Chapter 263 – Killing the Snake, Asking for Directions

Chapter 263 – Killing the Snake, Asking for Directions

Before long, Mo Lan spotted a towering ancient tree in the forest ahead. Coiled around it was a large snake, brownish-green with white spots.

A holly snake, without a doubt.

The snake’s body was roughly as thick as a bowl’s rim, wrapped around the ancient tree. If not for the fierce killing intent in its slightly opened eyes, it could easily be mistaken for a thick vine blooming with small white flowers.

Mo Lan approached slowly, mana gradually flowing toward her wand.

The holly snake raised its neck slightly, flicked its tongue, and let out a piercing hiss.

But Mo Lan was completely unaffected.

Knowing she’d be facing a holly snake, how could she come unprepared?

Holly snakes were non-venomous and weren’t magical beasts. The only thing worth noting was their hiss.

The sound was extremely shrill, easily disrupting one’s spellcasting rhythm.

These snakes habitually used their hissing to disorient enemies before lunging in to constrict and kill.

On her way here, Mo Lan had already used a Silencing spell to block her own ears.

Now she remained utterly unmoved, calmly preparing her magic.

Seeing that she showed no reaction, the holly snake immediately shot toward her with a whoosh.

Mo Lan made no move to dodge, keeping her eyes fixed on the snake.

Ten meters, eight meters — now!

Her wand trembled slightly as several successive blasts of magical energy flew out, all striking the snake’s vital point just below the head. Space tore open abruptly, and the snake’s head and body were severed clean in two.

The body crashed heavily to the ground. Only the head continued flying forward a few more meters, but its life force was draining rapidly.

It hit the ground, writhed and struggled a few times, then went still.

Only the spray of snake blood that splashed toward Mo Lan was blocked by a quick water shield.

Canceling the Silencing spell and letting sound return to her ears, Mo Lan breathed a small sigh of relief.

This was her first proper hunt — not striking at livestock penned in a training ground — so she’d been a little nervous.

But the books she’d studied carefully and the magic she’d learned all proved their worth in that moment.

Her choice of spells had been well-suited too, ending the fight quickly and decisively without any unnecessary delay.

Now it was time to collect her spoils.

The snake was nearly six meters long in total.

The head portion was less than a meter — far smaller than the body.

With that much snake body, she had more than enough to eat. Mo Lan simply discarded the head and incinerated it with her incinerate spell.

As for the plump snake body, Mo Lan washed it with a Spring Water spell, then used Flash Freeze on the severed end to seal it and prevent the smell of blood from spreading. Finally, she used a shrinking spell to miniaturize it.

Mo Lan’s Spatial Magic was still only at the Apprentice level.

When killing the snake, severing its bowl-rim-thick body had taken three or four Void Blade spells.

The shrinking spell was much the same — at the Apprentice level, it could only shrink ordinary objects down to one-tenth their size at most.

But that was more than enough.

The half-snake body shrank to just half a meter long, its weight dropping from nearly a hundred jin to less than ten. Tied at her waist, it looked like a green belt.

Only after dealing with her spoils did Mo Lan go to the ancient tree and use Tree Friend to ask about water sources.

She pressed one hand against the trunk and cast the spell with the other.

Through her mana, she connected with an extremely sluggish consciousness. “You… hello…”

“Hello. Could you tell me where the nearest water source is?”

“Water… southeast… valley… waterfall… stream…”

This matched the direction where she’d sensed denser water elemental force with Wind Sensing earlier.

Mo Lan thanked the tree and headed southeast.

Although she’d confirmed the direction of the water source, whenever Wind Sensing picked up something she needed along the way, Mo Lan would veer slightly off course.

Blue-heart grass, hollow vine, Dewdrop Flowers, three-tailed chicken eggs, fragrant mushrooms… anything Wind Sensing detected — whether potion ingredients or cooking materials — she picked it all, shrank it down, and tucked it into her satchel.

She was also forced to hunt several three-tailed chickens and one gold-striped leopard.

“Forced” because she already had no shortage of meat and hadn’t planned to actively hunt any more animals.

But they came at her on their own, so Mo Lan struck back.

Three-tailed chicken didn’t taste as good as Dodo Bird, but it was still a decent ingredient. Mo Lan went easy on them, using a Metal Arrow spell — one shot to the head each.

Gold-striped leopard meat wasn’t good eating. At the very least, Mo Lan had never come across a single Valen recipe for gold-striped leopard. But thinking that its pelt would make fine tailoring material, she used an earth wall spell to trap it, then crushed it to death with Falling Rock.

The meat was smashed to pulp, but the leopard skin remained intact. She peeled it off, washed it clean, and temporarily repurposed it as a wrapping cloth, bundling up four shrunken three-tailed chickens and carrying them on her back.

By the time she could hear the rushing of water, Mo Lan had a snake tied at her waist, a satchel stuffed full of magical plants, and a leopard-skin bundle on her back containing four three-tailed chickens.

Living in this forest, one truly never had to worry about going without meat.

In just this short while, she’d already hunted enough to eat for a month.

Along the way, she’d also caught some small animals with no real offensive ability to practice her death spell on.

The death spell belonged to Healing Magic.

Healing Magic came in two categories: one that healed the living, and one that dealt death.

There were two spells for healing the living: the healing spell and the cure spell.

Both were spells that infused the power of life, only one worked on the surface while the other worked internally.

There was only one spell for dealing death: the death spell.

It could extract the power of life, killing living creatures.

A creature killed by having its power of life completely drained by the death spell would be like a page from a thousand-year-old book — seemingly intact at first glance, but crumbling to dust at the slightest touch.

The essence of Healing Magic was the process of infusing living creatures with the power of life or extracting it from them.

Healing and killing were mutually reinforcing. In terms of magical learning, this meant the more one used the death spell, the more effective the healing spell and cure spell became, and vice versa.

Healing Magic was also the only school of magic where practicing on Training Dummies yielded absolutely no improvement in spell proficiency.

These spells could only be used on living creatures and grew through practice. Moreover, since healing and killing reinforced each other, one had to practice both — training only one type would yield little progress.

For now, though, Mo Lan’s death spell couldn’t even kill a small rabbit in a single use, so she couldn’t deploy it directly in combat. She could only practice it on prey she’d already defeated and restrained.

Not long after hearing the sound of water, Mo Lan emerged from the tree line.

Before her was indeed a valley.

She was standing on the mountainside, still about twenty meters above the valley floor — just the right height to take in the entire scene below.

The valley sloped from high in the north to low in the south. On the northern end, a waterfall cascaded down, forming a pool at the bottom. South of the pool, a small stream carried its waters gently out of the valley.

Sunlight bathed the valley, flowers scented the air, the scenery was uniquely beautiful, and the terrain was easily defensible — it looked like an ideal place to settle.

The only problem was that such a fine spot already had its owners — a herd of black-haired wild boars.