Xi Bei thought about it before explaining, “This is a magnetite mine. Grandpa is an engineer in this area. He said… he used to work at a research institute and it had been studying magnetic poles. Grandpa’s teacher told him that the cause of the disaster was a problem with the magnetic poles but the institute was trying to find a solution.”

“The Highland Research Institute,” Lu Feng stated lightly. “A research base on artificial magnetic poles.”

Xi Bei nodded. “It was called this.”

“I have temporarily lost contact with the base.” Lu Feng didn’t continue the topic and shifted it. “Once communication is restored, I will take you back to the base.”

Xi Bei nodded forcefully. “Thank you.”

Thus, they stayed there. It was unknown when the communicator would recover. Xi Bei took them around to give them a general understanding of the structure of the cave.

The place where they were now was the core area. Before the disaster happened, this was a temporary rest area for miners and engineers. There were rooms for people to live in, basic living facilities and some mining machines left behind, including a generator and many tools. Since it was deep underground and hard on all sides, this was a safe area as long as the hole was protected. Outside the core area was a number of deep mining holes. They were the product of previous excavations along the vein.

“It might be dark but there are no monsters. You can rest assured.” Xi Bei told them.

At noon, Xi Bei went to cook. An Zhe was interested in the kitchen here but he and Xi Bei weren’t familiar with each other. He didn’t dare to break into another person’s territory and found something else to do.

Mushrooms liked water and humans also needed drinking water. Water was very important, sometimes more important than food. Therefore, people in the mines put in a lot of effort to collect enough water.

The period when it rained outside was the concentrated water storage time. Every time, a large amount of rainwater was collected, purified with alum powder and stored in a large cement bucket. Still, the weather was unpredictable after all and no one knew when the next rainfall would happen. After many years, the people living here had created a catchment system. Along the largest and deepest mine, they cut complicated lines on the entire stone wall. The inside of the mine was extremely humid and due to the temperature difference between day and night, fine water droplets would condense on the wall. Once these water droplets reached a certain weight, they would flow down and slowly gather in the artificial nicks, falling drop by drop into a water collection bottle at the bottom. After hundreds of plastic water bottles were filled, they would have nearly 100 litres of water.

According to Xi Bei, the recent batch of water bottles was almost full and ready to be gathered.