Chapter 359 – Iron Stone Monsters

“Zhee?” Zhizhi watched the large bird ahead randomly venting its fury on trees, injuring itself all over in the process, full of confusion.

“It can’t see anymore,” Mo Lan said.

The two of them hadn’t bothered hiding their voices, and the Serpent Chicken Beast’s head immediately locked onto their position with precision.

Zhizhi was about to carry Mo Lan away with Teleportation, but Mo Lan patted the bag. “No rush!”

She stood right where she was, preparing her Teleportation spell.

When the Serpent Chicken Beast charged over, she teleported backward just enough distance to place herself right at the edge—where the beast couldn’t reach her, but its feather arrows could just barely make it.

After the Serpent Chicken Beast’s lunge missed, it instinctively flapped its wings and shot feather arrows in all directions.

Mo Lan immediately cast Teleportation, targeting the very feather arrows flying toward her.

Once the feather arrows were fired, the Serpent Chicken Beast had no control over them.

Mo Lan effortlessly channeled the feather arrows into a teleportation corridor, with the exit point being the Serpent Chicken Beast’s own head.

Zhizhi was completely dumbfounded. How did her Mistress just wave that little stick and make the Serpent Chicken Beast’s feather arrows shoot into its own head?

Once Mo Lan confirmed the idea was viable, she continued using the Serpent Chicken Beast as a test subject for further experimentation.

She caught feather arrows with Teleportation more and more smoothly.

She also tried minimizing the teleportation distance while maximizing the number of targets she could teleport at once, redirecting every single feather arrow the Serpent Chicken Beast fired right back at it by reversing their direction through Teleportation.

The Serpent Chicken Beast’s eyes were temporarily blinded, and it had no idea that the rain of projectiles piercing its body and bringing wave after wave of stinging pain were its own feather arrows.

A single feather arrow didn’t deal much damage, but the dense barrage of so many feather arrows was gradually worsening the Serpent Chicken Beast’s injuries bit by bit.

In the end, the Serpent Chicken Beast was completely bald—flapping its wings produced no more feather arrows—and only then did Mo Lan put it out of its misery.

Her Book of Cards material library didn’t have a Serpent Chicken Beast yet!

The Serpent Chicken Beast’s eyes were also excellent ingredients for poison potions.

After Mo Lan finished cleaning up the battlefield and called Zhizhi out to continue on their way, she noticed Zhizhi looking at her with an expression of wild excitement mixed with a touch of reverence.

“Zhizhi zhizhi!” Boss Mistress! Amazing fighter!

Mo Lan: “…”

Zhizhi had beaten down the little monkeys of the golden-armed ape clan, and they’d called her boss.

And Zhizhi used to call her just “Mistress,” but now it was “boss Mistress.”

So had Zhizhi previously thought that her Mistress wasn’t as good a fighter as she was?

“Zhizhi, just stay in the bag. If there are any magical beasts or treasures I haven’t noticed, give me a heads up—that’s all you need to do.”

Mo Lan decided it was time to let Zhizhi properly appreciate her Mistress’s true strength.

This time Zhizhi obediently agreed, showing no intention of jumping out to fight.

She still wanted to watch her Mistress go whoosh-whoosh-whoosh with the little stick!

Mo Lan first cast a luck spell on herself, then used the Fortune-Telling Spell to check the directions and chose the one whose divination result looked most promising before heading forward.

As she walked, she continuously scouted ahead with a wide-range Wind Sensing sweep, conducting what was essentially a carpet search.

Soon, Wind Sensing brought back information about the surroundings.

In the direction that had registered as mildly auspicious, there was a cluster of moving rocks.

“Moving rocks?” Mo Lan’s eyes lit up. “Those are Iron Stone Monsters!” She hurried in that direction.

Path Clearing, Wind Walk, and Super Speed all activated at once, and she took off at the speed of wind!

All Zhizhi felt was the branches and leaves whipping past before her eyes, and in a blink they had emerged from the forest.

The view ahead opened up dramatically—a vast, sprawling slope of scattered boulders, with rocks of all sizes strewn about haphazardly, and the ground carpeted with smooth, egg-sized pebbles.

If she hadn’t scouted ahead with Wind Sensing and didn’t know about the Iron Stone Monsters, she would certainly have just marveled at nature’s handiwork for creating such a massive spread of smooth stones in this place.

If she were being careful, she might have also found it strange that this rocky shoal was so eerily quiet—no insect sounds, not even an ant in sight.

In reality, who knew how many of those large boulders were Iron Stone Monsters in disguise.

And those smooth little pebbles were indeed stones, but they weren’t naturally formed—they were the “droppings” left behind after Iron Stone Monsters ate rocks.

Iron Stone Monsters were a type of earth-element magical beast that primarily fed on various rocks.

They could extract earth elemental force from ordinary rocks to nourish their bodies and magic crystals.

So once you stripped away the outer rock shell, the body of every Iron Stone Monster was made of high-quality magical metal, and each one came with a magic crystal that could be used directly as an earth-element gemstone.

Because of this, Iron Stone Monsters had another name: mobile magic mines.

Rumor had it that the Dwarf nobles of the Durin Volcano each owned at least one Iron Stone Monster ranch.

Iron Stone Monsters were extremely territorial. Whenever they sensed other creatures approaching, they would all squat on the ground in unison, perfectly still, pretending to be ordinary boulders.

Once the intruder walked into their encirclement, they would close in and crush or flatten them.

Unless your Metal Detection spell was at the Advanced level, there was no way to identify a disguised Iron Stone Monster.

She had already tested using Teleportation to redirect ranged physical attacks. But redirecting close-range physical attacks? She hadn’t tried that yet!

These Iron Stone Monsters were the perfect test subjects. Their attack methods were extremely limited, their intelligence was rock-bottom—they couldn’t even figure out how to pick up a rock and throw it—so even if Mo Lan found herself surrounded, she could escape immediately.

For easier spellcasting, she mounted her broomstick and flew into this vast expanse of rocky terrain.

As Mo Lan ventured deeper, Zhizhi suddenly sensed something was wrong. “Zhee!” Danger!

Although she sensed danger, she couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

All she felt was that every direction made her fur stand on end with tension.

“Don’t worry,” Mo Lan said. “They’re all Iron Stone Monsters. I have a plan!”

Confident that the Iron Stone Monsters couldn’t understand her, she even used Heart Speech to share information about Iron Stone Monsters with Zhizhi.

Even knowing that Mo Lan was prepared, Zhizhi still clung nervously to the mouth of the bag.

After they reached the depths of the rocky terrain, the Iron Stone Monsters finally revealed their true forms and began to move.

Seeing rocks suddenly sprout arms and legs, Zhizhi’s little mouth formed a perfect “O.”

Mo Lan pretended not to notice, waiting for them to close in.

Once every Iron Stone Monster across the entire rocky expanse had converged, she gently lifted the handle of her broomstick—which had been skimming just above the ground—and rose into the air, hovering at just the right height where the Iron Stone Monsters felt they could almost reach her if they really tried, yet always fell just short.

Iron Stone Monsters located targets by sound, so the ones on the outer ring had no idea Mo Lan had already escaped. They kept pushing their companions forward from behind.

Hovering in the air, Mo Lan felt the timing was right and began testing her magical inspiration.

She placed a Teleportation spell in the space between the innermost Iron Stone Monsters, attempting to teleport the crushing force of their push to the outermost ring of the encirclement.