Chapter 186. Demons and Monsters (10)

     Ye Mo put the bed into her storage space.

     While quickly replenishing energy and nutrients, she glanced at the Taro spirits in her life space. Their inner cores had almost been completely dug out, leaving them more severely injured than the crow demon.

     Even a mid-grade wood-elemental crystal core only barely kept them alive.

     The two Taro spirits were between 200 and 300 years old. They had seen demons with spiritual domain talents and regarded this space as Ye Mo’s domain.

     Although the two Taro spirits were of the same race, their relationship wasn’t strong.

     They had almost fought over the crystal core. If they hadn’t been so injured that they could barely move and hadn’t been wary of external enemies, they might have already killed each other.

     After experiencing a series of complex emotions, the two Taro spirits were now gradually calming down. Only by defeating Ye Mo could they possibly escape this confined space.

     Ye Mo released the two Taro spirits from her life space and made a deal with them. The deal was that they would work for her for one hundred days and nights, especially providing Taro fruits. After one hundred days and nights, she would set them free.

     If it had been last night, the Taro spirits might have hesitated for a long time, but now the problem was that they were on the verge of death and had thought about it for a long time in the space.

     They had anticipated the most terrifying and dreadful futures. Simply providing Taro fruit was not a problem for them at all.

     At least their lives were still intact.

     “Okay.”

     Both voices were male, with somewhat similar, clear, and crisp tones.

     Ye Mo let the two Taro spirits continue to live in the life dimension, providing them with a lot of fertile soil dug from the forest and two wood-elemental crystal cores.

     Heal them?

     What a joke.

     Just looking at the hostility between the Taro spirits, Ye Mo had already placed layers upon layers of defensive shackles on them in her mind. Unless there was an accident, she didn’t plan to let them out.

     “I will collect the Taro fruit tomorrow morning.”

     …

     Returning to the main cave chamber of the previous day.

     The little stone monster, who loved to play dead the most, was rolling around restlessly. As soon as it saw Ye Mo, it immediately straightened up, behaving obediently, and the moss on its stone surface had become much greener.

     Ye Mo actually read the words “expectant, ask me quickly” from the light green stone.

     “…”

     Under the little stone monster’s expectant gaze, Ye Mo did as it wished, looking at the stones in the center of the cave chamber, arranged neatly from large to small.

     “These are ones I haven’t seen before.” The little stone monster cleared out the largest pile of stones and stacked them together, accounting for about 60% of the total number of stones.

     35% were ones it had seen.

     Ye Mo took out a piece of white paper and a charcoal stick from her space, sat down, and had the little rock monster recount the stories of the stones it had seen—focusing especially on the environment and the stones’ characteristics.  

     As a stone monster, when the little stone monster arrived at an unfamiliar place, it would definitely first observe the stones in the environment in order to camouflage itself, blend into the environment, and protect itself.

     According to its description, it had stayed in the same place for the first 30 years of its 50 years, and had traveled to many places in the following 20 years, even encountering life-threatening situations several times.

     Different from other demons and monsters, fewer and fewer stone monsters were awakening their spiritual intelligence, and even fewer half-demons who survived alone existed. Stones were also not the preferred prey of various creatures. Therefore, weak stone monsters had survived.

     The little stone monster had seen many demons and also encountered half-demons struggling to survive. Other half-demons were not as powerful as demons, but they were likely still much stronger than her. So even when she spotted a few half-demons banding together, she didn’t dare approach them—after all, it wasn’t unheard of for half-demons to kill each other over resources.  

     The weak are prey to the strong, and only the fittest survive.  

     “Your talent for disguise is unmatched by them.” As the damp moss dried at a visible speed, Ye Mo pointed to the remaining 5% of the stones. “These?”

     The little stone monster shook the moss: “Not sure.”

     “Have you ever seen rocks on the mountaintop with fine granular, fibrous, or spherulitic crystal features like these? Their color could be gray-black, gray-white, gray-green, or gray-red”

     The little stone spirit didn’t quite understand but could recognize them. “Yes, some, with a little bit of red.”

      “Very easy to break.”

     “Right? Seems almost like soil.”

     “…”

     The little stone monster originally thought that only their stone monster clan understood stones the best, but she was wrong. As long as she described a characteristic, the half-deer, half-human demon in front of her could almost always understand as if she had seen it herself, describing it even more clearly than she could.

     It’s amazing!

     Ye Mo also discovered that the little stone monster was quite intelligent and knew how to learn by analogy. Some professional terms and methods of differentiation, after being explained at most twice, she could remember them.

     After finishing the Q&A with the little stone monster, Ye Mo also drew several rather peculiar maps, with geology, terrain, and monsters and demons as the three main characteristics.

     However, judging from the little stone monster’s behavior, although the language system in this world was unified, there was no written language at all. Communication between monsters and demons was entirely verbal.

     Even within tribal clans, they at most used knotted ropes or simple pictograms to express things that had to be recorded, mainly concerning ancestral sacrifices and the natural deities of spring, summer, autumn, and winter.

     The probability of the little stone monster having any concept of paper and pen was essentially zero.

     Ye Mo flicked two top-grade wood spirit stones toward her. “Well done. This is your reward.”  

     “Happy!”

