Chapter 1118: Chapter 1118
Having collected the items, Lin Yucha suddenly said, "Master, didn’t we say we wanted to go down and take a look? Shall we go now?" It was a suggestion made earlier and they had nothing else to do at the moment anyway.
"Of course, we should take a look. It’s rare to see such a large cave, and even rarer to find so many Sand Snakes inside. I think there must be something special below, let’s go search for it."
Du You and the two sisters quickly found an entrance, which Beetles had burrowed out.
Although Du You couldn’t figure out the layout of the underground cave, with Spiritual Perception, he could roughly sense all of the surroundings. If all else failed, he could always use Instantaneous Movement to travel layer by layer back to the surface. So, the worry of getting lost was not an issue for him.
The three of them entered the Snake Nest through a large entrance. The fifth-tier Sand Snakes had a diameter of two to three meters, and some were even larger. Since those Sand Snakes could move freely within the caves, so could they.
After entering the cave, there was still a lingering smell of blood and stench. The blood was left when the Sand Snakes died; as for the stench, it was hard to tell what it was. Either way, the Beetles had cleaned everything up, leaving nothing behind.
Speaking of which, Beetles would eat anything they came across, even excrement. If it weren’t for the Beetles’ strong stomach, Du You wouldn’t have known if he could enter the Snake Nest.
With so many creatures living together, the smell was unbearable.
Even now, the lingering odors were strong, as seen by the fact that the sisters had taken out their masks.
The group continued to delve deeper and soon arrived at the bottom. "Looking at the surroundings, it seems to be naturally formed," said Du You, who could only tell that there were no signs of man-made alterations in the vicinity.
"Exactly, this is naturally formed, due to the collision of tectonic plates creating a fault line. However, it seems that other forces have been at work as well, perhaps this is the doing of the Sand Snakes themselves." The higher-tier Sand Snakes were certainly not ordinary animals devoid of strength.
"Look, here, there’s something here," suddenly, Lin Yushi called out from ahead.
Du You and Lin Yucha walked up and saw a tomb. Yes, inside the Sand Snake Nest, there was actually a tomb. Du You didn’t care whose it was and began to dig it up, revealing a number of grave goods.
Unfortunately, there was nothing useful among these grave goods, most of which were just jewelry and such. The few magic items, having been used in rituals, had long since lost their power.
"It seems that these were left by the Quicksand Priests," Du You said, looking over the grave goods.
"Look, there are many more tombs here." As Du You walked forward, he indeed saw many more tombs, and he began to dig them up without any courtesy. As for desecrating the dead, he had even become a skeleton himself, so what was there to fear?
Upon digging, Du You found that some of the tombs contained Sandpeople — the multiple arms and large skeletons were giveaways. Some were tombs of Sand Snakes, probably combat pets of the Quicksand Priests buried here after their deaths. This place was indeed an ideal burial ground, where generally no one would dare to enter.
"There’s plenty of wealth, but nothing valuable. Oh well, when we get back, I’ll have Shaliya send people to dig up these graves."
Most of these burial items could be used directly as currency. Du You’s territory wasn’t lacking money, but it was not right to waste resources. Since they were the graves of the Sandpeople, it would be okay to destroy them.
Just at this moment, Lin Yucha seemed to have spotted something and then smashed against the wall. A piece of stone was knocked down by Lin Yucha, who then took it in hand and began to appraise it using a panel.
"Sister, what is this thing?" Lin Yushi bounced over happily.
"It appears to be a chunk of gold ore, no, it is gold ore and the gold content is very high. Maybe, this is a large gold mine."
"A large gold mine, huh? But that’s not right. Although a large gold mine is important to the people of this world, it shouldn’t be of much use to Sand Snakes. These are snakes, not dragons," Du You said, looking around curiously.
Looking around, indeed, there were many places shimmering with gold in the darkness; this vast area was all part of a gold mine.
If this gold mine were exposed, the influence of his territory would definitely be greatly enhanced. As for this place being within the Quicksand Empire’s domain, as long as he could occupy it, it would be his.
"There should be other things too. Gold mines often have a lot of high-tier associated minerals; let’s keep moving forward."
In many worlds, gold mines often have a strong adsorption power for natural forces and are frequently accompanied by higher-grade minerals. Therefore, the most valuable find in a gold mine is usually not the gold itself.
The three people continued walking forward. Not knowing how long they had walked, the vast gold vein still hadn’t come to an end. However, gradually, other minerals began to appear in their sight. They just didn’t know what exactly was attracting the Sand Snakes. It wasn’t until some time later that a patch of blue light suddenly appeared before them.
"Wow, what beautiful scenery," Lin Yushi exclaimed with sparkling eyes.
"I feel a strong presence of Water Element fluctuation; this must be a Water Attribute magic crystal mine." Thɪs chapter is updated by 𝘯𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭·𝓯𝓲𝓻𝓮·𝙣𝙚𝙩
Du You stepped forward, looking towards the ground and indeed, mixed in among many crystals, there were blue minerals, both regular and irregular – these were magic crystal mines. As a type of energy stone, magic crystals had many uses.
Moreover, this was of the water attribute, which may also be an important raw material used in nurturing the Sand Snakes.
"Look at the ground, there should have been many spherical objects here, probably snake eggs. Maybe the snake eggs need these water attribute magic crystals to hatch," Lin Yucha pointed at some traces on the ground, but because the Beetles had eaten everything so cleanly, not even a shard of a shell was left, leaving them only to guess.
However, it didn’t matter; they came here to cause destruction in the first place, finding the minerals was just an unexpected bonus.
"With such a large magic crystal mine, there might be high-purity crystal diamonds; if so, upgrading some of the buildings in our territory to tier five wouldn’t be a problem." High-purity crystal diamonds could replace many advanced materials. With this stuff, upgrading many branch of the armed forces’ buildings to tier five would absolutely not be an issue. The greater challenge was actually tier-five troops.
Finding tier-five experts wasn’t easy, especially on the human side. It was definitely not an easy task to find more than ten people of the same profession to serve as evolutionary material for a new branch of the armed forces.