For the next hour, Lin Mo completely let loose.
Amid the dense forest, an azure-gold afterimage darted like lightning, atop a towering tree one instant and behind a thicket the next.
When he encountered a lone hundred-year soul beast, he went up and fought on the move, using the terrain to wear it down.
When a group surrounded him, he turned and ran.
Killing beasts with a borrowed blade, luring the tiger away from its mountain, diverting disaster eastward... Lin Mo played all those tricks with consummate ease.
One two-thousand-year Ironback Azure Wolf in particular chased him through more than half the woods, snapping at him, only to be led into the territory of a four-thousand-year Gray Demon Spider. The two beasts immediately tangled in battle.
As for Lin Mo, he sat leisurely on a branch, munching on dried nuts he had scrounged up from somewhere and watching the show.
In the shadows, Xuan Zi nodded repeatedly as he watched.
Young as this brat was, his combat skills and on-the-spot judgment were remarkably seasoned. Running, scouting, hiding, being a sneaky bastard... he excelled at them all.
By the look of things, the brat had still held back during the freshman assessment.
As he watched, Xuan Zi's nose suddenly twitched twice. He faintly caught a fragrance drifting on the wind, straight into his nostrils, and his bleary, drunken eyes instantly lit up.
Was that... the fragrance of liquor?!
No, there was the smell of meat in there too!!
Xuan Zi gulped down a mouthful of saliva. Instinctively, he wanted to follow the fragrance, but when his gaze landed on Lin Mo, he hesitated.
The brat was still training. What if something happened...
Oh, forget it. What was there to fear?
The brat was so capable that, as long as he didn't encounter a ten-thousand-year soul beast, he could pretty much escape anything.
Besides, he would only leave for a little while.
Just a little while.
What could possibly happen?
"Even if something really does happen, this old man can get back in a single breath."
After reassuring himself with those words, Xuan Zi hesitated no longer. His figure flickered, and he immediately sped off after that wisp of fragrance in high spirits.
"Achoo!"
Lying in a thicket with two tufts of wild grass raised in his hands, Lin Mo sneezed hard.
He didn't know why, but ever since Xuan Zi disappeared, he had kept having an ominous premonition. By now, that premonition had reached its pea... wait, why had a red "Danger" character with an exclamation mark appeared above his head?!
Lin Mo felt a scalp-splitting sensation shoot straight from his tailbone to the crown of his head, and he instinctively hurled himself forward.
Crack-!
The next second, an enormous black shadow suddenly engulfed the spot where he had been. Immediately afterward, a great swath of ground, earth and stone included, was scraped flat.
The instant Lin Mo landed, he rolled and scrambled upright. Azure light flashed repeatedly over his body as he shot back dozens of meters before turning to look at whatever had attacked him.
It was a giant crocodile nearly seven meters long!
The giant crocodile's body was thick and heavy, its back and crown covered in overlapping layers of bony armored scales like slabs of lava rock, with dark crimson markings between them.
Its four limbs were as thick as stone pillars, and a row of razor-sharp bone spikes grew along the top of its tail.
Lin Mo's nearly year-long studies at Shrek hadn't been for nothing. With a single glance, he recognized the soul beast before him:
A Rock Armor Giant Crocodile.
A strength-type, earth-attribute beast with high attack and high defense.
Because it was a mutant variant, it didn't depend on water sources and could rampage unchecked through the jungle as well.
And the markings between its scales were dark crimson, which meant this big fellow's cultivation had already reached ten thousand years!
But what Lin Mo found most troublesome was-
Although the Rock Armor Giant Crocodile was highly intelligent, it had a one-track mind. Once it settled on its prey, it wouldn't stop until one of them was dead!
"Roar-!"
The Rock Armor Giant Crocodile opened its bloody maw and let out an earth-shaking roar. Its four stone-pillar legs drove against the ground with a crash, and it charged straight at Lin Mo.
Without the slightest hesitation, Lin Mo turned and ran.
His wings beat furiously, azure-gold Soul Power spraying out as though it cost nothing. He flapped so hard his wings were practically smoking.
One more look, and he would explode on the spot!
Yet before Lin Mo had gone very far, it suddenly darkened overhead, as though something had abruptly blocked the sunlight.
He instinctively looked up, and a distorted human face appeared just like that, its features twisted into something neither laughing nor crying, suspended in midair barely inches away.
"I-holy fuuuuuck!!"
Lin Mo was so frightened that his heart leaped straight out of his throat.
Immediately afterward, the huge mouth beneath the human face suddenly opened wide, and a stream of eerie green liquid shot out, reaching him in the blink of an eye.
At that critical instant, Lin Mo bent his legs forward and threw his entire body backward.
Whoosh!
The glob of liquid whistled past, brushing his hair. A few drops splashed onto the ground and instantly corroded several small, smoking pits into it.
"Fuck me, my back..."
With one hand supporting his lower back and the other braced against a thick tree trunk, Lin Mo hauled himself upright in a sorry state, his entire face scrunched up like a bitter melon.
But before he could even catch his breath, the ground beneath his feet began to shake.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
The Rock Armor Giant Crocodile's enormous body appeared in his field of vision once again. Every step of its four stone-pillar legs made the earth tremble.
Lin Mo was just about to flee to the side when three more yellow-green masses dropped from above. They abruptly burst open in midair, forming three enormous yellow-green webs that completely sealed off every escape route.
Those enormous webs were astonishingly poisonous.
As they landed on the ground and vegetation, they actually gave off scalp-prickling sounds of corrosion, wisps of yellow smoke rising into the air.
Lin Mo instantly froze in place.
Looking at those unmistakable, lethally poisonous yellow-green spiderwebs, he raised his head little by little, like a machine.
Sure enough, that horrifying human face from midair appeared before his eyes once again.
The black shadow bearing that horrifying human face turned its body, its eight spider legs like blades. It was none other than a Man-Faced Demon Spider!
By then, the Rock Armor Giant Crocodile had also reached him, its vertical pupils locked firmly onto him.
Lin Mo really went numb.
He seriously suspected that he had been set up.
He distinctly remembered that he should be in the outer ring of the Great Star Dou Forest, right? Why the fuck had two ten-thousand-year soul beasts set their sights on him at once?!
And of these two ten-thousand-year soul beasts, one was a fucking mechanics monster, and the other was a stat monster!
The classic Man-Faced Demon Spider.
A hundred-year one fought thousand-year beasts, a thousand-year one fought ten-thousand-year beasts, and a ten-thousand-year one rivaled hundred-thousand-year beasts. Fighting across tiers was its daily bread!
Then there was Uncle Crocodile.
Whether you were in the water or on land, once it bit you, a single death roll countered you one hundred percent!
"Fine, fine, fine, so that's how we're playing? Then I'm done pretending too!"
Lin Mo suddenly straightened his back, his gaze turning utterly resolute. His entire bearing brimmed with might as azure-gold Soul Power erupted outward and his robes snapped in the wind. The display left both the Man-Faced Demon Spider and the Rock Armor Giant Crocodile stunned.
For a moment, the two of them nearly forgot to attack.
Lin Mo gathered himself, then shouted four heart-rending words at the sky at the top of his lungs:
"Elder Xuan, save me!!!"
The air fell silent for three seconds, and then...
"Caw~ caw~ caw~"
A crow flew leisurely past, slowly spitting out six dots.
The Man-Faced Demon Spider: "..."
The Rock Armor Giant Crocodile: "..."
Lin Mo: "...Elder Xuan, you've screwed me!!!"