Where Immortals Once Walked

General Nanke insisted, “Give us safe passage today, and within ten days I’ll present you a blood offering in thanks.”

“Ten days? Why should I wait ten days?” Zhu Erniang laughed. “I can haul off your thousand-odd people and your hundreds of animals right now for fertilizer, then the little ones will have food for the winter!”

“Think twice, Zhu Erniang.” General Nanke’s tone turned solemn. “If I fall here in Guizhen Stone Forest today, Panlong City will come to settle accounts. If you won’t think of yourself, think of your hundreds of thousands of offspring. Are you not afraid they’ll be rooted out, nests and all?”

“Verminous ants dare strut before me? I was here before there even was a Panlong City, and I’ll still be here when Panlong City has long been reduced to dust.” Zhu Erniang said coldly, “You lot rely on the Red General, don’t you? The Red General, ha! I know exactly what that thing is. You fools have made a thief your mother without even knowing it. Sooner or later, it’ll drain you to the last drop of your blood and marrow. Ch!”

She spat out that final syllable with a roar that made everyone’s hearts jolt. At once, the ground thundered; something on the far side of the mountain came roaring closer.

General Nanke spun around, and he saw a water dragon surging down a mountain stream. The shining white waves that it set off were roughly seven to ten meters tall.

A flash flood!

With the army currently situated right in the middle of a valley, they had no way out.

So the old spider monster had only been feigning parley while secretly casting a water-drawing spell.

In his urgency, General Nanke spared a single glance for Zhu Erniang on the mound, then turned and murmured two quick sentences to the sparrowhawk on his shoulder before passing it a small bundle.

From the moment Zhu Erniang appeared, he had already formulated a plan in his head.

The sparrowhawk seized the bundle and beat its wings skyward.

Then the water dragon hit, surging straight at the troops. The blazing wall of fire collapsed with a single slap of the flood.

The origin energy sheathing Panlong City’s soldiers could blunt spells cast directly against their bodies, but the torrent that the spider monster had summoned was a real river in spate. What flesh and blood could stand against that?

* * *

With no pursuers behind them, He Lingchuan and the others finally eased their horses and let out the breath that they had been holding.

Those spiders could have normally chased them down a great distance, but they had chased them for less than a kilometer before turning back. Clearly, their first priority was guarding the den, and they did not dare stray far.

After learning that, the party directed their mounts and angled up through the woods toward the crest. That would cut the distance and save time.

From the ridge looking down, the den resembled a gaping, blood-red maw, forever waiting for some witless fool to leap in.

He Lingchuan noticed the brocade-like cover over the opening was bulging upward, as if wind were blowing from below to above. They could hear a low, wooing moan, a draft that lifted the hair at their temples.

Wind coming from the earth? Or is there another exit?

Willow used a few tricks to slip past the sentries’ senses, and their detour proved tense but uneventful. They were just swinging back into the saddle to press on when something came winging in from the northeast, circling several times above the den.

As an archer, Willow had sharp eyes, and the light of the glowspores helped her get a slightly better look at things. Two hard stares and she said, “It’s a sparrowhawk.”

By day, these birds flew as fast as arrows, but their night vision was nothing special. Dawn had yet to break, and here it was circling over the den; that alone was wrong.

Sun Jiayuan suddenly said, “There’s something in its talons!”

The sparrowhawk circled twice as if its reconnaissance were complete, then it suddenly climbed over three hundred meters before diving straight down.

It was like an arrow that had just been let loose from a bowstring, moving so fast that it left afterimages in the air.

It did not touch down; it veered off on a slanting flight, but the thing in its talons fell true, aimed straight at the den.

The swath of brocade gave a violent shudder, a wash of resplendent light rippling across it.

Now, everyone could tell the sparrowhawk had come to make trouble for the spider den.

A heartbeat later, a burst of brilliant fire bloomed at the mouth of the den.

They all held their breath.

Before long, the mountain wind swept the smoke away, and He Lingchuan let out a soft “Huh.”

That brocade-like veil, so light it danced at a puff of air, so delicate it looked like a poke of a finger would pierce it, remained perfectly intact.

So that stuff is actually blast-resistant?

The sparrowhawk seemed thrown as well. It dipped low to reconnoiter.

By then, the spider sentries had already converged, spitting silk at it in fury and fouling its flight.

The sparrowhawk turned away, and disappointment ran through the group at the thunderous roar yet paltry rain.

Fortunately, it soon returned, circling again as if looking for an angle.

This time, Willow finally saw it clearly. “It’s holding a command arrow.”

Faces tightened all around.

How would an ordinary sparrowhawk be using a human weapon? And not even commoners necessarily had access to one of those.

The sparrowhawk shifted its approach and made another drop.

Again, the command arrow failed to punch through the brocade and reach the den.

The sparrowhawk gave a frustrated cry.

It made a few more rounds in the air, as though working through options, and then it turned and flew straight toward them.

They exchanged glances. Had it spotted them?

Sure enough, the sparrowhawk folded its wings and settled on a branch above Liu Tong’s head, and then it spoke in human words, “Patrol of Panlong City?”

Liu Tong kept his guard up. “And you are?”

“I’m a courier of the Red General,” the sparrowhawk replied. “The spider matriarch Zhu Erniang has raised a flood to drown our forces in the valley! The battle goes against us. General Nanke specially commanded me to destroy her royal den to ease the crisis at the front.”

