Chapter 328: When Nightmares Bleed into Reality

The tables and chairs were all dilapidated; it was hard to imagine how the spider demons had managed to find human objects in the damp swamp.

Having tables and chairs was already quite an achievement; there was no hope for beds, so the two of them only had reeds.

In the corner of the stone chamber, the medicinal herbs specified by Dong Rui were piled up.

He walked over, rummaged through them twice, and shook his head. "Several ingredients are still missing."

The spider demon guard walked in to report, "They will be delivered later."

Even for them, it took time to forage for unfamiliar herbs throughout the swamp.

Dong Rui sat on a chair, looking around. "What kind of place is this, exactly?"

"The bladder." This was what He Lingchuan said.

"The demon nest." This was what the spider demon guard said.

As the man and the spider spoke simultaneously, Dong Rui didn't catch it clearly. "What did you say?"

He Lingchuan rubbed his forehead and suddenly asked the spider demon guard:

"Are you very familiar with this cave?"

"Yes." The guard did not lie. "I was born here."

He Lingchuan let out a soft breath. "So this is the demon nest? The 'demon nest' of the 'Demon Nest Swamp'?"

"Yes."

Dong Rui also caught on to something. "You mean, the entire swamp is named after this cave?" What was so special about this cave?

He Lingchuan stroked the cave wall.

He could never forget this texture. "Zhu Xiuer said the Jiana tribe was wiped out by a demon. The ancient great demons all liked to refer to 'gods' as 'demons.' So, this cave is likely the former lair of that demon, right? After Zhu Xiuer moved to the swamp, she picked up a ready-made one and used this place as her residence."

These words sounded ordinary, but Dong Rui pondered them carefully and understood the deeper meaning, unable to help but be moved. "You mean, the so-called demon is a god? The Jiana tribe was wiped out because they incurred the wrath of a god?"

"In any case, the herbs haven't been collected yet, and we're idle now." He Lingchuan asked the spider guard, "Does Zhu Xiuer also live here?"

"The Ancestor lives in the heart chamber."

He Lingchuan nodded. From the two words "heart chamber," he could see that Zhu Xiuer knew exactly what the "demon nest" was.

"Can you take us to see it?"

The spider guard: "Wait for us to report!"

Having said that, one of them turned and left.

Dong Rui asked He Lingchuan, "'Heart chamber,' 'bladder'—are these some kind of secret code?"

"Your table is in the bladder position," He Lingchuan said. "Zhu Xiuer lives in the heart chamber position; it's exactly as it sounds."

The look Dong Rui gave him was as if he weren't speaking human language. Could this demon nest be named after human organs? It was one thing for the spider guard to know, but why did He Lingchuan, a newcomer, know too?

He was about to go crazy.

He Lingchuan discovered another trait of this man besides his sharp tongue: his curiosity was exceptionally strong. "Wait until I confirm it one last time, then I'll tell you."

After more than a quarter of an hour, the spider guard returned and said, "Follow me, and don't wander around."

It seemed Zhu Xiuer was also carefree and not at all afraid of others seeing her boudoir.

The spider guard led the way, taking another winding path; the distance was even further than before.

He Lingchuan silently memorized the route.

After this trip, they discovered that this was the true base camp of the spiders; they would encounter one every few steps. Some intersections had guards, or were directly sealed off by dense spider webs, making it impossible for anyone to enter.

Soon, the heart chamber was reached.

This was almost the most core location of the entire cave. The two squeezed out of a narrow passage, and the view suddenly opened up: before them was a huge cavern, seven or eight times larger than the stone cave where they worked, and the height was over five zhang (16.5 meters); truly, one could hear an echo just by shouting.

The fluorescent spores here were more numerous than anywhere else, growing densely in the rock crevices, illuminating the entire cavern like broad daylight.

Dong Rui swept his gaze and pointed at the cave wall, his voice full of astonishment. "This, this?!"

Standing under the cave wall were several spider demons, each one more astonishing in size than the last; the largest and tallest one stood over three zhang (10 meters) tall! Even the sturdy Zhu Xiuer looked petite and small in comparison.

Even standing there quietly, they exuded immense power, and no one dared to approach.

This was the true behemoth; how many people would be scared to death if it were let out? He Lingchuan knocked his finger back. "Stop shouting; none of them are alive."

He took the opportunity to count them: one, two, three, four, five. There were only five giant spiders here.

"Eh?" Dong Rui was still immersed in the shock of the visual impact.

"You didn't walk close, so how do you know?" Zhu Xiuer's voice sounded behind the two.

She had followed them at some point without making a sound.

Her body, larger than a house, could actually shrink to one-fourth or one-fifth of its original volume to travel through narrow passages.

After she crawled out of the passage, her volume grew back, just like a fat sea cucumber thrown into water.

Actually, Zhu Xiuer's question was quite insightful.

The several spider demons standing in rows against the wall had the appearance and the fierce aura; spiders didn't have eyelids, so they looked like they were glaring at people whenever you looked at them. They were just not moving; on what grounds could one say they weren't alive?

He Lingchuan answered calmly, "They all have fluorescent spores growing on their joints. If they were still alive, they would at least clean them off, right?" If he remembered correctly, spiders were quite clean creatures. They weren't old turtles that let barnacles attach to their shells.

