Chapter 342: Dong Rui

"Hey?" Yellow-Hair was stunned. What work did these two still have to do? Just now everyone was drinking and eating fish together; these two looked like they were blending in, but actually, they hadn't said anything.

What on earth were they doing here? In the blink of an eye, He Lingchuan and his companion disappeared into the jungle.

Yellow-Hair had no choice but to go back and report gloomily.

Tu Zhongli looked at the sky; the moon was beginning to tilt west. He said decisively, "Forget about them!" Then he gave Yellow-Hair a wink.

Yellow-Hair understood. Taking advantage of adding firewood, he threw several packets of medicinal powder into the bonfire.

The firewood crackled, occasionally sparking, with nothing unusual.

But unknowingly, a faint herbal fragrance began to permeate the jungle.

This fragrance blended exceptionally well with the scent of the swamp; even the spider guards stationed not far away didn't notice anything amiss.

About a quarter of an hour later, the spiders nearby weren't moving much, as if they had entered a dazed state.

Yellow-Hair reached out and waved in front of a spider guard.

These things, whether they were asleep or not, kept their eyes open; it was truly hard to confirm.

He even used a tree branch to poke the spider guard, and seeing it had no reaction, he gave Tu Zhongli a thumbs-up.

Tu Zhongli ordered a subordinate to swim to the opposite bank, find a good position, and then tear open a Wind-Summoning Talisman.

Immediately, breeze after breeze blew past. The wind direction was from west to east, sending the medicinal fragrance from the bonfire toward the Demon Nest.

After another quarter of an hour or so, even the spiders around the merchant caravan slowed down their movements, as if they were drowsy, yet they themselves were unaware of it.

Tu Zhongli took out another packet of medicinal powder. This time, without any concealment, he threw it into the fire pit in full view of everyone.

With a "Boom," the bonfire surged four feet high, emitting billowing thick smoke, as if it were a fire scene, and it was an eerie bright yellow.

In the dark night, such thick yellow smoke billowing into the sky was particularly eye-catching.

Back in the Demon Nest's workshop, He Lingchuan looked outside and saw no spider guards on duty, so he said to Dong Rui, "They will make their move tonight. Take the thing out."

Dong Rui was surprised. "Take what out?"

"No need to pretend," He Lingchuan said with disdain. "You've been tinkering here for over half a month, and you've ruined forty or fifty spiders. Haven't you assembled a new monster?"

"What monster?" Dong Rui glared. "This is called a Demon Puppet!" After saying this, he walked to the deepest part of the stone cave.

Here, a large amount of materials was piled up, fragmented and scattered, but in Dong Rui's words, he had arranged them "in perfect order," with a strange order of their own. So if anyone else moved things here, he would curse them. Over the past half month, the spider guards had kept their distance from this place and wouldn't even go to lift the black cloth covering the items.

Now Dong Rui lifted the black cloth, revealing the thing underneath. He Lingchuan looked down. "No changes. Are you sure this is a Demon Puppet?"

Under the black cloth, there was only one intact spider. It was very large, pure black, and even with its legs tucked in, it was four feet tall.

But it looked no different from other cave spiders—it also had twelve eyes, eight legs, and was covered in stiff bristles.

Compared to the Ghost Ape or the Werewolf, it was truly too plain and unadorned.

"Use your brain. If I made it into an alien, how could it help us sneak out?" Dong Rui said, frustrated. "Besides, I was able to make a Demon Puppet in just over ten days—you should be grateful! Normally, a Demon Puppet takes at least two years from production to debugging to training—two years!"

"Then can this thing listen to your commands?" He Lingchuan had a new worry. "It won't dump us halfway, will it?"

"It understands basic commands, but it can't participate in overly complex battles." Wanting this spider to fight with the same ferocity as the Ghost Ape was definitely impossible; that required years of meticulous debugging. Dong Rui patted the spider. "Stand up and walk a few steps."

The spider indeed stood up and scurried around the room, its footsteps looking even more nimble than ordinary spider guards.

In fact, this was also the one with the highest combat value among the experimental subjects sent by Zhu Xiuer, and it was also the largest. Dong Rui had reported on the surface that it had been damaged in the experiment, while secretly modifying it into this appearance.

As for the consumables in the laboratory, how much was used and how it was used—wasn't that up to him to decide? This was just bullying an outsider.

After building this thing, they were waiting for an opportunity.

He Lingchuan circled the spider Demon Puppet and felt a little envious. "Can it listen to me? Just in case there's an opportunity later."

"Put your hand on its head and let it get familiar with your scent."

He Lingchuan did as told, and Dong Rui whispered a few words into the Demon Puppet's ear. He Lingchuan could hear it but couldn't understand it; this was likely a unique way of communication between Dong Rui and the Demon Puppet.

The spider Demon Puppet actually sniffed and rubbed against He Lingchuan's hand.

Dong Rui breathed a sigh of relief. "Alright, it recognizes you now." He said to He Lingchuan again, "The Demon Puppets I create usually only serve me as their master."

He Lingchuan rolled his eyes. "Can I persuade it to turn traitor? By the way, you said 'usually'—what are the unusual situations?"

"There are some," Dong Rui said casually. "Before I was wanted by the Beijia Nation and hadn't made Number 34 yet, there was one time I truly had no way to escape, so I had to custom-make a Demon Puppet for someone in exchange for help to escape Beijia."

