“You sure?”, Jack asked, holding up a piece of Mìngmài for Isaac.

“You go ahead, this old man is just going to rest his bones for a while”, Isaac declined the offer, sitting down to rest against the wall and taking a swig of water from his canteen.

Jack popped the piece of fruit into his mouth and shrugged, before sitting down to enter the meditative pose he’d learned from Jun, a lifetime ago.

Isaac watched with clear interest. The fruit had tickled an old memory from before he’d been sent here, when he was still in service in the capital, but he couldn’t quite place it.

The familiar warmth from the Mìngmài spread through Jack as he focused. It wasn’t as satisfying as the full bowl of food they served in the mess hall, but unlike Isaac he wasn’t quite ready to start forgoing meals altogether. “May as well use them, they’re not going to last forever”, he thought to himself.

Isaac noticed a frown flit across Jack’s face.

As usual, Jack could feel the energy from the fruit filling him, and starting the slow process of sinking towards what he now knew was his Shēnghuó chakra point. But there was something more. Something else. Something different.

“What’s this?”, he almost lost his concentration as he could feel energy coming from outside him. He’d never experienced this while taking in the energy of the Mìngmài fruit before?

This new, external energy felt somehow heavy. And while the energy from the Mìngmài first permeated his whole being before eventually congregating in his Shēnghuó, this energy felt like it was coming from a specific point outside his body. And it was gathering at a different point, “What did Isaac call it? The Dìqiú chakra point?”

“The Dìqiú charka point. That’s… Earth energy?”, he struggled to remember what he’d been told about the various chakras previously. It sort of made sense; He was in a mine, literally surrounded by earth - therefore earth energy!

But he meditated on the ground before, and felt nothing. And if he was surrounded by earth, why did this come from only one point? Was there something in the rocks around him that he was drawing the energy from?

Then it hit him. “Could I be drawing energy from nearby Earth Element? But that’s wrong. Isaac seemed quite adamant that it wasn’t possible to sense Earth Element, otherwise they wouldn’t need to use the miners to do the grunt work. But what if..?”. He focused on this new energy, specifically on where it came from.

“May I?”, he asked Isaac, reaching for the pickaxe propped against the wall.

“Be my guest”, came the reply from Isaac, a curious gleam in his eye.

“It felt like it came from there”, he looked at a section of wall to his right, quite low down. He couldn’t feel it now that he wasn’t meditating, but he’d looked at the spot as soon as he’d opened his eyes.

Isaac raised an eyebrow, seeing Jack heading for a very specific spot before limbering up. Jack swiveled a few times, a few faint crack sounds coming from his protesting back. A few swings of the arms. Some spit on the palms of his hands.

“Very melodramatic”, Isaac drawled.

Jack just turned and gave him a thumbs up, before getting a good grip on the pickaxe’s well worn handle.

CLANG

The familiar sound of the pickaxe striking rock rang out.

CLANG, again.

The spot he was aiming at was at an awkward height, around his knees, but he soon found his rhythm.

CLANG. Pause. CLANG. Pause. CLANG.

Although he didn’t feel as weak as he had under Confucius’ care, the pickaxe was still pretty heavy and Jack could soon feel his muscles protesting. “And Isaac does this for hours...”, he winced as his last swing almost jarred the pickaxe from his hand.

“Here”, Jack turned and saw Isaac holding his hand out for the pickaxe.

Swallowing his embarrassment, he handed the pickaxe over to the more experienced miner. “I’m probably wrong about what I felt anyway”, he consoled himself.

But to his surprise, Isaac tapped on the same spot that he’d been working on, and asked “Here?”.

“Uh. Yes”, he replied, not knowing how to explain further.

He took a few swigs of water himself. Swinging a pickaxe was hard work.

Taking a few steps back to give Isaac more room to swing, he watched as Isaac repeatedly hit the exact spot, over and over again. Until he was greeted by the rather underwhelming sight of the rock face cracking, and a few more swings broke off a good sized chunk about the size of two fists.

“All yours”, Isaac gestured towards the unassuming lump he’d worked loose, and returned to where he’d been relaxing against the wall.

“Er, thanks”, Isaac said. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting. “A nice lump of Earth Element sticking out would have been nice”, he moaned silently, picking up the hammer and starting with the arm numbing task of reducing the rock down to finer rubble.

Nothing. After tapping away determinedly, all he was left with was a pile of sand and small stones, no different to any of the ones he’d created the whole morning, or the previous afternoon when he’d first worked with Isaac.

Dejected, he sat there. He could barely meet Isaac’s eyes as he mumbled “Sorry”, quickly looking away.

Isaac grinned. “Why sorry? It’s as good a spot to mine as any”, he shrugged. To prove that it made no difference to him; he stood up, stretched and started attacking the same spot again.

CLANG CLANG CLANG, came his steady contact.

Jack couldn’t bear to even watch. He’d felt so sure, so confident about what he’d sensed, yet there lay the evidence of his error, a pile on the floor of the passage.

CRACK. Thunk. Jack heard the next piece of rock break loose and fall to the ground. He waited for Isaac to send it his way with a foot, as he’d been doing all along. But no rock was pushed his way.

“How did you know?”, came an almost inaudible whisper from Isaac.

“How did I know what?”, he thought, looking up to see what Isaac was talking about. He didn’t see anything unexpected where the chunk of rock had broken loose. But Isaac was looking at his feet.

Where there lay a chunk of rock, unremarkable. Except that there, clearly visible, was a pea sized piece of Earth Element sticking out.