More than a dozen spider guardians rushed to deal with it, but the fire spread astonishingly fast. Often, just as they painstakingly put out one chamber, four or five behind it were already ablaze.
To make matters worse, the draft blowing up from deep underground was exceptionally fierce. It swept up sparks and sent them swirling everywhere, scattering the seeds of light and heat even farther afield.
He Lingchuan had never expected four command arrows to produce such an effect.
Yet he could hardly celebrate, for the spider guardians were already upon him.
The foremost two could actually leap—and a single bound covered thirty feet!
This was his first time seeing spiders that could jump, and under such unfavorable circumstances no less.
He Lingchuan had no choice but to shout a warning to his companions on the surface. Brandishing his saber, he poured every ounce of his strength into hacking off two bundles of spider silk!
These silk strands were plain white and did not seem to belong to Zhu Erniang.
Before the jumping spiders could pounce onto his face, He Lingchuan drew a deep breath, flipped backward, and jumped!
Indeed, adopting a posture as if embracing the abyss, he entered a free fall.
The jumping spiders pounced into empty air.
The other spider guardians arrived and shot out webs, trying to haul him back up and teach him a lesson.
Unfortunately, they fell short by several feet.
Still, any living creature falling from here faced certain death; they would only need to scavenge his corpse later. Losing interest in He Lingchuan, the spider guardians turned back to salvage the burning stone chambers, while detaching a squad of over a hundred guardians that scurried aggressively out of the burrow to settle scores with the humans.
Humans, those spider-loathed creatures, never ventured alone into the Ghost Needle Stone Forest. If one emerged from inside the burrow, there was bound to be a swarm of them outside!
He Lingchuan plummeted like a lead weight, wind howling in his ears, two bundles of spider silk still gripped in his hands.
Time and again, he flung out the silk, hoping it would latch onto the distant cliff face. Given its stickiness, even the slightest contact would anchor it firmly.
Yet the silk was truly too light and wispy. Buffeted by the fierce updraft, it could only stream straight upward!
*Damn it, movies and TV really are a bunch of lies! Again!* He Lingchuan cursed aloud.
If he fell to his death in the dream, he would probably wake up in reality immediately.
Probably.
Yet he did not want to leave the dream just yet; he wanted to fight a bit harder.
At this falling speed, he only had a few heartbeats left.
Fortunately, he still had a trump card.
The Spider Queen's brood nest had expanded from a natural karst palace, riddled with countless holes and hollows. He Lingchuan picked out the largest opening on the rock wall. Once he locked his aim, he drew an object from his breast pocket, channeled his true power, and hurled it with all his might!
Practicing his throws for a thousand days had finally served its purpose in this split second.
Watching with his own eyes, He Lingchuan saw it land squarely amid a pile of dry leaves inside the hollow. Wild joy surged in his chest.
He was in rapid free fall, yet he had managed to hit an opening more than twenty feet away. How could he have possessed such eyesight and precise calculation a few months ago?
What was even more terrifying was that he was nearly at the chasm floor; he had only one shot at success!
Brilliant. He was simply bloody brilliant. He would give himself a proper pat on the back later.
This life-saving treasure was a tiny cicada slough.
Ghost shadow cicadas lurked underground as nymphs, and the adults liked to wedge themselves into the bottoms of branch forks—the armpits of large trees. They could even change their body color to match the bark, making their sloughs rather difficult to acquire.
Yet it was an indispensable catalyst for performing the art of Sacrifice the Plum to Preserve the Peach.
He Lingchuan had memorized the divine ability's formulas until they were second nature. With a swift flick of his left hand, forming the seal without even needing to chant an incantation, he vanished from his original spot and teleported straight into the mountain cave!
In exchange, that ghost shadow cicada slough was swapped into his former position. It ought to have continued plunging downward, but it was far too light and the wind from the abyss was too strong, blowing it tumbling back upward instead.
Having narrowly escaped death, He Lingchuan broke out in a cold sweat all over. Leaning against the stone wall, he let out a long breath of relief.
He poked his head out to look down at the bottom of the chasm, breaking out in another cold sweat: the distance between life and death had been a mere forty feet!
Thank goodness he had used his military merits before departing to redeem the art of Sacrifice the Plum to Preserve the Peach. Thank goodness he had repeatedly pondered its use while riding his horse along the way.
See? It came in handy, didn't it? Otherwise, he would have been forced to log off early.
Taking a few deep breaths to steady his nerves, he prepared to explore further.
The ground beneath his feet was remarkably soft. Illuminated by the fluorescent spores, he saw that the cavern floor was blanketed in semi-decayed leaves and twigs, overlaid with a moss carpet more than a foot thick.
The plant carpet was extraordinarily plush, causing his foot to sink straight in.
Looking closer, he realized something was squirming on the carpet—aphids, almost as large as pomelos?
It was the first time he had ever seen aphids this huge.
These bizarre insects had plump, rounded bodies that showed a pale green under the fluorescent glow. Even with an uninvited guest like He Lingchuan arriving, they merely paddled their six short legs, sluggishly and clumsily edging away from him.
He Lingchuan focused his gaze and noticed that on the fifty-foot stretch of moss carpet ahead, there were at least seven to eight hundred fat aphids. Some were feeding, some courting, and some simply fast asleep, but none ventured far from their own little patches of turf.
Just then, a shadow flickered across the ground. He Lingchuan quickly slipped into the shadows, and then saw a spider walking out from a fork ahead.
