Genshin x Minecraft: Building the Temple of Virtue

When Ganyu's voice echoed through the mine, shouting about an iron deposit, Ryen and Keqing immediately stopped chatting and rushed over.

As Ryen approached, he finally understood what Ganyu meant by "a lot."

After years of mining in the MC world, Ryen had never seen anything quite like this.

It wasn't an entire wall of iron ore, but…

Half a wall of it was covered in iron veins.

If mined and smelted, it wouldn't yield a full stack of iron ingots, but it would easily provide over half a stack.

Ryen stood there, momentarily questioning reality. Iron wasn't exactly rare, but when had it become this abundant?

The densely packed cluster of iron ore glimmered under the torchlight, casting a silvery glow that made the wall appear almost like a steel fortress.

It was mesmerizing.

Ryen cast a bemused glance at Ganyu, who was staring at the find with her usual wide-eyed innocence, completely unaware of how astonishing her discovery was.

But since it was Ganyu…

Ryen chalked it up to her uncanny luck.

Over the past year of traveling with her, he'd seen countless examples of her extraordinary fortune. She'd often stumble upon Mora while simply walking, and even opening random chests in the wild would yield rare ley line materials.

Luck, after all, was an excellent companion for mining. How else would the Fortune enchantment exist?

Speaking of enchantments, Ryen made a mental note to drag Ganyu along the next time he enchanted gear. With her luck, he'd definitely roll the best stats.

"Ryen," Keqing interrupted his thoughts, her tone more cautious than before. "Is this considered a lot of iron?"

Keqing didn't want to jump to conclusions again after her earlier misjudgment of the coal deposit.

Ryen snapped out of his musings, his excitement bubbling over. Instead of being cryptic, he decided to give Keqing and Ganyu a straightforward calculation.

"This section of the wall," he began, "roughly has ninety or so blocks of ore. Iron ore typically has about a fifty-percent yield, meaning at least forty blocks here will smelt into ingots. And do you remember what I told you about the weight of an iron ingot?"

Keqing's eyes lit up as she thought it through. "A cubic meter of iron weighs over eight tons, and it takes nine ingots to craft a single iron block. So, one ingot weighs… over nine hundred kilograms!"

She paused, her gaze darting back to the wall. "That means this deposit has… at least forty tons of iron ore?!"

Hearing her own calculations, Keqing and Ganyu froze, their hands tingling with a strange mix of excitement and disbelief.

This wasn't just a discovery; it was like stumbling upon a fortune that rivaled Morax's celestial relics.

"Exactly," Ryen confirmed, grinning as he playfully ruffled Keqing's hair. "And this is just what's visible. There could be more hidden behind these blocks. At the very least, we've secured over half a stack of iron ingots!"

Before he'd even finished, Keqing had grabbed her pickaxe and charged toward the ore.

"Hurry up, Ryen! Ganyu! Let's mine it all!"

Ryen chuckled at her enthusiasm. But since they were mining a wall, he felt obligated to issue a warning.

"When mining a wall, be careful. Some monsters hide behind blocks, and there might even be a mob spawner nearby. Always listen for unusual sounds. If you hear anything, stop immediately and call me over. Got it?"

Ganyu and Keqing nodded in agreement, their focus unwavering. Satisfied, Ryen let them get to work.

In just over an hour since they'd entered the mine, they'd already struck it rich with coal and now iron.

This was the very definition of hitting the jackpot.

Still, Ryen couldn't shake the feeling that Ganyu's luck played a significant role. If he had to describe it in MC terms, it was like having max-level Fortune enchantments at all times.

That said, even this massive iron deposit didn't seem excessive when he considered his long-term plans.

Ryen would need plenty of iron for tools, especially pickaxes, since mining diamonds and obsidian required a steady supply.

He'd also have to craft iron armor for himself, Keqing, and Ganyu.

Then there were buckets—for carrying water and lava—iron doors to keep villagers from wandering into his home, and cauldrons to prepare for potion-making.

And let's not forget the biggest expense: iron golems.

As guardians for his MC base, they were indispensable. Sure, he could set up villager farms to mass-produce them later, but for now, he didn't have the time to go "disrupting" villager populations.

