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"Heavy?"
Keqing looked at Ganyu strangely, pointing at the coal in her hand.
"Ganyu, are you tired? How heavy can such a small piece of coal be!"
"No, I'm not!"
Seeing Keqing didn't believe her, Ganyu said anxiously:
"Keqing! Feel it again! This coal is really heavy! At least a hundred times heavier than a crystal ore of the same volume!"
Seeing Ganyu's serious expression, Keqing no longer thought Ganyu was joking.
She took out a piece of coal and carefully felt it.
This time, Keqing was also startled.
Just now, she was enjoying the ease of mining and resources automatically entering her pockets.
She hadn't noticed anything special about this coal at all.
Now, weighing it, she found that this small piece of coal probably weighed over a hundred kilograms.
"This is almost three times my weight!"
Keqing looked at Jiang Xuan in disbelief.
The latter, however, merely shrugged with a calm expression.
"That's why I keep saying, the resources in this world are very peculiar... A single piece of coal is about one hundred and seventy kilograms."
"Nine pieces of coal can be crafted into a one-cubic-meter coal block. A one-cubic-meter coal block is over 1.5 tons."
"So, don't be fooled by how small this coal is. In reality, if placed in Teyvat, the heat released by this single piece of coal, and its burning time..."
"That's equivalent to one hundred and seventy kilograms of coal! And because this coal is of better quality, its effect might be much better than Teyvat's coal."
Keqing and Ganyu were both stunned by Jiang Xuan's words.
They had thought they understood everything about this world well enough.
But they didn't expect Jiang Xuan to give them an even bigger surprise.
She surveyed the dense coal deposits within a thirty-meter radius.
Keqing was numb with shock.
This coal mine...
Where was it barren?
It was clearly as abundant as could be!
On the walls, overhead, on the ground, underground...
All the coal combined, within a thirty-meter radius, probably amounted to nearly twenty tons of coal.
The quality of this mine shaft...
Even the Chasm's mine shafts, they had never seen such an outrageous place!
And this was just the very surface of the mine; they hadn't even gone deeper yet.
According to Jiang Xuan, deeper inside there were also the world's hardest diamond ores and obsidian...
And this mine, which looked like it was overflowing with resources, was somehow deemed "barren" by Jiang Xuan...
Keqing and Ganyu exchanged glances, inwardly elevating the importance of Jiang Xuan's world once again.
A wild world, a world without civilization.
A world abundant with high-end resources.
A world where mining was convenient, where a swing of the pickaxe would yield unprocessed resources directly...
"Treasured land" couldn't even begin to describe it.
This was heaven!
Keqing even dared to imagine.
If such high-grade coal was even more abundant deeper within this mine shaft.
This single mine shaft alone would allow Liyue Harbor to dump coal and control the entire Teyvat coal market.
Especially Snezhnaya, the place most in need of coal.
The dumping of resources would be enough for Liyue Harbor to leverage the profits from coal to suppress the Fatui's actions.
Thinking about it more closely, wasn't this a risk-free, highly profitable venture?
What had they sacrificed?
Just some manual labor, no maintenance needed, no worries about non-renewable resources.
This would bring countless Mora...
"If Ningguang finds out about this, she probably won't be able to sit still..."
Keqing murmured, her eyes burning with an increasingly intense fervor.
"Keqing, it's not just coal!"
Ganyu looked at Keqing seriously.
"Jiang Xuan said there are many other ores here. If those ores are also like coal..."
Before she could finish, Jiang Xuan waved his hand, interrupting Ganyu.
"No 'if,' it's a certainty! Take iron ore, for example. One unit of iron ore always yields one iron ore block. After an iron ore block is smelted, it yields one iron ingot."
"Nine iron ingots make one iron block. One cubic meter of iron block weighs about eight tons. So, how heavy do you think one iron ingot is?"
Jiang Xuan said with a smile, looking at Keqing and Ganyu.
The more the two thought, the more joyous their expressions became.
A moment later, Keqing fiercely punched the air, her cat-like face looking somewhat adorable.
"Excellent! Excellent! The resource problem will no longer limit Liyue's development!"
"This will be the greatest first step in Liyue's human governance! Jiang Xuan! Although I've said it many times, I still want to say..."
"Thank you! Truly... thank you!"