He was about to strike by surprise when the spider approached an aphid and patted its back.
The aphid's body shuddered, and from its rear it actually excreted a drop of honeydew the size of a pigeon egg.
The spider sucked it up in a single gulp as if savoring a delicacy. Still unsatisfied, it approached four or five more aphids to beg for food before wiping its mouth in contentment and ambling away.
Seeing this, He Lingchuan finally understood: these caverns were pastures. The burrow spiders of the Ghost Needle Stone Forest were actually imitating ants by rearing giant aphids as their everyday food source.
The air was slightly damp and well-lit, ideal for moss to grow. The aphids were the spiders' dairy cattle; whether to harvest milk or meat was up to the spiders.
No wonder the Ghost Needle Stone Forest out in the wasteland could support hundreds of thousands of spiders. The secret lay underground all along.
He Lingchuan moved forward cautiously, treading upon the thick moss carpet and stepping over countless obese aphids.
Being close to the bottom of the chasm, few spiders patrolled here, and those that did moved sluggishly, making them easy to avoid. Presumably, they felt the deepest part of the nest was safe, taking it as a matter of course to slack off.
Whether human or spider, the nature of living creatures was cut from the same cloth.
Yet although the guard was lax, the complexity of the labyrinth was very real. After walking for just a quarter of an hour, He Lingchuan had no idea where he was. In front of him, there were always several tunnels to choose from.
Still, he strove to choose paths leading upward.
After walking for another two hours, he remained thoroughly disoriented, but the moss on the ground grew thinner, and the aphids fewer.
Then, he stepped into a massive cavern.
It was roughly the size of a soccer field, some sixty feet high. The floor was dry and clean, without a single drop of dew or speck of moss.
Yet fluorescent spores covered the walls and ceiling of the cavern, illuminating the space as bright as day.
Thus, the very first sight that greeted He Lingchuan as he walked in made his heart leap into his throat and his scalp tingle with dread.
A gargantuan burrow spider stood thirty feet away, facing him head-on!
Twelve massive, pitch-black eyes stared directly at him.
Zhu Erniang's body, the size of a cottage, was already enormous. Yet this burrow spider reached an astounding height of forty feet—thirteen meters!
One should know that even a male giraffe's height rarely exceeded twenty feet, forcing humans to look up in awe.
Standing there with its immensely stout build, this burrow spider truly resembled a small mountain, radiating an overwhelming pressure.
In that split second, He Lingchuan's back stiffened. Every cell in his body seemed to scream: *Run! Turn around and run!*
The giant spider did not move.
He Lingchuan gentled his breathing and took two slow steps back. The passage he had arrived through was narrow; the monstrosity was too large and might not be able to squeeze in after him. Weren't all spider colonies supposed to have only one leader? Could this be Zhu Erniang's true form?
Yet even after he retreated four or five steps, the giant spider remained crouched in place, utterly motionless.
Was this thing sleeping, or...?
After all, spiders lacked eyelids and never closed their eyes whether asleep or awake.
Soon, however, He Lingchuan noticed a detail:
The omnipresent fluorescent spores actually grew on this giant spider as well!
On its back, its crown, its joints, and even amidst its long, stiff bristles.
The giant spider stood close against the rock wall, and the wall surrounding it bore far more fluorescent spores than anywhere else.
Just how long had this monstrosity remained motionless?
He Lingchuan felt around on the ground for a small pebble. Plucking up his courage, he tossed it at the giant spider with moderate force.
*Clack.* The pebble bounced off the spider's foreleg and hit the ground, echoing in the vast expanse.
The giant spider still did not move.
He Lingchuan tested it twice more. Seeing no reaction whatsoever, he cautiously approached.
The closer he drew, the more monstrously immense and terrifying the creature appeared. He could not fathom how long it had lived or what it had eaten to reach such a colossal size.
Finally, He Lingchuan stood before the giant spider, drew his saber, and lightly tapped its foreleg.
*Clang, clang.* Two dull clinks rang out, sounding somewhat like metal striking stone.
In other words, the shell of the giant spider's foreleg was as hard as rock.
Only from his current angle could he catch a glimpse of the giant spider's abdomen, which remarkably bore the pattern of a starry night and the Milky Way.
Zhu Erniang's abdominal pattern was already beautiful, but the giant spider's star map was broader and more brilliant, as though it contained half the Milky Way within it, making it impossible to look away. The stars in the pattern even flickered faintly, echoing the fluorescent spores upon the spider's body.
Growing bolder, He Lingchuan placed a hand on the spider's foreleg and channeled a wisp of true power into it.
If this were a living creature, how could it fail to react when someone came knocking at the door?
Yet that wisp of true power vanished like a clay ox sinking into the sea, offering He Lingchuan not the slightest feedback.
Desolate, vacant, and cold—that was all he felt inside the giant spider.
Such a magnificent demon had died countless ages ago; its remains had almost turned to stone.
For some reason, He Lingchuan was reminded of the skeletal remains in the immortal's grotto, and two words sprang to mind:
Passing into parinirvana.
Had this giant spider passed away in meditation here?
Following the cavern further ahead, he soon discovered another giant spider.
It was half the size of the first, likewise crouching upon the ground, and likewise covered in fluorescent spores.
He Lingchuan continued forward, finding a third, a fourth...
All the way to a seventh.
They grew progressively smaller, each harboring a star map upon its abdomen, and each entirely devoid of life.
Chapter 198