Chapter 358 – Magical Inspiration

After dawn, Mo Lan packed up the Tent Card and formation stones, then continued exploring with Zhizhi.

With the Rainbow Belt, Zhizhi’s movements were more agile and flexible than before.

It fought magical beasts faster than before, and in order to find replacement energy sources for its belt, it had even learned to extract magic crystals barehanded.

Mo Lan still sat nestled in the crook of Zhizhi’s neck, but rather than rushing to process the magic crystals Zhizhi had freshly obtained, she turned her attention to studying Spatial Magic.

Earlier, while watching Zhizhi fight and use its spatial abilities to deflect most of the damage, Mo Lan had been struck with a new inspiration for Spatial Magic.

Even though practitioners gifted in Spatial Magic were rare, the development of spatial spells was already quite mature.

The various properties of spatial power and the effects they could achieve were nearly all covered by existing witch Spatial Magic.

So this wasn’t exactly about developing a brand-new spatial spell.

Using the same spatial power, Zhizhi could harness its effects to redirect attacks aimed at itself to another location while simultaneously blocking a portion of the damage.

For a witch’s Spatial Magic to simultaneously achieve both blocking and teleportation was nearly impossible.

Apart from special spells that didn’t require converting Mana or magical power into other forms of energy, most witch magic could only manifest a single function and couldn’t combine two into one.

What Mo Lan was considering was the feasibility of using Teleportation for defense.

Compared to Zhizhi’s spatial defense, the witch’s Spatial Shield technique relied entirely on spatial power to devour and negate attacks. Although spatial power inherently possessed a “devouring” property that made it stronger defensively than other energies, negation was still more wasteful than redirection.

Zhizhi’s defensive approach was actually more similar to Teleportation than to the Spatial Shield.

Teleportation had always been used for spatially transporting the witch herself or allied units — no witch had ever used it as a defensive spell.

But from watching Zhizhi, Mo Lan saw this possibility.

Thinking it through carefully, the reason Teleportation was only used on oneself and allies was entirely because it required the subject being teleported to cooperate — they couldn’t resist the spell’s guidance. Otherwise, the result would range from teleportation failure at best, to being torn apart by spatial power mid-transit at worst.

An opponent had consciousness and could resist teleportation, but an attack that had already been launched had no consciousness — could it resist?

In theory, she could redirect an enemy’s attack aimed at her to another location nearby, achieving a “force deflection” effect.

Even if the teleportation failed, the Teleportation spell itself carried a certain degree of destructive force upon failure.

This destructive force, looked at from another angle, could also be considered a form of defense!

She already knew Teleportation, and it had already been upgraded to Intermediate level. She hadn’t had time to experiment before since she’d been busy making the magical belt, but now that she had some free time, she could give it a try.

“Hssss—”

Suddenly, a sharp screech came from up ahead.

Zhizhi heard it, its fur standing on end, and it turned to bolt.

Mo Lan probed with Wind Sensing — it was a bird-type magical beast with disproportionately huge, well-developed feet. Its wings were far too small relative to its body, having degenerated to the point where it couldn’t fly at all.

When she sensed the long, forked tongue flickering from its beak and the feather arrows that shot out when it flapped its wings, Mo Lan confirmed its identity.

“Zhizhi, it’s a Serpent Chicken Beast. Just don’t look at its eyes and you’ll be fine — let me use it to test my magic!”

The Serpent Chicken Beast was also an Advanced magical beast, and a particularly troublesome one among Advanced magical beasts at that.

However, its most troublesome trait was its petrifying gaze.

Its preferred strategy was to first use its petrifying stare to turn its opponent to stone, then crush the petrified victim with its massive feet.

Its legs were thick and powerful with astonishing explosive strength, but it wasn’t particularly fast, and its stamina was lacking — it wasn’t built for prolonged combat.

The feather arrows launched by its wing-flapping were so weak they couldn’t even match the damage of an Intermediate magical beast. As long as one could avoid its gaze, it became much easier to handle.

The Serpent Chicken Beast had already spotted them and was charging toward them aggressively.

Mo Lan had already returned Zhizhi to its miniaturized state, covered its eyes, and tucked it into her satchel.

She first teleported up into a tree, then used Darkness Magic to plunge the surrounding area into complete blackness — so dark one couldn’t see one’s hand in front of one’s face.

Her Darkness Magic wasn’t high enough in level yet, so even she as the caster had her vision blocked. But that was fine — she only needed a brief disruption.

Soon, she pulled out several bottles of blinding potion made from grey-eyed piranha eyes, uncorked them, and mixed the blinding potion into a Mist Technique, spreading it across the area beneath the tree.

It wouldn’t affect her, but it would definitely affect the Serpent Chicken Beast on the ground.

The Serpent Chicken Beast was supremely confident in its petrifying gaze, so when the Darkness Magic suddenly impaired its vision, it grew slightly agitated. Instinctively, it widened its eyes, straining harder to see its surroundings.

The blinding potion mixed within the Mist Technique coated its eyeballs directly.

At this point, it still didn’t realize that it had gone from being affected by the environment to being truly blind. It could only thrash about wildly in the darkness.

Whenever it hit a tree, it kicked it violently, trying to knock down the instigator.

The tree Mo Lan had been in earlier was kicked so hard it was swaying and about to topple.

But she had long since teleported to another tree nearby, and quietly dispelled the Darkness Magic.

The Mist Technique mixed with blinding potion had covered a wide area, but the potion had been diluted somewhat, which reduced its effectiveness.

Moreover, the grey-eyed piranha was only a low-level magical beast, and the potion was merely a low-level blinding potion.

The Serpent Chicken Beast was ultimately an Advanced magical beast, and its eyes were the vital point for its energy output.

That initial dose was only enough to keep the Serpent Chicken Beast blind for a short while.

That amount of time was far from sufficient!

Mo Lan took out several more bottles of blinding potion, used the Levitation Spell to float the liquid out of them, found the right moment, and smeared it onto the Serpent Chicken Beast’s eyes.

After applying two full bottles of potion, the Serpent Chicken Beast finally realized it was blind.

It buried its head down, blinking rapidly, trying to squeeze the strange “water” out of its eyes.

Though this did nothing to reduce the blinding effect, it did hinder Mo Lan, who had been planning to apply more poison.

Mo Lan looked at the potion in her hand, then at the Serpent Chicken Beast’s lowered head, and was suddenly struck by an idea: if Teleportation can redirect an enemy’s attack, can it also redirect my own attack?

She descended to the ground, designated the potion liquid as the teleportation target, and teleported it away — with the destination being the Serpent Chicken Beast’s eyes.

“It worked!” Mo Lan felt a surge of delight.

At this close range, teleporting the potion was far faster than using the Levitation Spell to deliver it.

The moment the Serpent Chicken Beast opened its eyes even slightly, Mo Lan could seize the opportunity to teleport potion onto the surface of its eyeballs.

The teleportation destination could be any unoccupied space within her range — the area just outside the Serpent Chicken Beast’s eyeballs fit this requirement perfectly.

Only after applying enough blinding potion to guarantee the Serpent Chicken Beast would remain blind for the better part of the day did Mo Lan pat her satchel. “Zhizhi, you can open your eyes now.”

Zhizhi curiously poked its head out through the small opening on the side of the satchel.