It had scouted the terrain earlier and found the location of Zhu Erniang’s den. The glowspores had made it glaringly obvious from the air. Clearly, the monster was skilled and brazen, convinced that no sky-borne enemy would dare intrude.

Sun Jiayuan said, “I think I saw this very sparrowhawk months ago, when I campaigned with the Red General.”

“But the brocade-like web is too flexible. The command arrows I drop can’t penetrate it.” The sparrowhawk beat its wings anxiously. “The front line is in peril. Please, you must help me!”

It was fast, yes, but far too small. No matter how lovely that brocade looked, it was essentially a colossal spiderweb.

If the sparrowhawk threw itself at it, would it not be just like a moth flying straight into the flame?

“How do we help?” Liu Tong suggested uncertainly, “Should we try shooting arrows too?”

He had watched the scene that had transpired earlier closely. Before the command arrows that the sparrowhawk had sent forth earlier could detonate, they got stuck to the web.

“If you look carefully, you might be able to notice that the web isn’t a single sheet but at least thirteen or fourteen layers stacked together. If you pry it open by force, there should be a gap between every two layers. Otherwise, how would the massive matriarch come and go freely without tearing the web?”

So that’s the case. Everyone looked again and could not help but marvel at Zhu Erniang’s craft. Thirteen or fourteen layers of spider silk lay one over another, and yet together they seemed as light and sheer as a single veil.

“If we can get past the web and then throw command arrows, which have fire charges bound to them, we might be able to set the den ablaze, just like the Baling people did,” He Lingchuan said under his breath. “From the look of that brocade, you can tell the spider queen treasures this place. If it goes up in flames, she may break off the fight and rush back.”

At that time, the siege on General Nanke would dissolve on its own.

Their unit might be bait, but they had no desire to be swallowed by spiders—or by those from Baling—either.

Only, slipping into and through stacked layers of webbing was not a sparrowhawk’s specialty. For this, hands beat wings in finesse.

No wonder it had come begging help from them. The patrolmen glanced at one another, none of them speaking.

Who would go?

And if they went... would they be able to come back?

Who could say what lay inside a den swaddled in brocade like evening clouds? And what if they failed to even set it ablaze?

Liu Tong glanced at Skinny. Of all of them, he was the quickest on his feet. He was the one who was best suited for slipping into the den.

But Skinny clamped his mouth shut and said nothing.

While the main force was struggling at the front line, their little squad just happened to be near the spider queen’s den. This meant that, one way or another, they had to get this done. Liu Tong let out a sigh and was just about to speak when someone suddenly said, “I’ll go!”

They all turned. It was Sun Jiayuan, standing in the back row.

A comrade clamped a hand down on his shoulder and hissed, “Hey!”

Among their current party, Sun Jiayuan was not the most advanced in cultivation, nor was he the quickest on his feet.

He asked Liu Tong, “If I die here, will my death be reported as a fallen hero’s death?”

Liu Tong nodded. “Of course. That would be great merit.” If he succeeded, he might save the entire army.

Panlong City had always compensated its fallen and wounded generously. If a soldier was posthumously named a martyr or fallen hero, his family would enjoy high benefits within the city. Not only would they have food and clothing guaranteed, but they would be provided a tin house as a starting grant, free schooling for the children, and holiday stipends on a regular basis.

In short, their family’s future would be largely secure.

Skinny, who had too many dependents, was an exception.

Sun Jiayuan’s expression grew solemn. “Good. I ask you all to bear witness for me.”

Since someone had volunteered, Liu Tong let out a breath. He first sent the merchants to a relatively safe clearing in the rear, then gathered the rest to hash out a plan.

All nine members of He Lingchuan’s squad were still alive. Counting the seven comrades they had rescued from the spiders’ jaws earlier, they had sixteen men who could still take the field.

Around the den, however, swarmed seven to eight hundred spiders, more than twenty of them large-bodied spider monsters.

They would have to cover Sun Jiayuan’s entry, give him the room to complete the arson of the den.

There was no question that in a world of webs, spiders were far nimbler than men. Even if they beat back the spiders’ attacks, Sun Jiayuan still had to find a way to move across the web itself.

They had all seen with their own eyes how a fruit bat had landed on the brocade, and just the tip of its wing brushing the web had glued it fast, leaving it unable to break free.

There was a high likelihood that this web had been woven by Zhu Erniang herself. Its power was not to be underestimated. That she had dared to stray far from her den only proved how confident she was in this web.

If Sun Jiayuan could not figure out how to move freely, this would not be a bomb drop but a self-offering to the net.

“The simplest way to keep from sticking is to oil up,” He Lingchuan said, rubbing his chin. “Anyone carrying oil?”

“I’ve only a small bottle of lamp oil,” Willow said, taut-faced. “It would be a bad idea to apply it on him, though. He still needs to throw a command arrow. What if he sets himself alight?”

That would be a human sacrifice.

“Then mud should work too,” He Lingchuan said, pointing west. “Back where we climbed ashore, there’s a big patch of mud. Brother Sun, how about you go roll in it? Come back caked in as much of it as you can, the thicker, the better.”

The inspiration came from the wild boar they had caught. It had been wallowing on the riverbank, plastered in mud. Sure, that could just be said to be the nature of pigs, but who was to say that it was not survival wisdom for anything living in the spider queen’s territory?

They thought it over and found the logic sound.

Sun Jiayuan turned and headed back. The rest of the patrol mounted up as well; not a single one of them hung back.