Interesting find! Did you load game from a previous update? I know there was issues with saving blocks found in 0.1.3 which has now been fixed. Let’s hope that was causing the issue…
Ahh I get you, sorry! Unfortunately the shards/essence/new dirt are all part of the “depth”, meaning there is no mining any of it. The soft block will be lifted in due course! I am still impressed you’ve reached 969 and are still wanting to go further!