Iron might not be the most valuable resource in the grand scheme of things, but it was undoubtedly the most critical during the early stages of development.

Ryen understood this well. The more they could mine, the better—especially with Keqing and Ganyu assisting him. While they were close friends, he couldn't let them work for free. A mutually beneficial arrangement was essential. When they eventually left the MC world, Ryen planned to let them take some resources with them.

It wasn't just for goodwill, either. With these supplies, Keqing and Ganyu could negotiate with Ningguang and the others back in Liyue. This, in turn, would pave the way for Ryen's large-scale development of the MC world.

Everything Ryen had told Keqing and Ganyu about the MC world was truthful. It was an immense, boundless realm—so vast that even with a lifespan of several thousand years, he couldn't possibly explore and cultivate all of it on his own.

Not that he intended to. The system's achievement tasks often demanded work on an almost absurd scale. Ryen had long decided that there was no need to exhaust himself chasing after perfection.

Lost in thought, Ryen continued mining automatically until a crisp cracking sound broke through his reverie. The stone pickaxe in his hand had shattered.

Glancing at his inventory, Ryen saw that only one stone pickaxe remained. He grimaced.

They had iron now—why continue this undignified life with stone tools?

"Keqing, Ganyu, keep an eye on your surroundings," Ryen called out. "I'm going to set up a furnace to smelt some iron. While I'm at it, I'll renovate this area to make future mining trips easier."

Keqing was so absorbed in her mining that she merely waved a hand in acknowledgment.

Ganyu, more mindful, turned her head briefly and replied, "Got it."

This time, Ryen didn't cobble together a makeshift furnace like before. He took a moment to survey the environment.

To his left, Keqing and Ganyu were still mining; there was no need to disturb them.

To his right was a flat stone wall, reasonably even.

Behind him stretched the path they had come through, lined with torches that illuminated the space, making it a passable tunnel.

Directly ahead were two branching tunnels, one of which Ryen had sealed off earlier.

Satisfied with the layout, Ryen began by placing a crafting table against the right-hand wall. Then, he cleared away the surrounding clutter of stone, shaping the area into a clean, rectangular space.

The loose stone he mined was fed into the crafting table to produce ten furnaces, which he arranged neatly along one side of the room.

Ryen placed his bed near the crafting table, adding a large chest beside it to act as a makeshift nightstand. He stocked it with food for future expeditions, sparing himself the hassle of scrambling for supplies later.

Finally…

Ten furnaces roared to life simultaneously, kicking off the grand iron-smelting operation!

If only he had redstone—he could have built a fully automated smelting machine with minecarts and pistons. Alas, for now, he had to settle for manual labor.

As the furnaces worked, Ryen used the downtime to spruce up the space. A few minor adjustments turned into a full-blown renovation as his sense of aesthetics took over.

By the time he finished organizing the area and setting up torches, Keqing and Ganyu had just about wrapped up their mining.

Unfortunately, the visible iron deposits turned out to be all there was. Beneath the surface lay only stone, and deeper layers yielded nothing but granite.

Granite in such shallow caves puzzled Keqing, but her dissatisfaction was quickly overshadowed by the heavy sense of accomplishment she felt.

She opened her inventory and looked down at the results. Seventeen iron ore blocks gleamed back at her.

A satisfied smile spread across her face.

"Ganyu, I mined seventeen blocks. How about you?"

Ganyu set down her now-broken pickaxe, wiped the sweat from her brow, and glanced at her inventory. "Only thirteen blocks…"

"That's fine," Keqing said with a grin, shaking her head. "This is already a great haul! Thirteen blocks of iron ore… that's over a dozen tons of material! And we only spent about ten minutes!"

"Between the two of us, we've mined around twenty-seven or twenty-eight tons of iron in just ten minutes. Nobody would believe it if we told them!"

Keqing planted her hands on her hips and considered their next steps. "Now it's time to let Ryen process all this iron ore. I remember how complex the mining operations at The Chasm were… but here, Ryen can—wait, what?!"

Her voice trailed off as she caught sight of what Ryen had been up to.