Chapter 802 – Three Thousand Mirror Ruins 69

By the time Mo Lan returned home, it was already afternoon.

The first thing she did upon arriving was take out the two Mirror Explorer notebooks Teacher Yan Shuang had given her. She read straight through until nightfall before finishing them.

Both notebooks documented unclaimed seven-star level mirror spaces.

The medium-sized unclaimed mirror space was called the Blue Sand Sea.

According to Teacher Yan Shuang’s notes, this mirror space was an extremely monotonous yet eerily beautiful world.

Between heaven and earth, there existed only a single color—a deep, mysterious blue.

Everywhere lay blue granules resembling crushed sapphire fragments, forming deserts and hills.

The only active biological community in this blue sand sea was a colonial mirror beast species known as blue-tailed ants.

Their nests, resembling enormous blue honeycombs, lay scattered and buried deep beneath the sand sea.

The entire ant colony had a rigorous social structure. The queen was the core and sovereign of the entire species, rated as high as seven stars, possessing formidable reproductive capability and psychic control.

The vast numbers of male ants, worker ants, and the more aggressive soldier ants generally ranged from five to six stars in strength, forming the foundation and armed forces of this blue kingdom.

Neither the blue sand nor the blue-tailed ants were unique species—discovery records existed in several other mirror spaces as well, so they were not considered precious.

Although the blue sand was rich in earth elemental force and water elemental force and could be regarded as a magical material, it carried a chronic neurotoxin that was extremely difficult to remove.

Whether through prolonged skin contact or accidental inhalation or ingestion, the toxin would accumulate in the body, gradually eroding one’s psychic power and physical functions.

And while the blue-tailed ants had evolved a degree of toxin resistance through generations of feeding on and nesting in blue sand, they still could not achieve complete immunity.

This directly resulted in their generally short lifespans—especially the lower-ranking worker ants and soldier ants, whose life cycles were particularly brief. The species relied entirely on the queen’s powerful reproductive ability to maintain population numbers.

One could say that in the Blue Sand Sea—a closed environment lacking other organisms and virtually devoid of natural predators—the only factor limiting the blue-tailed ant population from infinite expansion was the very sustenance they depended on: the blue sand.

The hunting value of blue-tailed ants was also minimal.

Among the blue-tailed ant colony, only the beast cores produced by the queen held any skill-extraction value, thanks to the “ant colony control” skill they contained.

The beast cores of the remaining male ants, worker ants, and soldier ants could mostly only serve as energy consumables for casting water-attribute skills, making them highly replaceable.

Moreover, blue-tailed ants always moved in swarms—hundreds or thousands at a time, sometimes even more.

The moment they encountered an outsider, they would launch frenzied attacks with no regard for their own lives.

Among the many known seven-star mirror beasts, blue-tailed ants were widely acknowledged as one of the more troublesome and best-avoided existences, owing to their overwhelming numbers, frenzied aggression, and low returns.

All things considered, the exploration value of the Blue Sand Sea was pitifully low.

The other small mirror space was called the Moss-Forest Secret Grove.

According to the notebook’s records, this mirror space seemed to have far greater species diversity than the Blue Sand Sea.

Within the space grew some common trees, and the ground was covered in thick, soft green moss—yes, the very same kind that the hospital doctor had given Mo Lan to eat when she first arrived in this world.

Green moss was the most common healing-type magical plant, widely used across various medical fields. It could be taken internally or applied externally. There were also several trickling streams and a small pond.

The ruler of this mirror space was a seven-star Moss-Forest Guardian.

This was a plant-type mirror beast of relatively gentle temperament that primarily focused on guarding its territory. It resembled an ancient tree covered in heavy moss and vines, typically rooted beside the pond at the center of the secret realm. It moved slowly and commonly appeared in old-growth forests rich with natural energy.

Beyond that, there were only some mid-to-low star mirror beasts below five stars with gentle dispositions.

For example, the Radiance Forest Deer with luminescent fur, the Moss Rat that fed on moss, the White Dew Bird that fed on morning dew, and various insect-type mirror beasts.

Clearing them out would be relatively easy—they posed virtually no significant threat.

Besides the green moss, the space also grew some other magical plants, most of which clung to the Moss-Forest Guardian’s body.

These plants mostly possessed functions like calming the mind, Lesser Light Illumination, and condensing pure water droplets—nothing particularly useful, and certainly nothing rare or precious.

If the Blue Sand Sea was classified as a resource-poor mirror space due to its singular species composition and lack of valuable specialties making it low in development value, then the Moss-Forest Secret Grove earned that classification because of its narrow scope. Though its energy cycle was self-sustaining, its regenerative capacity was limited and its ecology fragile.

Once the magical plants and mirror beasts within were harvested or hunted, the space’s own mechanisms made natural recovery extremely difficult.

In truth, virtually all small mirror spaces suffered from this fundamental weakness, which was why they were generally unsuitable for large-scale development. Most ended up becoming private mirror spaces.

And among small mirror spaces, the Moss-Forest Secret Grove was actually considered quite advantageous.

High biodiversity, a livable climate and environment, and minimal mirror beast threats were all points in its favor. Its only shortcoming was the rather ordinary quality of its resources. In the entire mirror space, aside from the Moss-Forest Guardian itself, the most valuable things were the green moss carpeting the ground and the space itself.

In her notes, Teacher Yan Shuang assessed that the Blue Sand Sea was suitable for use as a training ground, while the Moss-Forest Secret Grove could be arranged into a cultivation chamber or resting place.

For Mirror Explorers with a Mirror Explorer aptitude of 85 or even 90 and above—those for whom becoming the Mirror Lord of a small or medium mirror space placed little or no burden on their psychic power—acquiring one or two such mirror spaces for use as portable personal spaces was quite nice.

But Teacher Yan Shuang’s Mirror Explorer aptitude was only 84. A single point’s difference meant a world of difference.

Unless she was willing to claim a mirror space at the cost of her mental sea collapsing, becoming a Mirror Lord was essentially out of reach for her.

The entrance to the Blue Sand Sea mirror space was located within Sunset Bay, a seven-star mirror space on Long Island Mirror.

On the eastern side of Sunset Bay lay a stretch of blue sand beach.

There, one had to dig a pit at least five meters in diameter, channel in seawater, and wait for the sunset’s afterglow to fall upon the seawater in the pit. Then, by tossing in a blue-tailed ant beast core, the teleportation entrance could be activated.

The entrance to the Moss-Forest Secret Grove mirror space was located within Ice Lake Plateau, a seven-star mirror space in Cloud Mist Mirror.

One needed to venture deep into the snow caves within Ice Lake Plateau and find a patch of green land inside.

On that green land was a small pond.

All one had to do was remove every fish from the pond—regardless of size—then freeze the pond’s surface into ice. That sheet of ice would become the teleportation entrance. However, one couldn’t enter from the ice surface; entry had to be from within the pond.

By touching the contact surface between the ice and water, one could enter the Moss-Forest Secret Grove mirror space.

With such a complex method of entry, it was no wonder Teacher Yan Shuang said that, in all likelihood, no one had discovered it yet.