Where Immortals Once Walked-Chapter 332: Zhu Erniangs Neighbors

True to his reputation as a monster puppet master, Dong Rui’s experiments were bizarre, grotesque, and deeply unsettling.

He Lingchuan quietly turned his head away and chose not to watch.

Once a monster puppet master lost himself in his work, he seemed to stop caring about his situation at all. The five spider monsters lasted only three days before Dong Rui was already barking at the guards, “Next batch!”

* * *

In the blink of an eye, fifteen days passed.

He Lingchuan either assisted Dong Rui in the workroom or answered the spider queen’s summons to keep her company and talk.

The giant monster had lived in Demon Nest Swamp for a hundred years and had only left twice in all that time, yet she seemed to know a great deal about the outside world.

This meant that she still had channels of communication beyond the swamp.

He Lingchuan had visualized countless times how he might slip Zhu Erniang one gentle, clean strike while she was not paying attention, but no matter how he ran the scenario in his head, it never felt safe. Zhu Erniang’s twelve eyes were spread along both sides of her head, giving her nearly a full 360-degree view, with almost no blind spots.

Moreover, it was not just sight that he had to think about. Ancient greater monsters like Zhu Erniang kept their spiritual sense extended even while sleeping, so sneaking up on her was truly no easy feat.

Spiders did not even have eyelids, so when she stood perfectly still, who could tell whether she was asleep or wide awake?

And what truly caused him to be apprehensive was that monsters like this had all kinds of incomprehensible tricks. He Lingchuan had personally seen her pluck out one of her own eyes, only for the eyeball to sprout legs after it hit the ground and turn into a small spider.

Tsk, where even are her vital points?

And even if he could somehow handle Zhu Erniang, she also commanded an army of countless spider monsters. Their numbers were far fewer than a century ago, but even so, He Lingchuan alone certainly could not deal with them. She had killed General Nanke, so crippling the two of them would be effortless.

He Lingchuan had secretly taken out his Yuan Coin several times. The origin energy clinging to it could only be described as a thread about to snap. The origin energy was so faint that it was practically negligible.

In plain terms, origin energy came from a sort of unity of many hearts. He was far from home now, with no soldiers at his side. He only held an empty title token in his hand. Without “many hearts,” where would the origin energy come from?

Without origin energy, that meant that he would have to rely on raw strength, which meant... even less confidence against Zhu Erniang.

So during these past days, whenever he had time, He Lingchuan wandered the swamp, partly to learn the terrain as quickly as possible, partly to hunt for a chance.

The Demon Nest Swamp was enormous. He walked for days and still could not reach the edge. Zhu Erniang allowed it, as if she were not worried in the slightest that he might slip away.

He Lingchuan finally asked her point-blank, right in front of her, to which Zhu Erniang simply threw back her head and laughed.

“Demon Nest Swamp is ringed in by mirage fog. You can’t get out, so what do I have to worry about?” She tittered. “With that tiny wisp of origin energy on you, you can’t break through the mirage fog.”

She had never actually seen He Lingchuan’s mandate token, but her senses were terrifyingly sharp. Besides, he had not hidden his background. She knew that he was the son of the Governor-General of Xia Province of Yuan. In a human army, someone like that could easily carry a decorative rank or title.

“Mirage fog? Where did something like that even come from?” So escape just got even harder. Even if he could deal with Zhu Erniang, how was he supposed to get past a ring of fog?

“Eighty years ago, a mirage monster moved into Demon Nest Swamp,” Zhu Erniang said. “To persuade us to accept its residence, it laid mirage fog around the swamp’s perimeter to keep humans from intruding. Since then, the place has been much quieter.”

Demon Nest Swamp was rich in resources. Humans often came in to gather materials, and some even hunted Zhu Erniang’s offspring in secret.

Burrow spiders could be harvested for several valuable medicinal ingredients.

After the mirage fog spread, almost no one could enter, the only exception being military forces that carried origin energy.

Even though giant spiders did not blink, everything about her tone said that she knew exactly what he was thinking. He Lingchuan scratched the back of his head and said, “What do you mean when you say us? Are there other monsters living in this swamp?”

Zhu Erniang’s voice turned cold at once. “Who doesn’t have irritating neighbors? If you run into someone else’s territory and get eaten, don’t blame me for not saving you.”

With that, she strode off on her eight long legs.

That same day, He Lingchuan headed east and spotted a huge stone standing abruptly in a small ravine. It was over three meters tall, flat like a stele. It was draped in thick spider silk that glittered with shifting colors in the sunlight.

He recognized the silk as Zhu Erniang’s work at a glance. Curious, he went down for a closer look and found that the other side of the stone was covered with a shed hide, imprinted with scales. Each scale mark was bigger than his palm.

Is it snake skin or lizard skin?

Either way, the original owner had been enormous.

What the stone was for, He Lingchuan could guess well enough. Sure enough, two long snakes—one azure, one red—shot out of the grass and snapped at his ankles.

Snakes in tall grass were nothing unusual. Back when he was a patrol guard, He Lingchuan was good at flushing them out. His feet shifted back two steps on instinct, and his hand had already found the hilt of Fleeting Life.

A faint flash, and the two snakes fell into four pieces.

Even after that clean kill, he did not go forward to inspect them.

As expected, the chopped snakes twisted together on the ground as if dead, but then when He Lingchuan moved his foot slightly, they lunged again!

Of course, they still could not reach him.

Just then, a spider guard hurried over from behind and barked, “Stay away from the boundary stele!”

So Zhu Erniang’s territory ends here. Anywhere past this stone would be “visiting” or trespassing.

He Lingchuan lifted the snake carcasses with the tip of his saber and retreated back inside the boundary. “Whose territory is on the other side?”