Jiang Xuan chuckled as he rubbed Keqing's face, wiping away some dust in the process.
He handed her the newly crafted tools.
"Use this to dig. Higher-grade pickaxes dig faster!"
Keqing nodded solemnly, as if she had received a glorious mission.
"I understand! Jiang Xuan, just watch from the side. I'm going to mine all the coal here!"
Jiang Xuan felt somewhat strange.
It was his first time seeing someone so eager to mine coal, and especially someone of Keqing's stature.
It was quite outlandish.
However, Jiang Xuan wouldn't stop her.
Anyway, they would need it later, so just mine as much as they could.
Keqing no longer had the mind for small talk; she immediately swung her pickaxe, making clanging sounds.
Jiang Xuan turned and handed the remaining tools to Ganyu.
"So, Ganyu, you also need to work hard."
Jiang Xuan said with a smile to Ganyu.
The latter didn't seem as happy as Keqing. Instead, her eyes flickered, as if she was contemplating something.
Jiang Xuan didn't think much of it and turned to go mine elsewhere.
Suddenly, Ganyu weakly called out to him.
"Jiang Xuan..."
Jiang Xuan turned his head, asking curiously:
"What is it, Ganyu?"
Ganyu pursed her lips, seemingly a bit embarrassed.
But after hesitating for a moment, Ganyu whispered:
"My... my face is also a bit dirty..."
"..."
Jiang Xuan was stunned, but then chuckled and raised his hand, carefully wiping Ganyu's face.
He didn't say much, just whispered:
"Ganyu, bear with it. Conditions are limited. When we go out, I'll let you wash properly."
"This time, we'll mine iron ore and make some iron buckets. Next time we come, we can get some water, and Ganyu can stay clean at any time."
Ganyu didn't quite hear what Jiang Xuan said.
She just felt warm and a bit dazed.
Her horns were even a little hot.
She nodded vaguely, then turned around and continued to dedicate herself to the great task of mining.
Looking at Ganyu's retreating figure, Jiang Xuan's gaze was somewhat profound.
After a moment of silence, he shook his head and walked to another spot to mine.
For Jiang Xuan, coal was still acceptable.
But for Keqing and Ganyu, it was like a shot of adrenaline.
Their motivation was even stronger.
So, the three of them didn't plan to go any deeper for now.
They would clear out all the coal here first.
Jiang Xuan had said earlier that no matter what they mined this time.
Besides keeping some resources for future preparations, Keqing and Ganyu could take a portion of the rest.
Specifically, that portion was their nine inventory slots.
Don't be fooled by the small number of nine slots.
Each slot could hold up to sixty-four stacks of resources.
In terms of coal blocks, if the two of them could carry them, the coal blocks they took out would be enough for Liyue Harbor to use for over half a month.
Even if sold to Snezhnaya, it could probably fetch hundreds of millions of Mora.
After all, that was hundreds of tons of high-quality coal.
Coal, in Teyvat, truly had no shortage of buyers.
All nations needed it.
Snezhnaya, the extremely cold region, was a major consumer, and Fontaine also needed coal for energy.
Of course, this was just Keqing and the others imagining things.
After all, the two of them only had eighteen slots in total. They couldn't fill all of them with coal, could they?
They still needed to exchange for other resources.
At the very least...
Keqing had been staring at that inextinguishable torch.
Especially after seeing Jiang Xuan fill the surroundings with torches.
The entire mine shaft was as bright as day.
Keqing's heart itched even more.
Overall, the three were highly motivated. In half an hour, they had basically cleared out all the coal in the vicinity.
The amount of coal here still exceeded Jiang Xuan's estimate.
This haul yielded three and a half stacks of coal blocks.
It was a big harvest.
He glanced at the pickaxe in his hand, whose durability had turned red again, and Jiang Xuan casually tossed it away.
It was made of stone; there was no need to cherish it.
There was stone everywhere; he could just mine it.
He was just about to tell Keqing and Ganyu to rest and eat some food before continuing their exploration.
Suddenly, Ganyu let out another startled cry not far away.
This time, she seemed a bit panicked.
Jiang Xuan didn't think much of it. He shouldered his shield, grabbed his stone sword, and rushed to Ganyu.
When he reached Ganyu's side, Jiang Xuan's pupils constricted slightly.
On the wall in front of Ganyu...
An arrow was stuck!
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