The rain was still falling.
Not a gentle drizzle, but a torrential downpour that felt like it could pierce straight through human skin.
The massive collapse pit lay before everyone like a gaping black maw.
Bottomless.
Just fifteen minutes ago, this place had been the busy entrance to a mining site.
Now it was flat.
Not even a trace remained.
More than three thousand living people—along with the arrogant Young General of the Wang family, Wang Li—had simply vanished like that.
As if the earth itself had swallowed them whole.
Dead silence.
Only the “pitter-patter” of rain striking armor could be heard.
Thousands of Qin soldiers standing at the edge of the pit all had faces pale as paper.
Their halberds were trembling in their hands.
They had killed before. They had seen blood.
But this was different.
This was heavenly might.
It was the mountain’s wrath—something that devoured men.
A few surviving native laborers were now kneeling in the muddy water, frantically kowtowing.
Their foreheads were already bloodied, yet they kept banging them down.
Their mouths muttered unintelligible chants, as if begging for mercy.
“It’s over…”
A deputy general slumped to the ground, his helmet crooked.
He stared at the enormous pit with hollow eyes, his lips trembling violently.
“It’s all over…”
“Three thousand laborers… that was silver His Majesty was counting on…”
“And General Wang Li… he was the only son of the Marquis of Tongwu…”
The deputy suddenly seemed to remember something and hurriedly turned toward the black silhouette standing at the very front.
Fusu.
The First Young Master stood there.
Rainwater flowed down his black iron armor, forming streams that dripped to the ground.
He did not move.
Like a rusted iron statue.
“Your Highness!”
The deputy general scrambled over and clung tightly to Fusu’s leg.
Mud and water splashed all over him.
“Let’s go! We have to leave!”
He cried out, his voice swallowed almost entirely by the rain.
“This is an earth dragon turning over! An omen of great disaster!”
“This place is unclean! It’s cursed!”
“If we don’t leave now, we’re all going to be buried here!”
Several captains also rushed over.
They were usually decisive men who killed without hesitation, but now they were all shaken.
Who wasn’t afraid of death?
Especially this kind of death.
Being crushed into pulp under millions of tons of rock, not even leaving a complete corpse behind.
“Yes, Your Highness!”
A burly captain wiped rain from his face, stamping his feet anxiously.
“This simply can’t be saved!”
“With dozens of zhang of rock on top, even gods couldn’t survive!”
“Not to mention digging—this ground could collapse again at any moment!”
“Risking the lives of our brothers for a pile of dead bodies—it’s not worth it!”
A civil official who looked like a strategist also stepped forward, panic on his face.
“Your Highness, the priority now is to minimize losses!”
“We should immediately seal off the news and say… say it was an epidemic!”
“Yes! An epidemic!”
“Burn down the camp in one fire and fill in this pit. Then find another vein!”
“If His Majesty learns that so many people died and not a single ounce of silver was mined, we’ll all lose our heads!”
Everyone was talking over each other.
But the core message was one thing: run.
Run immediately.
Let whoever wants to deal with this mess deal with it. Everyone was surely dead anyway—there was no point in trying to save them.
Fusu said nothing.
He didn’t even look down at the deputy general clinging to his leg and crying.
He simply stared at the pit.
Rain struck his face, sliding down his sharply defined features.
His expression was strange.
No sorrow.
No fear.
Not even his usual cold detachment remained.
Instead, there was something unreadable… a deep, heavy darkness.
He was calculating.
In his mind, he was running through numbers again and again.
Three thousand laborers.
Each laborer could dig two hundred jin of ore per day.
That was six hundred thousand jin of ore.
After refining, that became fifteen thousand taels of silver.
Fifteen thousand taels per day.
In ten days, that would be one hundred and fifty thousand taels.
In one month, four hundred and fifty thousand taels.
Fusu’s fingers lightly tapped the hilt of the sword at his waist.
One tap.
Two taps.
Three taps.
This was not just numbers.
This was his father’s trust.
It was the foundation of his Ninth Brother’s grand blueprint.
It was the capital for Great Qin to sweep across the world.
Now… it was gone?
Just because this pile of broken rocks shifted?
“Your Highness! Say something!”
The deputy general panicked when he saw Fusu still unmoving.
“Let’s retreat!”
“Send an urgent report to Xianyang and plead for forgiveness!”
“As long as the green mountains remain, there’s no fear of running out of firewood!”
Retreat?
Fusu’s expression shifted slightly.