“Mountain Monarch Bo.” The spider guard eyed the snake pieces dangling from the blade. “You just killed their boundary sentries.”

“Oh, is that... serious?” So Zhu Erniang’s neighbor is a snake monster. He Lingchuan glanced at the snake hide on the stele again.

The guard made a circuit around the stele and did not find more snakes. Then it asked He Lingchuan, “Do you want them?”

“...You can take them.”

The spider guard dragged the carcasses dozens of meters away, at which point the boundary stele was barely visible, and then it sank its venomous fangs into the snake meat.

The azure snake was still not quite dead, but it could not resist anymore.

He Lingchuan: “...” So it’s just going to eat them on the spot? “You can just eat your neighbor’s sentries like that?”

The spider monster patiently waited for the venom to dissolve the meat into liquid and answered as if it were obvious. “They often sneak over and steal our things.” 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

He Lingchuan looked at the boundary stele and could not help but laugh. So it really is just a boundary marker, and it doesn’t actually hold much power. The underlings on both sides come and go, constantly stealing from each other.

Thinking about it, that made sense. Zhu Erniang and Mountain Monarch Bo were both monsters of the swamp, so how strict could their discipline really be?

As long as nobody started a full-scale war, petty theft was probably treated as background noise.

He Lingchuan asked, “How many years of cultivation does Mountain Monarch Bo have?”

“Four to five hundred.”

“That’s nothing compared to your ancestor.” He Lingchuan pressed, “Then why doesn’t Zhu Erniang just wipe him out and take his territory?”

Judging by how vast Zhu Erniang’s old den in Guizhen Stone Forest had been, she clearly believed in “more offspring, more blessings.”

In order to be able to sustain more offspring, she would need more land, so it was curious as to why she had not simply taken the entire swamp.

The guard blinked dumbly and answered, “I don’t know.”

Its job was simply to guard a boundary stele. Why would it care about anything else?

He Lingchuan thought for a moment. “Do the two sides fight often?”

“We do,” the guard answered casually, its mind still on the meal. “Mountain Monarch Bo will join with other monsters and come fight us. They want to rob us.”

So Zhu Erniang’s neighbors really are troublemakers. No wonder she sounded sour when I asked about them.

It seemed that the spider queen was not exactly beloved in Demon Nest Swamp.

He Lingchuan asked, “Are there other greater monsters in this swamp?” He only knew that there was also a mirage monster here.

“There are. I think there are seven to eight of them.”

He Lingchuan was startled. Greater monsters were rare elsewhere, yet there were around eight crowded into this single swamp?

Why are they all packed in the same place?

He knew well enough that the stronger someone was, the worse their temper tended to be, and that was especially the case when it came to monsters.

“What do they try to steal?”

“Everything,” the guard said, sounding genuinely indignant. “They even steal our nets. They also want to take the Demon Nest back!”

“Take it back?” He Lingchuan blinked. “Was the Demon Nest originally Mountain Monarch Bo’s?”

“Yeah. When our ancestor came here, she drove Mountain Monarch Bo out.”

He Lingchuan scratched his head. So Zhu Erniang had been the invader. No wonder the local monsters hate her so much.

Two days later, while He Lingchuan was watching the spiders harvest their cage cultures near the Jiana ruins, he found two huge snakes inside one cage, each stuffed so full that their bellies were as round as a drum.

Each snake was as thick as his thigh and nearly seven meters long.

After those two gluttons had visited, the cage held only two pitiful little fish that were as skinny as twigs.

Furious, the spiders sprayed webbing like mad. One snake was wrapped so tightly that it could not move, while the other had a belly slick with oil or slime, making it so slippery that it managed to shoot away in an instant, dive, and swim off into the distance.

Most spiders could not dive. They could only chitter angrily on the bank.

He Lingchuan’s eyes flicked. A sleeve arrow shot out and pinned the fleeing snake right through the head. He then hauled it back.

After that, he did not need to do anything. The spiders swarmed, stabbing both snakes again and again.

The snakes were big, but the spiders’ venom was vicious. Before long, both went limp.

The spiders happily began drinking the jelly-like liquefied meat. Clearly, they preferred the taste of snake over that of fish.

Since He Lingchuan had helped, the spiders did not reject him when he came closer.

However, this incident of snake-killing was not as consequence-free as the one back at the boundary stele.

Before the time it would take to drink a cup of tea had even passed, and before the spiders’ snake feast was even half finished, He Lingchuan noticed that the swamp had gone unnaturally quiet. He could not hear any birds or insects; there was simply not even the slightest sound.

Then, the three-meter-tall reed bed not too far ahead shivered and parted. It seemed that something was swimming beneath the reeds, pushing water as it came, moving closer.

The spiders abruptly abandoned their meal and withdrew in a wave. Larger spider guards stepped forward and laid down layer after layer of white webbing across the ground.

They had quickly formed a full defensive line.

In a situation like this, He Lingchuan was not about to stand there and be a target. He retreated quickly with the smaller spiders up to safer high ground, ready to watch the monsters clash from a distance.

But this time, Zhu Erniang herself arrived from behind.

She paused at the shore. Her massive body swelled, growing another notch larger, and then she moved out across the water.

He Lingchuan could not help but admire it.

A body built like a small hill, and she can still “walk” on water?

He had the feeling that she had pumped a large amount of air into herself, buoying up without difficulty.

Afterward, Zhu Erniang plunged into the reeds.

The reeds could not fully conceal her, of course. From He Lingchuan’s angle, he could see her crawl into the reed bed and stop, facing off against something hidden within.

Suddenly, Zhu Erniang spread her eight legs wide, lifted her body, and seemed to grow larger still, creating an imposing, ferocious silhouette.