"Coming right now." Dong Rui and He Lingchuan exchanged a glance and had no choice but to head back.
"Hey?" Huangmao was taken aback. What work did these two still have to do? Just now, everyone had been drinking and eating fish together; the two had seemed to blend right in, yet they had actually said nothing of substance.
What were they really doing here?
In the blink of an eye, He Lingchuan and Dong Rui vanished into the jungle.
Huangmao had no choice but to head back dejectedly and report.
Tu Zhongli glanced at the sky. Seeing that the moon had begun to sink toward the west, he said decisively, "Never mind them!" Then he shot Huangmao a meaningful look.
Huangmao took the cue. Under the pretense of adding firewood, he tossed several packets of medicinal powder into the bonfire.
The logs crackled, occasionally spitting a few sparks, revealing nothing out of the ordinary.
Yet before anyone realized it, a faint grassy aroma began to drift through the jungle.
This fragrance blended seamlessly with the scent of the swamp, so subtle that even the spider guardians stationed nearby failed to notice anything amiss.
Roughly a quarter of an hour later, the nearby spiders barely moved anymore, as though slipping into a stupor.
Huangmao waved a hand in front of a spider guardian's face.
These creatures kept their eyes open whether asleep or awake, making it truly difficult to tell.
He even poked the guardian with a tree branch. Seeing it make no reaction whatsoever, he finally turned and gave Tu Zhongli a thumbs-up.
Tu Zhongli ordered one of his men to swim across to the opposite bank, find a good position, and tear open a wind-summoning talisman.
Immediately, gentle breezes swept through one after another, blowing from west to east and carrying the medicinal scent rising from the bonfire toward the Demon Nest.
After another quarter of an hour or so, even the spiders around the caravan slowed down, growing drowsy and lethargic without even realizing it.
Tu Zhongli produced another packet of powder. This time, without bothering to hide it, he threw it into the flames in plain view of everyone.
With a booming whoosh, the bonfire flared four feet high, billowing rolling clouds of dense smoke like an out-of-control blaze—and an eerie, bright yellow smoke at that.
In the dark of night, such thick yellow fumes churning into the sky were exceptionally conspicuous.
***
Back in the workshop within the Demon Nest, He Lingchuan glanced outside and saw that no spider guardians were keeping watch. He immediately said to Dong Rui, "They're going to make their move tonight. Bring your stuff out."
Dong Rui looked startled. "Bring what out?"
"Stop playing dumb," He Lingchuan said with disdain. "You've been tinkering here for over half a month and ruined forty or fifty spiders. Don't tell me you haven't assembled a new monster?"
"What monster?" Dong Rui glared. "It's called a demon puppet!" With that, he walked to the deepest recess of the stone cavern.
A large quantity of odd scraps and materials was piled here. But as Dong Rui put it, everything was arranged in "apple-pie order," with a bizarre internal logic of its own, so he would curse out anyone who touched anything. After over half a month, the spider guardians gave this corner a wide berth, never daring to lift the black cloth covering the hoard.
Now, Dong Rui threw back the black cloth, revealing what lay beneath. He Lingchuan looked down. "It doesn't look any different. Are you sure this is a demon puppet?"
Beneath the cloth was merely an intact spider. It was massive, pitch-black, and stood four feet tall even with its legs tucked in.
Yet it looked no different from any other burrow spider—twelve eyes, eight legs, and legs covered in stiff bristles.
Compared to the ghost ape or the werewolf, it was remarkably plain and unassuming.
"Use your head! If I made it look like a freak, how could it sneak us out?" Dong Rui scolded, exasperated by his lack of insight. "Besides, I cobbled together a demon puppet in just a dozen days or so—you should be thanking the heavens! Normally, from crafting to fine-tuning to training, a single demon puppet takes at least two years. Two whole years!"
"Then will this thing actually obey your orders?" He Lingchuan voiced a fresh worry. "It won't dump us halfway, will it?"
"It understands basic commands, but it can't handle complex combat." Making this spider fight with sweeping, aggressive momentum like the ghost ape was certainly out of the question; that required years of meticulous adjustments. Dong Rui patted the spider. "Stand up and take a couple of steps."
Sure enough, the spider stood and scuttled around the room, its footing looking even nimbler than a regular spider guardian's.
In fact, this had been the largest specimen with the highest combat prowess among all the test subjects Zhu Erniang sent over. On the surface, Dong Rui had reported it lost during experiments, while secretly modifying it into this form.
As for the consumables in a laboratory—how much was used and how it was used—wasn't that entirely up to him to declare?
It was simply taking advantage of laymen.
Once he finished creating this thing, they had merely been waiting for an opportune moment.
He Lingchuan circled the spider demon puppet, a hint of envy in his tone. "Can it listen to me? Just in case an opening comes up later."
"Put your hand on its head and let it get used to your scent."
He Lingchuan did as instructed. Dong Rui leaned close to the demon puppet's ear and muttered a few quiet words. He Lingchuan could hear the sounds but could not understand them; it seemed to be a unique method of communication between Dong Rui and his puppets.
The spider demon puppet actually sniffed beneath He Lingchuan's hand and nudged against it.
Dong Rui breathed a sigh of relief. "All set. It knows you now." He then added to He Lingchuan, "Generally speaking, the demon puppets I make only serve me as their master."
He Lingchuan rolled his eyes. "Did you think I was going to coax it into rebelling? By the way, you said 'generally speaking.' What's the exception?"
