Seeking Truth with a Sword-Chapter 591 - 533 Spider Swarm

THUD!

Li Ang awoke from his nightmare, instinctively sat up, and ended up hitting his forehead against Lu Yunan’s chin, who was staring intently at him.

"OW!"

Lu Yunan covered her mouth and drew a sharp breath of cold air. As Li Ang apologized, she waved her hand. "It’s all right. Were you having a nightmare?"

"Yeah."

Li Ang hesitated, then nodded. The dream had been too real. Oppressively dark clouds filled the dreary sky, making it nearly suffocating. There were figures: some indifferent, some despairing, some frenzied. And then there was the Mountain Master’s last, still-echoing proclamation: The sky is falling.

There was no need for secrecy within the pitch-black tent. Li Ang relayed the contents of his nightmare to Lu Yunan. After a discussion, they concluded nothing specific, attributing it all to the psychological stress from their recent days in Li Yuan.

The rain outside the tent had stopped long ago, and the cliffs had dried.

The two finished the last of their dry rations, packed up their tent, and resumed climbing upward.

Knowing that spiders resided at this height of Li Yuan, Li Ang and Lu Yunan were even more cautious this time, having prepared crossbow arrows made from bamboo beforehand. Besides being able to injure wild species, these arrows could also have their arrowheads lit and be shot into the mist, using the flames to clear their vision.

As they climbed, more of Li Yuan’s unique sights were revealed to them.

There was a type of herbaceous plant, about one meter tall, resembling dandelions, with a ball of fuzz the size of a small ball at the top. These fuzz-balls would drift up when ripe, swaying with the wind. Just before touching the cliff face, they would explode, embedding their seeds like steel nails deep into the cliff.

There were creatures resembling a mix between crabs and scorpions, two meters tall, dwelling in caves. Their huge grey claws, which occupied most of their body volume, merged with the cave walls. Once they sensed the outside air or vibrations in the rock, they would awaken instantly, snapping at their prey with their claws.

Moreover, there were flying snakes with wing membranes, red ants capable of spraying acid three meters, and even demon beasts resembling Nearby Worms roaming about.

Lu Yunan observed each creature they encountered in Li Yuan. Whenever a threat approached, she would unwrap the Ink Silk Umbrella Cloth from her back, covering both of them. Li Ang would stop climbing, remaining still, camouflaged as a rock.

Some insects attempted to approach them, but their mouthparts couldn’t penetrate the Ink Silk Umbrella Cloth. After several attempts, they flew away on their own.

Thus, Li Ang and Lu Yunan proceeded intermittently, once again entering the sticky layer of spider silk.

"The complexity of Li Yuan’s ecological environment is comparable to that of the Ten Thousand Desolate Mountains," Lu Yunan said solemnly. "In the abyss, devoid of sunlight, the base of the ecosystem consists of glowing fungi, followed by plants, herbivores, and carnivores. Over eons of evolution, these demon beasts have adapted to Li Yuan’s environment, which is devoid of Spiritual Energy. Simultaneously, spiders must also play a crucial role in Li Yuan’s entire ecosystem. Species diversity is significantly reduced within the spider silk layer. The spider swarms act like a lid covering the entire Li Yuan, periodically preying on demon beasts from the lower layers. These two factors combined mean that the demon beasts of Li Yuan rarely appear in the outside world."

This also indirectly confirmed how difficult it was to escape from the seemingly endlessly high layer of spider silk.

Li Ang and Lu Yunan fell silent. Unlike the valley floor, the middle layer of Li Yuan had a lush and diverse ecological environment with an ample food supply. With Li Ang’s physical condition and Lu Yunan’s foreknowledge, they might indeed be able to survive here. With moss, lichen, and bamboo shoots as their staple food, occasionally hunting some flying snakes and gathering some honey, they could survive for a long time.

But they had reasons they had to return.

Li Ang had mentors, classmates, and disciples in Chang’an awaiting his return, while Lu Yunan had her kinsfolk in Northern Black Mountain.

