Chapter 1738: Some Kind of Magical Reaction
"Shut up!" Xu Huo stepped forward and grabbed his jaw, but the boss struggled and refused to stop, shouting, "Now that you've cleaned up your act, you want to pretend the past never happened? I'm telling you, it's impossible! There are plenty of people who know about this too. Killing me alone won't do a thing!"
"What did you say!" Xu Huo stopped the motion of injecting him with the syringe, his gaze sharp and fierce. "You dare to speak of this?"
The boss, thinking he had found a chance to survive, panted heavily and said, "Since you dared to do it, are you afraid of it being spoken of?"
"Tiantianle has deep pockets and a big business. You killed so many people and got away scot-free. I'm just a small-time operator, of course I have to think ahead!"
Xu Huo's face darkened. "You shouldn't know about this."
"Haha!" The boss laughed. "There's no wall that wind can't pass through. As long as those in the know aren't all dead, the news will leak out sooner or later..."
Before he could finish, Xu Huo twisted and broke his arm. "Talk!"
The boss was drenched in sweat from the pain, gritting his teeth and refusing to speak. Xu Huo showed no mercy and broke his other arm as well, adding, "Besides your arms, you still have two legs. If you lose your legs, you still have your family. I can wait until you're ready to talk."
As he spoke, he nodded to the player holding the boss down. That player immediately let go and opened the Message Collection Terminal.
"What are you doing?" The boss panicked. "You want to go after my family!"
"Since you refuse to say who leaked the information to you, and you claim there are other people in the know, it stands to reason that both parties are within your network. We can go through them one by one until we find them." Xu Huo glanced at the half-spilled potion, then casually tossed it aside. "No matter. There's plenty more potion."
The player beside him handed him a new syringe.
Hearing that the player had already contacted someone to detain his entire family under the pretext of a vacation trip, the boss finally couldn't hold back and roared, "Let my family go! I'll talk! I'll talk!"
At Xu Huo's signal, the player notified the contact to halt the operation, then repositioned the boss back into the chair.
This time, Xu Huo didn't sit down opposite the boss. Instead, he stood behind the chair, placing both hands on its back. "Speak."
The boss swallowed hard, then slowly began, "This mine was inherited from my father. But in truth, the gems were almost completely dug out over a hundred years ago. I had the idea of selling the mine to make one last profit. At the time, I went out to find a buyer and happened to run into an old friend of my father's."
"My father told me that his friend's mine should have been exhausted even before ours. But when I met that man, his mine was still shipping out large quantities of gems."
"I didn't understand how that was possible, so I tried to get close to him. After some effort, I finally got the truth out of him. It turned out that the reason his mine could keep producing gems was that every so often, people were thrown down into it."
Xu Huo's expression remained unchanged. "And you believed that?"
"Why wouldn't I?" The boss looked up at him, his eyes filled with anger and hostility. "Isn't that exactly what you people at Tiantianle do? I've observed your mines. Not counting the collapsed ones, plenty of mines that haven't caved in are still churning out gems nonstop. That doesn't add up!"
"But after learning this, I understood. I went around asking in many places, and it turns out the government and the mining conglomerates all knew about it. It was even tacitly approved by the government—because the flesh and blood of Evolvers, when combined with underground magma, can trigger some kind of magical reaction. It keeps the magma erupting continuously, forming large quantities of gems, enough for the mining companies to keep digging generation after generation... Why else would you refuse to give up even the collapsed mines? Isn't it because of this?"
"Unfortunately, I'm not as bold as you. I didn't dare to actually collapse the mine, and I didn't dare to kill that many people..."
"Since you've done it, do you think it was effective?" Xu Huo interrupted his argument.
"Yes, of course it was!" The boss ground his teeth. "Otherwise, how could my mine still be operating to this day?"
"I've already told you how I found out this secret. Since you've come for me, you're not going to let me off easily. What I said earlier was a lie. No one else knows about this. I handled all the arrangements myself. My family knows nothing. Kill me, but let them go!"
Xu Huo reopened the Message Collection Terminal and checked the relevant accident reports. Sure enough, cracks had also appeared beneath the boss's mine. "You once applied for government subsidies because of the increased danger level of your mine?"
The boss was taken aback. "So what if I did?"
Xu Huo ignored the question and instead said, "You think throwing living people in can keep a mine producing gems indefinitely. If it's such a good method, why was it banned a hundred years ago?"
In District 019, the technological leap a century ago had rapidly advanced mining techniques, gradually phasing out manual labor. Even if accidents occurred due to earthquakes, they rarely involved people—at most, some machinery was lost. If he claimed the government knew about it, it meant both the government and the mining conglomerates had agreed to abandon the method of "throwing in living people" to stimulate gem production—though whether this was actually true remained uncertain.
"It couldn't be because our company's machines dig deeper than yours, could it?"
For a moment, the boss looked dazed, but after hearing this, he perked up again. "That's right! That's exactly it! Because my equipment isn't good enough..."
The player standing nearby stepped forward and slapped him across the face.
The boss shut his mouth.
The boss wasn't lying. In his mind, he genuinely believed that the reason mines owned by large groups like Tiantianle could keep producing was because they continuously threw in living people. As for the claim that "living people and magma could trigger some kind of magical reaction"—whether it came from him or his father's friend—it was likely not true at all. It was probably just their own speculation, based on the fact that mining companies like Tiantianle were killing their workers.
But in reality, this speculation was utterly absurd. Not to mention whether enough people would be foolish enough to actually try it, even if they did, it wouldn't result in "gem production."
The peak of accidents a hundred years ago might have been partly due to natural causes in some mines, which served to cover up the actions of large groups like Tiantianle and Hailes. Whether the government knew about it... that was hard to say.
Regardless, it was a fact that large groups like Hailes and Tiantianle had deliberately caused mining accidents for some purpose. Especially Hailes—the accounts from Pu Hui and Mr. Wei had essentially confirmed it.
Since the boss could see through the cracks, then others—people working in related fields, the families of the victims—wouldn't they also suspect something was wrong?
Only some of the victims' remains were returned to their families. Could the rest have had absolutely no relatives or friends?
Suo Lan had frequently visited the area near her father's accident site to sketch. Could she truly have completely ignored the spark that ignited her family's tragedy?
(End of Chapter)