     The little stone spirit rolled around gleefully in delight, while the mute tiny stone spirit watched with envious eyes, a goal forming in its heart: it wanted to be this powerful in the future too.

     Nearby, the raven demon—who hadn’t understood a word of the exchange—glared resentfully at the wood spirit stones in the little stone monster’s grasp. He truly couldn’t comprehend why anyone would go to such lengths over ordinary-looking rocks devoid of any spiritual energy.  

     Soon he didn’t have time to think about it, because Ye Mo had already stood in front of him and asked, , “Have you figured out how to answer yesterday’s three questions?”  

     “…I have.”  

     Several hours later, the raven demon’s wounds had worsened yet again. To conserve his dwindling spiritual energy, he’d lain nearly motionless for the last two hours—yet his will to survive burned fiercely all the same.  

     “My name is Kong, I am a Raven Demon, my talent is flying, speed, wood…”

     The Raven Demon answered the first question without any problem; halfway through the second question, his two small eyes began to wander and the frequency of blinking increased.

     The entire demon was practically radiating the words ‘guilty conscience’; the little stone monster believed almost everything it said.

     Even if Ye Mo hadn’t spent mental energy yesterday to obtain the true information, she could easily see that it was lying. She had underestimated the simplicity of the demons in this world.

     “You can think again about how to answer.”

     Ye Mo’s words didn’t contain much emotion, but the words only made the raven demon squirm harder, his anxiety unconsciously draining his spiritual energy and worsening his wounds.  

     Three minutes passed.

     The raven demon honestly answered all the questions, not just the three. It basically answered whatever was asked. Based on its answers, Ye Mo began to draw sketches.

     The raven spirit was of the bird tribe, could fly, and had a certain level of strength and quite a few fellow clansmen

     His range of activities is much farther than that of the little stone monster. Forests, grasslands, mountains, ice mountains, lakes, basins, etc.—excluding the ocean and desert—it had seen most types of landforms, as well as various races of demons.

     His knowledge was indeed extensive.

     When Ye Mo briefly described Watson’s appearance, the raven demon offered multiple possibilities.

     Watson’s algae spirit was one of this world’s more common aquatic plant spirits. By nature, they drifted with the currents, leading to many branching tribes scattered across the land—some near, others distant.  

     Their locations varied in distance.

     Ye Mo had a mission and currently didn’t have time to investigate each of Watson’s possible tribal locations one by one, but at least she had a direction. She marked them on the map.

     She also gave the raven spirit a reward, which is to allow the little stone monster to treat him for 3 hours.

     “?!?”

     The raven spirit was really uncomfortable with this kind of differential treatment. A bird demon is not as good as a stone with grass? Is the deer monster in front of him really blind?

     The little stone monster agreed very straightforwardly: “Okay!”

     Ye Mo looked at the little stone monster, who had already undergone a complete transformation, not forgetting to warn and remind her that the raven spirit wasn’t as weak as she saw. It had an inner core, had eaten many demons, and killed many half-demons, so she absolutely couldn’t be careless.

     The little stone spirit snapped back to reality: “…”

     Ye Mo had no intention of telling the little stone spirit the truth—that even with 100 hours of her current wood-element healing arts, the raven demon still wouldn’t be able to break free from the restraint ring.  

     Nor could the little stone spirit release it herself.  

     Every wood-attuned spirit stone within 500 meters of the cave chamber had already been collected into Ye Mo’s storage space. “Trust, but verify” was her philosophy—she was, after all, only a temporary ally at best.

     …

     After giving her instructions, Ye Mo teleported out of the cave for the second time, arriving at the black hole not far from the surface, and then flew up to the ground. This would help her temporarily conceal the spatial teleportation array.

     The bright sunlight exposed the ravaged earth without any concealment. The hidden arrays around the area hadn’t been touched by any monsters or demons and were completely intact.

     Ye Mo chose a direction and entered the forest, her target being one of the overlapping points on the little stone monster’s and the raven spirit’s maps. At least this way, she wouldn’t return empty-handed.

     Due to the events of the previous night, she didn’t see many living creatures near the forest, neither ordinary animals nor monsters and demons.

     But even when she encountered a few small to medium-sized hunting parties, their attitude towards Ye Mo was one of non-interference, no longer seeing her as someone they could easily bully.

     Especially among the plant spirits, the banyan tree spirit’s reputation was surprisingly large in this forest, and Ye Mo, who had killed it, had also become famous among the plant spirits in this area.

     On the way, Ye Mo also saw some half-demons, mostly spotting them using her mental power or Hawk eye. They lived in the shadowy corners of this world and were even more afraid of her than the demons.

     At the slightest sign of movement, they would immediately flee or hide.

     Half-demons weren’t constantly in danger, waiting to be rescued. After Ye Mo tried a charitable rescue once, scaring the other party half to death and not hearing any system prompts, she abandoned such a foolish action.

     This was disturbance, not rescue.

     As she went further, Ye Mo gradually began to encounter demons who saw a lone traveler as easy prey.  

     For example, the five leopard demons in front of her were originally fighting three rose flower spirits for a spiritual herb.

     When the strangely dressed Ye Mo appeared, two of the leopard demons, under the dumbfounded gazes of the rose flower spirits, casually spat a string of fireballs at the lone passerby.