Chapter 300: Crossing the Valley - The Frozen Heads

Zhao Ji made a great discovery after moving closer.

He finally saw the true appearance of that Magic Beast. The thick white Mist that had originally shrouded the Magic Beast's entire body was now gone, perhaps because the beast had been frozen or perhaps because it had been tossed back and forth while wrapped in a giant snowball, which had dazed it.

In any case, the mist around the Magic Beast was gone.

It was a very huge, variegated spider-like Magic Beast. Why say it was only spider-like, rather than a true spider?

The reason was that after Zhao Ji moved closer and looked, he discovered that on the frozen face of the Magic Beast, there were actually over a dozen Human Heads growing. These heads all had necks and were growing exactly where the Magic Beast's eyes should have been.

These Human Heads, like the other limbs of the Magic Beast, were all covered in large patches of ice and snow on their faces. The Magic Beast's other limbs were twisted and crooked; some stood upright outside, twitching slightly, while others remained buried under massive piles of snow, out of sight.

Zhao Ji grinned, breathed in the freezing air, and slowly approached.

Once he got close, he discovered that these frozen Human Heads still possessed vitality; they struggled to turn their heads, seemingly wanting to look in Zhao Ji's direction.

The Long Spear he had thrown earlier was stuck under the neck of one of the heads, and that head hung low, appearing to have lost its vitality.

Others suddenly opened their frozen eyelids, opening pitch-black eyes with the sound of fine ice cracking, and slowly rotated their frozen eyeballs to look at Zhao Ji.

Zhao Ji saw the eyes of these things—whether they were truly Human Heads or not—and discovered that there were no whites in these human eyes; they were entirely pitch-black, which was extremely chilling.

Above his head, an upright leg of the Magic Beast twitched slightly, barely managing to collapse toward Zhao Ji's position, but Zhao Ji, who had already noticed it, dodged with a leap.

Zhao Ji stood up, turned around, and swung his Great Axe with full force, slamming it into the Magic Beast's slender leg.

Although the Magic Beast's leg was sturdy and sharp, after being frozen like this, it no longer seemed to have its previous hardness; after a round of hammering by Zhao Ji, he soon snapped the leg in the middle.

He turned around again to look at those Human Heads growing on the Magic Beast's face, and those heads were also looking at him.

The heads, with their various faces, twitched and gnashed their jaws, making the teeth inside click and clatter.

With a snort, Zhao Ji climbed onto a large pile of snow nearby, reached the top of the Magic Beast's front, and with a jump, stomped down onto the Magic Beast's torso.

Those Human Heads could not see Zhao Ji's figure and seemed somewhat panicked, slowly turning left and right until one head finally rotated one hundred and eighty degrees to look at Zhao Ji, who was behind it.

Then, all the other heads turned in unison.

Although they did not look threatening, Zhao Ji felt his scalp tingle, and his body felt a sudden sense of heaviness and weakness.

It was not until a green light emitted from the Backpack on his back that the feeling in Zhao Ji's body improved.

He did not see the situation behind him, but as soon as his body regained its strength, he immediately lunged forward two steps and slashed his axe downward with force.

"Go to hell!" A loud shout accompanied his fierce axe strike.

The Human Heads, already stiff from the cold, did not move at all before being split into two halves right down the middle by Zhao Ji's axe. The human tissue he expected to splatter did not appear; after splitting the skull, the contents greatly exceeded Zhao Ji's expectations.

Where the brain should have been, there was not a trace of a brain, but rather a fist-sized spider that had been cleaved in two.

If people normally saw a spider larger than a fist, they would certainly think it was a Monster, but compared to this house-sized spider-like Magic Beast under his feet, it seemed quite ordinary.

Yet, no matter how ordinary, turning a human brain into a spider was still quite eerie and strange.

Zhao Ji dared not think too deeply; he raised his axe and struck, slashing step by step, and after several consecutive blows, he smashed all dozen or so Human Heads into fragments.

