Chapter 327: When Nightmare Becomes Reality

The stone chamber was very large and empty, almost a perfect oval. Inside, there was a table and a few chairs, and two piles of reeds lay on the floor.

The table and chairs were quite worn, making it hard to imagine how the spider demons managed to find human furniture in the damp swamp.

Having a table and chairs was already remarkable; a bed was out of the question, so the two of them only had the reeds.

In the corner of the stone chamber, the medicinal herbs specified by Dong Rui were piled up.

He walked over, rummaged through them, and shook his head. "Several ingredients are still missing."

A spider demon guard entered and reported, "The rest will be delivered later." Even for them, collecting unfamiliar herbs from around the swamp took time.

Dong Rui sat on a chair, looking around. "What exactly is this place?"

"A bladder," He Lingchuan said.

"A demon lair," the spider demon guard said.

One person and one spider spoke simultaneously, causing Dong Rui to miss it. "What did you say?"

He Lingchuan rubbed his forehead, then suddenly asked the spider demon guard, "Are you very familiar with this cave?"

"Yes," the guard replied without lying. "I was born here."

He Lingchuan exhaled softly. "This is the Demon Lair? The 'Demon Lair' of the Demon Lair Swamp?"

"Yes."

Dong Rui also caught on. "Are you saying the entire swamp is named after this cave? What's so special about this cave?"

He Lingchuan ran his hand over the cave wall. Its texture was unforgettable to him. "Madam Zhu Er said the Kana tribe was destroyed by a 'demon.' Ancient powerful demons used to call 'gods' 'demons.' So, this cave was likely the former lair of a demon, and Madam Zhu Er, after moving to the swamp, simply took it as her residence."

The words sounded ordinary, but Dong Rui pondered them carefully, grasping their deeper meaning, and was moved. "Are you saying that the so-called demons were gods, and the Kana tribe was annihilated by divine wrath?"

"Anyway, the herbs haven't been fully collected yet, so we're free for now." He Lingchuan asked the spider guard, "Does Madam Zhu Er also live here?"

"Our Ancestor lives in the heart chamber."

He Lingchuan nodded. From the words "heart chamber," it was clear that Madam Zhu Er knew exactly what the "Demon Lair" truly was.

"Can you take us to see?"

The spider guard replied, "We need to report first!"

With that, one of them turned and left.

Dong Rui asked He Lingchuan, "Are 'heart chamber' and 'bladder' some kind of code?"

"Your table is in the bladder position," He Lingchuan said. "Madam Zhu Er lives in the heart chamber position. It's literal."

Dong Rui looked at him as if he were speaking nonsense. Was this Demon Lair named after human organs? It was one thing for the spider guard to know, but how did He Lingchuan, a newcomer, know too? He was about to lose his mind.

He Lingchuan discovered another trait of Dong Rui, besides his sharp tongue: his intense curiosity. "I'll tell you once I've confirmed it myself."

After about fifteen minutes, the spider guard returned and said, "Follow me, and do not wander off."

It seemed Madam Zhu Er was quite unconcerned, not at all afraid of others seeing her 'boudoir.'

The spider guard led the way, taking them along a winding path, even longer than before. He Lingchuan silently memorized the route.

As they walked, they realized this was the spiders' main stronghold; they encountered a spider every few steps. Some forks in the path had guards, or were directly sealed off by dense webs, making them impassable.

Soon, they reached the heart chamber.

This was almost the very core of the entire cave. They squeezed through a narrow passage, and a vast space suddenly opened before them. It was a huge cavern, seven or eight times larger than the stone chamber where they worked, and over five meters high, echoing loudly with any sound.

Fluorescent spores were denser here than anywhere else, growing thickly in the rock crevices and illuminating the entire cavern as brightly as day.

Dong Rui's gaze swept across the area, and he pointed at the cave wall, his voice filled with amazement. "This, this!"

Several spider demons stood against the wall, each astonishingly large. The largest and tallest among them exceeded ten meters in height! Even the robust Madam Zhu Er looked tiny in comparison.

Even standing motionless, they exuded immense power, deterring anyone from approaching. These were true behemoths; imagine how many people would be terrified if they were let loose.

He Lingchuan tapped his hand back. "Don't make a fuss; none of them are alive." He took the opportunity to count them: one, two, three, four, five. There were only five giant spiders here.

"Huh?" Dong Rui was still immersed in the visual shock.

"How do you know without getting close?" Madam Zhu Er's voice sounded from behind them. She had followed them without making a sound. Her body, larger than a room, could apparently shrink to one-fourth or one-fifth of its original size to pass through the narrow passage. After crawling out, she expanded back to her full size, like a dried sea-tangle dropped into water.

Madam Zhu Er's question was astute. The spider demons standing against the wall were imposing and fierce, and since spiders have no eyelids, they always looked like they were glaring. They were simply motionless; what made him say they weren't alive?

