Chapter 41

Chapter 41: Mo Ka Forest

After pulling off the swap, Ling Mo didn’t linger. She’d seen enough—this group was a disaster. If she stayed with them, she’d die with them.

As the plant’s barrage gradually weakened and dusk deepened, Ling Mo slipped away. Before anyone realized what she’d done, she was already gone.

She headed straight for the hiding place she’d picked earlier: a narrow, well-concealed burrow, its entrance tucked beneath thick tree roots, just large enough for her to squeeze through.

When the nightfall bar descended, the others scrambled to find shelter of their own, waiting for morning.

They noticed Ling Mo was missing, but no one cared. Her talent wasn’t combat-focused—if she stayed, she’d only serve as cannon fodder.

The girl in the white dress trailed after Jin Gang and the others. Before leaving, she looked back at the vegetable basket abandoned near the plant, her eyes sharp with possessive certainty.

She couldn’t lose her right to stay in the game.

And the moment she thought of the culprit who’d brought her to this point, it was like she could smell that choking stench again.

She would find that person. She would tear her apart. Only then would her hatred ease.

In the burrow, Ling Mo suddenly clapped a hand over her mouth and nose and sneezed.

She didn’t dare make a sound—not because something dangerous was nearby, but because the soil around her rustled with soft, skittering movement.

One finally pushed up through the dirt, trying to climb the nearest tree. Ling Mo snatched it in a swift grab.

A bug the size of a fist.

Luckily, she’d prepared. Gloves on.

On Blue Star, cicada pupae were nutritious, but Ling Mo had always wanted nothing to do with bugs.

So she did the only sensible thing: she took out her vegetable basket and tossed the longevity cicada inside.

With enough of these longevity cicada, she could lock in her points—and whatever ingredients she gathered tomorrow, too. The skinny man and chubby man’s points would be her cushion.

As she used her mental power to catch more longevity cicada crawling out of the ground, she also kept reaching toward the plant in the clearing, trying to communicate.

To her surprise, the plant didn’t reject her taking its fruits. It had two conditions: she had to take away all of its child, and she had to spread waterwood stone around its base.

At first, Ling Mo didn’t understand.

Child?

What child?

Then she realized the presence responding to her was likely the largest purple ling tree—the one surrounded by many smaller plants of the same kind. So many of them rooted together meant constant competition for nutrients.

Ling Mo agreed without hesitation. That was easy for her.

But she had her own condition. She wanted the energy rawstone buried beneath them.

The plant hesitated, and then accepted. Compared to the suffering caused by its child, the energy rawstone mattered less.

Ling Mo reached out from a distance and moved every plant except the largest one into her pocket space.

The drain on her mental power was brutal. She had to drink an advanced recovery serum before she could keep going.

She plucked the fruits from the purple ling tree, took the energy rawstone from underground, and then spread waterwood stone around the clearing as promised.

By the time she finished, her mental power felt wrung out to the last thread.

Her hands trembled as she pulled out an advanced recovery potion and drank it. Relief flooded her—full strength again, in an instant.

Advanced recovery serum really was good stuff.

Too bad it cost a fortune.

Back inside the burrow, Ling Mo continued catching longevity cicada while sending her awareness into pocket space to check her haul.

She’d guessed there would be a lot of energy rawstone below the tree, but she hadn’t expected this much—over a hundred pieces.

There were also over a hundred fruits, neatly stored.

As for the plants she’d moved into pocket space, she decided to keep them alive. If they matured, they’d make excellent guards. And if they didn’t? Fine. They’d still bear fruit. Either way, she didn’t lose.

She still didn’t know what the plants were called, so she scanned them with her learning machine.

The blue screen flickered, and the information appeared: purple ling tree. It loved sunlight and only bore fruit during a specific window. Bloom period: one day. Fruit ripening: one day. If the fruit wasn’t picked before that, on the third day it would fall and immediately take root and sprout.

So that was why it was seasonal.

If she’d been any slower, the ripe fruits would have dropped and sprouted on their own.

Lucky for her, she moved fast.

She was still savoring that triumph when her instincts jolted. Something huge stepped into her detection range, heavy footsteps vibrating through the earth.

It headed straight for where the purple ling tree stood.

A moment later, a roar tore through the night—so loud it felt like it would split her eardrums.

The ground shuddered in violent pulses. In the burrow, Ling Mo froze, holding her breath, not daring to make the slightest sound.

The learning machine had said the purple ling tree’s fruit was the Lord of the Forest’s favorite food.

That massive presence had to be the ruler of Mo Ka Sen Territory.

If you waited a year for your favorite food and found it suddenly gone, you’d go mad, too.

Ling Mo was terrified, but she didn’t retreat into pocket space. She could hide, sure—but the stream of longevity cicada didn’t care about her fear. They kept crawling up from the soil, and she wasn’t about to waste that.

So the roar echoed all night, and Ling Mo spent the entire night trembling and collecting longevity cicada, grinding her score all the way back to first place.

Only when dawn arrived did the longevity cicada finally stop emerging.

Ling Mo pulled away the makeshift grass cloak blocking her burrow entrance and tried to breathe fresh air.

The stench nearly knocked her out.

She forced herself to lean out and immediately saw the source: familiar piles not far away. And there wasn’t just one—there were several scattered around.

Ling Mo waved a hand and cleaned them up without hesitation, doing the forest territory a favor.

She’d discovered this stuff’s usefulness earlier when she threw it at the girl in the white dress. It wouldn’t kill anyone, but it was humiliating in the extreme.

Even if a toddler held a lump of shit, the lord wouldn’t charge in carelessly.

And whatever she didn’t use? Fertilizer.