Chapter 361 – The Strange Sky

Chapter 361 – The Strange Sky

Although Mo Lan had planned to set up camp here for a while and properly improve her Alchemy Magic abilities while materials were plentiful, she hadn’t expected this rain to last so long.

It had been raining continuously for a whole week, with no sign of stopping.

Water had already crept up to the entrance of her tent.

The weather was strange. Mo Lan was in the middle of an enthusiastic streak of crafting magical items and didn’t want to face unknown dangers.

She was already considering whether to retreat to the rocky terrain, or even further back to set up camp in the jungle.

Before departing, she habitually used the Fortune-Telling Spell to divine the fortune of continuing to stay in this area. The result showed: Minor Fortune.

The last time she had drawn Minor Fortune, Mo Lan had gained Zhizhi, that precious magical familiar.

Drawing Minor Fortune once again, Mo Lan unhesitatingly decided to press forward through the difficulty and stay in this heavy rain.

However, she couldn’t remain where she was. If the rain kept up like this, it wouldn’t be long before this spot was completely flooded.

She packed up the Tent Card, mounted her broom with Zhizhi, and set off to find a nearby spot with slightly higher elevation, where she set up camp again.

She even took the opportunity to snatch a Lightning Falcon out of the rain for questioning.

Though it was a magical beast, its intelligence was still quite low, and the Heart Speech only yielded some vague responses.

All she could gather was that this rain would probably continue for a very long time.

Mo Lan then used the Origin-Tracing Spell to probe the Lightning Falcon’s memories, and learned that this grassland underwent this kind of rainfall periodically—raining until most of the grassland was submerged in water.

Then the water would slowly evaporate and disappear, returning to the grassland she had seen before, and then the rain would come again.

The specific cause was unknown.

This Lightning Falcon had only experienced three rainfalls in its memory, but each time the rain lasted longer than the last, flooded a larger area, and the dry intervals between rains grew longer as well.

After releasing the Lightning Falcon, Mo Lan fell into deep thought. “This is too strange. The rainwater accumulates enough to flood the entire grassland, yet it can still revert back to grassland? Shouldn’t this place have become a massive lake long ago?”

At first, she thought it was a rare geographical climate like the Purple Night Grasslands or the Greengrass Plains.

But no matter how hard she searched her memory, she couldn’t find any precedent for a region with such strange weather.

The sky didn’t have the thick concentration of water elemental force like the Greengrass Plains did at night.

It didn’t seem like rain brought about by converging water elemental force—rather, it seemed like naturally occurring rain.

Unable to find an answer for the moment, Mo Lan could only wait and observe.

After all, the Fortune-Telling Spell had never been wrong. As long as she followed its guidance, something good would definitely happen in the end.

With that thought, she stopped overthinking and went back to her study to continue crafting magical items.

She waited until the puddles across the grassland outside had transformed into rivers, lakes, and small islands—the proportion of surface above water and below water had essentially swapped.

Her crafting of Intermediate magical items had progressed from clumsy to proficient, and she had even begun attempting to draw Advanced magical rune combinations.

Only then did the rain outside finally stop.

During this period, the rainwater had risen to her tent entrance several times, and Mo Lan had already relocated her tent multiple times before settling in her current position.

This spot had originally been the largest hill in the area, but now it had become a solitary island in the middle of a lake.

Two steps out the tent door and you’d hit water. Zhizhi didn’t even have anywhere to go out and play anymore.

After the rain stopped, Mo Lan and Zhizhi stepped out of the tent.

She finally noticed something was off.

The sunlight over this grassland seemed exceptionally fierce, causing the water vapor to evaporate remarkably fast. She stood outside the tent, squinting at the sky.

Zhizhi followed behind her, lifting its head in the same way, mimicking her down to the identical squint and even placing its hand above its eyes to shade them while observing.

The sky was clear for ten thousand miles, a pristine wash of blue.

Yet it was so blindingly bright that one couldn’t look directly at it, as if the entire sky, just like the sun, was radiating a brilliance too intense to gaze upon.

But the sun was just the sun. This demiplane belonging to the Witch Academy had only one magical sun made from a Solar Stone and one magical moon made from a Lunar Stone.

There was no way the current situation—where the entire sky was as dazzling as the sun—should be possible.

This kind of sky reminded Mo Lan of a rare elemental creature—the Cloud Beast.

When a Cloud Beast had no water inside its body, it would shift into a transparent form that could gather and amplify sunlight, accelerating the absorption of water vapor.

As it absorbed water vapor, the Cloud Beast would gradually take on the appearance of a white cloud.

Once the water vapor accumulated to a certain level, it would turn into a dark storm cloud, and finally release all the water inside its body as a downpour.

The current situation matched almost exactly what the books described about a Cloud Beast in its transparent form.

Thinking back, when the rain had first started, the sky had indeed been an endless expanse of dark gray.

At the time, Mo Lan had simply assumed it was storm clouds.

Although the current conditions aligned well with the characteristics of a Cloud Beast, Mo Lan still couldn’t be certain.

The main issue was—if it really was a Cloud Beast, given the coverage area of that previous rainstorm, just how enormous would this Cloud Beast have to be?!

It was too absurd! Supposedly on the Continent of Valen, a Cloud Beast the size of a single rooftop was already considered a rare species! If whatever was up in the sky really was a Cloud Beast, it would be enough to astonish all of Valen.

But upon further reflection, this place was isolated from the outside world. No one besides young witches would ever come here.

It was entirely possible that a Cloud Beast had been growing here undisturbed until it reached its current scale.

The Water Elemental Essence at the very core of a Cloud Beast, while not comparable to Earth Source Essence, was still a rare water-attribute treasure.

A single drop of Water Elemental Essence could transform a small patch of desert back into an oasis.

Wherever Water Elemental Essence was present, it would continuously absorb water elemental force and gather moisture.

With this, Mo Lan could create a truly inexhaustible water source card in the truest sense.

It was fundamentally different from cards like the Perpetual Kettle Card, which required time or energy to refill with water.

It would be a card that, once crafted, required no further investment whatsoever and could genuinely produce a continuous water source.

Moreover, Water Elemental Essence had other wonderful uses.

If used during potion brewing, adding just a tiny amount each time could elevate the entire potion’s effectiveness by a whole tier.

Who could resist getting their hands on some of that?

Mo Lan decided to observe for a while longer to see if the sky would gradually turn white.

If it turned white across a wide area, she could basically confirm it was a Cloud Beast.

After waiting about a week, Mo Lan clearly noticed that the sky wasn’t as blue as before.

There were still no clouds above, but the sky seemed to be veiled in a faint tinge of white cloud coloring.

No single white cloud could be this uniform and stretch beyond the horizon.

It could now be confirmed without a doubt—it was a Cloud Beast.

Now that it was confirmed to be a Cloud Beast, the remaining question was how to obtain the Water Elemental Essence from its body.