He Lingchuan answered calmly, "Fluorescent spores have grown on their joints. If they were still alive, wouldn't they clean themselves up a bit?" If he remembered correctly, spiders were quite clean creatures, not like old turtles that casually let barnacles attach to their shells.

Madam Zhu Er seemed to chuckle. "Clever."

This confirmed He Lingchuan's judgment. Dong Rui was overjoyed and rushed over, weaving among the giant spider figures, tapping here and touching there, more thrilled than a boy with a beloved toy. Even Madam Zhu Er felt flattered, wondering if this man truly liked her so much.

"These are my discarded molts."

"Ah?" Dong Rui looked at her, then at the giant spiders. "Oh!" No wonder they all looked alike but varied in size, like nesting dolls. He recalled He Lingchuan's earlier remark and pointed at the largest spider molt. "Is this your ancient demon immortal body? Truly, truly magnificent!" Ancient artifacts had almost completely decayed by now, let alone the remains of a demon immortal. Seeing just these, he felt his trip to the Demon Lair was well worth it.

However, Madam Zhu Er's tone suddenly darkened. "My demon immortal body is not here."

"Ah?"

Madam Zhu Er did not explain, but He Lingchuan suddenly understood. He remembered seeing six giant spider molts in the spider lair of his Panlong dreamland, and indeed, one was missing here. Where had the largest one gone?

"That's still incredibly impressive." Dong Rui's continued wonder and admiration pleased Madam Zhu Er. She introduced each one to them. "This one is from the late ancient period, this from the early medieval, mid-medieval, late medieval..." The molts became smaller the closer they were to the present.

Dong Rui looked at He Lingchuan, then said to Madam Zhu Er, "I understand. You deliberately shed your cultivation along with your outer shell, didn't you?"

Madam Zhu Er tapped the ground with a sharp foreleg. "Precisely."

"Clever, truly clever!" Dong Rui gave a thumbs-up. "Ancient immortals vanished from the world precisely because they couldn't adapt to the increasingly thin spiritual energy. Your method is something others cannot possibly learn."

He Lingchuan said nothing, because the divine bone necklace on his chest was heating up again. The divine bone necklace had reacted upon entering the heart chamber, indicating it coveted something here. The cave was empty save for the prominent spider molts, so it must want Madam Zhu Er's shells. He Lingchuan looked at Madam Zhu Er, thinking that the divine bone necklace's request would be hard to satisfy. On another note, how did Madam Zhu Er transport such enormous spider molts over such a long distance and then squeeze them through the narrow passage into the heart chamber? It seemed she had some secret methods.

Meanwhile, Dong Rui was caressing the spider molts as if they were jewels, unable to let go. He suddenly said to Madam Zhu Er, "I need to take a small piece from each molt; it will greatly aid my drug research!"

"Really?" Madam Zhu Er was displeased at the mention of touching her molts. "What's the reason for that?" If he couldn't provide a good reason, Dong Rui might just become her dinner tonight.

"Just a bristle!" Dong Rui quickly explained. "The biggest challenge in developing a new medicine specifically for you is the lack of comparative material! While you have many descendants, their cultivation is vastly inferior to yours, so medicines tailored to their characteristics might be too weak for you. These molts came from you directly; if I extract samples from each for comparison, the difficulty of drug production will decrease significantly!"

Madam Zhu Er, being well-informed, found his reasoning sound. Furthermore, he only asked for a single bristle from each molt, a minimal loss. After some thought, she personally took one bristle from each of the five molts and handed them to Dong Rui.

After leaving this enormous display chamber, the Spider Queen personally led the two further, entering two smaller rooms. Although called "small," this was only relative to the display chamber. One of these was the Spider Queen's residence; the other was sealed airtight with spider webs.

"What is this place?"

"The center of the Demon Lair. I rarely come here, so I simply sealed it off."

The Spider Queen used her own claws to open the webs; otherwise, it would have taken immense effort. A very thick layer of dust covered the interior. He Lingchuan, though shocked, dared not breathe deeply. This stone chamber was smaller than Dong Rui's workspace, with a stone platform in the center. Around the platform hung what appeared to be many drapes, but upon closer inspection, they were soft and elastic, like rubber bands, but even more like the sinews He Lingchuan had seen in the Red Peak Mine in the Panlong dreamland, which connected Yun Gu to the entire mine. Due to the passage of immense time, it hadn't decayed but had dried out.

"Flesh and Blood Fortress," He Lingchuan murmured, uttering the name that had given him nightmares. "It wasn't some demon that devoured the Kana tribe, but the Abuser!" No wonder he felt a surreal sense of a nightmare coming true upon entering this cave. It was real.

Dong Rui frowned. "What is that?" He had been asking questions constantly since entering this cave, feeling like the most ignorant among the three beings, and he hated that feeling.