Chapter 761: The Forest of Silence

More than two months later, in the southern forest of Rongshan. A bat flew down from the horizon and landed on Dong Rui's shoulder. He listened carefully, his spirit greatly lifted: "The town is just five miles ahead, only five miles left!"

The snow had all melted, and the ground was often damp.

But they couldn't ride the Snail Toad, because Dong Rui had performed two more surgeries on it, and the latter had entered a state of hibernation, not moving or consuming anything, not even needing to eat summer-withered grass, so Dong Rui hid it in his backpack.

Previously the Snail Toad carried people, now people carried the Snail Toad.

Dong Rui himself was also exhausted, just wanting to find a place to hide and have a good sleep.

He looked at He Lingchuan and Zhu Xiuer, like two tireless monsters.

Especially Zhu Xiuer, ever since she separated from her sisters and got a molted shell, she had been full of energy. No matter how harsh the mountain forest environment was, she enjoyed it.

In Zhu Xiuer's own words, she had slept enough for these three thousand years and should come out to move around more.

She adapted well to her new body.

Zhu Erniang filled the molted shell with flesh and blood and then gave it to her, which was equivalent to letting her possess a blank body without a soul, and the difficulty was almost zero, except for the possibility of losing a little memory.

According to the observation of the Soul-Sucking Mirror, the arrival of the Emperor's Dew in the last two times had made the spiritual energy of heaven and earth active again, which happened to be conducive to Zhu Xiuer's control of this body.

However, she was now the number two person on the wanted list of Lingxu City, so in order not to cause trouble, Zhu Xiuer made a little disguise treatment to her appearance, first putting away the iconic star map on her abdomen, changing it to the red and black poison spider special color, and her body also became square, with sharp thorns on the edges, shrinking by two sizes overall.

This didn't look like a cave spider at all, and He Lingchuan gave her a thumbs up: "Like a big crab."

Crabs also had eight claws, also had square shells, and there were serrations on the edges of the shells...

And there was crab paste.

Dong Rui yawned again: "This kid went where in the past two months, Zhu Xiuer, aren't you curious at all?"

"Unh-unh."

"..." After getting along for a long time, he could easily distinguish between this pair of spider queen sisters.

Zhu Xiuer was very straightforward, not liking those twists and turns, while Zhu Erniang had a brain and could think like a human.

Dong Rui wiped the rotten mud off the soles of his shoes on the tree trunk, and suddenly pointed to the sky: "The Heavenly Luo Xing hasn't been bright for a long time, you know that, right?"

"Unh-unh."

"I don't know when it started, it dimmed and never lit up again."

He Lingchuan stroked his chin: "Now that you mention it, it really is."

Dong Rui turned his head and stared at him fiercely: "Does it have anything to do with the things you snatched from the Star-Plucking Tower of the Tiangong?"

He only discovered recently when looking up at the starry sky that the Heavenly Luo Xing was gone! Was the Heavenly Luo Xing important? Of course!

If there was no Heavenly Luo Xing in the sky, there would be no He Lingchuan's Xushan plan at all!

"Yes, of course it does." He Lingchuan smiled. "This is a top secret, and those who know it will be in extreme danger, which is more dangerous than escaping the pursuit of the Tiangong. Do you want to hear it?"

Dong Rui sneered: "Aren't our current circumstances dangerous?"

Seeing He Lingchuan open his mouth to speak, he preempted: "Forget it, later."

He wasn't mentally prepared yet.

After walking another two miles, the forest was dense, and the evening wind whistled.

They found the road again, and it had been artificially repaired, with the ground being quite flat.

"Quick, quick!" Dong Rui urged, but He Lingchuan and Zhu Xiuer slowed down their pace, looking left and right.

"What's wrong?"

"The forest is too quiet." Even in winter, in the evening, birds returning to the forest would be relatively noisy. But here, there wasn't a single sound.

Not to mention that Zhu Xiuer's eight claw tips had extraordinary tactile sense, even if there were field mice digging holes or walking under the snow, they couldn't hide from her.

But she said now: "I can't perceive any life, look at these trees again."

Lin Mu? Dong Rui looked up and observed carefully.

The trees in autumn and winter basically had their leaves fallen, originally just bare branches and withered forks, covered with thick snow, impossible to be as lush as in spring and summer.

But Dong Rui still found round holes on the tree trunks, with a diameter about the thickness of a little finger.

What caused this, did someone hit nails on the trees? With this attention, he found at least seventeen or eighteen round holes on the trees.

This tree had them, that tree also had them... Dong Rui checked more than ten trees in a row, regardless of size or thickness, all were covered with round holes! Zhu Xiuer suddenly said: "This was caused by mouthparts."

He Lingchuan chopped a palm on the tree trunk.

The big tree that two people could embrace broke into two sections with a 'crack', the sound being overly crisp.

A large section of broken wood fell down with a 'bang'.

Even so, it didn't startle any roosting birds.

The forest was still terrifyingly quiet.

"Look." He Lingchuan pointed to the cross-section of the tree, "The inside is completely withered."

Dong Rui leaned over to look, and the cross-section he chopped was gray-black, with countless radial cracks.

From the inside out, this tree had no moisture or activity at all.

He Lingchuan randomly broke a few more trees, regardless of the variety, regardless of whether they were thick or thin, they were all in this situation.

Dong Rui's bat demon puppet also found a dead wild rabbit in a rock crevice.

It wasn't rotten, but it was shriveled.

"It was sucked dry." When Dong Rui said this, he looked at Zhu Xiuer, "Is this your kind?"

He had studied cave spiders and had also seen how the spider queen ate people, which was indeed injecting venom first, then sticking her mouthparts all the way in, and sucking up the dissolved flesh and blood essence in one go.

He also pointed: "Look, there are spider webs there too."

White silk floated in the depths of the dense forest, in fine wisps with the wind. He Lingchuan stirred a few sections of white silk with his sword and observed carefully; the stickiness was very high, and the toughness was also good.

"Nonsense." Zhu Xiuer wouldn't take the blame, and she wouldn't let her kind take the blame either.

He Lingchuan also said: "This is not a spider web."

Zhu Erniang's spider silk had a wide range of uses, and he knew every model. This white silk looked a bit like spider silk at first glance, but the strength and weaving method were completely different from cave spiders.

Dong Rui yawned: "Standing here, we won't get any conclusions."

The two and one spider temporarily suppressed the doubts in their hearts and continued to move toward the small town.

Soon, fields appeared one after another. But the fields were covered with white silk nets.

They ignored them and continued forward.

Finally, they reached the town.

The small town in the forest was unusually quiet, with no human voices and no lights.

Dong Rui sighed.

He had been sleeping in the open for two months, and he was thinking that he could eat hot food and take a beautiful hot bath upon reaching the town, living the life that humans should have.

As a result, even such a small wish fell through.

The dozens of houses in the town were eerily quiet, with some doors wide open, creaking in the north wind.

He Lingchuan looked at the street: "Looking at the footprints on the ground, no one has walked for at least half a day."

It started raining last night, and the ground was a bit muddy, but there were no new footprints.

This town had a permanent population of at least three to five hundred, right? Not a single one walking around?

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 762 =====