Secondly, General Nan Ke had also noticed that the Baling army had not followed them into the Ghost Needle Stone Forest. The Panlong City army therefore had to adapt its strategy, massing together to bring their superior numbers to bear against the burrow spiders' onslaught.
"There's an exit, but the river doesn't lead there," the guide calculated the distance in his head. "Once we make landfall, we'll have to walk another few li to reach the rendezvous point marked by the fireworks, and then another dozen-plus li to get to the northeast exit."
The Ghost Needle Stone Forest was vast indeed.
Willow spat a curse. "Damn it. If we could charge our way out of the Ghost Needle Stone Forest, maybe we could break out of the Baling cordon ahead of time."
"Or maybe the Baling troops have already laid a trap," He Lingchuan said, scanning their surroundings. "If I were General Nan Ke, I wouldn't be in a rush to leave the Ghost Needle Stone Forest. Burrow spiders are vicious adversaries; the Baling troops won't risk coming in either."
"If only we could find a way to deal with the burrow spiders." Liu Tong frowned. "This godforsaken place has my heart leaping into my throat."
The light was dim; no one could clearly see the spiders' specific movements, but they could hear the rustle of long, spindly legs scraping over dead branches and withered leaves. Multiplying and gathering, the sound was enough to make one's skin crawl.
One of the merchants could not help asking, "Are those things going to shadow us the whole way?"
Then how could any living soul dare step ashore?
No one had an answer. They could only take it one step at a time.
Sun Jiayuan, the patrol guard, happened to be walking alongside He Lingchuan, bites from spiders marking his wrists and neck. He Lingchuan glanced at him and asked out of the blue, "How did you lose your fingers?"
He had noticed that both of Sun Jiayuan's hands were missing pinky fingers.
Where other men had ten fingers, he had only eight.
Sun Jiayuan kept quiet.
Just when He Lingchuan thought the man would not reply, he spoke: "A few years back, two mantises turned into demons after imbibing Emperor's Flowing Dew. Their sickles were razor-sharp."
He Lingchuan let out a long "Ah."
What a coincidence—the pinky fingers on both hands were severed by mantis demons? And of all digits, they were the pinkies, which least hindered everyday tasks or fighting?
It seemed this man harbored quite a story, but He Lingchuan did not press further.
Before long, a scorched stench drifted along the wind.
The farther forward they went, the heavier and thicker the burning smell became, setting everyone to coughing fitfully.
They even saw vast swathes of burnt wasteland along the riverbank.
Now it could only be called the charred skeleton of a forest: scorched wood and blackened dirt everywhere, the soil itself melted into vitreous slag.
As they pressed deeper toward the heart of the Ghost Needle Stone Forest, the devastation grew ever more horrific.
"This bodes ill," Willow murmured. "The Baling army torched the forest. They probably incinerated the burrow spiders' main nest. No wonder the spiders are enraged."
The spider demons likely couldn't distinguish Baling men from Panlong men. Humans had burned their nest, so humans were their targets for revenge, plain and simple.
She rolled her eyes at the merchant who had spoken earlier. "See that? Only because their nest was destroyed are they on a rampage. Under normal circumstances, any guide could lead the way without an issue."
The merchant was struck dumb. Sun Jiayuan gave her a grateful look, then spat a few curses at the merchant to vent his lingering frustration.
This time, the merchant dared not talk back. He was still counting on the patrol guards to escort him out of danger.
Wading through the water for another hour, they finally saw the destroyed thickets and burrows begin to thin out. According to the guide, this was already approaching the heart of the Ghost Needle Stone Forest, where the burrow spiders never allowed humans near. Even in ordinary times, caravans passing through the stone forest never dared take this route.
Here, the burrow spiders were more numerous and larger in size. Every so often, He Lingchuan caught glimpses of gigantic silhouettes amid the swarm, but the poor light kept him from making out their full shapes.
Seeing more and more spiders amassing along the banks—even clambering over one another in writhing stacks—Liu Tong felt his heart pounding and finally ordered the torches extinguished.
He Lingchuan and the rest waded through the dark.
Once the flames were doused, the agitation on the banks indeed subsided. Though endowed with over a dozen eyes, most spiders could only perceive shifts in light and had poor eyesight, relying chiefly on scent and hearing.
They continued onward. Along the way, they even ran across a half-grown wild boar standing in midstream drinking water. Judging by its size, it weighed at most a hundred jin, probably frightened down into the water by the spider swarms as well.
He Lingchuan urged Door Plank to catch the boar alive. They bound its four hooves with rope, tossed it across a horse's back, and stuffed a piece of cloth into its mouth to keep its shrill squeals from piercing the quiet night.
After another two hours of wading, they reached the end of this stretch of their journey—
Another deep pool.
Directly above it hung a waterfall fifty feet high.
The cliff was steep and precarious. Even if the patrol guards could climb it, the merchants and carts could not, making further ascent impossible. They had no choice but to go ashore here and head east toward the rendezvous point designated by General Nan Ke.
Over the past four-odd hours, signal flares had lit the sky three more times, guiding the warriors through the darkness.
Along the way, the party had navigated several rushing stony shallows, soaking themselves to the bone. Perhaps the turbulent roar of the water had drowned out the sounds of their advance, for fewer and fewer spiders trailed them.
By the time they reached the deep pool, none remained on the banks.
The guide estimated the distance, a look of delight washing over his face. "Three li at most, and we'll link up with the main force!"
Naturally, he meant three li as the crow flies.
"Caution is best." Shadows of trees swayed on the shore; who knew if monsters lurked among them? This was where the wild boar proved useful.
