Chapter 71

Main Text Chapter 72: Lair

This mask-like giant face was as big as a washbasin, hidden in the dark corner of the cave; his body couldn't be seen, and the flashlight's beam could barely reach his face. That bizarre, cold expression was exactly the same as the human-faced stone sarcophagus in the Western Zhou ghost tomb.

The only difference was that this face wasn't a stone carving nor any rock painting in the tomb passage; under the beams of my and Pangzi's flashlights, it suddenly changed—the corners of its mouth turned up in a slight smile, both eyes closed simultaneously, bending into a semicircular slit. In my life I have never seen such a bizarre, indescribable smile.

Seeing that monstrous face, Pangzi and I instinctively stepped back two paces, but then I wondered: where had Da Jin Ya gone? Had that ghost‑faced creature snatched him away? Or was he already dead? Though Da Jin Ya was a complete scoundrel, he hadn't done great evil, and besides he shared some history with us two; we couldn't just look out for ourselves and abandon him.

In any case, Da Jin Ya's disappearance must be related to that suddenly appearing ghost face; perhaps the big goose that vanished in the Underworld Hall was also his doing.

Pangzi and I had the same thought; we simultaneously drew our weapons—I held the flashlight in one hand and a knife in the other—and lunged a few steps toward the ghost face, when suddenly I heard several strange noises coming from underfoot.

The pitch‑black cavern was like the mouth of a wine bottle; the cross‑section of the robber cave lay at the bottle's neck. That sound and the eerie ghostly "face" were deep inside the cavern. I aimed my Wolf's Eye at the source of the sound and shone it there; the strange cries came from Da Jin Ya, lying flat on the ground, his hands and feet wrapped in several gleaming white threads, a loop around his throat choking him—though not enough to suffocate him, he could no longer speak.

Da Jin Ya turned ashen‑white; seeing Pangzi and me rush over, he desperately opened his mouth to call for help, but the threads were wound tight around his neck, and from his throat came only a strangled "yi yi a a" sound, mixed with his panic—it hardly sounded human, which is why it seemed so weird.

I had no time to wonder how Da Jin Ya had ended up like this; Pangzi and I hurried forward to try to save the barely‑alive Da Jin Ya, when suddenly a rustling sounded above our heads and Da Jin Ya's body lifted off the ground, as if someone had hoisted him up.

I quickly raised my Wolf's Eye and shone it upward into the cave; the beam landed exactly on that strange‑looking human face, which hung above us, staring coldly. As the face twitched slightly, each movement jerked Da Jin Ya up off the ground a bit.

I was shocked—what the hell is this thing? The ghost face hung high in the cavern; though this part wasn't far from where the robber cave intersected, the space opened up and grew very high above, a pitch‑black mass I couldn't make out clearly. I waved at Pangzi, who without hesitation stowed his engineer's shovel, drew his paratrooper knife, and sliced the sticky threads binding Da Jin Ya. The suspended Da Jin Ya slipped free and fell to the ground; I hurried to help him up and asked, "Master Jin, how are you? Can you still walk?"

Da Jin Ya's neck was constricted to the point of nearly rolling his eyes back; he shook his head with difficulty. Overwhelmed by fright, he couldn't utter a word, his limbs went limp, and he obeyed no commands.

Pangzi stared at the ghost face above and cursed, "Fuck, so much sticky silk—could this be a spider spirit?" He didn't wait to find out what the face was, grabbed his engineer's shovel like a spear, aimed, swung his arms wide, and hurled it upward.

The engineer's shovel's sharp tip pierced the ghost face above our heads; instantly, two horizontal rows of red lights flashed on the lower part of the bizarre giant face—four lights on top, four below, like eight blood‑red eyes.

A huge, pitch‑black bulk came crashing down from the cave ceiling. Seeing danger, I hastily dragged Da Jin Ya aside; a dark object landed exactly where we had been standing. This time I was less than half a meter away; I swept my Wolf's Eye over it and saw its true form clearly.

It was a gigantic humanoid‑faced spider, its body jet‑black; on its back a natural white pattern formed a full human face, with all five features present, neither more nor less. The facial pattern was the size of a washbasin, and the spider's volume was several times larger, its eight strange legs covered in fur.

I had seen this kind of large spider before on Kunlun Mountain—a rare specimen with a back pattern strikingly like a human face. When I was in the army, we were working in a big valley on Kunlun Mountain; first a comrade from another unit vanished mysteriously, then deep in the valley we uncovered a huge spider nest. The soldiers had never seen such huge spiders, but thanks to the unit's disciplined training they kept their cool, using rifles and crowbars to kill all three large spiders in the nest. Finally, deep inside the nest we found the corpse of the missing soldier, wrapped in silk like a mummy, his body sucked dry to the consistency of rotted bark.

I had once heard an expert who worked with our unit describe the grim fate of people eaten by spiders. This black, giant humanoid‑faced spider belongs to a rare branch of spiders, nicknamed the "Black Spider." Though it can spit silk like an ordinary spider, it does not weave webs; the silk it produces is sticky but lacks sufficient toughness and fire‑resistance. Ordinary spider silk is fire‑resistant, highly elastic, cut‑resistant, and four times as strong as steel wire, whereas the Black Spider lacks these traits—it never builds webs, relying instead on the sheer quantity of its silk and the high toxin content in its body to prevail.