These strange things were destroyed, but the Magic Beast under his feet was still alive, and seemingly extremely dissatisfied with Zhao Ji's actions, it let out a high-pitched, intense squeaking sound, even though it was still weak.

Just as Zhao Ji was thinking about whether to continue slashing and destroying downward where the Human Heads had appeared, a thick, pitch-black limb burst out from the large pile of snow at the mouth on the front of the Magic Beast's body with a loud boom.

Zhao Ji looked up and felt that this thing looked quite familiar, then suddenly realized: wasn't this the giant mouth of the Magic Beast he had cut off outside Yinyulin Village?

Looking at it now, the Magic Beast's mouth did not seem to have fully healed, with only a few sparse, tender white teeth growing where the many embedded teeth had originally been.

Nothing else had grown out yet.

Even so, Zhao Ji was somewhat amazed at the recovery speed of the Magic Beast's body; relying entirely on self-healing, it had regrown a batch of new teeth in just these few short days.

This predatory mouth extending from the Magic Beast's body did not seem to be frozen; since it emerged, it had been tentatively whipping back and forth, forcing Zhao Ji to take two steps back.

As a result, the giant mouth seemed to have locked onto his position and whipped directly toward him.

Zhao Ji pulled out his Long Spear, held the axe in one hand and the cold shaft of the spear in the other, and jumped in place to dodge the whipping attack of the giant mouth, but was immediately forced off the Magic Beast's body by the thing's repeated strikes.

By the time Zhao Ji scrambled down from the scattered snow of the giant snowball, he looked up to see the Magic Beast using its mouth to rescue its remaining limbs one by one.

That pitch-black predatory giant mouth was very long and highly flexible; apart from not being hard enough, it was quite formidable. It didn't take much time for it to pull its entire body out.

Sensing something was wrong, Zhao Ji frowned and retreated. After the Magic Beast freed itself from the snow pile, it seemed that most of its body was still frozen, so it did not move, and the previous Mist was not released again.

Although this Magic Beast did not seem to speak human language, both it and Zhao Ji understood that intense intent to kill.

Zhao Ji turned and walked toward the south; he knew the Magic Beast would definitely follow.

Just as Zhao Ji expected, after he crossed the thick ice and stepped onto the gentle slope on the other side of the Valley, the Magic Beast, still on the thick ice in the middle of the Valley, finally made a move.

It ate the leg that Zhao Ji had broken with his axe, then moved its other still-clumsy limbs and slowly crawled down the large snow pile formed by the collapse of the snowball it had rolled and accumulated earlier.

Unlike a Human like Zhao Ji, who had to tie cloth strips with friction to his feet to walk on ice, this Magic Beast had many sharp legs, and the bottom of its body was smooth. After placing its body on the ice it did not like, this clever Magic Beast imitated Zhao Ji's previous movements, paddling with its remaining five legs and using itself as a sled to slide across the ice.

The Magic Beast's speed far exceeded Zhao Ji's cautious walking on the ice; it quickly crossed the thick, hard ice and reached the gentle slope on the other side of the Valley.

Seeing this, Zhao Ji hurriedly quickened his pace. He wasn't worried that the Magic Beast wouldn't follow him. With wicked ideas in mind, Zhao Ji slung his axe back onto his back, used the Long Spear as a cane with both hands, and climbed toward the gentle slope with all his might, using both hands and feet.

The Magic Beast behind him squeaked and shrieked; although its movements seemed wild and aggressive, it had clearly learned from its previous fall on the other slope and was much more careful.

It kept its torso very low, spread its remaining five legs wide, and while carefully moving itself, it still persistently pursued Zhao Ji the Human.

Just now, when Zhao Ji stepped on its body, it had already memorized the scent of this Human and the sounds of his heartbeat and the wriggling of his Viscera.

In its understanding, every animal's heartbeat was different, and the sounds of their slowly wriggling Viscera were also quite distinctive. As a life form with keen sensitivity to vibrations, as long as it carefully felt the sounds emitted by an animal's body, it could easily distinguish them.

