The following items were assigned to Xiao Mei: a back basket←a very sturdy one with lock; a shovel←a bit worn, which seemed to have already been used by many miners before; a pair of gloves←these were actually new; a very hardwearing mining helmet with a headlamp at the front; a work uniform←it’s new, albeit the smallest size, yet still a bit large for Xiao Mei’s current body.
Apart from the above, there was also a small waist bag with some necessities inside, including things such as high-energy foods. Although Xiao Mei couldn’t consume them, he was still given his share.
“Do you have anything else to say?” The recruiting foreman who was wearing a mask looked up and asked.
Xiao Mei then looked at Rong Gui in his arms.
“I need another mining helmet.”
That man seemed to smile: “According to the rules, this should be prohibited. But today few people are here, and I’ll make an exception for you.”
While speaking, he fumbled around the box under his feet and took out another helmet.
So now, Rong Gui…’s head also had a mining helmet~
Carrying Rong Gui at his front, the little mining basket on his back, and a multi-functional fanny pack on his waist, Xiao Mei in his full set of mining suit looked no different from other miners – except that he was a little shorter.
He was immediately taken to work.
His supervisor was still that man with a mask.
“Get on the car.” He beckoned to Xiao Mei, and led them straight to an ore truck. Only after Xiao Mei climbed onto the truck did the man start the truck slowly: “You are lucky that no one’s here today. Otherwise miners could only sit in the back.”
He pointed at the back of the wagon – it’s the trailer which was originally used to load the ore.
Holding Rong Gui’s head, Xiao Mei ignored him.
Nor did that man get angry, and he just kept driving on his own.
Mining pits seemed to be very far away from one another. It had been forty-five minutes before the truck eventually reached its destination. The situation in this mining pit was somewhat different from the one they saw previously. As they entered, the truck used to stop once, and only after the man had shown some kind of documents was he allowed to pass.
Unlike the Pit No.4, where people could apply for jobs at will, this pit must be a level higher, which would require a special permit to enter.
Of course, it was Xiao Mei who noticed this fact. As for Rong Gui, he had also seen it, but he never thought anything about it.
︿(￣o￣)︿
“Yo! So newbies are still coming? Wasn’t there an accident in the Pit No.4? Those lads should have all run away!” Another man in mask was sitting at the same position where the previous masked man was sitting when he was at the Pit No.4. They wore the same type of gas masks, but the man here was much taller. When he noticed how short Xiao Mei was, he was a little stunned, and only after a long while did he laugh: “This can’t be your relative, right? I can’t believe he’s even shorter than you…”
“He’s short, so what? I did my work better than all the big guys!” The small man immediately retorted, and patted Xiao Mei’s shoulder: “The best miners are never tall ones. Show them what you can do, boy!”
This last sentence was addressed to Xiao Mei.
Naturally, Xiao Mei ignored him. Yet Rong Gui responded vigorously: “We will for sure!!!”
Such a loud noise suddenly emerged from someone’s chest, which truly startled the tall man: “What, what’s this? A radio?”
The short man who brought them over, on the other hand, probably had noticed Rong Gui much earlier, so he was not surprised at all. On the contrary, he even laughed: “That’s the spirit, do your best.”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
“Cr j wlcfg, sbe’ii tjnf ab kbgx nfgs vffq ecvfgugbecv. Pa’r gfjiis atf ibcfilfra qijmf. Qlat atf meggfca jvnjcmfv rjofas wfjregfr, sbe jmaejiis vbc’a cffv ab kbggs jybea atf rjofas lrrefr ab kbgx yfibk. Ejatfg, sbe cffv ab kbggs jybea wfcaji lrrefr. Ktbrf wlcfgr ktb rqfca j ibcu alwf kbgxlcu ecvfgugbecv boafc tjnf wfcaji tfjiat qgbyifwr, wbgf bg ifrr. Kter, ws reuufralbc lr obg sbe ab ub vbkc abufatfg klat rbwf bo sbeg ubbv oglfcvr. Ljnlcu rbwfbcf ab mtja klat lr j ubbv kjs ab gfilfnf wfcaji ragfrr.” Ufgtjqr yfmjerf tf kjr gfjiis ja iflregf abvjs, atja wjc rjlv j ofk wbgf kbgvr: “Dea vbc’a qjclm fnfc lo sbe tjnf wfcaji tfjiat lrrefr – kf tjnf rqfmljilhfv qrsmtbibulrar bc rlaf.”
“Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.” Rong Gui listened very carefully while making sounds to respond. Unable to move, he used his voice to indicate that he had taken all notes down to heart.
Pleased with Rong Gui’s attitude, the short man explained a few more things and patted Xiao Mei’s shoulder. Then, another miner came out from the room behind, and he led Xiao Mei and Rong Gui straight to the back.
This appeared to be a lounge for miners to take breaks. When they entered, there were already eight miners inside, sitting or standing. As the newcomers got in, only two people seemed to look up and glance at them before turning away indifferently.
Rong Gui, who had planned to give a full introduction of himself and Xiao Mei, so that they could be better integrated into the miners’ squad to avoid depression, was now dumbfounded.
It was Xiao Mei who soon became integrated into this group.
By his usual, don’t-bother-me aloof attitude.
=-=
Including the miner who led them here, there were ten people in total in this room (plus a head).
No one was talking, and the room was silent.
After another two minutes or so, a soft sound of music suddenly rang across the room. Without anyone talking, the room instantly started to go down!
Rong Gui was a little scared right then. Yet, seeing that Xiao Mei was as calm as always, his fear slowly faded away.
In this way, they went down for about twenty minutes.
The musical finally stopped.
“The work starts.” The miner who previously led the way for them suddenly spoke, and the gate opened.
The view outside the gate was no longer the same as before, but all dark.
That miner had been standing in the gateway. After speaking, he went out without saying any more words. Other miners who were originally in the room quickly followed him. Soon, Xiao Mei was the only one left in the room.
After having another check on the backpack with which he carried Rong Gui at his front, Xiao Mei also went out.
The gate closed swiftly. Then, Rong Gui heard the noises of roller chains moving. With the whooshing sound of wind, the room behind them immediately went upwards.
Er…so the room they stayed before was actually a big elevator? But it was decorated as a lounge – should one treat it as a kind of human-centered design? Or was it just to save space?
Rong Gui pretended to think for a while.
Xiao Mei apparently didn’t have such idle thought. Following behind other miners, he started to walk ahead.
“We are now four hundred meters down in Pit No.7. The main minerals here are: germanium, blackfield stones, and czarnie. These are the primary ores of the three minerals – take a closer look.” The lead miner took out three stones for Xiao Mei to have a look. However, without even asking whether Xiao Mei had seen them clearly, he quickly put these samples away again.
His action was too fast, and Rong Gui was only able to vaguely recognize that there were two stones and a clump of mud. Not even until he could remember their colors, the miner had already taken them all back!?
And thus, Rong Gui could only pray that Xiao Mei had better eyesight than he did, because he didn’t see or understand anything!
“You’ll work at that end.” The man pointed in a direction, “We’ll meet here again in eight hours.”
Finishing this line, he left.
He left in a direction to the right. All other miners also seemed to have their respectively assigned mining areas. After the rustling sounds of a scurry of footsteps, there was no one else around them.
The only sound left in the darkness was the clinky-clanky sound of mining.
“Xiao Mei…” Rong Gui said timidly.
Rong Gui felt a mechanical hand of Xiao Mei touched his face. Moving upwards following the outline of his cheek, Xiao Mei’s hand landed on Rong Gui’s helmet. With a “click”, Xiao Mei turned on the searchlight on Rong Gui’s helmet.
A blazing white light illuminated the path before them.
“Let’s go.” With Xiao Mei’s calm words, they walked towards the area just assigned to them by that miner.
There was actually a huge cave.
A coal black cave embedded on the rock face.
There wasn’t even a ladder outside, but only some steel nails embedded therein which could serve as footholds. Xiao Mei had to climb into the cave with the help of these steel nails. Once they climbed in, they had entered into an even darker place.
In the past, Rong Gui only knew that all nights were dark black. But only now did he know that even darkness had different shades of black.
The darkness here was obviously of the deeper shade of black.
Fortunately, it’s quite spacious inside, and not as narrow as Rong Gui had imagined.
“You stay here.” Placing the back basket on the ground, Xiao Mei then put Rong Gui on the back basket.
Then he began to work.
“Xiao Mei, Xiao Mei~” Rong Gui began to “work” as well.
For Rong Gui, who didn’t even have his hands with him anymore, the only work he could do right now was to chat with Xiao Mei.
