After determining their route, the two set off without delay.
They ultimately chose to head toward the area where the stone pillars were sparser, because the path would become smoother the farther they went.
The gaps between the stone pillars would gradually widen, the ground would become less rugged, and they would no longer need to keep changing direction because of the pillars in their way. These were all foreseeable advantages.
But before they had gone far, Mo Ling suddenly stopped.
"What is it?" Lu Youqi asked in confusion.
"There's something ahead..." Mo Ling pointed at a stone pillar in front of them. "Behind that, there's something."
"What?"
"It looks like a scorpion—a stone scorpion. We'll be able to see it if we go around."
The two started walking again and quickened their pace, soon arriving behind the stone pillar.
Only then did Lu Youqi see it. A rock that looked remarkably like a scorpion was perched on the pillar, about the size of a human head. Its unusual shape made it easy to notice.
But in this stone forest filled with rocks, such a strange stone was fairly normal. Other than its exceptionally peculiar appearance, there was nothing odd about it.
"Let's go. It's just a rock," Lu Youqi urged Mo Ling beside him.
"Not yet... Can't you see it? It's moving!"
"Moving?" Lu Youqi immediately turned his gaze back to the stone scorpion, but he could not make out anything.
"Yes! It's moving, but very, very slowly. Maybe like a normal scorpion moving at one-hundredth its usual speed—no, maybe one-thousandth!"
"I can't see it."
Lu Youqi immediately understood. Perhaps only Mo Ling could see it.
His vision was sharp enough to detect such minute movements, while normal human eyes could not perceive them.
"Are you sure you saw