Chapter 515 - 362: Star Realm Refined Gold, Ah Ya (Part 2)

Ian also saw the air purification units.

Every fifty meters, a waist-high Metal Box was embedded in the wall, its surface covered with pipes and filters.

A faint hum emanated from inside the boxes. They drew in the foul air from the surface, and after multiple layers of filtration, expelled gas that was barely breathable.

The filtration efficiency was low. The purified air still had a pale purple tint, its toxicity merely reduced to a level that wasn’t immediately fatal—but it was enough for humans to scrape by.

At a depth of one thousand meters, the tunnel ended at a heavy metal blast door.

The door was cast from some kind of alloy, its surface covered in scratches and dents from impacts. Twisted Runes were drawn along its edges.

Ian glanced at it and could roughly tell it was a crude ritual to ward off filth.

Faint human sounds came from behind the door: suppressed conversations, low coughs, and the weak cry of an infant.

With a subtle thought, he used the Gravity Rule to give it a gentle push, and the blast door, weighing tens of tons, slid open without a sound.

...

Just like any other day, Ah Ya carried her Bone Lamp and skillfully slipped into the seventh tunnel.

The light danced on the rock walls, casting a long, thin shadow.

She had walked this path for three years; she could navigate it with her eyes closed, knowing exactly where to duck her head and where to turn sideways.

The sparse, glowing moss on the rock walls gave off a faint green light, which wasn’t even as bright as the lamp in her hand.

The lamp burned the fat of oil insects. It had a strange, foul smell, but there was no helping it. Underground, anything that could be burned had to be conserved.

This lamp was only lit for an hour a day, and only when she was gathering fungi.

At the end of the tunnel was a natural cavern that had been expanded into a fungus cultivation chamber three years ago.

They called it a cultivation chamber, but really, it was just a few trenches dug into the ground, filled with rotten wood shavings and artificial fertilizer. Grayish-white mycelium crawled everywhere, casting a hazy, gray pall over the entire cavern.

As for the sour, musty smell in the air, Ah Ya had long since grown too numb to notice it.

She crouched down, her knees pressing against the hard stone floor, and began to check for mushroom caps ready for harvest.

Her fingers carefully pushed aside the layer of mycelium. One, two... seventeen.

The largest one was only the size of her palm. The edges of its dusty gray cap were already curling; if she didn’t pick it now, it would rot.

Her movements were gentle. She pinched the stalk with her fingernail and placed it in the woven wicker basket on her back.

"Fungi are timid. If you startle them, they grow slower." This was what the chief had taught her.

No one knew if fungi were actually timid, but Ah Ya did as she was told. Underground, any rule that might produce even a little more food had to be followed.

She turned over the wood shavings to let the mycelium underneath breathe.

Her fingers touched the damp, cold layer of humus. She frowned as a familiar itch spread across the back of her hand.

Dark purple lines writhed on her skin, as if an insect were burrowing underneath.

It was the contamination. It had been there for as long as she could remember, and everyone had it.

When it was mild, it just itched. When it got severe, it would fester, ooze pus, and eventually rot you to death.

That’s how Old Mo Ken from the next cave died last month. For the three days before he breathed his last, the whole settlement stank.

Ah Ya scratched the back of her hand and continued tending to the fungi. There were three or four other women in the cultivation chamber, all familiar faces.

No one spoke, and no one smiled. Underground, smiling was a luxury. It cost energy and couldn’t be exchanged for food.

’Did people in the past smile every day?’ she sometimes wondered.

The chief said that people in the past had something called a "festival," a whole day where they didn’t have to work and just ate, drank, and had fun.

She understood eating and drinking. Mushroom soup, with the occasional bonus of rat meat—that was a festival.

But what was "fun"? She couldn’t imagine it.

’Maybe it’s like when the children chase each other around the caves? But they’d get a scolding for that. Sweating makes you sick, and getting sick means you die.’

After gathering the fungi, Ah Ya shouldered her basket and started back. The sharp rocks on the ground sometimes pierced the soles of her feet, but she was used to it.

As she passed the settlement’s main cavern, she saw a few people gathered outside the chief’s cave. They were from the Guard Team.

Normally, they guarded the main passage to the outside world and rarely came back. But now they were gathered here, each one’s expression grimmer than the last.

Someone was speaking in a low voice, hushed and urgent, but Ah Ya had good hearing.

She slowed her pace and pricked up her ears.

"...the surface..."

"...someone really came down..."

"...different, completely different..."

’The surface? Someone came down from the surface?’

Ah Ya froze on the spot. The wicker straps of her basket suddenly felt tight, constricting her chest.