He treated this work very seriously.
“Xiao Mei, did you get a good look at those ores? Can you find and dig them out?” He started the conversation from a professional perspective.
“No, I can’t.” Xiao Mei’s response was as succinct as ever.
“Eh?” Rong Gui was surprised. When he asked the question, he expected that Xiao Mei would definitely give him an affirmative answer. Then naturally, he could humbly request Xiao Mei to teach him how to distinguish the ores, and Xiao Mei would patiently explain everything to him. In this way, Xiao Mei would be able to talk much more, wouldn’t he?
Of course, it’s very likely that Rong Gui would still not be able to distinguish the ores even if Xiao Mei taught him.
“Then what should we do? He put away those ores too fast, and I didn’t even see clearly how they looked…” For a moment, Rong Gui was worried. Immediately afterwards, he tried to desperately recall: “The first ore…was it bluish? The second ore…was it black? Green? Aaaaaahhh~ It seemed to have many colors! And the third clump of mud was…”
Rong Gui simply couldn’t remember the color of the last clump of mud, so he just gave up thinking, and continued to chat with Xiao Mei: “However, it’s so rare to have something that even you have not seen before, Xiao Mei.”
Although Xiao Mei was merely an ordinary robot from a provincial town, his usual demeanor was just too knowledgeable, as if there’s nothing that he wouldn’t know. So Rong Gui guessed that Xiao Mei must have read a lot of books before.
It’s not that he hadn’t seen it before, but rather, it’s just that he hadn’t seen any primary ore of such a low quality – without speaking, Xiao Mei thought to himself.
In fact, these ores which accumulated in the deepest part of the earth were rather useless here. Even if they were extracted so that a fairly high concentration of wanted minerals could be obtained, such minerals could not realize their true value underground. It was in the “Sky” that their value could be truly realized, especially for the blackfield stones. Blackfield stones purified to the highest possible degree would turn white, with very light weight. They were the indispensable materials for building the Sky City. Of course, at that time, they would no longer be called “blackfield stones”…
Xiao Mei only knew the looks of these ores when they were purified to a certain degree, and he had not really seen before what they originally looked like.
But this didn’t prevent him from mining.
As a newbie, the mining pit which those old hand miners assigned to him must be the worst. But it didn’t matter – such worst mining pit had its own advantages.
The first advantage was its space – the cave was very spacious, which was obviously due to the fact that it had been mined and excavated for a long time. All ores which could be found here must have all been dug out and collected – well, this was the second advantage.
Miners could only take away the ores, but the rest of this place was left untouched, which allowed newcomers to study what kind of place might produce ores. Though one could not be sure of what types of ores were produced here, when he encountered a similar excavation environment in the future, he would know that he could expect to find ores there.
Overall, it’s a good place.
At least much better than those completely unexcavated mines where one couldn’t even be certain whether there were ores inside.
After an internal assessment in his mind, Xiao Mei began to study the surrounding walls of the mine cave.
Before that, he had taken all things out from the waist bag. As the necessities for other miners, there were some foods and medicaments in the waist bag, and even a radio and two batteries.
Xiao Mei only took the batteries with him. For him, only the batteries could come in handy, while others were all useless.
On the contrary, Rong Gui’s eyes lit up when he saw the foods. And when he next saw the radio, his eyes shone even brighter!
“Xiao Mei, Xiao Mei! Hurry up, turn on the radio! I want to listen to songs!”
Thus, Xiao Mei placed all “trash” which he originally planned to throw away next to Rong Gui’s head.
At Rong Gui’s request, he also specifically helped Rong Gui to tune into a music channel!
Rong Gui was eventually satisfied←the small cave became livelier, didn’t it? And Xiao Mei wouldn’t feel lonely anymore!
Xiao Mei was also satisfied←compared to the sound of radio broadcast, Rong Gui’s voice got toned down a little at last, and he finally stopped badgering Xiao Mei into talking with him.
Now, Rong Gui began to talk with the radio.
And Xiao Mei began to work.
In this way, the two robots busied themselves around for eight hours.
After eight hours, the radio ran out of power, and the only sound remaining in the mine cave was the singing voice of Rong Gui, who had just learned a lot of new songs.
Looking at Xiao Mei, who had just returned from his hard work, Rong Gui proudly stated his conclusion: “I am more durable than the radio~”
