When their bosses were in trouble, the underlings were bound to help. The giant wild boars and swarms of snakes large and small rushed in to break the siege, clashing with the spider horde.
Under the moonlight, the scene was as chaotic and boiling as a cauldron of water.
The onlookers on the hillside trembled with fear. Once demons went wild, humans had no place in the fray.
Tu Zhongli and his men, however, seized the opportunity presented by the demons' chaotic brawl to quietly climb down into the sinkhole along tree roots and vines.
Little did anyone expect that Zhu Erniang, having not suffered such a disadvantage in ages, was thoroughly enraged. Straining to lift her head, she shot several clusters of spider silk toward the distant ancient trees.
The trees looming over the sinkhole were all majestic, extraordinarily thick ancient timber at least seven or eight hundred years old.
Once the silk adhered, Zhu Erniang gave a mighty yank, dragging the entire tangled, chaotic mass of monsters—including both demon kings—down into the sinkhole together!
The drop was more than a dozen zhang. Upon hitting the ground, the lesser monsters on the periphery were scattered in all directions, left in total disarray.
Spider silk covered almost everything down here, leaving only a single narrow path for humans under normal circumstances. The smaller monsters knocked into the webs were trapped instantly, with the snakes suffering the worst luck of all.
Still entangled, the three great demons rolled along the downward slope and plunged into the water with a loud splash.
The water in the sinkhole was very deep.
After the behemoths fought underwater for a while, King Siwen was the first to falter. He was a purely terrestrial demon, unable to hold his breath for very long, and high-intensity combat depleted breath especially fast. Not to mention countless swamp eels emerged from the bottom—the smaller ones merely as thick as chopsticks, while the larger ones exceeded wide bowls—clinging to his body, gnawing and biting.
Normally, he would not fear them at all; such tiny creatures could not even penetrate his defense. The problem was that the spider guardians had already punctured more than a dozen holes into him and injected venom inside, leaving his boar hide lacking its usual elasticity. These swamp eels specifically burrowed into the wounds to wreak havoc, leaving him in agonizing, maddening itch and pain.
Not to mention one eel as thick as a bowl's rim, vicious and sinister, that was intent on burrowing into places it shouldn't.
As for the other two demons, the giant python Lord Boshan was inherently amphibious and could sleep underwater without issue. Zhu Erniang lacked that ability, but the bristles across her body trapped countless air bubbles upon entering the water; whenever she could hold her breath no longer, she needed only to draw a breath from them, and some bubbles even seeped directly into her body.
Less than half a quarter of an hour later, King Siwen could endure it no longer and turned to surface.
With one of her main attackers gone, Zhu Erniang was able to focus entirely on the giant python. Lord Boshan began to find it hard to bear.
As a venerable demon of many years, Zhu Erniang's claws were sharper than steel blades, and even her bristles carried venom, meaning she didn't need to bite Lord Boshan to inject poison.
Of course, Lord Boshan was an expert in venom himself. Sinking his fangs into the spider demon's shoulder carapace, he sought to pump all the venom in his body into her.
Yet he soon noticed something amiss:
Zhu Erniang's combat prowess hadn't diminished at all, as if his venom had no effect.
How was this possible?
A single drop of his saliva could poison hundreds of humans. No matter how formidable Zhu Erniang's constitution was, how could she be completely unaffected after absorbing more than a dozen jin of venom?
Just then, one of Zhu Erniang's eyes swelled larger and larger. When it reached twice the size of her other eyes, it detached and floated upward, drifting slowly toward the surface as its color shifted from black to red.
That eye was actually a small spider, but after twitching its legs twice in the water, it died.
Seeing this, Lord Boshan suddenly realized:
Had this wretched Zhu Erniang concentrated all the snake venom into an eyeball and expelled it this way?
Though they had been rivals for many years, Zhu Erniang still harbored so many hidden trump cards!
At that moment, however, he suddenly noticed wisps of flocculent fibers drifting in the water, clinging to him in layers wherever they touched.
Spider silk!
Zhu Erniang had secretly been spinning silk all along.
This silk was insoluble in water, and its stickiness did not degrade for quite some time after submersion; ordinarily, the spider swarm used it to catch fish.
Now, Zhu Erniang was using it to catch a snake.
Thanks to the water, the silk drifted everywhere, leaving Lord Boshan with nowhere to dodge. If he were completely tangled, he would be trapped; this was not dry land, where he could find leverage to fiercely tear through the webbing.
By this reckoning, Lord Boshan's only chance of victory was to find a way back onto land and attack alongside King Siwen.
Realizing this, he decisively released Zhu Erniang and swam rapidly toward the surface.
...
Outside the Demon Nest, heaven and earth were being overturned in battle, yet inside the underground palace, all was tranquil.
Column after column of spiders rushed out to reinforce the fight. The rustling sounds quickly faded into the distance. The vast Demon Nest was left empty and cavernous, while the remaining spider guardians stood firm at their posts, venturing no further.
Amid the dead silence, activity suddenly stirred in the Demon Nest's wine cellar.
Among the two long rows of wine vats hauled in earlier, the lid of one was slowly pushed open. Someone poked his head out, looked around twice, and whispered,
"No guards left. It's safe!"
The lids of four or five more wine vats were shoved aside, and the bandits hiding inside leaped out one after another.
Hiding in wine vats to sneak into the underground palace had indeed proved to be a flawless plan.
"Quick, find out where we need to go!"
"Where's the map?" a bandit called to the companion who had poked his head out first. "Lao Liu, look at the map, quickly!"
