been using for over five years.  The wood was some of the mysterious root that the prisoners used for everything else in the mine.  Although it looked like any other kind of wood, it was extremely durable and very good at channeling chi.  Its natural toughness also turned harder than steel when chi was run through it.  The other prisoners called the wood a “natural treasure.”

It’d taken him a long time to modify his sword into the shape of a saber.  He’d had to grind the wood on a special, shiny, porous rock for months to get it just right.

He ran chi through the sword, not using any other techniques.  In this place, using power sparingly and efficiently was the best way to survive.  Jake was able to regain lost energy easier than the other prisoners, but that didn’t mean he could be careless.  If he spent all of his time replenishing his lost chi, he’d never be able to advance.

The Web Burrows were a very clever prison.

Jake moved forward into the dark.  Some who came down to mine would bring a light.  Jake didn’t need one.  His night vision was up to the task, especially with the weird, glowing moss that seemed to pepper every cavern or mine hallway.  Slim could see in the dark, too.

Even so, the crawlers in this section of the mines would be hard to see.  They looked sort of like jet black monkeys mixed with scorpions.  Even after all these years, Jake still wasn’t sure what they ate to reproduce so fast or get so damn big.  At least they didn’t grow too big for their environment, the mine tunnels.  In the really large caverns, the things could get huge in but the smaller tunnels that he and Slim were in, they only got the size of a large dog.

Jake spotted the vein of three trigrams milk ore right up ahead.  This was a vein he and Slim had found a year ago.  Back then it’d been too small to bother with, but it’d been a while since they’d found any new veins of the stuff.  It was worth collecting this bit now before continuing to dig new tunnels.

Sure enough, the moment he got close enough, he could hear scuttling in the tunnel ahead.  The crawlers seemed to sense if anyone got close to any three trigram milk ore and groups of them were attracted to the stuff.

He’d asked Slim once why the rock was called three trigrams milk ore.  Slim had no idea other than its pale, veiny appearance.

Slim had been in the Web Burrows for over thirty years.  Jake refused to stay here that long.  He had a plan, and he was close to enacting it.

The crawlers came into sight, skittering around a corner ahead.  “Big ones!” Jake called back.

“Don’t worry.  I’m not coming anywhere near you until everything is dead!” called back Slim.  “Your problem, Boss!  If you die, I’m running back!”

“I know!”  Jake muttered, “Every fucking time… I get the point.”  He surged forward, moving among the crawlers like it was second nature.  After all these years, he’d had a lot of practice.

His wooden sword, strengthened with  chi, blocked and cut with ruthless efficiency.  All the creatures’ tails had giant points the size of a dagger.  They dripped with venom.

The crawlers had two sets of arms, one with monkey-like hands and one with pincers.  To be safe, Jake usually cut off as many limbs as he could before attacking the creatures’ bodies directly.  He’d adapted this strategy after a close call when he’d first come to the mines.

This time there were five crawlers.  That seemed to be the average number, but it could be four or even five times that sometimes.  Jake had no idea why.  The things screamed at him, the sounds echoing weirdly around the tunnels as they leapt around, trying to tear him apart.  They were fast but Jake was faster.

He cut them apart methodically, precisely, and the things growled in hatred as he did it.  Their faces were like a fucked up mix of human, monkey, and lion.  When the last one was down, he checked to see if any of them had enough residual energy to feed on. Two of them did.  He saw two monster cores on the ground too, where they’d rolled off the crawlers.

“Yes!” he whispered.

One reason he worked with Slim was the man...creature…whatever, never came anywhere near until Jake told him to, at least prior to actually mining.  This allowed Jake to feed or collect monster cores without any questions.  And during the actual mining, if any demon beasts attacked them, he let Jake have half the monster cores that appeared.  Jake still got half the mined ore, too.

At the end of the day, Slim was a coward who hated fighting, and Jake had better things to do with his time than swing a pick at a wall.  Whenever he had down time while guarding for Slim, he’d either practice forms with his wooden sword, meditate, or sit down and contemplate their surroundings.

The web burrows blocked most techniques, or even spikes in chi.  He also hadn’t been able to access his inventory the entire time he’d been a prisoner.

Jake put away the two cores. He called back, “It’s clear!”

“Got it.”  Slim jogged up and immediately began working.

This had been their routine for so long, it didn’t even require thought.

Jake tried to spread his senses as best he could.  It wasn’t easy to do in the Web burrows.  He was tense for about an hour.  If any demon beasts were going to attack, they usually did so while miners approached ore, or right after mining.

Nobody knew how the damn things moved so freely around the tunnels.  They even seemed to be able to get into closed off tunnel systems somehow.  Jake knew for a fact the things couldn’t move through walls, though.  He suspected there were fissures or smaller tunnels that just usually escaped notice to all but the crawlers.

He focused carefully, using all of his senses for a few five minutes.

Satisfied that nothing was going to eat Slim’s face anytime soon, Jake settled against the wall.  He placed one hand on the ground, probing the stone itself.  As he tried to better understand the weird energy field in this place, he thought about the escape plan he’d be acting on soon.

Thoughts of escape inexplicably reminded him of how he’d first come to the Web Burrows.  In the midst of his meditation, it was like he was reliving the experience.