Chapter 242 The Bad Guys
Ji Ma, as if struck by electricity, immediately jumped back into the air, creating some distance.
She knew that although she was in an invisible state, it was of no use in front of the Mother of Beasts, who was adept in divination. Moreover, the Mother of Beasts still had her wings in her hands.
What Ji Ma could do now was to get as far away from the Mother of Beasts as possible. As for the thief plan? It could be declared a failure.
Ji Ma flapped her wings with all her strength, her mind cleared a bit, and she flew toward a hilly terrain, the designated escape route.
Suddenly, her wings felt as if they were being squeezed and kneaded by an invisible pair of large hands. In a moment of excruciating pain, her wings snapped into more than a dozen pieces with a sound like breaking bones.
The pain caused Ji Ma to lose her balance. Dazed, she almost blacked out, but relying on her willpower, she hung on. When she opened her eyes, the ground was rushing toward her.
Ji Ma adjusted her posture, landed on her legs, and supported herself with her hands on the ground, avoiding a nasty fall. Her shattered wings hung limply on her back, a wave of pain surged in her head like an ocean, making it buzz; her eyes turned red, and tears streamed down her face.
She really felt foolish; why did she keep taking such risks? It would have been better if that group of Barto people had all been eaten by the beastmen, and she wouldn’t have had to risk death.
She complained as she forced herself to run, running desperately while resisting the malevolent curse of the Mother of Beasts.
The wings in the Mother of Beasts’ hand emitted blue smoke, burned, and turned to charred fragments that fell to the ground. Although the powerful medium was damaged in the confrontation, Ji Ma had lost her ability to fly.
Eight hundred meters away, Ji Ma stumbled as she fled.
Vigina, the Mother of Beasts, watched her retreating figure, a smirk curling at the corner of her mouth as she said, “You really are determined. Good, I’ll return the torment you’ve caused my child, piece by piece.”
Her curse not only shattered Ji Ma’s wings but also temporarily sealed Ji Ma’s extraordinary abilities.
With each step Ji Ma took, she felt every muscle in her body aching, and while taking medicine, she prayed that she could quickly lift the curse of the Mother of Beasts.
Countless powerful beastmen were chasing after her—beastmen with crow wings, flying scorpion-tailed lions, and centaur beasts running with four legs. They ran faster than wild horses, each of them among the fastest of the Mother of Beasts’ offspring.
The distance between Ji Ma and her pursuers was rapidly closing, like a rope tightening suddenly. The only thing Ji Ma could do was to try to lengthen her strides and run, run hard, desperately trying to create a bit of time for herself.
Suddenly, her calf cramped painfully, and her right foot lost strength, causing her to fall onto the jagged grass. As she fell, Ji Ma felt a surge of anger and despair.
I actually fell! Didn’t I use the lucky ring?
In the next moment, she felt something fly past her forehead—a bright amber spear shot over her head. A few strands of broken black hair danced in the light as the unhit spear flew into the darkness far away.
Before she could feel relieved, a booming sound reverberated through the sky.
Ji Ma instinctively turned to look; she saw three arrows with green trails swooping toward her like comets through the night sky.
But now she couldn’t use her extraordinary abilities; in a panic, Ji Ma stood up and tried to run, but she stumbled again and rolled down the slope.
Explosions echoed against her eardrums, and splattering soil and stones hit her body.
When she reached the bottom of the slope, Ji Ma touched her body and found that she could actually stand up without a single wound.
At the top of the slope stood a centaur beast, its bow drawn tightly, sending arrows flying toward Ji Ma.
At that moment, Ji Ma regained control of her extraordinary abilities, her previously paralyzed hands coming back to life.
The arrow pierced through her chest.
But Ji Ma’s puppet substitute technique took effect; the hideous puppet replaced her in death. She herself invisibly teleported ten meters away, but she created a silent illusory image, producing a self with an arrow in her chest, reaching for the arrow, trying hard to lift her head to look at the centaur beast.
