Zhang Chen directly carried the wild chicken and crawled into the pit he had dug at home. Within moments, he had arrived at the stone tablet.
He carefully used a brush to clean the dirt off the stone tablet, his eyes fixed on the mysterious runes carved into the tablet. He took the wild chicken out of the basket and then retrieved the clay pot he often used to boil water in the mountains. Zhang Chen apologized to the wild chicken: "Brother Chicken, please don’t blame me. It’s that damned Fox Spirit who forced me. If it weren’t for the Fox Spirit’s coercion, I wouldn’t have resorted to this desperate measure."
As Zhang Chen swiftly brought the knife down, chicken blood spurted out in an instant. Amidst the wild chicken’s struggling, a bowl of blood gradually filled up the pot.
Zhang Chen took out a brush he had prepared in advance, dipped it in chicken blood, and began to trace the characters on the gravestone. He knew the blood would clot quickly, leaving him with limited time. Fortunately, there weren’t many characters on the stone tablet. As Zhang Chen’s brush landed, blood-red characters emerged one by one.
Luckily, with his Golden Light Skill, Zhang Chen felt a strange stability in his movements. Despite his urgency, he made no errors.
After the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, Zhang Chen finished tracing the characters on the gravestone and applied white paper to it for rubbing.
In a typical rubbing process, the first stage involves applying paper, the second involves rolling, the third involves adding ink, and the fourth involves removing the rubbing. The procedure is exceedingly meticulous, but Zhang Chen didn’t aim to study calligraphy or preserve the rubbed characters for long. He merely intended to read the text on the stone through the Fox Spirit using Zhang Chen as a pawn.
The rubbing went smoothly. After removing the paper from the stone tablet, there was not a trace of blurriness; the blood-red text seemed particularly eerie in the gloomy cave.
"Next, we just wait for the Fox Spirit to take the bait." Zhang Chen picked up the Luoyang Shovel and resumed the grand excavation.
At this time, the ground had become permafrost, making it extremely difficult to dig, akin to chiseling ice directly off ice. Zhang Chen found that mere use of the Luoyang Shovel made it difficult to excavate; he needed to use both a chisel and hammer.
"I still need to prepare explosives. Once I use them to blast open the frozen soil, the digging will be faster." Zhang Chen muttered to himself while hammering the soil, "Also, those people from Blacksmith Cui’s house don’t seem friendly. If there’s any trouble, it might lead to killing them to keep silence, even slaughtering the entire village. I’ve had several encounters with those individuals; if they decide to eliminate witnesses, I won’t be able to escape. If I can create explosives..."
Zhang Chen excavated for half an hour, feeling an unbearable chill. The cold not only froze the soil but seemed intent on penetrating his bones to freeze his blood.
With numb hands and feet, Zhang Chen rushed out from underground, standing in the sunlight, greedily soaking up the sun’s rays. His eyes beamed with joy: "What is in that underground cave? Why is it so cold? I’ll return to dig tomorrow, but I need to prepare some cotton clothes beforehand."
After warming up for a while, Zhang Chen climbed back down the hole, picked up the chisel and shovel, and continued digging.
Zhang Chen didn’t notice that the blood on the stone tablet gradually seeped into the stone, disappearing without a trace, as if there had never been any blood on the tablet.
At this moment, Zhang Chen was so focused on accumulating experience points from digging that he wasn’t concerned with the stone tablet, which had lost its purpose.
After two more hours of digging in the cave, the cold became increasingly intense. Zhang Chen’s body froze stiff, and even his hair was coated in frost. Ultimately, he couldn’t endure it any longer and packed all the soil into the basket, then climbed out.
"The digging speed is getting slower. I’ve only managed to dig ten baskets of soil today." Zhang Chen laboriously climbed out of the pit, carefully scattered the soil around to avoid leaving any traces or rousing any wild animals.
He then checked the Golden Finger Interface:
[Name: Zhang Chen]
[Skill (Tier 2): Light of the True God (0/5000)]
[Points: 1100]
"Today, I’ve earned three hundred points, bringing the total to eleven hundred points. It seems I’m not far from five thousand points. It won’t be long before my skill upgrades."
Looking at his Golden Finger Interface, Zhang Chen felt optimistic about the future. He wasn’t far from the day his skill would upgrade. He looked up at the sky; the sun had already passed noon, and Zhang Chen was exhausted, feeling cold even in his bones. He decided not to continue digging but rather go prepare the explosives.
The Fox Spirit was formidable, but outsiders were also troublesome. He didn’t want to kill the Fox Spirit only to be killed by a bunch of ordinary folks. That would be a suffocating way to die.
Zhang Chen packed the rubbing paper into a bamboo tube and headed towards the mountains with the basket.
If it were an ordinary person, they might know how gunpowder is made. After all, one nitrate, two sulfur, three nitric acid was taught in junior chemistry classes, but that’s just theory, not a guarantee of successful production. But, coincidentally, Zhang Chen really knew the formula and process for making high-purity explosives! After all, in a previous life, he’d learned survival skills in the wild and followed his uncle into the mountains to blast wild boars and fish. This skill wasn’t learned without reason!
"To make explosives, two types are needed: a small amount of sensitive explosives as the ignition point and a large amount of insensitive explosives as the main force." Zhang Chen pondered internally.
Living in a remote mountain village, he was never short of materials for making explosives. He only needed to be cautious, avoiding letting the Fox Spirit or villagers notice anything suspicious.
Fortunately, he frequently hunted in the mountains, so he could make explosives deep in the forest, out of sight of the Fox Spirit, who seldom left Zhang Chen. Hence, detecting his activity would be difficult.
"Maybe I should make the explosives directly in the tomb... No, if an explosion occurs, I’ll be buried alive inside. I need to find a spacious place."
Quickly, Zhang Chen chose a target site, a natural cave rarely visited and almost untouched by people.
(PS: The detailed tutorial on making explosives is left out, fearing censorship from the authorities. Anyway, it’s not difficult and easy to find materials in rural areas.)
Creating explosives that could change the era, Zhang Chen dared not let anyone know, not even Wang Wu.
Zhang Chen tinkered in the mountains for half a day, then emerged with a gloomy face, golden light flickering in his eyes. Not sensing the presence of the Fox Spirit’s Qi Mechanism, he confirmed the Fox Spirit hadn’t followed, and went to check the traps in the mountains.
Today’s harvest was exceptionally abundant, with two wild chickens and a rabbit captured. Zhang Chen roasted a wild chicken and rabbit on the spot, eating to his fill, before heading home with the day’s catch and the morning’s game as dusk descended.
Arriving at his doorstep, Zhang Chen indeed saw the white-furred fox eagerly waiting at the gate. The Fox Spirit seemed to have caught the scent of the wild chicken and joyfully bounced on the ground, then cheerfully rushed into the house, waiting to enjoy the fruits of Zhang Chen’s labor.
"That damned Fox Spirit, truly cunning!" Zhang Chen gazed at the jubilant fox but couldn’t laugh. Angrily, he stomped his feet in place.
PS: Instead of posting four to five thousand words in a single Chapter, someone suggested separating them for better effect, so one temporarily split into two.
Yesterday’s thank-you remarks were said to involve PK, so they were deleted. Now, the thanks are posted below.
Also, a special thanks to the first alliance master for the book, thanks to ’Feng Junzi Haoran’ for being the alliance leader. Since it’s the new book phase, additional content will be noted and released all at once after the book is officially available.