[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-black-dragon-necromancer":3,"chapter-black-dragon-necromancer-black-dragon-necromancer-chapter-144":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"chinese","Black Dragon Necromancer",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":19,"prevChapterSlug":20,"totalChapters":21,"novelImage":22},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":15,"volume":16,"translator":17,"content_hash":18},2312904,4521,"Chapter 144: The Spider","black-dragon-necromancer-chapter-144",144,"\u003Cp>At the same time, the ruins of Xuanji City in the twilight resembled the hollowed-out skeleton of a giant beast.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The gray-white walls were split open by more than a dozen cracks; seven arrow towers had collapsed; the gate, smashed, had been hastily sealed with rubble and iron bars. Demon corpses piled at the base of the walls, layer upon layer, soaked in tar and blood.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Verna stood atop Hawk’s Beak Cliff, overlooking the fortress she had besieged for two months.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Her dark red eyes reflected the flickering demonic fire on the distant walls; her silver-white hair streamed backward in the sea wind. Behind her stood two figures: the Head of the Personal Guard, Viris, and the Spider Queen Priestess, Masha.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Gisk had been gone for two months.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Before that wolf pup left, he sent his reckless wolfmen charging seven times. Seven assaults, each time tearing open the demon lines only to see them close again, then tear open once more.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>On the final charge, he carried the battle standard himself, climbing onto the ramparts and standing there for a full half-hour, until he confirmed that section of wall could no longer be held, before withdrawing.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Gisk remained beneath Xuanji City for nine months, killing over fifty thousand demons in total. Their corpses piled at the wall’s base like a rolling gray hill, still burning after two months without being fully consumed.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The wolf pup was a madman in battle. But now that the madman was gone, the war still had to be fought.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“What are our losses?” Verna did not turn.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Four hundred and twenty Drow dead, over a thousand goblins lost, fewer than two hundred harpies still able to fly.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Viris’s voice remained steady, “But the demons suffered greater losses. Gisk’s final charge eliminated at least their last two thousand viable forces. The demons now inside the city number no more than twenty thousand, and most are low-grade.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Verna’s lips twitched slightly—not a smile, but something fainter, like the delicate tremor of a spider’s feeler.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Twenty thousand,” she repeated. “Nine months of siege, reduced them from seventy thousand to under twenty thousand. That mad dog Gisk saved us a great deal of effort.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“But Mother,” came Masha’s voice from behind, soft and rhythmic, like the chant of a prayer, unique to the Spider Queen Priestess.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“The concentration of demonic energy in the city has increased over the past few days—not because there are more demons, but because something is drawing power from the earth veins.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Verna turned, gazing toward Xuanji City. In the twilight, the demonic fire on the walls was indeed brighter than before—not dark red, but a purplish hue, like a bruise.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Glaez.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Verna knew what it was. A demon-producing machine. A Shenyuan creature born solely to reproduce and consume. It had no fixed form, merely a constantly writhing tumor, its interior packed with countless undeveloped low-grade demon embryos.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>With sufficient energy—corpses, souls, or simply earth vein demonic power—it could produce low-grade demons at an astonishing rate. A mature Glaez could birth over a hundred per day.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The newborn low-grade demons were no larger than puppies, slick with fluid, unable even to stand. But they grew rapidly. Eat Fu meat for three days, and they reach half a human’s height; eat for a week, and they can charge with bone spears;\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Eat for a month, and some begin to molt and mutate, dark red scales sprouting beneath their gray-black skin, their bodies doubling in size, becoming Berserker Demons.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Continue eating, continue killing, continue absorbing Shenyuan energy, and a tiny fraction among them will evolve further—Judgment Demons, Serpent Demons, even Balor Demons.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Glaez does not directly produce high-grade demons. It produces only the lowest-tier low-grade demons. But low-grade demons are the seeds of the Shenyuan ; given enough time and nourishment, they can grow into an entire army.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Gisk killed fifty thousand demons, but his pace of killing may not have matched Glaez’s rate of production.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Have you located its position?” Verna asked.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Viris stepped forward. “The underground waterways—we detected heavy demon activity there.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Verna fell silent for several breaths. “Where is the entrance?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Behind the ruins of the old city hall, there is a vertical shaft, blocked by rubble. But beneath the rubble lies open space. Demon patrol teams emerge from it every few days to drag corpses back inside.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Frequency?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Irregular. Sometimes every two days, sometimes every five. Depends on how hungry Glaez is.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Verna’s gaze drifted to the distant walls. Twilight deepened; the demonic fire flickered uncertainly through the mist, like floating ghost lights.