Moon Beast
"There's something wrong with that pea sprout, and there's something wrong with that Jack," Jasmine said definitively.
"That's for sure, now it's just a matter of what the problem is." Lu Li watched as another group of people headed towards Jack's house.
"Something's not right," Mond suddenly said. "This place is completely uninhabitable. Why would anyone build a farmhouse here?"
"Let's wait and see," Lu Li said, as they went to a distant hillside to observe the farmhouses.
Slowly, a large group of people arrived from afar. However, each time, Jack, who had already climbed to the top of the cloud, would slide down from the pea shoot and say the same things. He would usually say that there was a castle, countless gold coins, a hen that laid golden eggs, a harp that played automatically, and a terrifying giant.
The pale purple pea flowers shimmered with a crystalline light, spraying out countless amounts of pollen. And those who entered the farmyard, as Jack described, would climb the pea shoots and then disappear without a trace.
Gradually, no one else arrived. The pea shoot that seemed to connect heaven and earth suddenly turned into a cloud of dust and disappeared. The entire farmhouse did the same, leaving only a huge pit in the place, and an old woman with an axe in hand and a sad face.
The next moment, a huge monster crawled out of the massive pit. This monster looked like a skinned toad, its body mostly grayish-white with bumps on its back, but its head was the most terrifying part.
The monster had no eyes or other organs; its face was covered only with a bunch of short, wriggling pink tentacles, some of which were stained with blood. Then the monster approached the old woman and made a strange noise.
"Give me back my son, or I'll let him continue deceiving people!" the old woman cried out in anguish, raising her axe to strike the monster, but was immediately pinned to the ground by one of its claws.
Then the monster's body writhed and entered the large hole, spitting out a large number of bones. Its body also shrank considerably, becoming only slightly taller than a normal person.
"Mom, you're joking! Aren't I your son?" the monster said chucklely, then vomited out a large chunk of flesh, mostly corroded by stomach acid, and placed it in front of the old woman. "Come on, Mom, it's time to eat."
"I won't eat it, I won't eat it!" But the old woman was frail and weak, and could not resist the monster. The monster held the old woman down with one hand and stuffed the piece of meat into her mouth with the other, and kept stuffing it in no matter how many times she spat it out.
"Mom was still naughty today, taking so long to finish her meal." The monster released the old woman, ran back to the bottom of the pit, carried out a strange, large box, and then, carrying the box, it and the old woman walked to the other side.
"What a disgusting monster! So, that towering pea shoot was all fake, just a trap for this monster to hunt?" Lore gagged a few times; the monster was truly disgusting.
"This monster is somewhat like Moon Beast, but some of its habits are a bit off," Lu Li muttered. When he became a Dream Wizard at the Theseus Magic Society, Alice had told Lu Li about some Dreamlands Monsters, one of which was called Moon Beast.
Moon Beast are a highly intelligent race that inhabits the dark side of the moon in the Dreamlands. Moon Beast feed solely on living creatures and enjoy enslaving large numbers of other races, spending their time torturing them.
Among them, the Moon Beast's favorite slaves are humans, and Moon Beast also possess various advanced technologies, which they use to expand their territory. They are a sadistic race.
Judging from its appearance alone, the monster before them was undoubtedly Moon Beast, and its cruel nature was evident in the feeding earlier. However, it was rather strange that this monster would call the old woman "mother" and had not developed a large number of slaves.
Lu Li and the others quietly followed the monster. The monster walked for most of the day, and when it saw signs of human activity, it stopped and took out a strangely shaped tool from a large box. Soon after, it dug out a huge hole.
The monster then busied itself in the burrow for a while, leaving only the old woman standing there with her axe, her eyes vacant, seemingly muttering something.
Then Lu Li and the others saw the tentacles on the monster's face wriggle, revealing a mouth like a black hole inside. The tentacles stretched out and clung to the side of the pit, and gradually the monster's mouth opened wider and wider, covering the entire pit.
With a loud bang, a giant pea shoot shot into the sky, and after reaching a certain position, it released a large amount of white mist, forming a cloud. Around the pit, a farmhouse was formed again.
The old woman looked at the towering pea shoot and the boy clinging to it, and cried out frantically, "Son, I don't want the cow anymore! I won't hit you anymore! Don't climb this pea shoot! We don't want the gold coins anymore! We don't want the hen that lays golden eggs anymore! We don't want the harp anymore! Let's cut it down, okay?"
But as the pale purple flowers on the vine released pollen once more, the old woman's expression changed again after inhaling it; her eyes became indifferent. Then Jack jumped down from the tree again and said, "Mom, we can't let you ruin things this time. Four people ran away because of you today; it's better to subdue you as soon as possible."
After a while, another group of people arrived from a distance. One of them, panting, said, "Hey, what's with those pea shoots? I saw them this morning, they should have been gone much longer."
"Could it be that it can walk? You've been walking for too long and your brain has gotten foggy. We're almost at our destination. Let's hurry up and find some peas. If we grow peas that big, we'll have plenty to eat and wear." The other person also felt something was strange, but didn't pay too much attention to it. Instead, he rushed towards the farmhouse with a look of joy.
Before long, Jack tricked many more people into "climbing" onto the pea shoots, but in reality, they all fell into the monster's belly. Even if someone asked where the people who had arrived earlier were, Jack would say that they had gone up ahead to collect gold coins.
Then, tempted by gold coins and other things, and because they inhaled some pollen, they gradually became irrational and followed Jack "climbing" onto the pea shoots.
Lu Li squinted. From the old woman's words, he could tell that her son Jack had indeed traded a cow for a pea. After being scolded by the old woman, he somehow produced this giant pea sprout. The gold coin, the hen that laid golden eggs, and the automatically playing harp also seemed to exist.
But something happened afterward that caused Jack to transform into Moon Beast, leading to this tragic scene.