There were fluorescent spores in the wine cellar as well, so lighting was not an issue.
Lao Liu pulled a piece of black-and-gray snakeskin from his breast pocket and examined it against the glow.
"We should be here!" He pointed at the map. "So we need to go here... Wait, this doesn't look right?"
"Can you do it or not? Don't lead us astray!" the bandits urged impatiently.
The demons outside would buy them time, but for how long was uncertain, nor did they trust those demons. Completing their mission swiftly was the only sensible course.
Lao Liu shoved the snakeskin map toward them. "You think you're so smart? You do it!"
None of the others took it. "You do it, you do it! Just hurry up."
None of them was as good at navigating as Lao Liu.
"Yeah, it should be here. Follow me." Having finally identified the path, Lao Liu slipped out of the wine cellar with nimble steps. "Lord Boshan said this was originally his lair, so the map he gave should be fairly accurate."
There were no guards at the wine cellar entrance.
Naturally—who guarded against wine thieves in a place like this?
However, Lao Liu noticed what seemed like a flicker of light at the end of the passage and couldn't help shrinking back.
A few breaths passed without any movement, and only then did he proceed outward. When the fluorescent spores in the underground palace matured, they occasionally flared with light abruptly, which was not unusual.
Lao Liu truly had a knack for reading maps. Entering this intricately layered, multi-storied underground labyrinth for the first time, he managed to roughly determine their orientation with nothing more than a compass-like contraption in hand.
Though they took a few detours, the direction they were heading was unmistakably Zhu Erniang's residence—the very heart of the Demon Nest!
Naturally, there were spider guardians patrolling the paths, but these men had counter-measures prepared. Whenever there was nowhere to hide, they held up a sheet of snakeskin in front of them. When the spider guardians walked past, their large clustered eyes would see nothing more than ordinary rock walls.
An illusion had been cast upon this snakeskin, granting it camouflage properties. With the spider guardians' level of cultivation, they could not see through it.
As for the bandits, they had long since smeared plant juices and costusroot across themselves to conceal their human scent.
Having fooled several waves of sentries this way, they ventured deeper and deeper into the caverns.
Despite having a map, the vastness and complexity of this three-dimensional demon nest still exceeded their expectations. A bandit braced himself and asked Lao Liu, "How much farther?" Just walking had taken a quarter of an hour, which was far too long a delay.
Their leader had previously sounded out Lord Boshan. Even as the giant python bragged of his combat prowess, he still acknowledged Zhu Erniang's might, warning the humans to get in and out quickly inside the Demon Nest; otherwise, they would die without a burial ground.
They hadn't even managed to "get in quickly"—how could there be any hope of "getting out quickly"?
Finally, they crept into a colossal cavern whose entrance was sealed with dense, intricate spiderwebs.
Instead of being alarmed, Lao Liu was overjoyed. "This has to be it, guarded so tightly!"
The webbing could not be touched; its stickiness was terrifying. The men were prepared, however, and the two sacks of sand they carried finally came in handy.
They scattered the sand handful by handful onto the web.
No matter how adhesive the silk was, once coated in layer upon layer of sand, it lost its grip. At last, Lao Liu tapped the webbing with his hatchet. Finding that it no longer stuck to the blade, he said, "We can go through."
It couldn't be cut through, but the webbing was extremely elastic, and the men managed to squeeze their way through.
No sooner had they stepped inside, before they even had time to dust off the sand from their clothes, than they saw several massive, pitch-black spider demons standing against the walls, dozens of eyes seemingly glaring toward the entrance.
The men shuddered in terror, and the map in Lao Liu's hand nearly slipped to the ground.
So... so huge! Even larger than Zhu Erniang outside!
Once they calmed their pounding hearts, they noticed that these giant demons remained completely motionless, as though deep in slumber.
"A-Are these the ones?"
Lao Liu steadied his nerves. "Must be. Lord Boshan wants spider molts; these should be them!"
"Which one do we take?" Finding no guards in the chamber, the men crept over, looking here and touching there.
Seeing such colossal monsters for the first time, curiosity got the better of them. Someone even reached out and tapped a spider leg—rock hard! "There are four here."
"Lord Boshan didn't specify which one." Perhaps even the giant python didn't know there were four molts in here? "Let's just pick the biggest one."
Another bandit shook out a snakeskin sack. "How do we use this thing?"
"That big serpent said to just pull the Qiankun bag over the molt's head from above."
The bandit had no choice but to scramble up the mountain-like spider molt using both hands and feet. But the bristles on the molt's legs were like a wall of swords, forcing him to proceed with extreme caution at every step, terrified that a single stumble might...
His companions below were burning with anxiety and kept urging him: "Hurry up! What the hell are you dawdling for? Get up there!"
"Weren't you nimble enough when crawling into Widow Wang's bed?"
"Could your knees be going weak? I noticed your steps were a bit shaky today."
Irritated, the bandit turned around and snapped, "Shut up! If you're so good, you climb—aaah!"
He jerked violently, convulsed twice as if having a fit, and plummeted headfirst.
The bristles on the molt's legs were like rapiers. As he tumbled all the way down, countless bloody gashes were torn across his body, turning him into a leaking sack.
The others gasped in horror and flipped him over, only to see his face turned purplish-black, his entire body convulsing, and his skin swelling at a pace visible to the naked eye, as if someone were pumping air into him.
The blood spilling from his wounds swiftly turned yellow-green, resembling pus far more than blood.
Chapter 338