Knight Lanisha, who had barely managed to lead the team through a mountain peak buffeted by wind and snow, and who had tied everyone together with the same rope, waited for the wind and snow to subside before brushing the ice and snow off her armor. When she looked ahead, she was stunned in place in surprise.

The other Hunters on the same rope passed through the final wind and snow zone one by one, and were also stunned by the scene before them.

They knew that between the two continuous mountain peaks was a huge gentle-sloped Valley; living in Kendall County, they had naturally heard people talk about the terrain and landscape here, but no one had expected that on the gentle slopes on both sides of the Valley, there would be a snow-free zone cutting across both sides of the Valley.

At least twenty meters wide, the zone had no white snow, completely exposing the gray, fractured mountain rock beneath.

It was as if a giant god had stood in the air and drawn a line along the ground on both sides of the Valley with a finger.

So, where was all that snow?

It was all gathered in the very center of the wide ice in the middle of the Valley.

Piled up high, it looked like a shattered bird's egg.

"What is that thing?" a young Hunter asked.

The other few old hunters muttered, not knowing what to say; although they had lived for several decades, they truly could not tell what that huge snow pile on the ice surface was.

Knight Lanisha frowned, opened the faceplate of her helmet, and said to the other hunters with a strange expression: "Uh, I do have a guess. Sigh, it's too crazy, it's not very likely."

The few old hunters looked at each other and said: "My Lady, please speak. We all cannot tell what that is. If you have an idea, tell us all; perhaps it could be beneficial for pursuing the Magic Beast, and it could also avoid some potential dangers."

Waving her hand, Knight Lanisha's expression twitched oddly, and finally, as she began to speak, she couldn't hold it back and laughed out: "I think, look, the movement traces left by the Magic Beast from the side extend all the way to the end where there is no snow. You tell me, did that Magic Beast roll down from the snow on the gentle slope of the Valley? After rolling down, it was wrapped by the snow and rolled all the way to the other end of the Valley."

"Then, just like everyone usually rolls snowballs on a hillside, that Magic Beast rolled back along the path it had rolled out. Just like that, it finally rolled to the very center of the ice surface, and only then did it break open the big snowball and escape from inside. Hehe, hahahahahaha. I can't take it, I have to laugh. I have never heard of a Magic Beast tripping while walking on snow. Hahaha."

The hunters' expressions were all very strange; in their eyes, that Magic Beast was a huge Monster that wouldn't suffer the slightest damage even if they all fired at it simultaneously. Yet, unexpectedly, it had done such a ridiculous thing in the Knight's description.

Looking at it this way, although the Magic Beast was still very terrifying, at least it was not very smart. If they relied only on the ten of them and did not fight the Magic Beast head-on, relying on traps and the wisdom of hunting, it seemed possible to defeat that thing.

Afterwards, the group no longer waded through the thick snow and instead carefully followed the snow-free path opened by the Magic Beast's rolling to reach the ice lake.

After a discussion, everyone unanimously decided to first go to the huge snow pile created by the Magic Beast to see if there were any other discoveries.

With Knight Lanisha pulling, the other hunters sat on their cloaks, and the Knight pulled them all over in one go using a rope.

Actually, they could have walked across the ice surface, but Lanisha felt it was too slow, so she just pulled everyone over with one hand.

When she walked on the ice, she stomped down directly, using her steel-plated Boots to shatter the surface layer of the ice, then borrowed the force to walk quickly. Every step she took left a shattered footprint, and she crossed one side of the ice surface rapidly.

After arriving at the snow pile in the middle of the ice, everyone took out their weapons and cautiously approached this huge, scattered snow pile.

The Knight took the lead, riding her beloved horse to leap repeatedly on the compacted snow, and soon approached the center of the snow pile from the outer perimeter.

There was no sign of the Magic Beast inside, but there were all kinds of traces left by the Magic Beast everywhere.

Suddenly, her eyes swept over the surrounding snow, and she saw many different things in the snow pile.

