After the Immortal Disappeared

Chapter 203: Chapter 204: Nesting Dolls

Over a dozen Spider Guards rushed to deal with it, but the fire spread with surprising speed. Often, after they worked hard to extinguish the flames in one room, four or five more would have already caught fire behind them.

A strong wind just had to be blowing up from underground, carrying sparks everywhere and scattering the seeds of light and heat even further.

Hee Lingchuan hadn’t expected just four Command Arrows to have such an effect.

But he wasn’t too happy about it, because the Spider Guards had already pounced.

The two at the front could actually jump, and one leap covered thirty feet!

It was his first time seeing a jumping spider, especially in such an unfavorable environment.

Hee Lingchuan had no choice but to shout a warning to his companions on the surface, while he himself swung his Long Saber, using all his might to sever two strands of Spider Silk!

These two strands of Spider Silk were plain white. They didn’t seem to belong to Second Madam Zhu.

Before the Jumping Spiders could pounce on his face, Hee Lingchuan took a deep breath, flipped over, and leaped down!

That’s right. He struck a pose as if embracing the abyss and went into a freefall.

The Jumping Spiders hit nothing but air.

The other Spider Guards arrived and shot out webs, trying to haul him back up for a good lesson.

Unfortunately, they were just a few feet short.

But any living thing that fell from here was as good as dead. All they needed to do was go down and collect the corpse later. The Spider Guards lost interest in Hee Lingchuan and turned back to save the burning stone chambers. They then dispatched a small team of over a hundred Spider Guards, which scrambled out of the cavern with menacing intent to settle the score with the humans.

Humans, those creatures so loathed by spiders, never entered the Ghost Needle Stone Forest alone. If one popped up in the cavern, there was bound to be a whole group of them outside!

Hee Lingchuan plummeted like a lead weight, wind whistling in his ears, still clutching two strands of Spider Silk.

He cast out the Spider Silk again and again, trying to get it to stick to the distant rock walls. Given the silk’s adhesiveness, even the slightest contact would make it stick fast.

But they were truly too light, too wispy. Buffeted by the strong updraft, they could only fly straight up!

"Damn, movies and TV lied to me again! Again!" Hee Lingchuan cursed out loud.

If he fell to his death in the dream, he should wake up in reality immediately.

He should.

But he didn’t want to leave the dream just yet; he wanted to try a little harder.

At this speed, he only had moments left.

Fortunately, he still had a trump card.

The Spider Queen’s nest had developed from a natural limestone cavern, a labyrinth of a thousand holes and a hundred grottoes. Hee Lingchuan picked out the largest opening in the rock face, and once he had his aim, he pulled an object from his robes, channeled his True Power, and hurled it with all his might!

All those days of hard practice throwing finally paid off in this very instant.

Hee Lingchuan watched with wide eyes as it landed precisely in a pile of withered leaves within the cave opening, and his heart leaped with wild joy.

To make a throw into an opening twenty feet away while he himself was plummeting—where would he have gotten such sharp eyes and precise calculation a few months ago?

What was even more terrifying was that he was about to hit the bottom of the abyss. He only had one chance to succeed!

’I’m awesome. I’m so damn awesome. I’ll have to give myself a good pat on the back later.’

This life-saving treasure was a tiny Cicada Shell.

Ghost Shadow Cicadas hide underground during their larval stage. As adults, they like to stuff themselves at the base of tree branches—in the "armpits" of the tree, so to speak. They can even change their color to match the tree, which makes their molted shells rather hard to come by.

But it was an indispensable material for performing the Substitution Technique.

Hee Lingchuan had long since memorized the Divine Skill Technique until he knew it by heart. Now, he formed a seal with his left hand—no incantation needed—and vanished from his original spot, teleporting directly into the mountain cave!

In his place, the Ghost Shadow Cicada Shell was swapped into his previous position. It should have continued to fall, but it was so light and the wind from the abyss so strong that it was actually blown upward instead.

Having escaped death by a hair’s breadth, Hee Lingchuan was drenched in a cold sweat. He leaned against the stone wall and let out a long sigh of relief.

He peered down into the abyss, breaking out in another cold sweat. ’So the distance between life and death was only about forty feet!’

Thank goodness he had redeemed the Substitution Skill with his military merits before setting out. Thank goodness he had spent the entire horse ride pondering its use.

’See? It came in handy, didn’t it? Otherwise, I would have been forced to log off early.’

He took a few deep breaths to calm his mind, then prepared to continue his exploration.

The ground beneath his feet was very soft. Thanks to the illumination from the fluorescent spores, he could see that he was standing on semi-rotted leaves and branches, as well as a mossy carpet over a foot thick.

The carpet of vegetation was exceptionally soft, and his foot sank right in.

Now that he was closer, he noticed something wriggling on the carpet. It was a pomelo-sized... aphid?

He’d never seen an aphid this big before.

The strange insects had plump, round bodies that appeared light green under the fluorescent glow. Even with the arrival of this uninvited guest, Hee Lingchuan, they merely paddled their six short legs, struggling to slowly move away from him.

Hee Lingchuan focused his gaze and realized that on the fifty-foot stretch of mossy carpet ahead, there were at least seven or eight hundred of these fat aphids. Some were eating, some were courting, and some were sound asleep, but none of them strayed far from their own little patch of turf.

Just then, a shadow flickered across the ground. Hee Lingchuan quickly ducked into the shadows and saw a spider walking over from a fork in the path ahead.

He was just about to launch a surprise attack, but then the spider approached an aphid and patted its back.

The aphid’s body trembled, and it actually excreted a drop of Honey Dew the size of a pigeon’s egg from its rear.

