89 Blackpool Mountains

While Jayde was initially wary of traveling on the Ovis Canis, she quickly overcame her reluctance, as she found the speed that they were traveling through the forest and up the mountain path exhilarating.

All too soon Jayde and her team arrived at the village base camp. After dismounting Jinko led the beasts away, their care was his primary duty.

Behro led Jayde to a large pit that the villagers of Tardide had been mining for decades. Seeing the pit Jayde was relieved, she had been worried that they expected her to blast directly into the mountain. She didn't relish the thought of having a mountain fall on her head if her calculations were off.

Jayde had pondered the idea of introducing gunpowder to the villagers, but after careful thought, she abandoned the idea. She had already interfered too much in their development and there was no way she was going to be responsible for giving them such a dangerous technology, especially with such aggressive leaders, she could just imagine the mayhem something like gunpowder would bring to Telia.

Climbing in the pit, Jayde walked over to one of the walls, weaving her fireball she started off small testing the exact amount of magic she would need to blast the stone apart. After half an hour she had figured out exactly what size fireball was needed to break the stones apart in the right size chunks for the villagers to use.

Slowly walking around the pit Jayde weaved her fireballs — punching and breaking through the rocky surface. The young men in her team quickly lined up and started to pass the chunks of rock to each other transporting them out of the pit into various piles near an open area, ready to be loaded onto the wagons when they arrived.

After a couple of hours, Jayde had exhausted her magic and mental strength. Taking a break she found a private area, sitting down under a tree she downed a Qi gathering pill, then sitting cross-legged she quietly mediated gathering all the available Qi around her.

Jayde was pleasantly surprised to see that she was able to fill up her dantian quite quickly and to her, it looked like the consistency of pure gold liquid seemed thicker and purer. It looked like draining all her Qi energy had some sort of benefit.

Since Jayde was such a newbie at magic, what she didn't realize is that what she was doing was purifying her Qi energy, while it would take her longer to breakthrough, the benefits she would reap would be enormous when she did, and the more dense ones Qi was, the more stable their foundation was when they broke through, the added benefit was that this thicker Qi nourished a Mages meridians and dantian making them more supple.

Also, the denser the Qi stored in your dantian was the higher the chance was of a Mage immediately bypassing beginner level sub-rank and entering mid-level or even advanced sub-rank without suffering any repercussions.

Most mages didn't have the patience to continuously drain their Qi and re-cultivate, as they were more interested in advancing as quickly as possible.

After her energy was restored Jayde returned to the pit to carry on blasting the stone.

By the time the wagons had arrived and the women had cooked dinner, Jayde had drained and restored her magic three times. The Qi liquid energy in her dantian had a honey-like consistency. She was also nearing a breakthrough, she could just about feel that she was close to the barrier, another day of this and she would be able to breakthrough she thought.

The young villagers were over the moon with how quickly Jayde was able to blast through the rocks, they had more than enough rocks to fill all their wagons twice. After getting Jayde confirmation, Behro decided that the next morning the wagons would leave to return the first load to the village, and return the day after, while Jayde would spend the next day blasting the stones.

Using the campfire light as well as oil lamps that they had brought with them, the young men quickly loaded the wagons, so that the wagon drivers with some guards could return to the village at first light.

Early the next morning Jayde ate breakfast while the wagons set off. Returning to the pit Jayde was eager to get started. She was quite keen to break through. Soon she would be returning to Doha to undergo the assessment at one of the magic academies, and the more powerful she was the higher her chance was of being accepted.

From dawn until dust Jayde blasted at the rocky walls of the pit, only returning to rest and recover her Qi energy. Exhausted she tiredly ate her supper before retiring to her tent to meditate and gather the Qi around her.

By now the Qi liquid in her dantian had thickened to the consistency of pudding and Jayde could feel that she was ready to break through. While Jayde liked the young villagers she did not trust them fully so she decided to forgo breaking through at that moment, and wait until she returned to the cave — at least there she had Reiko and Yinxin to protect her.

The next morning Jayde informed Behro that she wanted to explore the surrounding area since the floor of the pit was still covered will lose rocks that the men had to transport those rocks the open area, they were more than happy to let Jayde carry on her own.

With the number of rocks that Jayde had blasted Behro calculated that it would take at least five or six trips to transport all this stone back. There was more than enough stone now to finish up the expansions of the villagers' homes as well as to start on the village walls. Elder Ryunzo had already decided to use wood to build the bunkers, as they were not going to be permanent features in the village.

Waving Jayde off Behro returned to the pit to supervise the men waiting. While Jayde strolled around the mountainside. She was interested in the area to the west. According to Behro, all the villagers avoided this area as it was filled with strange black pools that were highly dangerous.

It took Jayde a couple of hours to make her way to the black pools that Behro had told her about. Cautiously Jayde entered the area, as Behro had warned her that people could easily become trapped and die if they fell into one of these pools.

A strange scent permeated the air as Jayde entered the dangerous area. The smell was quite potent making Jayde sneeze.

Seeing a large black pool filled with a bubbling substance, Jayde was quite curious. Warily she made her way to the pool. Curiously she leaned down and felt the warm thick liquid bubbling away in the pool.

While the liquid was quite hot, it wasn't hot enough to burn her. Rubbing the substance between her fingers, Jayde tried to remember where she had heard about this stuff before. Finally, she remembered — it was in one of the old Earth books she had found on an abandoned way station.

Excited she looked at the pools around her, this was very similar to the what was described from an ancient city called Los Angeles, the La Brea Tar Pits if she remembered right.

This tar stuff could be used to make roads and for waterproofing items like roofs and other products as well. Petroleum had been outlawed in the Federation for over a thousand years, while nasty it would be of great use to the villagers as long as they did burn it she thought.

Removing one of her wooden barrels from her spatial ring Jayde filled up the barrel with the tar. Once filled she stored it away. Filthy and covered with the horribly sticky black tar, Jayde decided to find a river or lake to bath in.

***

Jayde returned to the camp just before midday. She would have returned sooner, but she had stopped a couple of hundred meters outside the camp, using her magical senses she made sure that she was all alone before removing the covered barrel of tar from her spatial ring.

Then dragging the barrel she returned to camp. Behro and Jinko seeing Jayde struggling with the barrel rushed over to help her. Finding that the barrel contained that nasty black stuff from the black pools there were really confused why Jayde would want to bring that stuff back, smiling mysteriously Jayde just said that this stuff was really good and would be beneficial to the villagers.

Behro and Jinko knew that Jayde had already helped the villagers out tremendously and that she had some weird but really creative ideas, while highly curious about just how this horrible stuff could be useful, they kept their questions to themselves, knowing that soon Jayde would show them.

She asked Behro to arrange a couple of barrels of smaller rocks to be loaded and transported back to the village as well as her barrel of tar.

Behro arranged with one of the young men staying behind to wait for the wagons to make sure that Jayde instructions were carried out. Then most of men and Jayde mounted their Ovis Canis to return to the village.

President Andillevé and his son would be arriving soon, and Jayde wanted to be there to meet them.

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