Chapter 780 – Three Thousand Mirror Ruins 47

The earth-shaker bulls’ eyes were crimson red—they had clearly fallen into a berserk state. The cow in particular kept letting out grief-stricken, furious bellows, her gaze locked murderously on Wang Jingnan’s retreating figure.

“Wang Jingnan! What the hell did you do?!” Lin Yue shrieked, her face drained of color.

Wang Jingnan skidded around a sharp turn and slid to the edge of camp, gasping for breath as he explained at breakneck speed: “I was… I was chasing the wind-stripe leopard cat and ran too far. On the way back I tried to take a shortcut and stumbled on a den of stone-armored badgers digging in the dirt. Isn’t that Zhou Ming’s target mirror beast? So I gave them a little provocation… but before I got very far I ran smack into a whole family of earth-shaker bulls! I figured if I’m already pulling one group, might as well pull two, so I… I tossed an explosive orb to grab their aggro… Except I didn’t expect it to kill the calf outright. Not only did I max out the aggro, both bulls went completely berserk!”

By this point even he realized he’d dragged back a few too many mirror beasts. Watching the surging dust cloud and hearing the frenzied roars bearing down on them, a note of guilt finally crept into his voice: “Can we take them? If not, I can lead them away…”

The target mirror beasts were right before their eyes—kill them and they could extract skills from the beast cores. But Zhou Ming and Zhu Rao stared at that pack of fang-bristling stone-armored badgers and the two earth-shaker bulls with their crimson eyes and steam blasting from their nostrils, and their throats went dry.

Solo kills amid this kind of chaotic onslaught? They didn’t have an ounce of confidence.

Just then, Mo Lan turned to Su Yu beside her. “Two stone-armored badgers—think you can handle them?”

Su Yu, who had already been gripping her blade hilt, felt a sharp gleam flash through her eyes. She answered without a shred of hesitation: “Yes!”

“Good!” Mo Lan issued rapid orders. “The two stone-armored badgers on the left are yours! The two on the right plus the bull earth-shaker are mine! Everyone else—help divide the battlefield, create obstacles, and give Zhou Ming and Zhu Rao the chance to solo their target mirror beasts!”

The moment the words left her mouth, Mo Lan charged headlong into the oncoming wall of dust.

Su Yu said nothing. Her gaze, razor-sharp as a blade, followed close behind as she broke left.

Facing the two fang-bristling stone-armored badgers on the right and the massive bull earth-shaker with its crimson eyes blazing like fire, Mo Lan showed not a trace of fear.

Mid-sprint—whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

Several flashes of cold light burst forth as she simultaneously hurled three throwing knives, each one striking with pinpoint accuracy—hitting the left eye of each of the two stone-armored badgers on the right and the left eye of the bull earth-shaker!

“GRAAAH—!”

Agonized howls erupted instantly. The searing pain of their wounded eyes locked all three mirror beasts’ aggro firmly onto Mo Lan. They went completely berserk, charging at her with reckless abandon.

This was exactly the effect Mo Lan wanted!

Fighting while retreating, she guided the three frenzied mirror beasts toward the right side of the battlefield, clearing space in the center.

Her long blade blocked and cleaved, driving back the close-range swipes of claws and fangs, while her throwing knives flew out at every opportunity—disrupting, wounding, steadily whittling down her opponents while keeping their aggro locked solidly on herself. The coordination was seamless.

The most harrowing moment came when the bull earth-shaker launched a berserk full-force charge, barreling forward like a war chariot. The force of its impact gouged a trench into the rocky ground.

Yet at the last possible instant, Mo Lan twisted sideways to dodge the lethal blow, and in the same motion deftly “swatted” one of the blinded stone-armored badgers into the exact spot where she’d just been standing!

WHAM!

A dull impact rang out. The stone-armored badger was sent tumbling by the bull’s charge, the crack of breaking bones clearly audible. Mo Lan emerged without a scratch and, seizing the moment while the badger lay stunned on the ground, drove her blade into its eye socket and finished it off.

On the other side, Su Yu’s approach against her two stone-armored badgers was pure offense—attack as defense.

Her bladework was vicious and cunning, every slash targeting the gaps in the badgers’ stone armor, their joints, their eyes.

Agile and relentless, her blade wove an unbroken tapestry of light, leaving wounds of varying depth across the stone-armored badgers’ bodies.

She had taken some injuries herself, but the two stone-armored badgers were in far worse shape—she had beaten them into steady retreat, unable to form any effective encirclement, let alone interfere with the main battlefield.

The other classmates sprang into action as well—those with trip wires laid trip wires, those with smoke bombs threw smoke bombs. The beast core skill Ren Miao had extracted days earlier proved critical at this moment.

The Lesser Water Arrows—seemingly gentle yet imbued with the power of deceleration—struck with precision against the stone-armored badgers and earth-shaker bulls that Mo Lan and Su Yu were keeping pinned down.

The water arrows dealt minimal damage on impact, but rapidly dissolved into a layer of viscous water-elemental energy that clamped around the beasts’ limbs like invisible shackles, noticeably slowing their charges and strikes.

This gave Mo Lan and Su Yu an enormous advantage in their hit-and-run maneuvers, drastically reducing the threat the beasts posed.

Under Mo Lan’s precise aggro management, Su Yu’s aggressive suppression, and the team’s effective support in dividing the field, the center of the battlefield was completely cleared—leaving behind exactly one stone-armored badger and one mother earth-shaker bull.

Without needing anyone to tell them, Zhou Ming engaged the stone-armored badger while Zhu Rao charged the mother earth-shaker bull.

Both abandoned any possibility of fighting clever. They threw themselves into danger and gave everything they had, engaging their target mirror beasts in the most primal, most direct contest of strength and will.

Only by fighting this way would the beast cores they claimed allow them to extract the strongest possible skills.

Mo Lan had taken on three opponents alone, yet she was the first to finish her battle.

After collecting the mirror beast carcasses, she cast a quick glance at the left-side battlefield.

Su Yu looked somewhat worse for wear—breathing ragged, fine beads of sweat seeping from her temples, the arm gripping her blade trembling slightly. She was clearly at the end of her reserves, her stamina heavily depleted.

But the two stone-armored badgers she’d been tangling with were in far more pitiful shape.

Their once-tough stone armor had been shattered inch by inch under Su Yu’s relentless storm of attacks, most of it crumbled away to reveal the raw, bloody flesh beneath.

Mo Lan shifted her weight as if to move, but then stopped.

She looked into Su Yu’s eyes—still fierce, still stubborn, still blazing with an unmistakable, possessive determination even in her state of exhaustion—and understood immediately.

What Su Yu needed right now wasn’t a helping hand. She needed to finish off these two mirror beasts she had ground down almost single-handedly by her own strength, so that their beast cores and materials would be completely, indisputably hers as spoils of war.

Mo Lan shifted her gaze away from Su Yu and turned it toward the center of the battlefield.

Without interference from other mirror beasts, in a one-on-one situation, Zhou Ming and Zhu Rao were handling things reasonably well. Taking down their target mirror beasts was only a matter of time—though injuries were inevitable.

A few breaths later, the suffocating intensity of combat on the left-side battlefield came to an abrupt halt.

With a low, guttural cry—suppressed pain and utter resolve compressed into a single sound—and the final wet thud of a blade tearing through flesh, Su Yu’s long knife plunged clean through the last stone-armored badger’s relatively soft throat.

She herself was nearly spent. Blade tip braced against the ground, her body swaying slightly, she gasped for air in violent heaves. Sweat streamed down her jawline in an unbroken cascade, and her combat suit bore several fresh tears, blood seeping faintly through the fabric.