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“We need more intelligence,” she said. “Viris, pick three goblins best at stealth. Infiltrate the shaft. No fighting—only confirm Glaez’s location and the layout of its nest entrance.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Viris knelt on one knee. “As you command, Mother.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Masha, set a Silence Array around the ruins of the old city hall. Keep it small—just large enough to cover the shaft entrance. When the operation begins, no sound must escape.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Masha also knelt on one knee, but she did not say “As you command.” She bowed her head, lips barely moving, as if chanting. Verna could not hear the words, but she noticed Masha’s fingers tapping lightly on her knee—three short, three long, three short.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The spider’s rhythm.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Verna did not press. She turned back, continuing to watch Xuanji City. Night had fully fallen; the demonic fire on the walls glowed sharply in the dark, like a slowly opening vertical pupil.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Masha,” Verna’s voice was soft, “what news from Nabian ?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Masha withdrew a black crystal the size of a fist. Inside, something moved slowly—not mist, but alive.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A spider, no larger than a fingernail, crawled within the crystal; each step it took sent faint ripples across the crystal’s surface. Masha held the crystal to her ear, as if listening to a sound too faint for any mortal to perceive.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Silence lasted nearly half a minute. Then Masha returned the crystal to her robes, lifted her head, and fixed her dark red eyes on Verna.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Mother, ‘What lurks in the shadows must be seen with shadowed eyes.’”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Verna stared at Masha for several breaths. She did not press further, only gave a slight nod.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“I understand.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>She turned and descended Hawk’s Beak Cliff. Masha and Viris followed behind; their three shadows stretched long across the gray-white rocks in the twilight, like three interwoven serpents slowly crawling.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>No, not serpents.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Spider legs.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Three days later, three goblins crawled out of the shaft.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>They were soaked through, coated in fragments of dark green fungal mats and an indescribable stench. The eldest, Grick, a veteran of the goblin mobile corps, had served Verna for nearly ten years. He lay panting atop the rubble for a long while before catching his breath.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Mother,” his voice rasped like sandpaper, “it’s deep. The shaft is about forty feet down; the walls are entirely covered in fungal mats, slippery as ice. At the bottom is a tunnel, artificially carved, its walls embedded with glowing demonic energy crystals.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“And Glaez?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Grick’s face twisted. Goblins’ faces were already wrinkled, but at that moment, his creases deepened further.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“At the end of the tunnel is a large circular chamber. Inside is one Glaez—huge, at least twenty feet long.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It coils in the center, its body translucent, revealing countless tiny low-grade demon embryos packed tightly within. With each pulse, its surface splits open, spilling out four or five newborns.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Only one?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Only one seen. But midway down the tunnel are two recessed niches—each contains something pulsing. I dared not approach, afraid of alerting them.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Verna fell silent for several breaths.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“What of the patrol teams?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“We waited six hours at the bottom and saw no patrols. Glaez seems hungry—its pulses are slow, and the newborns it produces are weak, barely able to stand.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Well done,” Verna said. “Grick, take your men to rest. Tonight, we move.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>That night, Verna herself led five Drow into the shaft.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Masha’s Silence Array was already in place. Verna did not know how she had done it, but she felt it—the air twenty feet below the ruins of the old city hall was thick, sticky, like walking into a spiderweb.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Not a physical web, but something more intangible, colder—as if an invisible spider had spun an unseen net across this small area, severing it from the outside world.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Any sound, any magical fluctuation, even any trace of life, would be absorbed and devoured by this net. From outside, the ruins of the old city hall appeared unchanged;\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But within, the clash of blades, the dying screams, even Glaez’s shrieks as it was torn apart, would not escape.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>When Verna slid to the tunnel’s bottom, it was utterly silent.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>She moved along the tunnel wall, her curved blade flipping soundlessly in her grip. Behind her, the five Drow formed a single line, each step precisely placed in the footprint of the one ahead, like a silent serpent.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The tunnel was long and winding, its walls covered in dark green fungal mats; beneath them, thick veins pulsed faintly, like arteries. Those veins throbbed slowly, as if something breathed beneath the fungus.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Verna halted before the two recessed niches midway down the tunnel.