Chapter 175: A Tiny Match
A strange, heavy silence fell over the collapsed mine shaft.
Only the sound of Old Ou muttering incoherently could be heard from the far end.
On this side, Wang Sheng and the others fell completely silent.
After a very long time, Ke Wen was the first to speak. His voice trembled uncontrollably, whether from pain or from the fear of startling this sudden, unexpected spark of hope.
“Brother Shang, is what you said true? Can you really… really save me?”
Shang Yue nodded vigorously.
Wang Sheng and the others could not actually see it, but for some reason, amidst the pitch-black darkness, they could feel a surging, almost overflowing waves of determination and hope radiating from Shang Yue.
Pulling himself together, Shang Yue finally spoke, “We will definitely get out of here! Good brothers, those wicked men are still alive and well, so we have no right to die!”
Wang Sheng was the first to respond, wiping a mix of tears and grime from his face. “Right! The people who caused the deaths of Xiao Si, Xu Laowu, and the others are still alive. Why on earth should we die?”
However—
Lu Bo spoke up from the darkness. “Shang Yue, can you actually find wooden boards to splint his leg?”
“Not wooden boards,” Shang Yue said as he struggled to pull out the bamboo he had been pressed under when he fell back down. “It’s bamboo.”
Jian Xingxia had used a sickle to scratch the exterior of the bamboo into a total mess. Bamboo like this could not be sold for money, though it was still perfectly usable for splitting. Consequently, the system had priced it at practically zero.
Shang Yue had hauled over a bundle of about six or seven stalks of bamboo, each roughly the width of a wrist. Two or three had snapped, but the rest were merely covered by dirt and stone. Shang Yue dug them out, felt them over, and found them to be in good condition.
Sitting right next to him, Lu Bo was the first to touch the bamboo poles.
Lu Bo was utterly shocked. “Old Shang, where did these bamboo poles come from?”
Shang Yue said in a deep, steady voice, “I knew long ago that those people wanted us dead. Every time I went down into the mine shaft, I would quietly smuggle a few things in.”
“But bamboo poles this long… how did you manage to bring them in right under their noses?”
At this moment, Shang Yue couldn’t even care about the agonizing pain in his broken leg, racking his brain to patch up his lie.
“Last month during the rush order, when the soldiers forced us to dig day and night for three days straight without rest, and so many of our brothers dropped dead from exhaustion…”
Lu Bo fell silent.
There had indeed been such an incident. While these innocent, wronged, and framed citizens were toiling away deep underground, the guards and soldiers above were drinking wine and feasting on meat. Sometimes, taking advantage of the guards being dead drunk, the men would sneak up for a breath of fresh air.
Because Shang Yue possessed some construction talent and needed to move around, his trips up and down were more frequent than the others.
Hearing this, Ke Wen was now absolutely certain—Brother Shang truly had a way to save him!
Wang Sheng couldn’t help but praise, “Shang Yue, you really are incredible! To think you could look so far ahead during such a miserable time.”
Performing hard labor in the mines was a special kind of hell; over half the men who had entered in their batch were already dead or injured. Finding even a brief moment to rest or catch a breath was hard enough. Who would have thought Shang Yue had actually managed to secretly cache supplies down in the shaft?
Wang Sheng praised Shang Yue without stint.
Even though he knew that harboring any emotions other than “seeking survival” was improper right now, Shang Yue’s ears still grew hot in the darkness.
Where was any of this due to his own far-reaching foresight? It was simply that he wasn’t meant to die. His sudden, inexplicable arrival at that manor right when the mine collapsed was the sole reason he possessed these lifelines now.
But Shang Yue recovered his composure very quickly.
He had indeed wanted to die before, but that was because the layers of oppression and constant warfare in the Great Yu Dynasty left the common people with no way to live, making him feel that living or dying made no difference at all. But things were different now. He had unexpectedly obtained a mystical affinity and tools to save himself.
Furthermore, that young Owner had said—as long as he could stubbornly hold out for a single day, she would recruit him over again at five o’clock tomorrow morning!
Right now, the unfortunate brothers who shared his grim fate were lying right beside him. Holding onto this mystical affinity, he could not simply sit back and watch them die in vain. The imperial court was corrupt and the people were destitute; he had prayed to the heavens countless times to open their eyes, look upon this world, and help the common folk. Now that the heavens had opened their eyes, how could he possibly disregard this chance?
Lu Bo interrupted Shang Yue’s thoughts. “We have bamboo poles, but we don’t have anything to split them with.” Unlike wood, bamboo couldn’t simply be smashed apart; it would only splinter into jagged pieces, making it highly difficult to cut cleanly.
Shang Yue said, “I have it.”
Lu Bo: ?
Shang Yue pulled the machete from his tunic. “I have a machete.”
Lu Bo reached out to feel it and was instantly dumbfounded. “You even managed to smuggle in a machete? And you buried it in the mine shaft, right where you happened to get hit?”
Shang Yue: “…Yes.”
There was nothing to be done; his luck was just that spectacular.
On the other side, Wang Sheng suppressed his grief and stripped some garments from the bodies of Xiao Si and Old Five. It was a pity that men forced into hard labor couldn’t even wear whole clothes; most only had tattered trousers, lacking shirts entirely.
“Shang Yue, I have the cloth, and I’ve gathered some splinters from the broken support beams, but… we don’t have a source of fire.”
Standardly, lighting a fire down here was impossible.
Shang Yue said, “I have it.”
Wang Sheng: ???
“You have that too?” Lu Bo and Ke Wen blurted out in unison.
Shang Yue pulled a tiny paper box from his tunic. According to the Owner, the items inside were called “matches.” Shang Yue had looked at them—they were just tiny wooden sticks tipped with black phosphorus. As long as one rubbed them against the coarse surface on the side of the paper box, it would catch fire. Even without the paper box, striking it against a rough stone would make it ignite.
Shang Yue told Wang Sheng to tear the cloth into thin strips and bring them over. Wang Sheng did as he was told.
Shang Yue carefully pulled a single match out of the flattened box, repeatedly feeling in the darkness to confirm which end held the phosphorus tip.
Then—
With a sharp scritch-scratch, a tiny, green-bean-sized flame flared up from Shang Yue’s hand.
Wang Sheng let out a cry of pure astonishment. “Heavens! What manner of object is this! It’s actually more powerful than a flint!” He had assumed Shang Yue had brought a flint and steel. But striking a fire with flint required striking dozens or even hundreds of times just to spark a flame onto dry grass or lint. Yet Shang Yue had produced an open flame with a single stroke!
Wang Sheng was temporarily rooted to the spot in sheer daze.
Pinned a bit further away, Ke Wen shouted frantically in his anxiety, “Brother Wang Sheng! Quick! Light the fire! Light the fire!”
“Oh, right, right!”
Only then did Wang Sheng hurriedly thrust the cloth forward, carefully catching the flame from the bean-sized spark. The cloth was stained with blood, so it didn’t ignite on the first try. Wang Sheng quickly turned it to a different spot before the flame finally caught.
A faint, weak light bloomed inside the mine shaft.
The men quickly fed the broken rags, fallen splinters from the support beams, and pieces of broken bamboo into the spark, kindling a small pile of flames.
The weak light was like the very hope of survival, illuminating the face of every single man inside the dark cavern.
