Chapter 771 – Three Thousand Mirror Ruins 38

“Heeee—!” The windchaser antelope let out a short, shrill cry of alarm. Every muscle in its limbs tensed instantly as powerful Wind Elemental Magic energy began gathering around its body. In the next second, it would ride the wind and vanish!

Xiang Yufan’s heart plummeted. This is bad!

He knew he’d been detected. Spotted at such close range, given the windchaser antelope’s speed, he would never have the chance to fire his crossbow, let alone land a hit. All his effort—wasted! Bitter frustration and refusal to accept defeat flooded through him.

Then, at that very moment—”Whoosh!”

A sound sharper and more piercing than the wind itself tore through the night from the direction of the watchtower, arriving after the alarm but striking before the antelope could flee. Moving at a speed beyond what the eye could track, it flew with unerring precision toward the joint of the windchaser antelope’s hind leg—the one it had just lifted but hadn’t yet fully pushed off from!

It was Mo Lan’s flying dagger!

She had been observing the entire scene from her elevated position, detecting the subtle shift in air currents even before Xiang Yufan did. Almost the instant the wind changed direction, she had judged that Xiang Yufan was about to be exposed—and struck without a moment’s hesitation.

She hadn’t aimed for a vital point. In its startled state, the windchaser antelope’s vitals would be difficult to hit, and a strike there could easily prove fatal.

In this urgent moment, all she needed to do was lend him a hand. If she actually killed it, the beast core would be of far less use to Xiang Yufan.

So she chose to restrict its movement instead.

With a soft “squelch,” the dagger embedded itself precisely in the windchaser antelope’s right hind leg joint. While the wound wasn’t severe enough to cause serious damage, it was more than enough to disrupt its movement.

“Heeee!”

The windchaser antelope let out a pained and panicked cry. Its launch was instantly thrown off. It stumbled, and instead of building speed, it nearly fell!

Xiang Yufan didn’t waste the opportunity. Almost simultaneously with Mo Lan’s dagger finding its mark, his body reacted instinctively. He surged forward and fired.

“Thwack!”

The short crossbow discharged with a muffled but powerful report. In that fleeting instant while the windchaser antelope was off-balance and sluggish, the bolt struck the side of its neck with pinpoint accuracy, its tremendous penetrating force delivering a fatal wound.

The windchaser antelope’s cry of anguish cut off abruptly. The light of intelligence in its eyes dimmed rapidly as its massive body crashed to the ground. It twitched a few times, then went still.

Silence fell over the scene. Only the soft rustle of wind through the grass remained.

Xiang Yufan stood frozen in his firing stance, chest heaving with ragged breaths, cold sweat drenching his forehead—partly from lingering fear, but mostly from overwhelming relief and excitement.

He looked toward the watchtower, eyes brimming with gratitude.

Mo Lan had already descended from the watchtower at some point, landing without a sound. “I intervened, so the beast core goes to you, but the carcass and remaining materials go to me. Since I participated in the attack, the skill extraction rate from the beast core will probably be affected—it won’t be as good as if you’d made the kill entirely on your own. Dig it out and keep it as a backup for now. If you’re lucky enough to solo-kill a windchaser antelope in better condition later, use the new one. If there’s no better option, this one will still work.”

Xiang Yufan quickly stowed his crossbow and jogged over, his face full of sincere gratitude. He spoke with earnest solemnity: “Thanks, Mo Lan! I owe you big time for this one!”

He wasn’t the ungrateful sort. He understood perfectly well that if Mo Lan hadn’t first spotted the windchaser antelope’s trail and alerted him in time, he would never have had this chance at all. And if not for Mo Lan’s almost supernaturally skilled dagger throw that interrupted the antelope’s escape and created the perfect opening, he could only have watched helplessly as his quarry slipped through his fingers.

While this windchaser antelope couldn’t count as a solo kill, Mo Lan had left the final blow to him, which preserved the beast core’s skill extraction potential to the greatest extent possible. The beast core’s effectiveness would be somewhat less than from a solo kill, but far superior to one killed entirely by someone else. For a target as extraordinarily difficult to hunt as a windchaser antelope, this was already an excellent outcome.

His original plan had always included “imperfect kill” as a fallback option, so he accepted the favor graciously and with genuine appreciation.

Xiang Yufan immediately produced his dissection tools, crouched down, and began processing the windchaser antelope’s carcass.

Every part of a windchaser antelope was valuable—worth far more than those red-eyed grasshoppers from before, and even more precious than many two-star mirror beasts.

To preserve the carcass’s integrity as much as possible, he worked with extraordinary care.

He pried open the windchaser antelope’s mouth and used a specially crafted thin-bladed dagger to carefully cut through the soft tissue of the upper palate, avoiding critical blood vessels and nerves. Finally, from deep within the skull, he extracted a beast core still warm from the creature’s body heat, faintly pulsing with a blue-green luminescence. He wiped it clean meticulously.

Then he pushed the nearly intact windchaser antelope carcass toward Mo Lan:

“Here! If I’m incredibly lucky later on and manage to solo-kill a windchaser antelope for a more perfect beast core, I’ll give you that first one too—as thanks for leaving that final blow to me.”

He meant every word.

He had seen it clearly. In that situation, with Mo Lan’s terrifying flying dagger technique, had she aimed for a vital point, she absolutely could have killed the windchaser antelope outright. There was no need for the extra step of targeting the joint and leaving the finishing blow to him.

In that scenario, he had spooked the windchaser antelope and lost his chance at the kill. Mo Lan stepping in to finish it off would have been perfectly justified—yet she had deliberately held back.

“Deal.” Mo Lan didn’t refuse. She nodded and stored the windchaser antelope’s carcass in her storage space.

She planned to find an opportunity to feed this windchaser antelope carcass to the Book of Cards as material.

The sky gradually brightened as a new day began.

Ren Miao added several fresh pieces of firewood to the campfire at the center of their site, coaxing the nearly extinguished flames back to vigorous life and chasing away the morning chill.

Bai Wei had set a moderately sized metal pot over the fire, in which a thick meat porridge bubbled away—a mix of dried meat bits, compressed vegetables, and several varieties of edible fungi foraged locally. It gurgled and steamed, releasing a warm and enticing aroma that had everyone’s stomachs rumbling.

One by one, the team members emerged from their tents and gathered around the rekindled campfire, eating their simple but belly-warming breakfast while unable to resist chatting about the previous night’s “thrilling” watch duty experiences.

“Our first shift scored the opening victory last night!”

Lin Yue tapped the edge of her bowl with her spoon, a touch of smugness in her voice as she drew everyone’s attention. “Sure, we were a bit flustered at first, but the three of us worked together and took out two nocturnal weasels that were sneaking up on us! Got two one-star dark-attribute beast cores!”

As she spoke, she fished two black crystals from her pocket—each roughly the size of a fingernail, emitting a faint, dim luster—and waved them in front of everyone. Then her gaze shifted to Mo Lan, who was quietly sipping her porridge:

“Mo Lan, your target phantom leopard cat is dark-attribute, right? You’ll definitely need dark-attribute beast cores as catalysts or consumables when you use its skills later. Want these? If so, we’ll sell them to you at a discount.”