"...Let’s go."

Li Ang took a deep breath, his calloused fingertips hooked into the crevices between the rocks.

He climbed slowly. This was not only because the air in the spider silk layer was moist and the rocks were slippery, but also because spider groups patrolled the canyons. These spiders exhibited some social behavior. From what Lu Yunan could see, they had at least one Spider Nest with a diameter of over three hundred meters. Within the nest, some spiders cultivated glowing fungi on the rock walls and collected dew honey. Others were responsible for hunting animals from the lower layers, wrapping the prey in spider silk, and transporting it into the nest. Still other spiders would digest the prey and feed the nutrient fluid to the newborn spiderlings.

In the thick, dense fog, the number of spiders inhabiting the area could likely be counted in the millions, or even tens of millions.

The smaller spiders were only the size of a palm, similar to the wolf spiders of the outside world. However, the largest ones were thirty to forty meters in length, comparable to land tanks. They made the entire cliff tremble as they crawled over rock faces.

Lu Yunan remained silent, her fingertips tracing sentences on Li Ang’s back: "They’re just like alien creatures. This power, if released into the outside world, could easily destroy a nation."

Considering the dietary habits of the spider swarm, being caught by them made instant suicide a less painful option.

Lu Yunan opened the Ink Silk Umbrella Cloth, enveloping their forms and masking their scent, peering out only through a slit at the front to observe their direction.

Li Ang also slowed his pace, instantly stopping at the slightest disturbance.

In this way, the speed of their climb drastically reduced. Li Ang’s arms ached terribly, and Lu Yunan’s eyes were extremely strained.

But they could not stop; the most dangerous area was above them, a dense network of webs where swarms of spiders incessantly scurried about.

A mere eight hundred meters took Li Ang two hours to climb. At the most perilous moment, a hunting dog-sized, colorfully patterned spider even crawled over their Ink Silk camouflage.

That was close...

Li Ang silently let out a breath of relief and climbed upwards, following Lu Yunan’s directions. However, he accidentally touched a newly spun, slippery web strand. Failing to grasp it firmly, he plunged downwards.

Even as his right hand firmly grasped a protruding rock to stop his fall, the momentum pulled their Ink Silk camouflage loose, causing it to unfurl and hang downwards.

The stifling heat from being under the disguise for so long vanished instantly. Li Ang felt countless eyes turn towards him.

"OOH!"

Lu Yunan, who was on his back, cried out. From her perspective, countless spiders covering the mountainside halted their movements and turned to look their way.

Countless spiders surged towards them along visible and invisible webs.

Falling!

Just as she thought to shout a warning, the spiders ignored them and crawled past.

What’s happening?!

Lu Yunan’s mind froze for a moment. These spiders weren’t paying them any attention at all.

The entire swarm from the Spider Nest hurriedly climbed onto the largest Fortress Giant Spider, which then carried them as it moved into the distance.

There, hundreds of Fortress Giant Spiders, laden with their smaller kin, emerged from the dense fog. They lay uniformly and meekly on the cliff face, quietly waiting for something.

The solemn, mysterious, and eerie sight made Lu Yunan involuntarily hold her breath. She even forgot to trace words on Li Ang’s back to describe the scene.

BOOM. BOOM.

A thunderous, earth-shaking noise came from afar.

A gigantic spider of unimaginable size, so vast it blotted out the sun, slowly emerged from the fog.

Its brown-gray fur stood on end like steel columns. Its carapace and sternum had a resilient, thick metallic luster, resembling an immeasurably wide steel wall. Its eight colossal legs were dug deep into the solid rock, and each movement caused swathes of the cliff to shatter and peel away.

The Fortress Giant Spiders in front of it looked like infants in comparison.

All the spiders lay down respectfully and obediently, their pincers lifted high, as if...

"Prostrating."

Lu Yunan whispered softly, "They are prostrating before their ancestor."