Ever since then, he learned from his bitter experience and understood the principle that no matter how fast four legs are, they are no match for wings, which is why he created the strange bird demon puppet No. 34.

"Hey? You've actually done this before at Zhu Xiuer's place? Who did you custom-make a Demon Puppet for last time?" He Lingchuan was curious. "You even take these kinds of orders? Then can I also...?"

"No!" Dong Rui really wanted to spit on him. "Do you think this is something you can just do at will? I've told you so many times: the production of a Demon Puppet is extremely difficult, and what it looks like when it's finished is all up to fate!"

It was rare for him to share the secrets of Demon Puppets with an outsider; did this fellow just let it go in one ear and out the other every time? "Then didn't you make one for someone else?"

"That time I was lucky; I happened to have a ready-made Demon Puppet embryo that met their requirements, so I just modified it a bit. And things made in a rush have flaws—that Demon Puppet had to consume a large amount of Prunella vulgaris every few days, otherwise it couldn't be maintained."

"What number did you assign it?"

"Thirty-one."

"Is it still alive?"

"Of course, as long as it's maintained properly!" Dong Rui was afraid he would keep asking, so he quickly changed the subject. "Alright, alright, back to business! How do you guess they will make their move?"

He paused. "Zhu Xiuer recognizing thieves as guests is actually our opportunity."

Zhu Xiuer hadn't dealt with humans for a long time. Even if living people occasionally wandered into the Demon Nest Swamp, they were all eaten by it and its descendants. The only exception in these years was likely that merchant caravan.

He Lingchuan and Dong Rui could see through the disguise of their own kind, but the spiders couldn't.

Currently, this was their small advantage.

"That depends on what their goal is. It couldn't possibly be Zhu Xiuer. With their manpower and ability, they can't deal with a prehistoric great demon." What mountain bandits sought was nothing more than wealth. "If they are eyeing the things in the Demon Nest, they have to find a way to lure Zhu Xiuer away."

He said this, then suddenly twitched his nose and sniffed everywhere. "Did you smell anything?"

Because fungal mats and aphid-cattle were raised in the Demon Nest, it was already very damp, and the air was always filled with the smell of rotten wood. Now there was actually a faint fragrance of grass, flowers, and fruit. Thinking of the subtle external environment, He Lingchuan was a bit vigilant. He took two pills from his bosom, swallowed one himself, and handed the other to Dong Rui.

"Poison-repelling elixir, specifically for dispelling intoxicating incense."

Dong Rui looked at him and shook his head. "No need, medicine can't knock me down." He spent his days rolling in medicine bottles; unless it was a deadly poison of the level of Poison Dragon Saliva, ordinary poisons couldn't knock him down.

He brought up the soul-searching question again: "Which side are we helping?"

"Of course, help the side with the better chance of winning." If you pick the wrong side, the outcome will be worrying. Zhu Xiuer was certainly not a kind soul, but these mountain bandits were even worse, not to mention that there was likely a mastermind behind them.

"Which side..."

Before he could finish, he heard a sharp, piercing howl from outside that tore through the sky.

Who could make such a roar? It didn't sound like a tiger, wolf, or bear; it was unpleasant to the point of being heart-wrenching—

But it was loud enough.

Even the two people located in the complex maze could hear it clearly.

Dong Rui thought for a moment. "Why does it sound like..."

"A pig's squeal?"

It sounded like a pig being slaughtered; it was nothing but that kind of noise.

"Right!" Just as Dong Rui was about to speak, the spider Demon Puppet suddenly moved, stepping forward as if to walk out. He gave it two commands in succession, but the Demon Puppet stumbled two steps, as if it had experienced a fierce ideological struggle, and finally barely stopped in place, but its claws kept tapping the ground.

"Sigh, still a semi-finished product," Dong Rui said, very dissatisfied. "It received an order from the Spider Queen, demanding that mid-to-high-level descendants immediately head to the Jiana ruins for support."

The orders of the Old Ancestor and the new master were fighting in the Demon Puppet's mind; naturally, in the end, Dong Rui's methods gained the upper hand.

Sure enough, after only a few breaths, a rustling sound came from outside.

He Lingchuan leaned against the doorway and saw spiders passing by outside the workshop, dense and countless, almost making the passage itself invisible. Everywhere there were round-headed, round-bodied, round-bodied things scurrying, as well as spider legs leaving afterimages.

This scene was truly a bit hair-raising. Who could have expected that a Demon Nest could hold so many spiders! He Lingchuan waited patiently for a good while before the spider army had basically finished passing.

Before long, a huge figure appeared in the passage, bringing a heavy sense of oppression.

Zhu Xiuer had come.

This passage was the only way to the surface.

At this critical moment, it didn't even look at the two humans as it passed in front of them.

Thanks to the effective illumination of the fluorescent spores in the passage, and He Lingchuan's good eyesight, he noticed that Zhu Xiuer's eyes were a bit wrong.

It had twelve eyes, circling both sides of its head. But from He Lingchuan's angle, it seemed... a few were missing? Where had Zhu Xiuer's eyes gone? A few more spider guards came over, spraying layer after layer of spider webs, blocking the door of the workshop tightly.

Zhu Xiuer was rough but attentive; it hadn't missed the two small fry.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 343 =====