Chapter 204

More than a dozen Spider Guards rushed to handle it, but the fire spread with astonishing speed; often, just as they painstakingly extinguished one room, four or five others would already be ablaze behind them. To make matters worse, the wind blowing up from the depths was incredibly strong, carrying sparks that danced everywhere, further scattering the seeds of light and heat in all directions.

He Lingchuan had not expected four signal arrows to have such an effect.

But he wasn't very happy, because the Spider Guards had already pounced.

The two in the lead could actually jump, and one leap covered three zhang! It was his first time seeing spiders that could jump, and in such an unfavorable environment at that.

He Lingchuan had no choice but to call out a warning to his companions on the surface, while he himself swung his long saber, using every ounce of his strength to hack down two bundles of spider silk! These two bundles were pure white, and they didn't seem to belong to Zhu Xiuer.

Before the jumping spiders could pounce on his face, He Lingchuan took a deep breath, turned, and jumped! Yes, he adopted a posture of embracing the abyss and went into freefall.

The jumping spiders pounced on empty air.

Other Spider Guards arrived and launched spider web attacks, wanting to fish him up and teach him a lesson.

Unfortunately, they were ultimately a few feet short.

However, any living thing that fell from here was doomed; they only needed to go down later to collect the corpse. The Spider Guards lost interest in He Lingchuan and turned back to save the burning stone chambers, while also splitting off a small squad of over a hundred Spider Guards that crawled out of the cavern, looking to settle scores with the humans.

Humans, creatures that spiders detested, would never enter the Ghost Needle Shi Lin alone. If one could pop out of the cavern, there must be a whole group outside! He Lingchuan plummeted like a plumb bob, the wind whistling in his ears, still clutching the two bundles of spider silk in his hands.

He whipped out the spider silk again and again, wanting it to attach to the distant rock wall. With the stickiness of spider silk, even a slight contact would allow it to adhere firmly.

But they were truly too light and airy; buffeted by the strong wind blowing from below, they could only drift straight upward!

Damn, movies and TV shows really are deceptive, again! He Lingchuan cursed aloud.

If he died from the fall in this dream, he should wake up in reality immediately.

He should.

But now he was unwilling to leave the dream; he still wanted to try a little harder.

At this rate of descent, he only had a few moments left.

Fortunately, he still had a backup plan.

The Spider Queen's nest had developed from a natural karst cave system, riddled with thousands of holes. He Lingchuan chose the largest opening on the rock wall, took aim, pulled an object from his bosom, channeled his true qi, and threw it with all his might!

After a thousand days of hard practice in throwing, he finally used it at this very moment.

He Lingchuan watched with his own eyes as it landed precisely in a pile of dead leaves within the wall cavity, his heart filled with wild joy.

He himself was falling rapidly, yet he still had to hit a hole more than two zhang away; where could he have found this level of eyesight and precision calculation a few months ago?

What was even more terrifying was that he was about to hit the bottom of the abyss, and he only had one chance to succeed! Awesome, he was just too awesome; he would have to praise himself properly later.

This life-saving treasure was a tiny cicada slough.

The Ghost Shadow Cicada hides underground during its larval stage, and as an adult, it likes to wedge itself into the base of tree forks—the armpits of large trees—and can even change its body color to match the tree, so this kind of cicada slough is not easy to get.

But it is an indispensable material for performing the Li Dai Tao Jiang technique.

He Lingchuan had long since memorized the secret of the divine ability by heart; at this moment, his left hand formed a seal, and without even needing to chant, he vanished from his original position, teleporting directly into the mountain cave!

Correspondingly, that Ghost Shadow cicada slough was swapped into his original position; it should have continued falling, but because it was truly too light and the wind at the bottom of the abyss was too strong, it was actually blown upward.

Having escaped death, He Lingchuan was covered in cold sweat. He leaned against the stone wall and let out a long sigh of relief.

He poked his head out to look at the bottom of the abyss and broke into a cold sweat: so the distance between life and death was only four zhang!

Thanks to him exchanging for the Li Dai Tao Jiang technique with military merits before setting out, and thanks to him repeatedly pondering its usage while riding his horse along the way.

See, it came in handy, didn't it? Otherwise, he would have been forced to log off early.

He took a few deep breaths to calm his mind and prepared to continue exploring forward.

The ground beneath his feet was very soft; thanks to the illumination of the glowing spores, he could see that the ground was covered in semi-rotted branches and leaves, as well as a moss carpet over a foot thick.

The plant carpet was exceptionally soft, causing him to sink in with every step.

Only when he was close did he discover that there were things wriggling on the carpet—they were actually... aphids almost the size of pomelos? This was his first time seeing aphids this large.

These strange insects had round bodies and were light green under the fluorescent light. As He Lingchuan, the uninvited guest, arrived, they only paddled their six short legs, moving away from him laboriously and slowly.

He Lingchuan looked closely and realized that there were at least seven or eight hundred fat aphids on the moss carpet five zhang ahead; some were eating, some were courting, and some were simply fast asleep, but basically none had left their own little patch of territory.

Just then, a shadow flickered on the ground. He Lingchuan quickly hid in the shadows, and then he saw a spider walk over from a fork ahead.

He was just about to launch a surprise attack when the spider walked up to an aphid and patted its back.