The centaur beast immediately nocked another arrow, aiming at the fake Ji Ma.
The true Ji Ma focused her gaze on him, forcibly dragging him into the dream realm. The centaur beast’s eyes became dazed, and its drawn bow weakened instantly.
In Ji Ma’s vision, a pale dream balloon was forming above the centaur beast’s head.
If she could just enter his dream and then quickly leap to another dream using the “dream seed,” she could escape.
“Don’t even think about running!”
At that moment, a familiar voice, Basha’s, burst onto the scene, throwing a small dreamcatcher at the fake Ji Ma.
Fortunately, I’m clever.
Ji Ma felt a sigh of relief inside.
At that instant, the dream balloon above the centaur beast’s head fully formed, and Ji Ma’s will focused on it. She turned into a wisp of a ghost, diving into his dream.
A series of extraordinary abilities—energy spheres, arrows, and more, in various colors, fell on the fake Ji Ma, and she dispersed, leaving only a puppet pierced by an arrow lying on the soft earth.
A large red smile on that puppet made Basha, who arrived just in time, feel defeated.
“Tricked again! Where’s the Succubus?!”
More than a kilometer away.
Ji Ma escaped from the dream, stumbling to her knees on the ground, expelling several wriggling black worms from her mouth, which dissolved and disappeared on the grass.
“Fortunately… cough cough cough, I set a getaway point.”
Ji Ma stood up, using her axe-spear to support herself.
A few meters behind her, several beastmen were sleeping soundly. They had been forced into sleep and drugged by Ji Ma, their limbs bound, with dream seeds implanted, serving as Ji Ma’s escape point.
Ji Ma had intended to run further away, but when she dove into the dream, she found herself surrounded by thick gray mist. A dream seed visible more than a kilometer away was indeed hard to reach.
“I need to keep running.”
Ji Ma took a breath, her throat crackling like a broken wind box, burning, while her head throbbed painfully.
That was the result of consuming a large amount of magical power in a short time.
Arriving at Arcanis, making long-distance dashes, jumping dreams, and puppet substitutes—all of these were extraordinarily power-draining abilities.
Ji Ma glanced at her personal system display and found that her magic power was only at thirty-one percent, with a negative status of magic chaos.
Fortunately, she could use medicine to suppress it.
Ji Ma rummaged through her belt, picking up a vial of blue potion and gulping it down.
But the potion went down the wrong pipe.
Ji Ma choked as the potion went into her trachea.
She coughed violently, nearly choking, taking a full minute to catch her breath again.
Damn the law of conservation of luck.
Ji Ma wanted to take off the lucky ring but gave up on that idea; she was in a hurry to escape.
I want to see just how unlucky I can get.
Ji Ma suppressed her chaotic magic as she focused on the beastman’s dream, getting ready to enter the dream.
Suddenly, a large tree in front exploded.
Chunks of flesh and bark flew out, rushing toward Ji Ma.
Instinctively, Ji Ma grabbed her axe-spear and held it in front of her, simultaneously enhancing her extraordinary charm.
The incoming chunks of flesh veered away, sketching out a hemispherical protective range based on her extraordinary charm.
“Children, wake up quickly.” A familiar, loving voice came from within the blood mist. “We meet again, Miss Ji Ma. You can really run.”
Out of the blood mist, the first to emerge was the Mother of Beasts, her plump body appearing. The lower half—a body like that of an ant queen—was missing many parts, continuously bleeding.
This was perhaps the cost of her forced “teleportation.” Ji Ma realized that the Mother of Beasts could use trees to move.
Looking at the trees that had exploded as if pregnant, it just happened to be an old tree that could barely accommodate the Mother of Beasts’ enormous body, and her luck was surprisingly bad.
“You almost escaped.” The Mother of Beasts picked up another half-burnt wing. “Fortunately, I have a second wing that tracked you.”
The malicious curse followed, causing every muscle in Ji Ma’s body to tremble violently, as if it wanted to leap from her bones. She struggled to suppress the curse, reciting a counter-curse.
