Zhu Erniang's Neighbors

True to a demon puppet master, the experimentation process was bizarre and twisted. He Lingchuan silently turned his head away, choosing not to look. Once fully engrossed in his work, the demon puppet master seemed barely bothered by his circumstances. The five spider demons lasted only three days before Dong Rui made a demand of the guards: "Next batch!" ... In the blink of an eye, fifteen days passed. When He Lingchuan was not assisting Dong Rui, he was answering the Spider Queen's summons to keep her company in conversation. This giant monster had lived in the Demon Nest Swamp for a century and had only left twice during that time, yet she seemed quite knowledgeable about the outside world. Did that mean she had other channels of communication with the outside? He Lingchuan had envisioned countless times how he might give this giant monster a quiet, fatal strike when her guard was down. Yet no calculation seemed safe. Zhu Erniang had twelve eyes set along the sides of her head, giving her virtually a full three-hundred-and-sixty-degree field of vision with zero blind spots. Furthermore, an ancient monster like her kept her spiritual senses extended even while sleeping; launching a sneak attack against her would be exceptionally difficult. Spiders had no eyelids. As long as she stood motionless, who could tell if she was asleep or awake? What was more, this monster possessed many unfathomable abilities. He Lingchuan had witnessed her pluck out one of her own eyes, only for the eyeball to sprout legs upon hitting the ground and turn into a little spider. He could not even tell where her vital points were. Not to mention that Zhu Erniang commanded an army of spider demons. Although their numbers were far smaller than a century ago, He Lingchuan alone stood no chance. She had slaughtered General Nan Ke himself; wouldn't crippling the two of them be child's play? In private, He Lingchuan had taken out his Yuan coin several times to examine it, discovering that the origin power clinging to it was weak as a dying breath, virtually negligible. Simply put, the source of origin power was "unity of purpose." He was far from his homeland now, with no soldiers at his side—holding only an empty token. Without the will of the multitude, where would origin power come from? Without origin power, he had to rely entirely on his own strength, which left him even less confident in dealing with Zhu Erniang. During these days, He Lingchuan wandered around the swamp whenever he was free—first to familiarize himself with the terrain as quickly as possible, and second to look for opportunities and brainstorm a way out. The Demon Nest Swamp was too vast; he walked for days without reaching its ends. The giant spider let him roam freely, seemingly not worried in the least that he might slip away on his own. He Lingchuan eventually asked her directly to her face, and Zhu Erniang laughed heartily: "The perimeter of Demon Nest Swamp is veiled in mirage mist. You can't possibly walk out, so what do I have to worry about?" She chuckled. "With that meager wisp of origin power in you? It won't break through the mirage mist." Though she had not laid eyes on He Lingchuan's State Token, her spiritual perception was astonishing. Besides, He Lingchuan had not hidden his background; she knew he was the son of the Chief Administrator of Xiazhou in the Yuan Kingdom, someone who could easily hold a nominal military title. "Where did the mirage mist come from?" Well then, escaping had just become even harder. Even if he could deal with Zhu Erniang, how would he escape the perimeter of mirage mist? "Eighty years ago, a mirage demon moved into the Demon Nest Swamp. To gain our consent to stay, it laid down mirage mist around the swamp's perimeter to ward off human intrusions. Since then, the swamp has been far more peaceful." The Demon Nest Swamp was rich in resources, so humans had often entered to harvest materials, even covertly hunting Zhu Erniang's offspring. Burrow spiders yielded several medicinal ingredients. Once the mirage mist rolled in, practically no one could enter aside from armies endowed with origin power. Even though the giant spider could not blink, every word she spoke implied, *I know you want to escape.* He Lingchuan rubbed the back of his head. "What do you mean by 'our consent'? Are there other monsters in the swamp?" Zhu Erniang's voice abruptly grew cold. "Who doesn't have annoying neighbors? If you wander into someone else's territory and get eaten, don't blame me for not saving you." With that, she strode off on her eight long legs. One day, He Lingchuan walked eastward and spotted a massive stone rising abruptly out of a small gully. It stood over ten feet tall, flat like a stele, and covered in a thick layer of spider silk that shimmered with iridescent light under the sun. Recognizing at a glance that the silk came from Zhu Erniang, he felt curious and walked down to inspect it, only to discover that the other side of the stele was draped with a shed skin. Each scale mark on it was larger than his palm. Was this snake skin, or lizard skin? The original owner was certainly huge. He Lingchuan could roughly guess the stone's purpose. Suddenly, two long snakes—one green and one red—darted out of the grass, opening their mouths to strike at his ankles. Snakes in such tall grass were only natural, weren't they? Back when He Lingchuan served as a patrol guard, he was well practiced at beating the grass to flush out snakes. He naturally stepped back two paces, his hand already resting on the hilt of Fusheng. With a faint flash of blade light, the two snakes were severed into four pieces. Even though he had dispatched them in a single strike, he did not step forward to inspect them. Sure enough, the snake segments writhed together on the ground as if dead, but the moment He Lingchuan took a slight step, they lunged again! Naturally, they failed to reach their target. Just then, a spider guardian hurried up from behind and snapped: "Stay away from the boundary marker!" Sure enough, Zhu Erniang's territory ended here; crossing the stele meant trespassing into another's domain. He Lingchuan balanced the dead snake parts on the tip of his saber and backed into