The Hidden Myth of Ji Dara

The trees here were densely packed and were just about 5 feet apart from one another, growing taller and taller since their branches could not spread wide…

Uncle Min grabbed a long rope which seemed to have been made out of braiding lots of smaller vines together into one, and pulled it out of the supply sack Aunt Lin was carrying on their way here...

He looked towards the digging Dara and noticed that he was peeping out of the pit as he was digging;

"My wife knows a lot about weaning, she weaned the fishing net we used to save you, out of some vines we were able to gather from the river banks..."

"She also weaned this rope from the same vines…"

"She usually do this to pass time and relieve her boredom whenever I am out hunting…" Uncle Min explained;

"She sounds like a very smart and supportive woman…"

Dara praised as he descended back into the pit and continued his digging…

Uncle Min took this vine, and climbed up about 40 feet of the ground reaching just about half of the tree, and then tied one end of the rope to the tree, and then descended and climbed the neighboring tree…

Then he released his 8 Meridian cultivation base and pulled on the rope, and gradually the twenty inch thick tree began to bend, and when it had bent to an extent that satisfied him, Uncle Min returned to the tree and began to cut it from the opposite side of where he had bent it towards…

The strain that was packed at the ten feet point of the tree, made the tree begin to crack slightly, and as a result, each of Uncle Min's further chop began to speed up its cracking rate...

Once there was no more girth to support the strain of the pull, the tree then snapped y itself, flinging splinters all over the place, and then falling with a loud bang…

Dara heard this and quickly peeped, and his jaws slacked instantly;

"This man seems much wiser than he looks… What an efficient logging method, allowing tensile stress/strain to do a part of the work…"

Dara thought to himself as he continued digging, and after about another thirty minutes when it was time to rest, Dara stepped out of the twenty feet long and thirty feet deep ditch that he had just dug…

He was covered in sweat from head to toe, and had dirt all over him, as he saw Aunt Lin, and Uncle Min already seated in front of lunch waiting for him…

Dara saw several washed edible fruits on the table alongside some of the dried meat Uncle Min killed the day before and some bowl of fresh water from the spring, and then looked further away to see that Uncle Min had actually fallen four massive trees already…

He smiled at the amount of progress they had made so far, and for some reasons decided there were not going to swap, unless one of them really needed to;

"I think we should stick to our current labor distribution, it seems to be much more effective this way…"

"That is unless you want to swap?"

Dara spoke after returning from washing his hands by the spring before joining them to wolf down the entire meal, but Uncle Min simply agreed to his plan…

He was already getting used to tree logging, if her should quit at this point, he might not be as effective by the time he gets back to it...

Five minutes of eating and ten minutes of rest, and Dara could feel within himself, that he could dig faster this time than his fist attempt…

If one was to calculate the circular length of the plateau, it was about 1300 meters around if one factors the fact that Dara was digging ten meters off the plateau wall, that means he would need to dig a ten meters deep and about 3000 meter long ditch, and this was just for the water…

There was still the first line of defense and the second line of defense, and all this work had to be done in about 600 hours, and he had spent an entire hour digging only about two meters long…

But he wasn't going to relent, he had a determination and instinct for survival, and now he had two partners who were sharing the same goal as his with equal determination and grit…

Then they resumed work, and whilst Dara's body could only endure digging two meters in the first hour, he ended up digging three in the second hour, and then four in the third and then five in the fourth hour and finally seven in the last working hour of the day…

Uncle Min on the other hand fell four trees in the first, five in the second, six in the third, fourth and last hour, as it seemed like he got totally exhausted, whilst Aunt Lin was able to discover two edible types of fruit and one healing herb, as they began to rush home…

Grey plumes of energy were already billowing out of the ground by the time they got home, which was about only a few minutes from the beast roaming time… 

They couldn't light a fire since it was already too late, and the explosion from the beast blood might attract some monsters or beast, thus, the couple gave Dara all their furs to keep warm, whilst they simply cuddled one another through the cold, eerie and dark night…

