"Yes, Team Leader." The young man suppressed his excitement, kept his patience, and continued surveying the surrounding area with the team leader.
"There's some here too." The team leader's eyes lit up.
"Team Leader, I've found Magic Crystals over here as well!" The young man named Kaya, a hundred meters away, was practically bursting with excitement. The team leader scanned the area, then immediately ran over to his subordinate. He was so excited that he could barely catch his breath. "Kaya, this is obviously a Magic Crystal vein. Just the area we've discovered spans several hundred meters. A vein this large is extremely rare across the entire Yulan Continent."
Kaya nodded again and again.
Magic Crystals. A single pouch of Magic Crystals could be worth thousands, even tens of thousands of times more than a pouch of gold. This was an absolutely enormous fortune.
Kaya looked at his team leader, then glanced around to make sure no one was nearby. He immediately whispered, "Team Leader, we've struck it rich! The vein we've surveyed spans several hundred meters—it's got to be worth hundreds of millions of gold coins, maybe even more!"
The team leader was experienced in geological surveys and could naturally calculate a rough figure.
"Kaya, what are you trying to say?" The team leader had already detected the greed flickering in Kaya's eyes.
Kaya suppressed his excitement and said hurriedly, "Team Leader, think about it… how much do we make surveying terrain for a whole year? Now, all we have to do is sneak around, tell nobody, and quietly mine a pouch or two and sell it. We'd be wealthy! With this Magic Crystal vein, we could become some of the richest people on the Yulan Continent!"
The more he thought about it, the more excited Kaya became.
There was no helping it—Magic Crystals were hard currency, and there were far too many channels through which to sell them. At the very lowest end, even the poorest-quality Magic Crystal was worth ten gold coins a piece. The value of Magic Crystals was beyond imagination.
"Kaya, calm down. Money's no good if you're not alive to spend it." While Kaya's head was burning hot, the team leader's words fell on him like a bucket of cold water poured over his head in the middle of summer. Kaya shuddered and looked at his team leader. "Team Leader, what do you mean by that?"
The team leader said gravely, "You should know that our Geological Survey Department is strictly managed. The higher-ups worry that we might discover a precious mineral vein and embezzle it for ourselves. The Kingdom is extremely harsh when it comes to monitoring us in this regard."
Kaya laughed dismissively. "Team Leader, what's there to be afraid of? Sure, there's oversight, but we take our cut and run. We don't go back."
"You're still too young," the team leader lectured. "You should know that the department keeps records of which area we survey each day. If we suddenly disappear, they'll definitely check this section. And when they do, they'll discover this Magic Crystal vein."
"Second…" The team leader fixed Kaya with a solemn gaze. "The Kingdom has no shortage of powerful experts. Once the Kingdom discovers what we've done, they will hunt us down without mercy. Our families will likely be implicated as well."
Kaya suddenly recalled that his team leader did, in fact, have a fine family back in Baruch City.
But he, Kaya, was different. His parents had died long ago during the wars. He was all alone, unmarried, with absolutely nothing tying him down. Kaya was confident… if he could walk away with a massive fortune, he could live the life of a king.
"Kaya." The team leader looked at him. "If we report this to the department, they'll give us a reward for the discovery."
"How much of a reward could they possibly give?" Kaya snorted. "Even if they gave us ten thousand gold coins, that'd be the upper limit."
In truth, ten thousand gold coins was no small sum. An ordinary family spent only a few dozen gold coins a year. Ten thousand gold coins could sustain a normal household for a hundred years. But if one wanted to live a life of true luxury… ten thousand gold coins really wasn't much.
"That's not necessarily the case. It depends on the size of the vein. If the Magic Crystal vein is large enough, they could give us tens of thousands—even a hundred thousand gold coins is possible," the team leader reasoned. "Kaya, the money the Kingdom gives us, we can spend with a clear conscience, and we won't have to abandon our homes."
Kaya looked over at the Magic Crystals in the tunnel below, then back at the team leader. After a fierce internal struggle, he nodded.
Only then did the team leader allow a faint smile to appear on his face.
The team leader thought of his wife and his three children. He truly did not want to drag them into a life of fleeing as fugitives.
But at that very moment, a sharp dagger suddenly thrust toward the team leader. A trace of madness flickered in Kaya's eyes. "Die—" Yet just as the blade was about to sink in, it could not advance even a fraction of an inch further.
Because his wrist had been seized by the team leader.
Kaya's face changed immediately.
The team leader stared at him coldly while applying force and twisting. A crisp crack rang out as the bones in Kaya's wrist shattered. Kaya howled madly and swung his left hand at the team leader in a desperate strike. Unfortunately—he was only a third-level warrior, while the team leader was a fifth-level warrior.
The gap was simply too vast.
"Thud!"
The team leader's fist struck squarely into Kaya's chest with a simple, direct blow. The sound of breaking bones was heard as Kaya's entire body was sent flying, crashing heavily to the ground. His chest caved inward, and blood gurgled from his mouth in a steady stream.
"You…" Life was draining rapidly from Kaya's body. He was truly unwilling to accept this… to have been so close, only to have his ambush caught and countered. The other man had clearly been on guard.
The team leader sighed as he looked down at him. "Kaya, if I were twenty years younger, with no attachments, perhaps I would have made the same choice as you—to seize a vast fortune and flee far away. To become a tycoon. So I completely understand what you're thinking right now."
The team leader had anticipated Kaya's attempt and had been on guard the entire time, circulating his Battle Qi within his body.
After hearing those words, the light faded from Kaya's eyes. Not a trace of life remained.
Looking at Kaya's corpse, the team leader shook his head and sighed softly. But he did not dwell on it. In his youth, before the Baruch Kingdom was even established, he had seen plenty of killing and had often taken part in it himself. There were far, far too many people who had thrown away their lives trying to rise above the masses.
The team leader quickly covered the tunnel with soil, then immediately headed at top speed toward the nearby city of Nifeng.
News that a Magic Crystal vein had been discovered in the outskirts of the small city of Nifeng in the Baruch Kingdom quickly reached the capital. Thousands of troops had already been dispatched to the area around the vein, barring anyone from approaching. They awaited the capital's orders in silence.
Black Crow Mountain.
Wotton sprinted along the mountain path at high speed, cutting through dense forests and following the stream until he finally arrived at Lin Lei's training grounds.
"Brother!" Wotton called out from a distance.
Lin Lei, who had been meditating cross-legged by the stone house in the center of the lake, opened his eyes at the sound. Seeing Wotton, a smile appeared on his face. "Wotton, what's the matter? You look like you're in quite a hurry."
"Brother, come with me—you need to see something!" Wotton said urgently.