Chapter 181. Demons and Monsters (5) The Myriad-Tentacled Banyan Tree Spirit

     “I’m a useless little thing without an inner core, my body is really tough and has a fishy, stinky smell, not tasty at all, really, I’m not lying, please don’t kill me!”

     In this instance, over 99% of the races in this instance only have cultivation and survival in their eyes. Their languages are still similar to those from tens of thousands of years ago, so there’s no issue with communication.

     The little stone monster seemed to misunderstand Ye Mo’s meaning. It thought that “your life is mine now” meant that she would devour it as energy.

     “……”

     Ye Mo was silent for a moment because of this explanation.

     Seeing that she didn’t reply, the little stone monster misunderstood her again. Tears streamed down its moss, and its voice was full of grievance: “Great Human-Deer demon, as long as you don’t kill me, I’ll do anything you want, please don’t kill–“

     “I won’t kill you.”

     The little stone monster’s crying stopped abruptly, its trapezoid-shaped mouth opening wide, “Really?”

     Ye Mo: “But you must be obedient.”

     “Obedient, obedient!” The little stone monster repeated the words while rolling around on the ground, “Little trash will listen to the Great Human-Deer demon.”

     Ye Mo didn’t care that she had gained another title, but she didn’t like the words “little trash.” She issued her first command: “From now on, your name is Little Stone Monster.”

     “Eh?”

     From then on, Ye Mo acquired a stone monster, and it was even a moss-covered one.

     Ye Mo squatted down to examine the little stone monster. In fact, she often tested different kinds of ores for properties like hardness, density, thermal expansion, plasticity, impact toughness, elastic modulus, and toughness.

     “Its hardness is much lower than diamond, but its plasticity and toughness are very high.”

     The little stone monster was so scared that its whole body stiffened: “…”

     “Ahem, ahem, ahem—my examination was off. It’s a wood-water type stone monster, but its wood and water elemental talents aren’t high. Its physical defense is very strong, but its mental defense is extremely low, and its camouflage skill is maxed out.”

     Ye Mo took a wood-earth element futon out of her space and placed the little stone monster on it. She sprinkled half a packet of Golden Wound Powder, and the injuries on the stone monster healed incredibly fast.

     “What is this?”

     The monsters and spirits of this world all directly swallowed healing plants. Unfortunately, as spiritual power decreased, the efficacy of spirit plants also decreased. They had never seen medicine before, just like this little stone monster with its ten thousand whys.

     Once Ye Mo took the four-tailed fox, three-tailed fox, and two-tailed fox out of her space and began to dissect their cores and trim their claws, the talkative little stone monster lay quietly on the ground without moving.

     Simple popular science:

   【The physical defense of X-tailed fox corpses is low, roughly the same for 4-tailed, 3-tailed, and 2-tailed foxes. Their fatal weaknesses are their eyes and lower abdomen.

     Although X-tailed foxes have strong spiritual talent, their attacks are relatively monotonous.

     The inner core of an X-fox can be eaten directly, or its spiritual power can be absorbed. It can also be used as energy. The beast core of a 4-tailed fox is comparable to a mid-to-high-grade wind-element spirit stone, but it lacks spirit-related source power.

     Claws, teeth, and the fur on their tails can be used to make weapons.

     Unlike dinosaurs, after injury, the spiritual power in their flesh and bones is very low and not very useful. Dead monsters and spirits are no different from ordinary animals.】

     After Ye Mo dissected the three fox monsters, the little stone monster lay on the ground obediently, basically answering whatever she asked, and the moss on it body had never dried.

     In the demons and monsters dungeon, with the decline of spiritual energy, the birth rate of all races is decreasing. The current population of spiritual beings is: animals > plants > all half-demons > stone monsters.

     The population of the stone monster race might even be smaller than that of the half-demons. After all, “half-demon” encompasses all races. Not only is their spiritual awakening slow, but their childhood is also extremely long. During childhood, they can basically only play dead or be fed to survive.

     Of course, due to their inherent talents, the number of strong surviving stone monsters is not small. Their living conditions are definitely hundreds of times better than those of the despised half-demons.

     However, according to Ye Mo’s memory, within a radius of hundreds or even thousands of miles around the swamp, there isn’t a single group of stone monsters.

     Furthermore, it will be a long time before the little stone monster develops an inner core. It doesn’t even have any attack skills, and traveling long distances is difficult for it, meaning it must have lived near the swamp and might not even be an abandoned half-demon.

     The little stone monster admitted it.

     She did not grow up in the tribe, but was born in this forest. Counting from the time of awakening her spirit, she is already over 50 years old. Stone monsters are all relatively old.

     The little stone monster remembered that when it was small, it was just a slightly greenish stone. Before its childhood even ended, moss started growing on it, making it a rare plant-stone half-demon.

     Its greatest talent was camouflage, especially in environments with water and plants.

     The little stone monster came to the forest for two reasons: first, to make itself stronger, even as a half-demon; second, in the place where it was born and grew up, another small green stone had surprisingly developed a faint sentience. Could it be its kind?

     Living as a single stone was too monotonous.

     After communicating with the little stone monster, Ye Mo decided on their resting spot for the night. So, she stood up and left the messy swamp, heading towards the forest.

     The forests in this world are often destroyed in battles, but due to the spiritual energy, their natural recovery ability is dozens or even hundreds of times greater than that of modern Earth. The vegetation in the forest is extremely lush, with many ordinary shrubs and vines capable of blocking out the sky.