their side of the border. "Whose territory is across the way?" "Lord Boshan's," the spider guardian replied, noticing the dead snakes on his blade. "You killed their boundary sentries." "Oh dear, is that going to be a problem?" It appeared Zhu Erniang's neighbor was a serpent demon. He Lingchuan glanced at the shed skin on the boundary stele—yes, definitely enormous. The spider guardian circled the boundary marker, found no trace of other snakes, and asked He Lingchuan, "Do you want these?" "...You take them." The spider guardian dragged the snake carcasses several dozen paces away, until the boundary marker was almost out of sight, before sinking its fangs into the meat. The green snake was not completely dead yet, but it was powerless to resist. He Lingchuan: "..." Digging right in, are we? "You can just eat their sentries like that?" The spider demon waited patiently for the venom to dissolve the snake flesh into liquid, answering as if it were the most natural thing in the world: "They often sneak over to steal our food, too." He Lingchuan looked at the boundary marker, amused. So it really was just a rough marker for territory; minions from both sides came and went, regularly stealing from each other. Come to think of it, both Zhu Erniang and Lord Boshan were monsters native to this swamp; how strict could their control over underlings be? As long as they were not fighting full-blown battles, minor squabbles were simply overlooked. "How many centuries of cultivation does that 'Lord Boshan' across the border have?" "Four or five hundred years." "Then he can't compare to your ancestor," He Lingchuan said. "Why doesn't Zhu Erniang wipe him out and take his territory?" Just looking at how massive Zhu Erniang's nest back in the Ghost Needle Stone Forest had been made it obvious that she believed more offspring brought greater fortune. The more offspring to raise, the more territory she needed. The spider guardian said blankly, "Don't know." Its duty was merely to guard the boundary marker; why would it need to know so much? He Lingchuan considered this and asked, "Do you two sides fight often?" "Yeah, we do." With its mind fixed entirely on its prey, the spider guardian answered casually, "Lord Boshan teams up with other monsters to attack us. They just want to rob us." So none of Zhu Erniang's "neighbors" were easy to deal with—no wonder she sounded so irritated whenever they came up. It seemed this female spider was on terrible terms with everyone in the Demon Nest Swamp. "Are there other great monsters in this swamp?" He only knew of the mirage demon. "Yes, seven or eight others." The Demon Nest Swamp was very big. He Lingchuan was slightly surprised. Great monsters that were rare elsewhere, yet there were seven or eight gathered here? Why were they all crowded into this swamp? He knew full well that the greater someone's ability, the larger their temper—and monsters were even more so. "What do they want to steal?" "Everything!" Bringing this up stirred anger even in the spider guardian. "They even steal our webs! And they want to take back the Demon Nest!" "Take it back?" He Lingchuan asked, puzzled. "Was the Demon Nest originally Lord Boshan's?" "Yeah. It was only when our ancestor arrived here that she drove him out." So Zhu Erniang was the invading bandit all along. He Lingchuan scratched his head. No wonder the native monsters resented her so deeply. Two days later, while watching the spiders retrieve aquatic trap cages near the Jiana tribe ruins, He Lingchuan actually discovered two large snakes inside one cage, both stuffed with round bellies. Each snake was as thick as his thigh and nearly twenty feet long. After being raided by these two gluttons, only two pitiful, scrawny little fish were left in the cage. Enraged, the spiders sprayed webs frantically. One large snake was bound fast, unable to move, while the other slipped away slick as oil, diving into the water and swimming off into the distance in the blink of an eye. Most spiders could not dive, so they could only chitter furiously on the bank. He Lingchuan's eyes darted. He fired a sleeve arrow that struck true into the snake's head, and dragged it back by main force. The rest required no effort from him. The spiders pounced and stabbed furiously at the two snakes. The snakes were large, but they were no match for the spiders' potent venom, going numb in no time. The spiders happily slurped up the liquefied jelly; snake flesh was clearly far more delicious than fish. Because He Lingchuan had lent a hand, when he approached again, they no longer showed hostility toward him. However, killing snakes this time would not be as inconsequential as at the boundary. Barely the time it took to drink a cup of tea had passed, and before the spiders finished their snake feast, He Lingchuan noticed the surrounding woods had grown eerily quiet—not a single bird call or insect chirp remained. Across the way, the ten-foot-tall reeds suddenly swayed, moving closer from afar; something was swimming through the water, through the reeds— The spiders abruptly abandoned the delicacy at their jaws and retreated en masse. Larger spider guardians stepped forward, spraying layer upon layer of white netting across the ground, standing at the ready. In a situation like this, He Lingchuan naturally had no intention of standing there like a target. He quickly followed the smaller spiders to higher, safer ground, prepared to sit back and watch tigers fight. Just then, Zhu Erniang arrived in person from the rear. She paused at the water's edge, her colossal body swelling another circle larger, and then glided across the surface of the water. He Lingchuan was impressed. With a body like a small mountain, she could skim across water too? Then again, she seemed to have just pumped a vast amount of air into her body, so floating was no problem. Then, Zhu Erniang slipped into the reed marsh as well. Of course, she was so tall that the reeds could not completely hide her. From He Lingchuan's vantage point, he could see her freeze as soon as she crawled into the reeds, seemingly confronting something. Suddenly, Zhu Erniang splayed her eight legs and raised her body, appearing a full size larger overall, imposing and formidable.