Chapter 818 – Three Thousand Mirror Ruins 85

Chapter 818 – Three Thousand Mirror Ruins 85

In the end, Mo Lan settled for the next best thing and shifted her sights toward the cheap leads.

Over the past two years, she had steadily purchased over a thousand pieces of cheap information that only listed detailed locations. Of these, more than six hundred were situated within the Golden Oasis.

These leads were like treasure maps—they told you which general area the treasure might be buried in, but gave you no shovel, didn’t tell you how deep it was buried, and didn’t mention whether there were traps.

Whether you could find and open that door depended entirely on the buyer’s skill, patience, and… luck.

Many of these leads were notorious “old headaches”—energy fluctuations had been detected and entrances confirmed at those locations as far back as a century ago, yet to this day, no one had managed to crack the method to open them.

Although she had spent the past two years absorbing knowledge about unclaimed mirror spaces like a sponge, Mo Lan was perfectly clear-headed: in terms of sheer understanding and knowledge of mirror spaces, she could hardly surpass veteran Mirror Lords like Teacher Huang Yao, who had been deeply immersed in this field for years.

If even they hadn’t found the way to open those transport entrances, she was unlikely to find it through knowledge alone.

However, she possessed one unique advantage that no Mirror Explorer or Mirror Lord had: a Witch’s Divination Magic and Blessing Magic!

Mo Lan had read countless books about mirror beasts, and never once had she come across a mirror beast whose beast core possessed skills related to divination or blessings.

Since Mirror Explorers’ magical abilities all came from beast cores, without divination-type or Blessing-type beast cores, naturally no Mirror Explorer had similar capabilities.

This meant that even if she carried the identity of a mere student, as long as she discreetly cast those spells that had no flashy visual effects and produced extremely subtle energy fluctuations—divination spells and luck blessing spells—no Mirror Explorer would ever detect anything abnormal.

Even if Teacher Huang Yao happened to be exercising his Mirror Lord authority to conduct “localized detailed monitoring” of her area at the exact moment she cast a spell, at most he would sense a slight, inexplicably lucky coincidence in the energy flow of that zone—and would never connect it to someone casting magic.

Divination Magic and Blessing Magic were, in this world, practically an “invisible” cheat.

This was precisely the confidence behind her willingness to spend tens of millions of mirror coins on cheap leads.

Next, Mo Lan planned to establish herself in the Golden Oasis for the long term, personally investigating and studying each of those six hundred-plus locations where unclaimed mirror space transport entrances existed, one by one.

She would combine the theoretical knowledge of mirror spaces she had learned with the directional guidance of Divination Magic, then layer on Blessing Magic like the luck spell to boost the probability of a “flash of inspiration,” and attempt to crack open those long-sealed mirror space transport entrances.

Ever since she had learned that offering a mirror space’s core to the Book of Cards merely “copied” its spatial rule knowledge rather than plundering its source energy—and therefore didn’t count as mass exploitation of a world’s resources—Mo Lan’s ambitions had grown beyond simply obtaining one small mirror space for creating a time-differential study room.

With this many leads, there had to be a few “big catches” hidden among them. Surely she could find several resource-rich large or medium-sized mirror spaces!

She was already here—might as well aim for the best.

Once she succeeded, she could use the Book of Cards to fully master its spatial rule knowledge, and in the future, she would be able to craft similar Spatial Cards on her own.

Her resolve set, Mo Lan hesitated no longer and stepped through the Golden Oasis transport gate.

A mirror space “gold rush” combining theory, luck, and patience had officially begun.

The moment she entered the Golden Oasis mirror space, scorching dry air hit her face.

Beneath Mo Lan’s feet stretched a vast, boundless expanse of golden sand. Vegetation was sparse around her, and a winding river flowed nearby.

She quickly cross-referenced the map of the Golden Oasis in her mind and found that her luck was quite good—this spot was very close to one of her target locations: the “Gold Crystal Mine.”

This was a mine currently in a mining prohibition period. The entrance was sealed with a restriction barrier that forbade anyone from entering to mine, but exploration itself was not prohibited. According to the cheap lead she had purchased, deep within the mine, on a cluster of gold crystals, there existed a transport entrance to an unclaimed mirror space.

Mo Lan quickly located the mine. Inside, there were quite a few branching tunnels, but old signposts remained to guide the way, and she easily found the tunnel where the gold crystal cluster indicated in her lead was located.

The moment she walked in, she froze for a second.

It wasn’t deserted here at all—in fact, it was quite “lively.”

Before that enormous gold crystal cluster—growing upward like golden antlers—seven or eight students were gathered, some sitting, some standing.

Some were clutching thick copies of 《A Hundred Solutions to Unclaimed Mirror Space Entrances》 or other related tomes, flipping through pages while gesturing at the crystal cluster and muttering under their breath. Others were disheveled and hollow-eyed, slumped against the rock walls, clearly having expended too much mental energy here and now teetering on the brink of collapse, scratching their heads in frustration.

Seeing a newcomer enter, the few students who were still relatively lucid raised their heads. Their numb gazes carried a hint of sympathetic mockery:

“Hey, another sucker who bought a ‘cheap lead’!” a male student called out feebly.

“Hey, classmate, did you bring any good food? Share some? I’ve been camped out in this godforsaken place for almost a month! I’m going crazy eating nothing but rice cakes every day!” Another student who looked half-starved gazed at her with desperate, pleading eyes.

“Ugh, if it weren’t for the ten thousand mirror coins I spent, I’d have left ages ago! I just can’t accept it!” Someone pounded the ground in frustration.

“Come on, come on, newcomer! Don’t be shy, join in! Maybe you’ve got good luck—even a blind cat stumbles on a dead mouse sometimes—and we can ride your coattails!”

A student who looked slightly older gave Mo Lan a bitter smile and waved her over, pointing at the gold crystal cluster that had been studied countless times, its every inch of crystal rubbed smooth.

Mo Lan went along with the flow and joined their “research group.”

Over the days that followed, she did exactly as the others did—spending each day trying every known or hypothesized method of opening the entrance on that gold crystal cluster.

This included, but was not limited to: shining light at various angles and intensities, chanting all manner of incantations, applying bizarre liquids, tapping different parts of the crystal cluster, and one person even tried dancing in front of it…

Days passed one after another, and the number of people here dwindled. Disappointment and frustration spread like a plague.

The first student to leave was still cursing under his breath. The third left with a completely numb expression. The fifth kindly advised Mo Lan not to waste any more time either.

Three months later, the last remaining student finally broke down completely.

Eyes bloodshot, hair a tangled bird’s nest, he screamed in despair at the utterly unresponsive gold crystal cluster: “There’s nothing! There’s absolutely nothing! I’ve tried every method I can think of! It has to be fake! Teacher Huang Yao must be selling bogus leads to scam people out of mirror coins!”

Panting heavily, he turned to Mo Lan—the only companion left in the mine chamber—and said in a hoarse voice: “Classmate, don’t be stupid. Let’s go! Instead of wasting these three months, you’d be better off going out and hunting some mirror beasts. At least you could earn back that ten thousand mirror coins! This thing… is nothing but a scam!”

With that, as if he could no longer bear this place for another second, he stumbled out, disappearing around the bend of the tunnel.