Zhu Xiuer seemed to let out a laugh. "Clever."

This confirmed He Lingchuan's judgment. Dong Rui was overjoyed and ran over, darting between the several spider demons, knocking here and touching there, even happier than a boy getting his favorite toy.

Even Zhu Xiuer felt flattered when she saw this: did this man like her that much? "These are all the molted shells I've shed."

"Ah?" Dong Rui looked at her, then at these giant spiders. "Oh!"

No wonder they all looked the same, just different in size, like nesting dolls.

He remembered what He Lingchuan had said earlier and pointed to the largest spider shell. "Is this your demon immortal body from the ancient era? Truly, truly remarkable!"

Ancient objects were mostly decayed by now, let alone the remains of a demon immortal.

Just seeing these few items, he felt the trip to the demon nest was worth it.

Who knew Zhu Xiuer's tone would suddenly sink. "The demon immortal body is not here."

"Ah?"

Zhu Xiuer didn't explain, but He Lingchuan suddenly understood. He remembered seeing a total of six giant spider remains in the spider nest in the Panlong Dream; sure enough, it wasn't the dream that was wrong, but that one was missing here at Zhu Xiuer's place.

Where did the largest remain go? "That's still remarkable." The surprise and admiration in Dong Rui's tone finally pleased Zhu Xiuer. She introduced them one by one. "This is from the end of the ancient era, this is from the beginning of the medieval era, the middle, the late..."

The closer to the present, the smaller the spider shells.

Dong Rui glanced at He Lingchuan and said to Zhu Xiuer, "I understand, you voluntarily deposited your cultivation into the shell and molted it off together, right?"

Zhu Xiuer's sharp front claws tapped the ground. "Exactly."

"Smart, truly smart!" Dong Rui gave a thumbs up. "The ancient immortals disappeared from the world precisely because they couldn't adapt to the increasingly thin spiritual energy. Others couldn't learn this method of yours even if they wanted to."

He Lingchuan didn't make a sound, because the divine bone necklace on his chest was heating up again.

Entering the heart chamber cavern, the divine bone necklace reacted, indicating it coveted something here.

The cave was empty, with only the spider shells being the most conspicuous, so did it want Zhu Xiuer's shell? He Lingchuan looked at Zhu Xiuer and thought that this request from the divine bone necklace wouldn't be easy to satisfy.

Come to think of it, how did Zhu Xiuer transport such massive spider shells from thousands of miles away to here, and then stuff them into the narrow passage to enter the heart chamber cavern?

It seemed she still had secret methods.

Over there, Dong Rui was touching the spider shell as if a woman were touching jewelry, unable to put it down. He suddenly said to Zhu Xiuer, "I need to take a little bit from each spider shell; it will be of great help to drug research!"

"Really?" Hearing that he wanted to touch her remains, Zhu Xiuer was displeased. "What kind of logic is that?"

If he couldn't explain the logic, Dong Rui might become her dinner tonight.

"Just one bristle will do!" Dong Rui explained hurriedly. "The biggest difficulty in developing a new medicine tailored for you is that there are too few comparison objects! Although you have many offspring, their cultivation is a hundred and eight thousand miles behind yours; medicines adjusted according to their characteristics might be too weak for you. These spider shells come from you yourself; as long as I extract samples for separate comparison, the difficulty of drug manufacturing will drop by more than one level!"

Zhu Xiuer was also well-informed; hearing that what he said wasn't unreasonable, and that he would only pick one bristle from each remain, the loss would be small. Therefore, she thought about it and personally took one bristle from each of the five spider shells and handed them to Dong Rui.

Leaving this huge showroom, the spider queen personally led the two to continue forward, entering two small chambers.

Although they were called "small," that was only relative to the showroom.

One room here was the spider queen's residence, and the other was sealed airtight with spider webs.

"This is?"

"The center of the demon nest. I rarely come here, so I just sealed it off."

The spider queen personally used her claws to open the spider web, otherwise, others wouldn't know how much effort it would take.

A very thick layer of dust had accumulated inside. After He Lingchuan saw it, he didn't dare to take a deep breath even though he was shocked.

This stone chamber was even smaller than Dong Rui's workshop, with a stone platform in the middle.

The stone platform seemed to be hung with many curtains, but after grabbing a piece to observe carefully, he discovered that this thing was actually soft and quite elastic, like a rubber band, but more like—

More like the tendons connecting Yun Gu to the entire mine that He Lingchuan saw in the Chifeng mine in the Panlong Dream! It was just that too much time had passed; although it hadn't rotted, it had already dried out.

"Flesh fortress." He Lingchuan muttered this name that had made his heart jump in his dreams. "The one who ate all the Jiana tribesmen wasn't some demon, but a predator!"

No wonder he had the illusion that a nightmare had come true the moment he walked into this cavern.

It was real.

Dong Rui frowned. "What is that thing?" Ever since entering this cavern, he had been asking questions; among the three biological entities, it seemed he was the most ignorant, and he hated this feeling.

Woke up at 3 AM to watch the game, lost a hundred big ones, and was left sleepy and confused, almost missing the noon update.

(End of chapter)