Favorite of the Beast-world: I Got Rich Through Farming-Chapter 209 - 151: Xi’s Anomaly and the Spiderweb
It all happened so suddenly.
It was incredibly bizarre.
It wasn’t just the Beastmen who were caught off guard. Even An Jin froze for a moment, her fingers digging into the tree trunk.
Her grave gaze fell upon the bewitching, almost demonic Merfolk in the river nearby.
The Merfolk’s stunningly clear eyes looked past everyone as if they weren’t there, gazing directly toward her. Then, his red lips curved into a gentle smile, so beautiful it was breathtaking.
Before An Jin could ask, he dove back into the river, swimming freely like a fish. The water glittered with the intermittent blue gleam of the Merfolk’s scales.
It was as if the riverbed were paved with brilliant, deep-blue jewels.
He swam with great speed and was about to vanish from sight.
An Jin quickly turned and spoke to the Beastmen behind her. "The swiftest among you, from the Eagle and Leopard Clans—follow him. Be careful. I suspect there’s trouble ahead."
"Yes!"
She had a feeling that Xi was trying to send her a message but was being prevented from communicating directly by some unseen force.
Their footsteps were nearly silent in the jungle as they followed the Merfolk downstream. Not far ahead lay a stretch of rolling hills.
The largest of the hills was riddled with holes, like countless small caves. They were pitch-black inside, making it impossible to see anything.
A cold, eerie wind blew from all directions, scraping against their skin like a knife. The utter silence of the surroundings was unnerving.
Even the usual chorus of insects that filled the night had vanished without a trace.
This place felt like another world, one devoid of sound and light.
’The aura of Demon Beasts is incredibly thick here; this has to be their nest. Still, none have attacked yet. They must all be out hunting.’
The Beastmen quickened their pace, arriving before the largest cave at the center of the hill.
From a distance, they could see that a web of crisscrossing white silk completely sealed the large cave.
And on the massive web that covered everything, a dozen or so Beastmen were stuck?!
Heads bowed, they were trapped in the web like corpses. Their bodies were withered, their faces deathly pale and bloodless. Their eye sockets were deeply sunken, and they were so thin it looked as if only a layer of skin was stretched over their bones.
Their lips had an unnatural, bluish-purple tint, as if they had been poisoned.
Only upon getting closer did they realize they were Beastmen. From a distance, they had looked like a dozen pieces of deadwood.
"Are they... dead?"
The Beastmen who had come were all stunned by the horrifying sight, their voices trembling.
Gu Yin frowned, a flash of disgust in his blood-red, serpentine eyes. While he enjoyed tormenting his prey before a meal, he would never reduce them to such a hideous state, neither living nor dead.
"No, they’re still alive," An Jin said, stepping out from behind Gu Yin’s tall, imposing figure. "But their life force is extremely faint. They’re barely hanging on."
She extended her spiritual power, wrapping it around the dozen or so unconscious Beastmen, and was able to detect a faint trace of life.
’This must be the nest of some spider-type Demon Beast. They’ve been captured as prey, and the silk wrapped around them is siphoning their blood to the ’master’ inside the cave.’
"These Demon Beasts are despicable!"
The facial muscles of several enraged Tiger Beasts twitched with fury. They bared their ferocious fangs, and hard, black claws shot out from their fingertips. With a vicious swipe, one lunged forward to tear at the webs. "To think they’d torture our fellow Beastmen into this state! We have to get them out of there, or they’ll really die!"
"Wait! The webs might be poisoned!"
An Jin tried to stop them, but it was too late. One of the Tiger Beast’s sharp claws had already struck the web.
With a series of TWANGS like snapping steel cables, he severed a few of the white strands, which drifted to the ground like feathers.
Hearing the word "poison," the Tiger Beast’s face paled. He instantly retracted his claws and began frantically digging at the ground, grinding his claws against the soil.
"AWOOO!!"
’I can’t die! I have a mate waiting for me at home! That despicable Wolf Beast will definitely use this chance to steal my primary mate and bully my cubs!!’
Everyone held their breath, nervously watching the Tiger Beast frantically digging. The only sound was the nervous gulping of saliva.
Faint moonlight began to seep through the thick clouds.
The air was deathly still. After a long while, seeing that the Tiger Beast showed no signs of being poisoned, An Jin and the surrounding Beastmen all let out a collective sigh of relief. The rock-hard tension in their muscles eased slightly.
"The venom must be transmitted through the bloodstream."
Continuously extending her spiritual power for so long was beginning to tire An Jin. She quickly scanned her surroundings.
A radiance bloomed at her pale fingertips as she condensed her spiritual power into a tangible, sharp blade in her hand. "Any Beastmen with open wounds, stay back. The rest of you, help me clear these webs."
’All that commotion, and still no sign of the spider. It must be out hunting and hasn’t returned yet.’
This gave them the perfect opportunity to rescue the dozen or so trapped Beastmen.
"HISS... ’Have you noticed the Merfolk is gone?’" Gu Yin’s gaze swept coldly over their surroundings before settling on the still, silent river.
His snake tail remained tense, keeping the female securely behind him. Years of survival in the perilous jungle had honed his hunter’s instincts, and he couldn’t bring himself to lower his guard.
’That’s right, where’s Xi?’
An Jin paused. Following Gu Yin’s gaze to the river, she was horrified to realize that Xi had vanished without a sound.
Before the looks of horror could fade from their faces, a great, fetid gust of wind blasted them from behind, carrying with it an overwhelming, deadly aura.
Several black figures burst from the jungle like a hurricane, swiftly encircling the group. They closed in, step by step, letting out menacing roars.
The Demon Beasts were grotesque, each one uglier than the last. Some had two mouths, others had four or six eyes, and some had multiple heads. They looked like cobbled-together biological monstrosities, pushing the very limits of what could be considered ugly.
The one unifying feature of these bizarre amalgamations was their blood-red eyes, savage faces, and their massive, menacing, pitch-black bodies.
"ROAR—!" Relying on years of combat experience, the Beastmen quickly sensed the danger from behind, narrowly avoiding the initial attack before plunging into a frenzied battle with the pack of Demon Beasts.
"Leave the rest to me. Stay hidden. I might not be able to protect you otherwise." Gu Yin placed An Jin high up in a towering tree.
The dense, overlapping branches and leaves concealed most of her figure.
"Mm."
She nodded, her fingers digging into the rough bark as she watched the black-and-red serpentine shadow swiftly join the fray.
With the Seventh Rank Beastman joining the battle, the tide turned in an instant. The Beastmen, who had been on the verge of being overwhelmed, now had the upper hand. The ground was spattered with blood, and the air grew thick with the spreading stench of gore and rot.
