Li Shiyin was struggling to fend off the spider spears of the Ghost-faced Spider, when she suddenly heard a "rustling" sound coming from the cave below. She glanced down and her hair stood on end in horror.
The rustling sound was coming from the endless horde of small spiders. It was the sound they made as they crawled.
Looking down from above, Li Shiyin saw the cave floor had become milky white in the bright light. The ground was writhing...with spiders crawling and webs trembling.
This terrifying sight shocked her. In that moment of inattention, she was swept away by one of the Ghost-faced Spider’s spears, flying back seven or eight meters.
She steadied herself in midair and couldn’t help but look down at the ground again. She saw the milky white ground, the milky white tide, was already very close to Tian Wenjin. Tian Wenjin seemed to be frozen in place by fear.
"Wenjin!" she shouted, trying to rouse Tian Wenjin.
At the same time, she slashed out a blade of qi, cutting down in front of Tian Wenjin. The qi separated the stray small spiders floating in the air and blocked the tide of small spiders crawling on the ground.
With the spider tide about to engulf Tian Wenjin, this was all Li Shiyin could do. Because the Ghost-faced Spider had caught up to her!
The Ghost-faced Spider’s four spider legs scurried swiftly across the web as its four spear-like legs attacked Li Shiyin, leaving her no chance to be distracted.
The aerial battle erupted again.
On the ground, Li Shiyin’s shout didn’t work, but her qi blade did. It got the attention of the fellow sword cultivator Tian Wenjin. Coming to her senses, Tian Wenjin saw the milky white spider tide right before her eyes, about to crawl onto her the next moment. Meanwhile, many small spiders blown over by the wind were already crawling over her clothes.
She felt itchy all over...
In that instant, terror exploded in her heart!
"Ahhhhhhhh!" She screamed up at the sky...
Lightning, blue lightning, dazzling blue light exploded in the cave!!
With Tian Wenjin at the center, and all the webs as conduits, thunder roared...
The endless hordes of tiny spiders evaporated instantly under the blue thunder. The extremely tough and firm spider silk turned into charcoal under the blue thunder.
The two battling fiercely in midair, human and spider, were shocked into halting their fight by the sudden lightning. Li Shiyin held up her sword and looked down, unable to see clearly through the piercing light. But the electric arcs in the air made her skin tingle as the hairs on her body stood on end.
After this thunderclap explosion, stunned silence filled Peach Blossom Cave for a good while, before being broken by a shriek from the Ghost-faced Spider.
The endless small spiders birthed from the dozen or so corpses, all the spider spawn crawling out, were this Ghost-faced Spider's offspring. And Tian Wenjin's massive thunder blast had electrified and killed an endless number of them.
The Ghost-faced Spider was enraged!
It abandoned Li Shiyin and exerted all eight legs at once, kicking off the cave ceiling and shooting down like a bullet.
Its six compound eyes were filled with hatred and malice. It wanted to tie up that woman and lay its eggs inside her while she still lived! To have her live to incubate its darling babies! To have her alive to be eaten by its darling babies!
"Wenjin, be careful!" Li Shiyin shouted a warning and hurried to follow and rescue Tian Wenjin.
It was imaginable that, while such a massive cultivation eruption had power and caused destruction, Tian Wenjin's current state must be extremely weak.
The blue thunder dissipated, the dazzling light fading to reveal Tian Wenjin at its center. She was propping herself up with her sword, her form wilted.
The Ghost-faced Spider shot down from the air with its eight spear-legs attacking in unison. Warned by Li Shiyin, Tian Wenjin lifted her sword to defend, but lacking strength, even exerting all her might she could only block two of the spears. She was pierced through by the other six.
"Wenjin!"
Li Shiyin shouted sharply. A slash of purple qi split the air, its formidable aura forcing the Ghost-faced Spider to feel threatened. It hurriedly flung Tian Wenjin away, bouncing off the ground with its legs to launch itself into the air again.
The qi blade barely missed it, leaving a mark across its carapace.
Li Shiyin didn't pursue the Ghost-faced Spider. Her figure flashed as she caught Tian Wenjin falling from the sky.
"Puh..." Tian Wenjin spat out a mouthful of blood and said weakly to Li Shiyin, "Hurry and go, you can't beat it!"
Impaled by six wounds, her arms, both sides of her ribcage, both legs, bleeding all over, she had completely lost the ability to fight.
Li Shiyin gritted her teeth. With her previous temperament, she should have turned back to fight the Ghost-faced Spider in a battle to the death. But the present her, hearing Tian Wenjin's words and recalling her master's advice, knew that life was most important...
She didn't think any further. Sweeping Tian Wenjin into her arms, not caring about the Ghost-faced Spider's actions behind her, she sped away toward the cave exit.
By now the sky was growing dark as snow fell heavily. The world was gloomily ominous.
Li Shiyin flew out of the cave, instinctively heading toward Da Shan Ridge Village as she thought to find a place to treat Tian Wenjin's injuries first no matter what.
But after flying a large stretch, nearly reaching Da Shan Ridge, she suddenly stopped midair.
With large snowflakes the size of thumbs pelting her face from the sky, her chaotic mind suddenly thought of something...
Spiders!
Something they had completely overlooked.
In the mission briefing, it had specifically mentioned small spiders spinning webs around the village days ago, weaving until the entire village was covered in spiderwebs. Yet walking into the village from outside, and leaving the village again, they hadn't seen a single spiderweb.
Where had those webs gone?
Following this train of thought, she continued thinking:
With such a powerful monster beast so close by, how did the villagers here survive?
Unless...
They were all dead!!
They had long since died!!!
Li Shiyin's mind buzzed loudly. She recalled the crowds behind her in the village during the day, yet she'd felt a sense of emptiness. No wonder—because they were all dead people.
Those villagers' weird smiles, their questions.
They had asked her:
"Are you cultivators?"
"Are you sword cultivators?"
"Are you very powerful?"
"What level of cultivation are you..."
She had found it strange at the time that commoners, upon learning they were immortals from the mountains, shouldn't have had the courage to ask the subsequent questions.
But what if those questions hadn't been asked by them?
What if those questions had been asked by the Ghost-faced Spider in Peach Blossom Cave?
With extremely high intelligence, it could even create doubts, gather intelligence, set traps, and...
Li Shiyin also recalled how extremely polite all the villagers had been, performing a standard greeting each time they met. When they were the crudest barbarians beyond the Hengduan Mountains, how could they understand etiquette!
But what if this was a Ghost-faced Spider with no understanding of human social structures?
In that moment, Li Shiyin understood everything.
Despite being immune to heat and cold, she somehow felt a chill rise up her spine, cold all over!
"Chichi..." "Creak..." The Ghost-faced Spider's cries rang out from thin air.
The grating sounds filled Li Shiyin with horror.
Suddenly, the ground began to shake, like the shaking from many people running together. She looked up to see, in the growing dark dusk, many people running out from Da Shan Ridge Village...
Tens, hundreds, nearly a thousand, more than just Da Shan Ridge villagers.
They all ran expressionlessly toward Peach Blossom Cave. Though they didn't speak, Li Shiyin heard excited "chichi" cries that she knew were the small spiders' voices.
Nearly a thousand people ran past beneath her, all headed to Peach Blossom Cave behind her.
She continually heard strange sounds arise from behind...
"Jijiji..."
"Gachi..."
The sounds made her scalp tingle. She had a premonition something horrifying was happening behind her. She should be fleeing with all her might now, abandoning Tian Wenjin and escaping.
But she didn't. She looked back.
So she would find it hard to ever forget the scene she saw then...