Riding her brave horse, her beloved horse made a jump, cleared the fracture zone in the middle of the snow, and jumped to the side of those things.

After looking closely, she immediately recognized that these were the Human Heads she had seen on the front of the Magic Beast's body after she had approached it earlier.

However, what was scattered on the ground were just some fragments of half a skull. Besides that, she also saw some tiny spiders the size of a fist, but spiders of this size were everywhere in every Forest and were truly very common, so they did not attract her attention.

Until the other hunters came over, some hunters noticed these Human Heads that had appeared here strangely; they had all been severed by sharp Human weapons.

This discovery shocked everyone.

Everyone looked at each other, and an idea was about to be spoken from their lips.

Could it be that the Human who was pursued by the Magic Beast earlier was not dead yet? Had they actually escaped the Magic Beast's attacks all the way here and even launched an attack on the Magic Beast?

Everyone discussed for a while; although they didn't know why many shattered Human Head fragments had appeared here inexplicably, these things had definitely been beaten into this state by someone.

Knight Lanisha had to state her previous intelligence, otherwise, the hunters' subsequent guesses would deviate from the possible reality.

"My Lady, so you mean that Wal, Pozina, and Dardin, who were killed by the Magic Beast earlier, were all swallowed by this Magic Beast, and then it grew their heads where its eyes were?" the oldest hunter in the group asked heavily.

Knight Lanisha nodded, confirming this answer.

Although the news was sad, the hunters who knew the situation did not remain silent for long before they spoke one after another, stating their own speculations.

After discussion, everyone felt that even if the three swallowed hunters were still considered alive before, they were forcibly controlled by the Magic Beast, which was an insult to all of them as hunters. That unknown Human had destroyed these enslaved people—who didn't know if they could still be considered Human—which could be considered as saving them.

"May they fly to the kingdom of the gods."

"May their Spirits fly to the kingdom of the gods."

"No longer suffering, enjoying long-lasting pleasure, and then being reborn to meet again."

The hunters found the few head fragments that could be identified as the victimized hunters and held a simple blessing funeral. Unlike the hunters, Knight Lanisha did not believe in the God of Hunting, so she did not participate; she only warned the few hunters who carried the victimized hunters' body fragments that these things had come into contact with a mysterious, evil Magic Beast, and they must be inspected by a Church Priest of the Church of the God of the Dead before being buried back in the city.

Zhao Ji and the pursuing Magic Beast entered the mountain region with intense wind and snow one after another; as long as he crossed this continuous mountain range, he could reach the place where the Bandit Group might be hiding.

At that time, if the Magic Beast behind him still wanted to kill him, he would dive into the simple Yingdi of the Bandits and let the Magic Beast deal with those damned Bandits.

If the Magic Beast saw other Humans and stopped pursuing him, he would hide first and see the situation; anyway, no matter what, those Bandits had to die.

Whether it was because those Bandits had killed many innocent people and Caravan Shop Assistants in the past and had not yet received the lesson they deserved, or because he needed the metal weapons on those Bandits.

Although there was a possibility that the Magic Beast would not be a match for the numerous Bandit Group, for Zhao Ji, it was dogs biting dogs anyway; whether the Magic Beast killed those Bandits or the Bandits killed the Magic Beast, it made no difference to him—both were good things.

Good things.

After a long time of escaping, walking, and crossing mountains, even with sufficient food, water, and the support of the Divine Power of the Agricultural God on Zhao Ji, his fatigue and body aches were still there.

Zhao Ji was panting, so he simply lifted his Faceplate and breathed in the extremely icy cold air in large gulps; regardless of whether it would cause illness, he had already buried the Agricultural God Badge that could cure illnesses in the fields around Kendall City before he came.

He had buried it quietly, and no one would discover it.

Calculating the time since he buried it, he only needed to wander for a few days and then find his way back to Kendall City, at which point he would probably be able to use the badge again.

So, he couldn't worry about the possibility of getting sick at this moment.