The spider slurped it up in one go as if it were a rare delicacy. Unsatisfied, it went to four or five more aphids to beg for food before finally wiping its mouthparts in satisfaction and leaving.

Seeing this, Hee Lingchuan finally understood. These caves were Pastures. The Earth Cave Spiders of the Ghost Needle Stone Forest were actually imitating ants, raising giant aphids as their daily food source.

The air was slightly humid and there was light for illumination, perfect conditions for moss to grow. The aphids were the spiders’ dairy cows; whether to have milk or meat was the spiders’ choice.

No wonder the Ghost Needle Stone Forest in the Wilderness could support hundreds of thousands of spiders. The secret was underground all along.

Hee Lingchuan walked onward cautiously, treading on the thick mossy carpet and stepping over countless obese aphids.

This area was near the bottom of the abyss. Few spiders patrolled here, and those that did moved sluggishly, making them especially easy to avoid. They probably thought the deepest part of the nest was safe, so it was only natural for them to slack off.

Whether human or spider, the nature of living creatures was cast from the same mold.

However, while the Guards were lax, the complexity of the maze was very real. Hee Lingchuan had only been walking for a quarter of an hour before he lost all sense of direction. In any case, there were always several caves ahead for him to choose from.

Still, he tried his best to choose paths that led to higher ground.

After another double-hour of walking, he was still lost, but the moss on the ground was becoming thinner and the aphids scarcer.

Then, he walked into an enormous cavern.

It was roughly the size of a soccer field, with a ceiling about sixty feet high. The ground was dry and Clean, without a single drop of dew or speck of moss.

But fluorescent spores covered the walls and ceiling of the entire cavern, illuminating the place as if it were daytime.

Thus, the very first thing Hee Lingchuan saw upon walking in made his heart pound wildly and his scalp tingle with fear.

A massive Earth Cave Spider stood just thirty feet away, face-to-face with him!

Twelve huge, dark eyes stared right at him.

The Spider Queen, Second Madam Zhu, with a body the size of a thatched hut, could already be considered enormous. But this Earth Cave Spider reached a staggering height of forty feet (thirteen meters)!

For perspective, a male giraffe generally doesn’t exceed twenty feet in height, a sight humans already have to crane their necks to behold.

This Earth Cave Spider just stood there, its form incredibly thick and sturdy, truly like a small mountain. The oppressive feeling was overwhelming.

In that instant, Hee Lingchuan’s back went rigid. Every cell in his body seemed to be screaming, ’Run! Turn around and run!’

The Giant Spider didn’t move.

Hee Lingchuan held his breath and slowly took two steps back. ’The passage I came through is narrow. A monster this big might not be able to follow. Didn’t they say every spider swarm has only one leader? Could this be Second Madam Zhu’s true form?’

But after he retreated another four or five steps, the Giant Spider remained where it was, completely still.

’Is this thing sleeping, or...?’

After all, spiders don’t have eyelids; they don’t close their eyes whether they’re asleep or awake.

But Hee Lingchuan soon noticed a detail:

The ubiquitous fluorescent spores were also growing on this Giant Spider!

On its back, its head, its joints, and even among its long, hard bristles.

The Giant Spider was pressed up against the cavern wall, and the number of fluorescent spores on the wall around it was much greater than elsewhere.

’Just how long has this monster been motionless?’

Hee Lingchuan picked up a small stone from the ground, mustered his courage, and threw it at the Giant Spider with moderate force.

CLINK. The pebble bounced off the Giant Spider’s front leg and hit the ground, the sound echoing in the empty space.

The Giant Spider still didn’t move.

Hee Lingchuan tried two more times and found it completely unresponsive. Only then did he slowly approach.

The closer he got, the more he was struck by its immense size and ferocious appearance. He couldn’t imagine how long it must have lived or what it must have eaten to grow to such a size.

Finally, Hee Lingchuan stood before the Giant Spider, took out his saber, and lightly tapped its front leg.

CLANG, CLANG. Two dull thuds, almost like the clang of metal on stone.

In other words, the exoskeleton of the Giant Spider’s front leg was as hard as rock.

Only from his current angle could he catch a glimpse of the Giant Spider’s abdomen, which, to his surprise, also bore the image of a starry night sky.

Second Madam Zhu’s Abdominal Map was beautiful enough, but this Giant Spider’s Star Map was vaster and more brilliant, as if it held half the Milky Way within it, making it impossible to look away. The stars in the map even seemed to twinkle faintly, echoing the fluorescent spores on the Giant Spider’s body.

Growing bolder, Hee Lingchuan placed a hand on the Giant Spider’s front leg and channeled a bit of True Power into it.

’If this were a living creature, how could it not react when someone’s knocking at its door?’

But that bit of True Power was like a clay ox sinking into the sea—it vanished the moment it entered, giving Hee Lingchuan no feedback whatsoever.

Desolate, empty, and cold—that was what he sensed inside the Giant Spider.

Such a magnificent Demon had died countless years ago. Even its remains had nearly turned to stone.

For some reason, Hee Lingchuan was reminded of the remains in the Immortal Cave. A phrase came to mind:

Sitting in transformation.

’Had this Giant Spider undergone its sitting in transformation here?’

He continued walking along the cave and soon discovered another Giant Spider.

It was half the size of the previous one, but it was in the same crouching position on the ground, also covered in fluorescent spores.

Hee Lingchuan pressed on, discovering a third, a fourth...

All the way to the seventh.

Their bodies grew progressively smaller, but each one bore a Star Map on its abdomen, and each one was lifeless.

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