’How could there be people on the surface? It’s all poisonous gas, all Mutant Beasts, all dead people...’ These were the words she’d heard since she was a child, etched into the memory of every underground kid.

’Who would dare go to the surface? Who could possibly survive there?’

Just as she was thinking this, the curtain to the chief’s cave was thrown open violently.

A woman rushed out, her face pale, but her voice was sharp and piercing. "Everyone! Assemble immediately! The chief summons you!"

The settlement erupted in chaos.

Some three hundred people emerged from the various caves, mostly the old, the weak, women, and children. Their faces were filled with confusion and fear.

The last assembly had been half a year ago, when a cave-in next door had crushed seven people to death.

Ah Ya set down her basket and squeezed into the main cavern with the flow of people.

The main cavern was the largest, big enough to hold everyone. A dozen or so torches were stuck into the rock walls, the CRACKLE of burning grease mixing with the panting of the crowd, making the air even more stifling and hot.

Ah Ya was small. She slipped through the gaps in the crowd to the front and stood on her tiptoes...

The chief stood at the very front, his wrinkled face trembling violently in the firelight.

Behind him... was a person. No, that wasn’t right. That wasn’t a person.

At least, not one of the underground people.

The figure wore a type of clothing she had never seen before, shimmering with a dazzling golden light, without a single speck of dust on it.

Who among the underground people had clothes that clean? Everyone’s clothes were stitched together from rotten rags, patch upon patch, so dirty you couldn’t even tell their original color.

But this person’s clothes had none of that. Not even a single wrinkle.

The figure just stood there, and the air around them seemed to become pleasant.

It wasn’t an illusion. Ah Ya saw that when the torchlight fell on him, the floating dust motes swirled around him, avoiding him.

She subconsciously took a deep breath, and then her whole body went rigid. That scent...

The air underground was always choking and oppressive, thick with the smell of mildew and urine. Breathing it for too long made your throat dry.

But the air around this person was different. It was fragrant. It was clean.

Yes, that was it.

It was like that one time she had stolen a sip of water from the very bottom of the storage tank. It had a rusty taste, but it was so much better than the usual murky water.

This crisp aroma now was countless times cleaner than that water.

She took just one breath and felt the tightness that had been lodged in her chest for twelve years suddenly loosen a little.

’So this is what air can be like.’

"Th-this... this Lord has come from the surface. He is going to give us..." the chief began, his body trembling.

Before he could finish, the person in the golden clothes raised a hand.

Ah Ya saw a faint golden light appear at his fingertip. It was weak and gentle, like the faint glow from an oil insect’s tail, yet different.

There was something in the golden light she couldn’t comprehend, something that reminded her of what the chief called the "sun."

The light spread, turning into a pale golden mist, which then condensed into a rain that fell upon everyone’s skin.

First, there was a warmth, like being submerged in lukewarm water, and then an itch.

It wasn’t the usual annoying itch. This was a tingling, prickling sensation, burrowing its way out from under their skin.

Ah Ya looked down and saw the "earthworms" on the back of her hand—the ones that had been with her for twelve years—suddenly begin to writhe, like living things trying to escape.

But they couldn’t escape. Washed over by the pale golden rain, they dissolved into thin wisps of black smoke and vanished without a trace.

Ah Ya took another breath, and tears rolled down her cheeks without warning.

She had lived for twelve years, and for the first time, she knew that the world could be clean, that breathing could be so easy.

A collective gasp rose from the crowd, followed by suppressed sobs. Someone fell to their knees and began to kowtow...

"A miracle..." the chief murmured. "This is a miracle..."

Ah Ya didn’t kneel. She raised her head, staring blankly at the person.

The person was still standing in the same spot, their face devoid of expression, as if they had just done something trivial.

Ah Ya looked at his eyes. Those eyes... she didn’t know how to describe them.

They weren’t like the eyes of the underground people. The eyes of the undergrounders were all cloudy, covered with a layer of gray, viewing everything with exhaustion and numbness.

But these eyes were clear, like the sky of the surface world she imagined, though she had never seen the sky.

She suddenly remembered the things the chief had said, the things she had always dismissed as nonsense from a dream.

"The sun in the sky is red, and it feels warm on your skin."

"The air is sweet. One breath can fill you with sweetness from your throat to your belly."

Before, Ah Ya could never imagine it.

But now, looking at this person, at his eyes, and at the pale golden mist surrounding them...

She suddenly understood. Light really existed. Cleanliness could truly be smelled, touched, and breathed.

Tears welled up again. This time, she couldn’t hold them back and began to sob quietly.

It wasn’t sadness, nor was it pain. It was an emotion she couldn’t describe.

It was as if something that had been pent up for twelve years had finally found an escape.

"A red sun rises in the sky; when it appears, all is bright."