The aphid's body shuddered, and it actually excreted a drop of honeydew the size of a pigeon egg.

The spider swallowed it in one gulp as if it were a delicacy, but it wasn't satisfied; it went to find four or five more aphids to beg for food before wiping its mouth and leaving, fully content.

Seeing this, He Lingchuan finally understood that these caves were pastures; the cavern spiders of the Ghost Needle Shi Lin actually imitated ants by farming giant aphids as their daily food source.

The air was slightly humid, and with the light for illumination, it was perfect for moss to grow. Aphids were the spiders' dairy cows; eating the milk or the meat were both options for the latter.

No wonder the Ghost Needle Shi Lin on the wasteland could support hundreds of thousands of spiders; it turned out the secret was all underground.

He Lingchuan walked outward cautiously, stepping on the thick moss carpet and crossing countless obese aphids.

Here, near the bottom of the abyss, patrolling spiders were rare, and their movements were slow, making them very easy to avoid. They probably assumed the deepest part of the nest was safe, so they naturally slacked off.

Whether human or spider, the nature of living things is cut from the same mold.

However, although the guards were lax, the complexity of the labyrinth was real. He Lingchuan had only been walking for a quarter of an hour before he didn't know where he was; in any case, there were always several caves ahead for him to choose from.

But he still tried his best to choose paths with higher terrain.

After walking for another hour, he still couldn't find his bearings, but the moss on the ground was becoming thinner and thinner, and the aphids were becoming fewer and fewer.

Afterward, he walked into a huge rock cavern.

It was about the size of a football field and about six zhang high. The ground was dry and clean, without even a drop of dew or a speck of moss.

But glowing spores covered the walls and ceiling of the entire cavern, lighting the place up like broad daylight.

So, the first thing He Lingchuan saw upon walking in made his heart jump wildly and his scalp tingle.

A huge cavern spider was standing just three zhang away, face-to-face with him! Twelve large, pitch-black eyes were all staring at him.

The Spider Queen Zhu Xiuer's figure was like a thatched cottage, which could already be considered huge, but this cavern spider's height reached an astonishing four zhang (thirteen meters)!

One must know that the height of a male giraffe generally does not exceed two zhang, and humans would already have to look up in awe.

This cavern spider stood there, its figure extremely robust, truly like a small mountain, and the sense of oppression rushed toward him.

In this instant, He Lingchuan's back stiffened, and every cell in his body seemed to be screaming: Run, turn around and run fast! The giant spider remained motionless.

He Lingchuan even lightened his breathing and slowly retreated two steps. The passage he came through was relatively narrow, and perhaps this monster's body was too large to chase him in. Wasn't it said that all spider groups only had one leader? Could this be Zhu Xiuer's true form?

But he retreated four or five steps, and the giant spider still lay in place, motionless.

Was this thing sleeping, or?

After all, spiders have no eyelids; they don't close their eyes whether they are in a deep sleep or awake.

However, He Lingchuan soon noticed a detail: the ubiquitous glowing spores were actually growing on this giant spider too! On its back, forehead, joints, and even between its long, hard bristles.

The giant spider was pressed against the rock wall, and the number of glowing spores on the rock wall around it was greater than elsewhere.

How long had this monster not moved?

He Lingchuan picked up a small stone from the ground and, emboldened, threw it at the giant spider with a force that was neither light nor heavy.

Clack, the stone bounced off the giant spider's front claw back to the ground, making a hollow sound.

The giant spider still didn't move.

He Lingchuan tried two more times and found it had no reaction at all, only then did he gradually approach.

The closer he got, the more he felt this thing was unimaginably huge and ferocious; he didn't know how long it had lived or what it had eaten to grow to such a size.

Finally, He Lingchuan stood before the giant spider and took his saber to gently tap its front leg.

Clang, clang, two dull sounds, a bit like metal and stone clashing.

In other words, the giant spider's front leg shell was as hard as stone.

From his current angle, he could finally glimpse the giant spider's abdomen, which was also in the pattern of a starry night galaxy.

Zhu Xiuer's abdominal pattern was already beautiful enough, but the giant spider's star map was broader and more brilliant, as if it had contained half a galaxy, making it impossible for one to look away. Even the stars in the map were flickering slightly, echoing the glowing spores on the giant spider's body.

He Lingchuan's courage grew even more; he reached out and pressed his hand on the giant spider's front claw, channeling a bit of true qi into it.

If this were a living thing, and someone had come knocking at the door, how could it have no reaction?

But this bit of true qi was like a clay ox entering the sea; it vanished as soon as it went in, and it didn't give He Lingchuan the slightest feedback.

Desolate, empty, cold—this was what he felt inside the giant spider.

Such a spectacular monster had died countless years ago, and even its remains were about to turn into stone.

He Lingchuan inexplicably remembered the remains in the Immortal Cave and thought of two words:

Zuohua (sitting in meditation until death).

Did this giant spider die sitting in meditation here?

He continued walking forward along the cave and then discovered another giant spider.

It was half the size of the one before, also crouching on the ground, and also covered in glowing spores.

He Lingchuan continued forward and discovered a third, a fourth...

All the way to the seventh.

The sizes were getting smaller and smaller, all with star maps hidden on their abdomens, and all had lost their vitality.

(End of chapter)