I'm trapped in a block

Chapter 69 Stone Forest War
  The acupuncture stone forest is not as desolate as it seems on the surface.

On the contrary, it is very vibrant.

These towering stone pillars are not so towering from ancient times to the present, but they grew from small stalagmites to such a large size.

At first, they were just small stone protrusions. These stone protrusions would appear anywhere in the acupuncture stone forest. They looked like tiny thorns and you couldn't even see them if you weren't paying attention.

Over time, these thorns will slowly grow and rise, becoming the size of grass, then the height of a big tree, and finally piercing the sky.

Shi Beng didn't know the reason why these stone pillars grew. This had been the case for these stone pillars since he first became conscious.

In the process of growing upward, these stone pillars will collapse due to various factors, including sandstorms and biological damage.

As it slowly grows larger, it rarely collapses.

But the growth of stone pillars is not unlimited.

When these stone pillars reach a certain height and become strong enough, cracks may begin to appear within the stone pillars.

And veins of minerals will slowly begin to form within these fissures.

These veins will gradually expand the cracks in the stone pillars, forming dissolution caves, and then slowly turn into complete cavities.

Mineral vein?

At this point, Li Luo asked Shibeng: "What kind of mineral vein is it?"

"Any possible mineral vein," Shibeng replied.

These mineral veins can be of any kind of mineral, or they may contain several minerals at the same time. Generally, mineral veins will contain a main mineral and other associated minerals.

But the strangest thing is that the area of ​​the Acupuncture Stone Forest is obviously not large, and the composition of the stone pillars is similar, but various minerals can appear in the stone pillars.

Gold, silver, copper and iron, diamonds and jade, all kinds of rocks...

Anything they can think of will appear in the stone pillars. They have studied the formation of these veins, but they have not found the cause.

After these veins were formed, the dissolution cavity continued to expand until the entire interior of the stone pillar became a huge space.

Immediately afterwards, these mineral creatures will be born from the mineral veins.

They are born with wisdom, names, certain knowledge, and even language, as if someone had arranged it.

However, they do not know their purpose.

Without any desire.

"Can you understand? You know everything, but you don't know what you should do. This is a very painful thing." Shi Beng said with some discomfort.

Boredom is the daily life of these mineral creatures.

From the moment they are born, they stay in the cavity and want to do nothing. They are neither hungry nor thirsty, have no desire to reproduce, and have no curiosity.

There is only endless emptiness.

"How did you escape?" Li Luo asked in confusion as he looked at the stone collapse that was no different from a human being.

"Although we don't have any desires, we have an emotion - fear. It was fear that drove me to escape." Shibeng explained.

"fear?"

"Yes, it's the only emotion we have."

He continued to tell.

I don't know when the mineral veins in these stone pillars began to penetrate deep into the ground, and different mineral veins began to intersect together.

This was nothing at first, but as the dissolved cavities intertwined, the spaces within the multiple stone pillars began to slowly merge.

After a long time, a huge cave like an ant nest formed underground in the entire acupuncture stone forest, and the mineral creatures in it also met.

Then the fight started... No one knew how the fight started. It was just because other mineral races wanted to fight themselves, so they had to fight others.

If you sit still and wait, you will die, and fear begins to drive war.

Only by annihilating other mining races can their own race be safe. They don't know who made the first move, and the war just happened.

Shi Beng said that when he was born, the entire Acupuncture Stone Forest had been at war for who knows how long, and even many caves were affected by the war and collapsed.

When he had just gained consciousness and was still trapped in a state of emptiness, he was dragged into a war by his own race.

But because of his small body, he couldn't defeat others, so he had to run away driven by fear, and ran outside through the collapsed stone pillars.

It would be safer outside, but there were also many wandering enemies, so he kept wandering and hiding, and thus met many humans.

Those humans fell from the sky, some were injured, and he was brought to a safe place.

Speaking of this, Li Luo asked again: "Why do you want to save those humans?"

"Because it's boring." Shi Beng scratched his head: "It's also because I learned about human customs from them. At least talking can make me feel less empty."

His reason was strange, but he didn't know how to refute it.

Then he started talking about the war in the cave.

War is not fought randomly, but is divided into camps.

When Shibeng was born, he was dragged to the battlefield by a companion of the Marble Tribe.

The mineral veins that appear in the stone pillars of the Acupuncture Stone Forest will not be completely random, but there are differences between common minerals and rare minerals.

Their rocks are the most common minerals, and their camps are also the same.

The other camp is rare minerals.

These are the two camps involved in the war.

Common ores and rare ores? Is there really no problem with this division?
  Mo Ling didn't quite understand. He always felt that this division was very childish.

"Is that jade man just now from the rare mineral camp?" Li Luo asked, pointing to the jade fragments on the ground.

"Yes, he is from the Jade Tribe, and judging from the color, he must have very high fighting power among their tribe."

After Shi Beng finished speaking, Mo Ling also had a guess in his mind:
  This division between rare and common seems to be exactly the same as on earth.

"The more valuable it is, the rarer it is?"

Later, Shi Beng also introduced the mineral races in the two camps to Li Luo, and it turned out to be roughly the same as Mo Ling guessed.

No wonder Shibeng called himself an iron clan brother at the beginning. It seems that iron ore also belongs to the common mining camp.

"I remembered that iron was quite valuable, but I didn't expect that it was also commonly mined."

Maybe it's because the iron ore content in the earth's crust is high enough.

However, we still need to learn more about the definition of "common" among these mineral creatures. Mo Ling still thinks that this classification method is a bit strange and reveals a very random feeling.

"Those rare minerals have been defeated by us. Maybe the war will be over soon." Shibeng said.

Due to the disparity in numbers, the war is almost one-sided. Except for some powerful mining clans that occasionally appear on the rare mine side, normal encounters can be overwhelmed by numbers.

The rarer it is, the more passive it is during war.

Common mines use the simplest human sea tactics, which can also pile up those powerful rare mines to death and beat them to retreat.

After eliminating the rare mineral clan in a cavity, and then destroying the mineral veins in the cavity, no mineral clan will be born again from this stone pillar.

Shibeng calls this an "extermination tactic."

(End of this chapter)