More than two months later, in the southern forest of Mount Rong.
A bat swooped down from the horizon and landed on Dong Rui's shoulder. Listening closely, he perked up considerably. "The town is just five li ahead! Only five li to go!"
The snow had melted, leaving the ground perpetually damp.
However, they couldn't ride the snail-toad. Dong Rui had performed two more surgeries on it, sending it into a dormant restorative state where it neither moved nor expended energy—it didn't even need to eat prunella spikes. Dong Rui kept it stowed away in his pack.
Previously, the snail-toad had carried men; now, men carried the snail-toad.
Dong Rui was utterly exhausted himself, wishing for nothing more than a quiet spot to hole up and sleep like a log.
To him, He Lingchuan and Zhu Daniang seemed like two tireless monsters.
Zhu Daniang in particular had been bursting with boundless energy ever since parting ways with her sister and obtaining a shed husk. No matter how harsh the forest environment grew, she took it in stride.
In Zhu Daniang's own words, she had slept enough over the past three thousand years and ought to get out and move around more.
She had adapted well to the new vessel.
When Zhu Erniang packed the husk with flesh and blood before handing it over, it was equivalent to letting her perform a body seizure on a soulless, blank body. The difficulty was practically zero, aside from the possibility of losing a bit of memory.
According to the soul-snatching mirror's observations, the two most recent descents of Emperor's Flowing Dew had revitalized the spiritual energy of heaven and earth, which happened to help Zhu Daniang command this body.
However, she was currently the number two target on Lingxu City's Heaven Ranking wanted list. To avoid trouble, Zhu Daniang had disguised her appearance: first concealing the distinctive star map on her abdomen in favor of the alternating red-and-black coloration of a venomous spider; she also flattened her body into a squarish shape with barbed edges, shrinking two sizes overall.
This made her look nothing like a burrow spider. He Lingchuan gave her a thumbs-up. "Looks like a big crab."
Crabs also had eight legs, a squarish shell, and serrated edges on their carapace...
And crab roe.
Dong Rui yawned again. "Aren't you even a bit curious where this kid went over the past two months, Zhu Daniang?"
"No."
"..." Having spent so much time together, he could easily tell the Spider Queen sisters apart now.
Zhu Daniang was blunt and straightforward, disliking convoluted schemes, whereas Zhu Erniang was astute and capable of thinking like a human.
Scraping the mud off his boots against a tree trunk, Dong Rui suddenly pointed at the sky. "You know the Tianluo Star went dark long ago, right?"
"Mm-hmm."
"I don't know when it started, but it faded and never lit up again."
He Lingchuan stroked his chin. "Now that you mention it, that's true."
Dong Rui turned around and shot him a fierce glare. "Does it have anything to do with what you snatched from Zhaixing Tower in the Heavenly Palace?"
Only recently, while gazing up at the night sky, had he noticed the Tianluo Star was missing!
Was the Tianluo Star important? Absolutely!
If the Tianluo Star weren't in the sky, He Lingchuan's Mount Xu Plan wouldn't exist at all!
"It does. Of course it does," He Lingchuan smiled. "Though that's top secret. Anyone who knows is plunged into extreme danger—far more dangerous than running from the Heavenly Palace's manhunt. Want to hear it?"
Dong Rui sneered. "And our current situation isn't dangerous?"
Seeing He Lingchuan open his mouth to speak, Dong Rui beat him to it. "Never mind. Maybe later."
He wasn't mentally prepared yet.
They traveled another two li through the dense woods under a howling evening wind.
They found a road again, paved and maintained by human hands, its surface quite level.
"Hurry up, hurry!" Dong Rui urged, but He Lingchuan and Zhu Daniang slowed down instead, looking left and right.
"What is it?"
"The woods are too quiet." Even in winter, tired birds returning to their roosts at dusk would make quite a din. Yet here, there was not a sound.
Not to mention that the tips of Zhu Daniang's eight legs possessed extraordinary sensitivity; even a vole digging or scurrying beneath the snow couldn't escape her notice.
Yet now she said, "I can't sense any life at all. And look at these trees."
Trees?
Dong Rui looked up and inspected them closely.
Trees in late autumn and winter had shed almost all their foliage, leaving only bare, withered branches blanketed in thick snow; they couldn't possibly be lush like in spring or summer.
Still, Dong Rui discovered round holes in the trunks, roughly the thickness of a little finger.
What caused this? Had someone driven nails into the trees?
Paying closer attention, he found at least seventeen or eighteen holes on this tree alone.
This tree had them, that one did too... Dong Rui checked over a dozen trees in a row. Regardless of size or thickness, every single one was riddled with round holes!
Zhu Daniang suddenly said, "These were made by mouthparts."
He Lingchuan struck a trunk with his palm.
With a loud crack, the tree—thick enough to require two men to encircle—snapped clean in two. The sound was unnervingly crisp.
A massive upper section crashed down with a thud.
Even so, not a single roosting bird took flight.
The woods remained dreadfully silent.
"Look," He Lingchuan said, pointing to the cross-section. "The interior is completely dead."
Dong Rui leaned in to look. The cross-section broken by the strike was grayish-black, marred by countless radiating cracks.
From inside out, the tree held neither moisture nor life.
He Lingchuan randomly snapped several more trees. Regardless of species, thick or thin, every one was in the exact same condition.
Dong Rui's bat demon puppet also found a dead hare in a rock crevice.
It wasn't rotten, but completely shriveled and desiccated.
"Sucked dry." Saying this, Dong Rui looked toward Zhu Daniang. "Could this be your kind?"
He had studied burrow spiders and seen how a Spider Queen ate humans: first injecting venom, then plunging mouthparts straight in to slurp up the dissolved essence of flesh and blood.
He even pointed into the distance. "Look, there are even webs over there."
Deep in the forest, white silk drifted in fine wisps on the wind. He Lingchuan drew his blade, twirling a few strands onto it to examine them closely. They were highly sticky and had good tensile strength.
"Nonsense." Zhu Daniang refused to take the blame, nor would she let her kin take it.
He Lingchuan said as well, "This isn't a spiderweb."
Zhu Erniang's spider silk had a wide variety of uses, and he recognized every type. While this white silk resembled spider silk at first glance, its strength and weaving pattern were entirely different from those of burrow spiders.
Dong Rui yawned. "We won't figure anything out standing here."
The two men and one spider set aside their doubts for the moment and continued toward the town.
Before long, patches of farmland came into view, but the fields were blanketed in sheets of white webbing.
Paying them no heed, they pressed onward.
At last, they arrived at the town.
The woodland town was unnaturally quiet, without a sound of human life or a flicker of lamplight.
Dong Rui let out a sigh.
After braving the elements and sleeping rough for two months, he had hoped to reach the town, enjoy a piping-hot meal, soak in a nice hot bath, and live like a human being again.
Yet even that modest wish had come to nothing.
The several dozen houses in town were eerily still; some had their doors hanging wide open, creaking as the northern wind rattled them.
He Lingchuan examined the street. "Judging by the footprints on the ground, no one has walked here for at least half a day."
The rain had started last night, leaving patches of mud, but there were no fresh footprints.
A town like this must have had a permanent population of at least three to five hundred people, right? And not a single one had come out to walk around?
Chapter 744