"There was one," Dong Rui answered casually. "Back when I was wanted by the Beijia Kingdom and hadn't yet made Number Thirty-Four, I was backed into a corner with no way out. I had no choice but to custom-make a demon puppet for someone in exchange for help escaping Beijia."
From then on, he had learned his lesson through bitter pain, realizing that no matter how fast four legs ran, they could never match a pair of wings. Only then did he create the monstrous bird demon puppet, Number Thirty-Four.
"Oh? So your time with Zhu Erniang wasn't your first rodeo? Who did you custom-build a puppet for back then?" He Lingchuan asked curiously. "Since you take commissions, could I maybe...?"
"No!" Dong Rui felt like spitting in his face. "Do you think these can just be whipped up out of thin air? I've told you so many times—crafting a demon puppet is extraordinarily difficult, and what it turns out like depends entirely on chance!"
He rarely shared the secrets of demon puppets with outsiders, yet did this bastard just let it go in one ear and out the other every single time?
"Well, didn't you still make one for someone else?"
"I got lucky that time. I happened to have an existing puppet base on hand that matched their requirements, so a few tweaks made it usable. Even so, something rushed like that comes with flaws. That demon puppet had to consume large doses of prunella spikes every few days, or it couldn't hold together."
"What number did you give it?"
"Thirty-One."
"Is it still alive?"
"Of course, as long as it's properly maintained!" Afraid He Lingchuan would pry further, Dong Rui quickly changed the subject. "All right, back to business! How do you think they're going to strike?"
He paused. "Zhu Erniang mistook thieves for guests, which actually gives us an opportunity."
Zhu Erniang had gone a very long time without dealing with humans. Even when living people occasionally strayed into Demon Nest Swamp, she and her brood simply devoured them as convenient snacks. The only exception in recent years was likely that caravan.
He Lingchuan and Dong Rui could see through the disguises of their own kind, but the spiders could not.
For now, that was their slight advantage.
"That depends on their objective. It can't possibly be Zhu Erniang herself. With their meager numbers and skill, they can't take on a prehistoric arch-demon." What mountain bandits sought was nothing more than wealth and goods. "If they're eyeing things inside the Demon Nest, they'll have to find a way to lure Zhu Erniang away."
As he said this, he suddenly twitched his nose and sniffed the air. "Do you smell anything?"
Because the Demon Nest cultivated fungal carpets and aphid cattle, it was inherently damp, and the air was perpetually thick with the stench of rotting wood. Now, there was a faint aroma of fresh grass and sweet blossoms. Considering the delicate situation outside, He Lingchuan grew alert. He retrieved two pills from his robe, swallowed one, and handed the other to Dong Rui.
"An antidote pill, specifically for stupefying incenses."
Dong Rui glanced at him and shook his head. "No need. No drug can fell me." He rolled around among medicine vials day in and day out; unless it was an extreme poison on the level of toxic dragon saliva, ordinary venoms could not bring him down.
Then he posed that soul-searching question again: "Which side do we back?"
"The side with the better odds of winning, of course." Backing the wrong horse would end in disaster. While Zhu Erniang was certainly no benevolent creature, these bandits were even worse scoundrels—not to mention there was very likely a mastermind pulling their strings.
"Which side..."
Before he could finish, a piercing howl tore through the sky outside.
What kind of creature could produce such a cry? It did not sound like a tiger, a wolf, or a bear; it was gut-wrenching and horrific to the ear—
Yet it was remarkably resounding.
Even deep within this intricate labyrinth, the two men heard it with complete clarity.
Dong Rui pondered. "Why does that sound like..."
"A pig squealing?"
Squealing like a pig being slaughtered—there was no mistaking that racket.
"Right!" Dong Rui was about to speak when the spider demon puppet suddenly stirred, taking strides toward the exit. He barked two consecutive commands at it. The puppet staggered through a couple of steps, looking as though it were enduring a fierce inner struggle, before barely coming to a halt where it stood. Even so, its claws tapped restlessly against the ground.
"Ugh, it's still an unfinished piece," Dong Rui grumbled in dissatisfaction. "It received an order from the Spider Queen, commanding all mid- and high-tier offspring to rush to the Jiana ruins for support immediately."
The orders of its ancestor and its new master were battling inside the demon puppet's mind, though Dong Rui's methods ultimately won out.
Sure enough, within a few breaths, rustling noises drifted in from outside.
He Lingchuan leaned against the doorway and watched spiders stream past the workshop in dense, countless swarms. They were so thick that the tunnel itself became invisible, filled everywhere with jostling round heads, round bodies, and spider legs blurring into afterimages.
The sight was truly hair-raising. Who could have imagined that a single Demon Nest could house this many spiders!
He Lingchuan waited patiently for a good while before the spider army had mostly passed.
Moments later, a colossal silhouette appeared in the passage, radiating a heavy, stifling pressure.
Zhu Erniang had arrived.
This tunnel was the only path leading to the surface.
In this moment of crisis, she swept past the two humans without so much as glancing at them.
Thanks to the ample glow provided by the fluorescent spores in the passage, and aided by He Lingchuan's sharp eyesight, he noticed something amiss with Zhu Erniang's eyes.
She possessed twelve eyes encircling the sides of her head. But from He Lingchuan's vantage point, it looked as though... several were missing?
Where had Zhu Erniang's eyes gone?
Behind her came several more spider guardians. They sprayed layer upon layer of webbing, sealing the workshop door tightly shut.
Rough as she seemed, Zhu Erniang had a meticulous side—she had not overlooked the two little minnows.
Chapter 336