Dawn the next day…

The trio were already at the plateau once again and got to work instantly, there was no need for any other explanation since they all had specific tasks to accomplish alongside their appointed daily quota…

Today, Dara dug 10 meters in the first hour, 12 meters in the second, 14 in the third, 17 in the fourth, and 20 meters in the last work hour of the second day, bringing his total workload of the first day to about 20 meters long and ten meters deep ditch, but on the second day he dug about 75 meters long and 10 meters deep which was almost four times his work rate the day before…

That was how strong and fearsome the meridian revealing training technique he got from the dark soul was…

Uncle Min on the other hand fell a total of 27 trees the day before, and that was after using the natural energy [Qi] at regular intervals, but despite all that, his maximum output was a steady logging of seven trees per hour, which meant he fell a total of 35 tress today…

The amount of long fallen trees were so much, that he had to cut them down in a circular path around the plateau to create more space for more wood, and at the rate with which  they  were going, he might run out of space in less, than two weeks…

Aunt Lin was a little bit on the low output side, since she didn't know much about all the herbs and fruits in the area, and she couldn't just go around tasting them, otherwise, if she should mistakenly ingest poison in the process, that would be the end of her…

After all, Dara and Uncle Min knew nothing about medicine and herbs, and they were not even sure if the healing herb she gathered a day before could work against the specific poison she had ingested…

Thus, she could only find one edible fruit, and a poisonous grey colored plant…

The couples work was steady for the next two weeks, but Dara's output was ever increasing, and in on the third week, he had finally dug around the plateau, and it was time to flood the entire ditch…

All he needed to do now was to simply dig a gutter from the edge of the spring to the ditch…

Thus he gave the task to Aunt Lin, as an honorary way of opening their new dam or reservoir, but just as she dug a 5 feet deep and 10 feet wide gutter, the water from the spring gushed out into the gutter with insane force;

Boom!

It slammed into Aunt Lin with great force as she was flushed straight into the ten meter deep ditch, and because she had just done an intense labor [by her standards] she was too weak to swim and neither did she have enough energy to climb her way out of a 35 feet deep ditch...

Water then began to flood the ditch, and in less than a minute, the water was already about three feet high, reaching her tummy level…

Uncle Min rapidly dropped from the tree he was currently cutting when he saw the scenario, as he loosed the vine rope he had used to contort the tree, and ran towards the ditch before dropping it in, but the rope was about five feet short, and just as he was about to panic, he saw Dara jump into the ditch and then allowed her to climb onto his shoulders as she grabbed the rope and was pulled out by Uncle Min…

But then, a new problem arose;

Dara himself could barely swim, and though he had managed to claw his way out of the moving water by the cliff his sister pushed him into back then, that river wasn't as fast as this spring which was gushing out aggressively due to the pressure the weight of the plateau was exerting on its pathway…

Furthermore, that river wasn't as wide and deep as this ditch also, and as a result, Dara found himself in a deadly situation, because he allowed his emotions rather than logic to solve the previous problem…

Furthermore, the water was pushing Dara in circles around the plateau because the ditch was round and the water needed a path to flow through...

As a result that, Dara had to swim against the surging currents so that he can remain in position whilst Uncle Min found a solution to his condition, because should Uncle Min jump in at this time, they would both be carried in rounds trips around the ditch...

Moreover, even if they could reach the rope due to the elevated waters, the force of the water and their own personal body weight might prove too much for the weak Aunt Lin to pull out…

Dara didn't know how, but he simply began to flap his legs and thrust his hands forwards as he began to swim against the current…

He didn't know where this idea came from [Sam obviously], but it was working, and though, he was still being pushed back, it wasn't as rapid as he would have been tossed if he did nothing;

"Hold on!"

Uncle Min bellowed to Dara as he looked around anxiously for a solution, but he couldn't think of any…

His wife had just escaped death by the fraction of a breath, and now, the person who had light a candle into their darkness was now in the same situation...

"Calm down and think!"

Pa!

Uncle Min slapped himself hard and instantly had an idea.