That chill in his face was enough to make people shudder.
He slowly turned around.
His eyes swept over the group of panicked officers.
What kind of eyes were those?
They carried no warmth of life at all.
Like two freshly sharpened blades, scraping across every person’s neck.
The noisy crowd fell instantly silent.
Only the rain remained.
Splashing.
Splashing.
Fusu lifted his foot and kicked away the deputy general clinging to him.
The force wasn’t heavy.
But it was full of disgust.
It was like kicking away a stray dog blocking the road.
“Retreat?”
Fusu spoke.
His voice wasn’t loud, but mixed with the rain, it clearly pierced into everyone’s ears.
“Retreat where?”
“Back to Xianyang?”
“Tell Father Emperor that I lost his treasury?”
“Tell Ninth Brother I couldn’t even control a few men?”
The civil official stammered, trembling:
“Your Highness… this is a natural disaster… not the fault of war…”
“Natural disaster?”
Fusu smiled.
Standing in the rain, his smile was eerie.
He raised his head and glanced at the dark, crushing sky.
Then he looked at the bottomless pit.
“I don’t believe in heaven.”
“I only believe in accounts.”
As he spoke, he reached toward his chest.
Click.
A crisp sound.
The fastenings of his black iron chest armor came undone.
Everyone froze.
What was the Young Master doing?
Clang!
The heavy chest armor was casually thrown into the muddy water, splashing mud everywhere.
Next came the arm guards.
Clang!
Then the leg armor.
Clang!
In just a few breaths’ time, the heavily armored, high-and-mighty Qin noble was gone.
Now Fusu was only wearing a thin white inner garment.
The rain instantly soaked him through.
The fabric clung tightly to his body, revealing lean but sharp muscle lines.
He rolled up his sleeves.
Step by step, he walked toward the wooden shed where tools were stored.
The rain was too heavy; his cloth shoes squelched in the mud with every step.
“Squish… squish…”
Thousands of eyes stared at him.
No one dared speak.
No one dared move.
Fusu reached the tool pile.
Bent down.
Reached out.
And picked up the heaviest iron pickaxe.
It was normally used by the strongest miners.
It weighed a full thirty jin.
Holding the pickaxe, he turned around.
And walked back to the edge of the collapse pit.
He stood there, holding the pickaxe, facing a group of fully armed officers.
Like a madman.
“Y-Your Highness…”
The deputy general was still sitting on the ground, staring blankly.
“You… what are you doing…”
“Why suffer like this!”
“They’re just slaves! Just lowly commoners!”
“If they’re dead, they’re dead! We can capture more!”
“For tools like this, how can someone of your noble body—”
“Shut up!”
A thunderous roar exploded like lightning.
Fusu lowered his head and stared at the deputy general.
The iron pickaxe slammed heavily into the ground.
“You also know they are tools?”
Fusu’s voice carried an unprecedented ferocity.
But that ferocity was not directed at human lives lost—
It was directed at lost assets.
Like a miser discovering a hole gnawed through his treasury.
“They are my tools.”
Fusu pointed at himself.
“They are the property of Great Qin.”
“They are the capital used to exchange for silver.”
He raised the pickaxe with force, its tip pointing straight at the massive pit.
Pointing at the silent mountain itself.
“These useless things—only I can kill them.”
“Only I can exhaust them, use them until they die!”
“This mountain?”
“What the hell is it?”
“It thinks it can take my things?”
Silence fell across the entire field.
Everyone was stunned by this twisted logic.
He wasn’t saving people out of mercy—
But out of possession?
Out of unwillingness to lose assets?
What kind of reasoning was that?
Was this even human logic?
And yet, strangely enough…
As they listened, the soldiers’ fear of “heavenly might” began to fade without them realizing it.
In its place rose an inexplicable anger.
Yes.
That was Great Qin’s silver.
Those were Great Qin’s laborers.
What right did this damned mountain have to swallow them?
Fusu paid no attention to their reactions.
He turned back toward the ruins of broken rock.
Rainwater flowed from his hair into his eyes.
He didn’t even blink.
“Listen carefully.”
His voice cut through the rain like a blade.
“Today.”
“I will take back everything that belongs to me—without missing a single thing.”
“Whether they are alive, dead, or silver.”
“If even a single coin is missing…”
“I will flatten this mountain.”
He raised the iron pickaxe high.
Muscles tensed.
Using all his strength—
He swung it down onto the hard stone ruins.
“BANG!!!”
Sparks exploded into the rain.
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