Chapter 757: Silence Forest

**Chapter 750: The Silent Forest**

Over two months later, in the southern forest of Mount Rong.

A bat flew down from the horizon and landed on Dong Rui's shoulder. He listened intently, and his spirits lifted. "The town is just 1.5 miles ahead, only 1.5 miles left!"

The snow had melted, and the ground was often damp.

But they couldn't ride the Snail Toad because Dong Rui had performed two more surgeries on it. The Snail Toad then entered a dormant state, neither moving nor consuming energy, not even needing to eat Self-heal herb. Dong Rui kept it hidden in his backpack.

Before, the Snail Toad carried people; now, people carried the Snail Toad.

Dong Rui himself was utterly exhausted and just wanted to find a place to hide and sleep soundly.

He looked at He Lingchuan and Granny Zhu as if they were two tireless monsters.

Granny Zhu, in particular, had been bursting with energy ever since she separated from her sisters and obtained a discarded husk. No matter how harsh the mountain forest environment, she endured it with pleasure.

In Granny Zhu's own words, she had slept enough over the past three thousand years and should be more active.

She adapted well to the new body.

When Granny Zhu II filled the discarded husk with flesh and blood and then gave it to her, it was akin to allowing her to possess a blank body without a soul. The difficulty was almost zero, except for the possibility of losing some memories.

According to observations from the Soul-capturing Mirror, the recent two occurrences of Emperor's Dew had made the spiritual energy of heaven and earth a bit more active again, which happened to be beneficial for Granny Zhu to control this body.

However, she was now the second most wanted individual on the Spirit Void City's celestial bounty list. To avoid trouble, Granny Zhu had disguised her appearance. First, she retracted her distinctive abdominal star map, adopting the red-and-black coloring characteristic of venomous spiders. Her body also became squarish, with sharp spines along the edges, and overall, she had shrunk by two sizes.

This made her look nothing like a burrowing spider. He Lingchuan gave her a thumbs-up, saying, "You look like a big crab."

Crabs also have eight legs, a square shell, and serrated edges on their shells... and crab roe.

Dong Rui yawned again. "Where did that kid go for the past two months? Aren't you curious at all, Granny Zhu?"

"No."

"..." After spending a long time together, he could easily distinguish between the two spider queen sisters.

Granny Zhu was straightforward and disliked intricate schemes, whereas Granny Zhu II was intelligent and could think like a human.

Dong Rui wiped the mud from his shoe soles on a tree trunk, then suddenly pointed to the sky. "The Heavenly Net Star stopped shining a long time ago, you know that, right?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"I don't know when, but it dimmed and never brightened again."

He Lingchuan stroked his chin. "Now that you mention it, you're right."

Dong Rui turned around and glared at him fiercely. "Is it related to what you snatched from the Star-Picking Tower in the Heavenly Palace?"

He had only recently looked up at the night sky and noticed the Heavenly Net Star was gone!

Was the Heavenly Net Star important? Of course!

If the Heavenly Net Star weren't in the sky, He Lingchuan's Mount Ruin plan wouldn't exist at all!

"Yes, of course it is," He Lingchuan said with a smile. "This is a top secret. Anyone who knows it will be in extreme danger, even more dangerous than evading the Heavenly Palace's pursuit. Do you want to hear it?"

Dong Rui sneered, "Aren't we in a dangerous situation already?"

He saw He Lingchuan open his mouth to speak, but quickly interjected, "Never mind, maybe later."

He wasn't mentally prepared yet.

They traveled another 0.6 miles. The forest grew dense, and the evening wind howled.

They found the road again; it had been artificially maintained, and the ground was quite even.

"Hurry!" Dong Rui urged, but He Lingchuan and Granny Zhu slowed down instead, looking around.

"What's wrong?"

"It's too quiet in the forest." Even in winter, at dusk, tired birds returning to their nests would make some noise. But here, there wasn't a single sound.

Not to mention Granny Zhu's eight claws had extraordinary tactile senses; even if field mice were burrowing or moving under the snow, she would detect them.

But now she said, "I can't sense any life. Look at these trees again."

Dong Rui looked up and observed carefully.

Trees in autumn and winter usually shed most of their leaves, leaving bare branches and dry twigs. Covered with thick snow, they couldn't be as lush as in spring and summer.

But Dong Rui still found round holes in the tree trunks, about the diameter of a little finger.

What caused them? Had someone driven nails into the trees?

Once he paid attention, he found at least seventeen or eighteen such holes on the tree.

This tree had them, and that tree had them... Dong Rui checked more than a dozen trees in a row, and all of them, regardless of size or thickness, were covered in round holes!

Granny Zhu suddenly said, "These were caused by mouthparts."

He Lingchuan chopped the tree trunk with one palm.

The tree, thick enough for two people to embrace, snapped into two pieces with a surprisingly crisp sound.

A large section of the broken trunk crashed down.

Even so, no roosting birds were startled.

The forest remained terrifyingly quiet.

"Look," He Lingchuan said, pointing to the tree's cross-section. "The inside is completely dead."

Dong Rui leaned in to look; the cross-section he had broken was grayish-black with countless radial cracks.

From the inside out, the tree had no moisture or life left.

He Lingchuan then randomly broke off branches from a few more trees; regardless of the species, whether thick or thin, they were all in the same condition.

Dong Rui's bat demon puppet also found a dead wild rabbit in a rock crevice.

It hadn't decomposed but was shriveled and dry.

"It was sucked dry," Dong Rui said, looking at Granny Zhu. "Is this one of your kind?"

He had studied burrowing spiders and seen how the spider queens ate people: they would first inject venom, then extend their mouthparts to pierce deeply, and then suck up the dissolved essence of flesh and blood.

He then pointed with his hand, "Look, there are cobwebs over there too."

White strands floated deep within the dense forest, drifting thinly with the wind. He Lingchuan extended his knife to entangle a few strands of the white silk and examined them carefully; they were very sticky and quite tough.

"Nonsense," Granny Zhu said. She wouldn't take the blame, nor would she let her kind take it.

He Lingchuan also said, "This isn't a cobweb."

Granny Zhu II's spider silk had many uses, and he recognized every type. This white silk looked somewhat like spider silk at first glance, but its strength and weaving method were completely different from those of burrowing spiders.

Dong Rui yawned, "Standing here won't get us any conclusions."

The two people and one spider temporarily set aside their doubts and continued toward the town.

Soon, patches of farmland appeared. But the fields were covered in white silk webs.

They ignored them and pressed on.

Finally, they reached the town.

The small town in the forest was eerily quiet, with no human voices and no lights.

Dong Rui sighed.

After sleeping rough for two months, he had hoped to reach the town, eat a hot meal, take a nice hot bath, and live a normal human life.

But even this small wish had been dashed.

The dozens of houses in the town were eerily silent. Some doors hung wide open, creaking in the north wind.

He Lingchuan looked at the street. "Judging by the footprints on the ground, no one has walked here for at least half a day."

The rain had started last night, leaving the ground muddy, but there were no new footprints.

This town must have a permanent population of at least three to five hundred, right? And not a single person is out walking?