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Each niche held a translucent tumor, the size of a calf, its surface crisscrossed with fine cracks.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Inside, dark yellow pus churned, packed with countless embryos like beans. Their pulses were slow—so slow Verna could count the intervals between each contraction.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>She ignored them. Her blade swept upward, slicing through the membrane of the first tumor. Dark yellow pus gushed out; the undeveloped embryos writhed briefly in the fluid, then stilled.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The second tumor was cut open moments later. The entire process made no sound—not because Verna moved quietly, but because Masha’s Silence Array swallowed everything.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Verna pressed forward.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>At the tunnel’s end lay a circular chamber, larger than she expected. The ceiling was studded with demonic energy crystals, casting a sickly green glow that turned the space into a giant stomach.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In the center coiled the Glaez—twenty feet long, its translucent membrane packed with hundreds of low-grade demon embryos.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Its pulse was far faster than the smaller ones; each contraction split its membrane, spilling out three or four newborns. The newborns tumbled onto the fungal mat, struggled to rise, and staggered toward the tunnel.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Verna watched the newborns pass her. They did not look at her—not because they failed to notice, but because they lacked the consciousness to recognize danger.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>They knew only to move forward, out of the tunnel, onto the surface, to eat, to grow, to become stronger demons. Then be slain by Gisk’s axe or her curved blade.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Glaez seemed to sense something.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Its pulse accelerated abruptly; bubbles rose across its membrane. The embryos still within began to thrash violently, as if struggling to emerge prematurely.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Verna did not know if it could “see”—Glaez had no eyes. But it had other senses—perhaps vibrations, temperature, or something she could not name. It knew something had breached its nest.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Verna gave it no more time.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Her figure vanished in place—a short-range shadow leap. She did not know how she gained this ability, nor did she care to question it. She only knew that when she needed it, shadows answered.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>She appeared atop Glaez, driving her blade downward into its core.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Glaez convulsed violently. Its membrane collapsed inward; dark yellow pus and half-formed demon embryos erupted like a volcanic blast.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Verna withdrew her blade and stabbed again—second time, third time. Each thrust caused the faint patterns on the blade to glow briefly, as if something flowed along its edge.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Not magic. Older than magic. Quieter than magic.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Glaez’s pulse slowed. Its membrane lost its luster, turning gray and dry. The embryos still inside began to rot, releasing a thick, foul stench.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Verna leapt off its body, standing in the pus, watching the once-prolific demon producer collapse and crumble like dried meat.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>She knelt, retrieving from Glaez’s remains a thumb-sized, dark red crystal—the core, saturated with concentrated life energy. She tucked it into her robes and turned toward the tunnel exit.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Behind her, the five Drow emerged silently from the shadows, following her.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>When they climbed out of the shaft, dawn was breaking. The morning wind scattered the lingering stench. Viris and his guard waited at the shaft’s mouth, blades stained with blood—they had silently slain several newborn demons that had scrambled out of the tunnel.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Mother, the demons inside the nest?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“All dead,” Verna said. “Glaez is dead. Xuanji City will receive no more reinforcements.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>She stood atop the ruins of the old city hall, watching the Xie fire on the distant walls fade one by one. Without Glaez to supply new troops, the demons inside were now a Gu army.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Out of ammunition, out of food, no reinforcements, no retreat. They would rage like caged beasts—frenzied, desperate—but ultimately, they would die.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The sea wind blew in from the Starfall Strait, dispersing the last wisps of demonic energy mist above Xuanji City. Verna looked down at the Glaez core in her hand, her dark red eyes reflecting its faint glow.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>She slipped the crystal into the deepest hidden pocket of her sleeve.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"We begin the siege tomorrow,\" she said. \"Within a month, I want our flag flying over the ramparts of Xuanji City.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Vellis knelt on one knee: \"As you command, Lady Master.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Verna turned away, casting one final glance at the fortress about to fall. Then she descended into the ruins and stepped into the morning light.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The morning light was bright, but the shadow behind her was deeper than ever—not her own shadow, but something else. Those shadows crept silently over the rubble, like countless slender legs, like a net slowly drawing shut.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Verna did not look back.\u003C\u002Fp>",2293,"2026-06-20T13:10:04.638Z",1,"Qwen3-Next 80B","8bff4825b670682e5be52dace678d8835d7df89e5cd98d58d5553823f6d4132e","black-dragon-necromancer-chapter-145","black-dragon-necromancer-chapter-143",145,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Fblack-dragon-necromancer-cover.jpg"]