Although the trembling in her muscles subsided, cold sweat dripped steadily from her chin.
“I’m very curious about how you plan to escape this time.”
Vigina, the Mother of Beasts, approached Ji Ma, her body blocking the moonlight, casting a shadow over Ji Ma.
Being so close to the Mother of Beasts, it truly seemed hopeless.
Ji Ma stepped back, settling into a horse stance, gripping the axe-spear. Although her hands trembled slightly from weakness, the spear tip steadied itself, pointing at the milk-laden bosom of the Mother of Beasts.
Moonlight cascaded onto the porcelain white skin of the Mother of Beasts, highlighting her golden hair beautifully.
Vigina, the Mother of Beasts, dropped the half-burnt wing, holding her tentacle staff, chuckling, “What a stubborn little girl. It’s a pity that I don’t like you.”
Ji Ma was always welcoming to any conversation that bought her time.
“Why not?”
“You’ve caused my child great suffering,” Vigina, the Mother of Beasts, replied. “And you have a close relationship with the Demon King Kima. I suspect you are using his flesh and blood to create, whether you are or not, it’s better to just let me use you as material for nurturing excellent offspring.”
Having said that, Vigina, the Mother of Beasts, raised her tentacle staff and waved it.
“Ding ding ding.”
The wooden stick in her hand, tied with copper bells, suddenly rang out, shaking.
Why did the tentacle staff turn into a stick that clowns like to use?
“Wow, this thing actually recognizes its master?”
Arcanis shouted nearby, suddenly leaping away and discarding the tentacle staff he had just stolen. The tentacle staff extended its tentacles, whipping at Arcanis, who nimbly dodged all around.
Moreover, he had a bloodied cloth bag tied around his waist, the fabric wrapping around a can-shaped object.
Vigina, the Mother of Beasts, immediately sensed that it was the Demon King’s extraordinary substance!
Her eyes narrowed dangerously as she looked at Arcanis.
“Hey!” Arcanis turned to run, shouting, “Ji Ma, why did you run away?!”
Ji Ma was climbing the slope with the agility of a mountain goat, not looking back as she shouted:
“Since we can’t win anyway!”
Arcanis ran even faster, catching up to Ji Ma and asking, “You don’t want the extraordinary substance? I stole it out of a living womb.”
Voices of fury from the Mother of Beasts came from behind.
Ji Ma replied, “What’s the point of taking it? Neither of us can beat this meat mountain in a short period.”
“Either way, you need to take it.”
Arcanis tossed the cloth bag to Ji Ma. When she caught the heavy bag, the can inside heated up, the extraordinary substance boiling as if to escape and occupy Ji Ma.
She quickly tossed it into the prepared backpack, securing it for the moment.
The Mother of Beasts climbed the slope quickly, the trees around her morphing to support her body, and she was about to enter the attack range of her tentacle staff.
Ji Ma was planning how to trick Arcanis into becoming cannon fodder when suddenly, a sound of a baby crying came from him.
She turned her head and saw Arcanis running backward, hauling a naked beastman newborn, yelling at the Mother of Beasts, “I stole this from your belly; it’s so ugly!”
“Put down my child.”
“Stop right there!”
Surprisingly, the Mother of Beasts really halted her steps, but the tentacle staff suddenly shot out its tentacles, attacking Arcanis.
Arcanis vanished from sight and reappeared in another shadow.
“Hey, look, I dodged.” Arcanis laughed, gripping a dagger, and in front of the Mother of Beasts, directly stabbed at the baby beastman’s eyes, “Die, little monster!”
The Mother of Beasts extended her hand, shouting, “No! Please!”
“Ha ha, it’s dead.” Arcanis threw the lifeless baby toward Ji Ma and fled in another direction: “If you have the guts, come catch me! Mother Monster.”
The Mother of Beasts hesitated slightly.
Without hesitation, Ji Ma used the corpse of the dead baby as a powerful medium, returning the pain she had endured earlier one by one to the Mother of Beasts, causing her to roll down the slope…
