Chapter 769 – Three Thousand Mirror Ruins 36

From the moment the night-shriek bats launched their attack to their rout, the entire process took no more than a few breaths.

The night-shriek bats’ piercing sonic attack had barely begun—hadn’t even had time to wake the people in the tents—before it was cut short beneath Mo Lan’s daggers, reduced to seven still-twitching corpses on the ground.

A brief silence fell over the camp, making the crackling of the bonfire and the night wind all the more pronounced.

Bai Wei and Ren Miao stared in astonishment at Mo Lan as she stood with her momentum settled, their lips slightly parted, eyes filled with incredulous shock.

Their minds kept replaying everything that had happened in that lightning-fast instant.

Though they’d known from martial arts class that Mo Lan’s combat ability was absurdly strong—after all, she’d been personally called a “martial arts genius” by Instructor Yan Shuang, a monster who could take on all eleven of them at once.

But that was supposed to be limited to learning close-quarters blade work and dagger fighting techniques exceptionally fast, and having body tempering results far surpassing everyone else!

Since when could daggers be used as ranged weapons? And wielded so… savagely?!

That wasn’t just randomly throwing them and hoping for the best! That was precision killing!

Every flying dagger seemed to have eyes of its own, striking vital points, killing with a single hit! Blazing speed, ferocious force, terrifying accuracy! This had completely exceeded their understanding of what a “dagger” as a weapon could do!

An alarming thought forced its way unbidden into their minds: if… if back during martial arts class, when everyone was sparring to determine rankings, Mo Lan had opened with this flying dagger technique… they probably wouldn’t even have had time to react before being instantly “killed,” losing ten times faster than they already had!

“Gulp.”

Bai Wei unconsciously swallowed, and that tiny sound was amplified with startling clarity in the surrounding silence.

She snapped back to her senses with a start, her cheeks flushing hot. She hurriedly lowered her head, not daring to look directly at Mo Lan, though her heart was still pounding wildly.

Ren Miao also struggled to tear her gaze away, and when her eyes met Bai Wei’s in midair, they didn’t even need words to instantly read the identical shock, lingering fear, and a trace of indescribable… self-doubt in each other’s eyes.

The two of them were ranked last and second-to-last in practical martial combat, respectively—positions beyond dispute.

This ranking was partly due to their somewhat lesser talent in body tempering and martial arts, but the deeper reason perhaps lay in a certain unspoken belief buried deep in their hearts.

Like many young Mirror Explorers nowadays, they subconsciously felt that martial skills, with their limited lethality, were far less flashy and practical than the wonderfully powerful beast core abilities. Moreover, martial skills were difficult to learn and master, requiring enormous investments of time and sweat to hone—the return on investment was simply too low.

To avoid having bodies too frail to impede the more important cultivation of psychic power in the future, they could grit their teeth and endure the pain of medicinal body tempering—after all, the body was the foundation.

But for martial skills, which they believed “could to some extent be replaced by powerful beast core abilities in the future,” there was no need to take things too seriously.

Subconsciously they felt that good enough was good enough—once they’d hunted one-star mirror beasts and built up their initial skill systems, they’d naturally have more powerful methods at their disposal.

This mindset, perhaps not deliberate, had nonetheless genuinely affected the effort they put into martial arts class.

But now…

Who would dare say those daggers Mo Lan had just casually thrown weren’t powerful?!

That lightning-fast speed! That terrifying efficiency of instant kills! And the accuracy of hurling several daggers at once, every single one hitting its mark!

Searching their hearts honestly, even if they were lucky enough to obtain a decent one-star offensive beast core ability in the future, could the burst of power and sense of threat it produced match the sheer terror of those daggers Mo Lan had tossed out as if it were nothing? The answer was almost certainly no.

Even the most powerful one-star mirror beast’s beast core ability might not be as fearsome as that flying dagger technique that seemed like Death itself calling names from a list!

In that moment, a certain deeply rooted belief in their hearts quietly cracked open.

All the night-shriek bats had been killed by Mo Lan, so their corpses were naturally her spoils.

After the battle ended, she set about extracting the night-shriek bats’ beast cores.

Night-shriek bat beast cores were of the dark attribute. Though only one-star in grade, they could be kept for use as casting materials after extracting beast core abilities.

Mirror Explorers needed beast cores matching the corresponding attribute of a magic skill as casting materials in order to successfully use it.

As for the night-shriek bats’ sonic attack ability itself, Mo Lan ostensibly wasn’t very interested—the phantom leopard cat’s phantom clone ability was the first beast core skill she had set her sights on for herself.

But that didn’t stop her from keeping one core. After extracting the phantom clone ability from the phantom leopard cat’s beast core later, she could then extract a sonic attack ability too, to see what was so special about the magic skills extracted from beast cores in this world.

Though her surface-level psychic power wasn’t much, her actual psychic power had already exceeded the upper limit of the Three Thousand Mirror Ruins World.

Normal one-star Mirror Explorers could only extract a limited number of skills—too many would put pressure on their psychic power, causing the failure rate of subsequent extractions to increase dramatically and even causing some harm to the body. So every skill needed to be carefully considered before planning.

But Mo Lan had psychic power to spare. “Wasting” some to extract a few less useful skills was no problem at all.

While extracting the fourth night-shriek bat’s beast core, Mo Lan’s ears twitched slightly, and her gaze locked sharply onto a stretch of darkness on the east side of the camp.

There, an extremely faint, blindingly fast shadow seemed to flash past. At the same time, an incredibly faint sound—one that blended almost perfectly with the breeze sweeping across the meadow at night—a soft “click” reached her keen ears.

The sound was light and brief, like something hard striking the solid ground with extreme speed.

Hoofbeats! Extremely faint but extraordinarily rapid hoofbeats!

Mo Lan’s eyes narrowed. Without a moment’s hesitation, she immediately said to Ren Miao, “Wake Xiang Yufan, now! East side of camp—there might be a windchaser antelope! Hurry!”

Ren Miao froze for a second, then snapped to action and rushed to Xiang Yufan’s tent to wake him.

When Ren Miao roused Xiang Yufan, he was still heavy with sleep, mumbling incoherently, “…What’s going on? Is it morning? Or is there a mirror beast we can’t handle?”

“It’s not morning, and there’s no mirror beast attack! Mo Lan says there might be a windchaser antelope to the east! Get up, now!” Ren Miao kept her voice low, but her tone was urgent.

“A windchaser antelope?!” Those three words hit like the most potent wake-up drug, instantly scattering every trace of Xiang Yufan’s drowsiness.

He shot upright, eyes wide as saucers in the darkness. Almost instinctively, he grabbed the long blade resting right by his pillow, threw open the tent flap and ducked outside in one swift motion, his voice trembling slightly with excitement: “Where? Are you sure?”