Its lower jaw contains a poison sac storing a large amount of toxin; once it ensnares prey with silk, it immediately injects the poison. The most terrifying aspect is that a victim poisoned by this substance suffers only muscle rigidity and paralysis while remaining fully conscious, even retaining the sensation of pain.

What's worse, while injecting the paralytic toxin, the spider simultaneously secretes a digestive fluid that melts the prey alive for it to absorb. When my comrades and I heard this, we felt a chill run down our spines—such a death is horrifying.

Past memories flashed like lightning in my mind; at this moment I was only half a meter from that huge human-faced black spider. At this close distance, in the beam of the wolf-eye flashlight, every black hair was especially clear, making my scalp tingle. Without waiting for this just-fallen black spider to act, I immediately thrust the paratrooper knife in my hand at it.

One thrust straight in, the feeling at point of contact was like hitting cowhide; the paratrooper knife is short, so it didn't injure this human-faced black spider, but it startled it; it turned and lunged at me. I know the black spider's eight strange legs are a kind of vibration sensor; the paratrooper knife is too short to injure it, so I raised the knife and slashed horizontally, just cutting its foreleg; the paratrooper knife is very sharp, a rope as thick as two fingers could be cut with a few strokes.

The black spider's legs are its most sensitive part; it relies entirely on its spider legs to sense movement when catching prey. Although this slash severed the leg of the human-faced black spider, it only made it flinch back in pain.

The entrenching tool stuck in its back also fell to the ground; Pangzi reached out and picked up the entrenching tool, shouting angrily, "Lao Hu, we've really fallen into the spider silk cave!" While shouting, he swung the entrenching tool wildly at the giant spider's body.

The black spider, in pain, retreated quickly into the depths of the cave; Pangzi, hacking away frenziedly, wanted to pursue and kill it; I hurriedly shouted, "Don't chase! Quickly carry Da Jin Ya on your back, let's leave this place."

Hearing my shout, Pangzi came back, reaching out to help lift the prone Da Jin Ya, but suddenly his foot gave way and he stepped on something. Looking down, he said, "Ah, isn't this the goose we lost? It turns out the spider spirit sucked it dry."

I helped Da Jin Ya to his feet and told Pangzi, "Don't worry about the goose; quickly help me carry the person. Fortunately we're not far from the robber's cave—this cave interior is unfathomable. I originally thought it was a solution cave, but now it looks like it might all be spider nests. We should hurry back, exit the robber's cave, otherwise if we fall into those labyrinthine caves below, escaping will be difficult."

I had just finished saying half of my words when suddenly I felt a tightness on my leg, lost my balance, and was pulled to the ground; Pangzi and Da Jin Ya were the same, and we three almost simultaneously fell down.

Immediately we three were dragged by a huge force; the other side seemed to want to pull us deeper into the cave. I tried to get up from the ground, but because my body kept being dragged, I struggled a few times to no avail. I discovered my leg was wrapped in spider silk as thick as a child's arm; the black spider that Pangzi had chased away certainly couldn't have such thick silk—could there be an even larger one in the cave? Able to drag three people, my goodness, how big must it be.

Thinking of this, I struggled desperately, trying to break the spider silk wrapped around my leg; I drew the paratrooper knife from my waist, intending to cut the silk. But as soon as I lifted my head, I ran into a sudden low ceiling in this passage, and my head struck a hanging stone, almost breaking my nasal bone. My nose bled profusely, pain making me gulp cold air, yet the more anxious I became, the more helpless I felt.

We three were dragged far through the winding cave; the clothes on our backs were all torn, our bodies covered in bloody streaks. I was greatly alarmed, fearing they wanted to drag us back to their lair, paralyze us with toxin, store us for three or five days, then slowly feast on us. Just thinking of that grim state, chills shot straight to my head.

Pangzi, being relatively heavy, had been dragged this long distance; at first he was also panicked, but then he calmed down, casually grabbed a nearby stone pillar to steady himself, sat up from the ground, drew the entrenching tool, and with three or four chops severed the spider silk wrapped around his leg, ignoring his own pain. He came to my side, reached out and grabbed me, then also cut the spider silk wrapped around my leg. I cursed as I sat up, used my sleeve to wipe the blood from my face, then used the paratrooper knife to cut off the sticky spider silk on my leg. Pangzi again wanted to rescue Da Jin Ya, but saw he had already been dragged twenty-odd meters away, waving his arms and shouting in struggle.

Pangzi and I only had the wolf-eye flashlight in his hand left, with no other lighting equipment; we saw Da Jin Ya being dragged farther and farther away—if we didn't go after him now, it would be too late.

Pangzi and I had no time to weigh pros and cons; right then we gritted our teeth, bore the pain, and sprinted after him; the beam of Pangzi's flashlight shook violently with our running; just as we reached Da Jin Ya's side, the wolf-eye in his hand flashed twice and then went out—it had run out of battery.