He Lingchuan ungagged and untied it. The moment its four hooves touched down, before it could even stretch its legs, it splashed through the water and bolted for the bank.
Crackle, snap! It snapped countless branches as it fled, its indignant grunts fading into the distance.
Standing in the river, everyone held their breath and listened intently.
There was no rustling sound of spiders scuttling ashore, and the wild boar was still tearing away in the distance, seemingly meeting with no mishap.
Only then did Liu Tong give the command: "Go ashore. To the rendezvous point."
No one dared delay. Scrambling onto dry land, they whipped their horses into a gallop and sped eastward.
***
In a river valley in the northeastern Ghost Needle Stone Forest, where the fireworks had been launched.
General Nan Ke's forces were regrouping here. Over the past several hours, more than one thousand three hundred people had arrived to rendezvous in batches, including over nine hundred Panlong soldiers and more than four hundred merchants and travelers.
Though everyone who reached the valley was battered, wounded, and draped with cobwebs, they had miraculously preserved seventy percent of their cargo.
Right now, this was the most bustling place in the entire Ghost Needle Stone Forest. Because the signal flares had made so much noise, the enraged spiders had converged on the area.
Looking out over the valley, one saw a suffocating black sea of spiders, without a patch of empty ground to be seen.
At the valley floor, the river bent in an L-shape with a depth of at least eight feet. The Panlong City army had already discovered that the spiders dared not enter the water, so General Nan Ke had temporarily set his base camp in the center of the valley, right within the bend of the L.
With the river guarding their rear, the soldiers only had to focus on the foes before them.
Against these pervasive spiders, the solution General Nan Ke devised was to build a wall of fire.
Spurred by the spider demons, large numbers of burrow spiders could temporarily suppress their fear of fire, but they possessed no magical immunity to flames. Once roasted by fire, they still died, charred, and grew fragrant...
While fighting off the spiders, the Panlong City troops worked swiftly to fell a dozen large trees—the more lush and leafy, the better—and doused them in fire oil before lighting them ablaze.
Whoosh! Flames shot toward the sky.
With this method, the Panlong City army hastily threw up a fire wall over ten feet wide. The roaring flames were a barrier most spiders could not cross.
With deep water behind and a wall of fire in front, the temporary camp was safe for the moment.
However, drawing on years of campaign experience, General Nan Ke ordered his men to pull open a gap at the northernmost end of the fire wall, measuring four or five feet wide at most.
Seeing an opening in the wall of fire, the spiders outside surged in recklessly!
Though they crashed forward like stormy waves pounding the shore, the Panlong soldiers held the line in tight formation, spearing every spider that breached the gap and tossing its carcass into the fire to serve as kindling.
Casualties occurred here and there, but compared to their previous desperate rout, it was day and night.
A confidant of General Nan Ke asked in confusion, "General, why not seal the fire wall completely?"
That way, the soldiers would suffer no further casualties.
"These spider demons aren't stupid. Without an opening, they would try every possible means to break through, running us ragged," General Nan Ke said. Seeing the situation steadily fall under his control, he finally found the time to uncork his waterskin and quench his thirst, feeding some water to the black-spotted sparrowhawk perched on his shoulder as well. "Better to leave an opening ourselves and funnel them all right here. That keeps the rest of the wall secure."
Controllable versus uncontrollable—this was an art, a matter of delicate mastery. Otherwise, with fewer than a thousand soldiers facing hundreds of thousands, even a million spiders, even with origin power to protect their bodies, they could never hold out.
General Nan Ke looked at the sparrowhawk. "You said earlier... how soon will the reinforcements arrive?"
"Before dawn." The sparrowhawk preened the feathers on its back. "Soon."
It had flown from Puxigou to Panlong City to seek aid, then back to the Ghost Needle Stone Forest with the report, tracing a vast triangle in a frantic rush.
In another hour, the horizon would begin to pale.
General Nan Ke looked toward the northeast, his expression somber. Even if they broke out of the Ghost Needle Stone Forest, a brutal battle still awaited them. The Baling troops were bound to have laid an ambush at the exit. Thus, hazardous as the Ghost Needle Stone Forest was, he insisted on waiting here until dawn before venturing out. His ideal scenario was to coordinate with the reinforcements from inside and outside, encircling the Baling troops in reverse.
Just holding out for another hour would suffice.
He was also somewhat disgruntled. "If General Red had agreed to detach troops my way, I would have sent these Baling bastards packing long ago!"
"General Red said the original operational objective remains unchanged."
The supreme commander's orders had to be obeyed. General Nan Ke let out a heavy snort.
***
After galloping in silence for half an hour, Liu Tong suddenly raised a hand. "Halt! Something's ahead!"
Dismounting, everyone advanced at a cautious walk. Pushing aside the dense foliage, the view ahead opened up abruptly.
Past this stretch of low woods lay a vast, open slope, completely unlike the cramped thickets.
At the crest of the slope stood several ancient trees centuries old, their branches spreading wide and luxuriant, while the slope itself was blanketed in fine, velvet-soft grass—tender green, smooth, and immaculate, as though meticulously tended by hand.
The deepest reaches of the Ghost Needle Stone Forest were rarely visited by man. The only ones who could tend it so neatly were... spider demons?
That they could see the slope clearly in the dark was thanks to speckles of white light scattered across it.
These luminous clusters were larger than pomegranates, their color resembling pearl-white—not soft, but piercingly bright.
Door Plank whispered, "Those are fluorescent spores."
They grew clustered around a colossal cave.
Chapter 193