     The little stone monster moved by constantly “rolling over,” and it would frequently get stuck on shrubs or be blocked by thick tree roots, making its progress very slow.

     Ye Mo had no choice but to pick up the little stone monster and start running through the dense forest. Apart from being kicked, this was the first time the little stone monster could “fly” for so long and so high.

     The little stone monster felt a bit dizzy but didn’t dare to throw up, tears streaming down its face the whole way.

     “……”

     Occasionally, Ye Mo would stop, especially in places with water.

     In the eyes of the little stone monster, Ye Mo had a storage space just like the macaque spirit or squirrel spirit with cheek pouches, but, while their spaces held prey, Ye Mo’s space contained many strange and peculiar things.

    These things it had never seen before.

    Sometimes, Ye Mo would inexplicably bury some energy sources (setting up spatial arrays), but she didn’t allow the little stone monster to damage them, as it was way too wasteful.

     Waste is shameful!

     …

     The little stone monster lived in a very deep cave. Stone monsters were never afraid of cave-ins; it was just that if a cave collapsed, it might take decades for some of them to “see the light of day” again.

     By the time Ye Mo and the little stone monster arrived there, it was already dark. The sun had set, and the moon had climbed into the night sky.

      For demons and monsters, the essence of the sun and moon can help them absorb a tiny bit more spiritual energy from the air. Many demons regularly sunbathe and moonbathe.

      The little stone monster had piled at least a hundred stones haphazardly outside the cave.

     With a sweep of her mental energy, Ye Mo easily found a small, oval-shaped stone monster whose camouflage was still poor and whose aura was very weak. It couldn’t even manifest a mouth, nose, or eyes.

      Stone monsters also have lifespans, which vary at different stages. If a tiny stone monster can’t survive its infancy, it will just become an ordinary stone.

      The little stone monster rolled around the tiny stone monster, seemingly communicating with it.

      “……”

     Ignoring the two stone monsters, Ye Mo conjured a refined iron shovel in her hand and familiarly began digging at the small cave entrance, excavating a human-shaped opening.

     An hour passed.

     Another hour passed. Ye Mo didn’t know how many meters she had dug, but she finally confirmed her speculation and understood the reason for the little stone monster’s and the tiny stone monster’s spiritual awakening.

     Beneath this ground, there were many petrified woods, fossils formed when trees are buried underground for millions of years or longer, with minerals replacing the woody fibers.

     The little stone monster and its kind became spirits by relying on these fossils, or rather—they themselves were petrified wood.

     As for why there were so many petrified woods but only two small stone monsters had awakened spiritually, well—it’s like trying to figure out why some creatures are humans while others are cockroaches. Sentience might be a choice of nature.

     In any case, if it weren’t for her experience in the Jurassic dungeon, Ye Mo would have likely overlooked these deeply buried petrified woods.

     Generally speaking, petrified wood easily forms spirit stone mines, especially in times of abundant spiritual energy. The fact that all this petrified wood was just waste rock—she had seen this before.

     Ye Mo continued digging deeper underground.

     After another two hours, she finally dug out the first low-level wood spiritual stone and threw it into the storage space, the second, the third… the twelfth…

     It was really a huge harvest.

     Especially with the appearance of four deep green spirit jades. These four deep green spirit jades could be stored in her storage space, meaning they hadn’t developed sentience and weren’t stone spirits.

    Ye Mo didn’t continue digging. Instead, she set up many formations around the spirit stone mine where she had dug.

     The wood-element energy of the spirit jades was too powerful. The little stone monster at the cave entrance had sensed it in that instant.

    But before it could roll down the first pit along the stone wall, the pure wood-element spiritual power suddenly disappeared, leaving only faint traces of spiritual energy that gradually vanished.

     The little stone monster was puzzled: “???”

     At this moment, Ye Mo had already climbed up the walls with agile movements. After guiding the little stone monster and the tiny stone monster for a short distance, she pointed to a deep pit and said, “Roll down with him, now.”

     Here, “roll” is a normal verb and doesn’t carry any insulting meaning.

     “Yes, woo woo woo—”

     While the little stone monster sobbed, it obediently rolled the tiny stone monster into the largest deep pit. Ye Mo seized the time to clear any traces inside the cave.

     And to set up traps.

     Unsurprisingly, before dawn even broke, hunters from several races, following the scent tainted by the wood-element spirit jade, had arrived at Ye Mo’s and the stone monsters’ location.

     Landslides and ground fissures were definitely minor issues that wouldn’t kill anyone. What was truly terrifying were the tree spirits possessing inner cores.

     For example, the first to arrive was a spirit that looked like a banyan tree on Earth, only much, much larger.

     ‘A single tree forming a forest’ was one of the banyan tree spirit’s inherent talents. Countless slender aerial roots would grow from its branches. These aerial roots could delve into the ground to form new trunks, continuously expanding its territory.

     A banyan tree spirit that had developed an inner core could easily grow a forest spanning tens of thousands of meters. By simply standing in one place, it could effortlessly hunt prey.

     When the banyan tree spirit’s aerial roots explored the underground world, its dangling roots would pierce the earth and burrow deeper, endlessly growing and extending. A single tree spirit could dig tunnels as fast as hundreds, even thousands, of dwarves combined.  

     How terrifying.  

     Ye Mo had no idea how many times her proudest talents would be humbled by the demons and monsters in this dungeon. But she wasn’t afraid of any challenge!