Another Crisis

Hearing Mo Li's guess, Zhong Lichun was stunned for a moment, then asked in confusion, "Are you sure those two wolves were raised by the Yeti? And how did you determine that?"

"I certainly have no evidence proving those two wolves were raised by the Yeti, but don't forget that our so-called domestic dogs were also tamed from wild wolves and wild dogs by the Old Ancestor. If the Old Ancestor could do it, why couldn't these Yetis?" Mo Li rolled his eyes and retorted.

"I have to say, your imagination is really rich. Being a police officer is wasting your talents—you should write novels instead." Zhong Lichun shook her head with a smile and teased him.

They chatted as they continued forward, neither of them paying much attention to the changes around them. Of course, this was mainly because the light sources they carried were too weak. After all, the area illuminated by the glow sticks was extremely limited.

After walking for more than ten minutes, Zhong Lichun suddenly stopped. She then raised the glow stick in her hand and shone it around. Seeing what she was doing, Mo Li stopped as well and asked in confusion, "What is it? Is something wrong?"

"Don't you notice anything strange about this place?" Zhong Lichun did not answer Mo Li. Instead, she turned around and asked with a frown.

"Something strange? What could be strange?" Hearing Zhong Lichun's words, Mo Li frowned as well and looked around. However, after scanning the area, he did not notice anything.

Zhong Lichun said nothing more. She tucked the glow stick into her field jacket and used the jacket to block its light. Once the illumination disappeared, the surroundings immediately became pitch-black. Mo Li looked around in confusion again, and this time he finally saw what was wrong. On both sides of the cave walls, he saw scattered pale-green lights. They were extremely faint, so they had not been noticeable under the glow stick's light. Only after everything had gone completely dark could they be seen.

"What is this?" Mo Li muttered in confusion. He then leaned toward the cave wall and examined it carefully. His expression changed at once, because he saw that the cave wall contained a huge number of skeletons. The faint pale-green light was actually coming from those bones.

This was the inside of a mountain, with hard cave walls on both sides. Yet all those skeletons were embedded in the walls. No—"embedded" was not quite the right word. If he had to find a fitting description, "devoured" would be more appropriate. The skeletons looked as if they had been swallowed by the cave walls.

"Th-this... what exactly is going on?" Mo Li instinctively backed away several steps, then cried out in disbelief.

Zhong Lichun did not answer him. Instead, like Mo Li, she leaned closer to examine the cave wall. After observing it carefully for a while, Zhong Lichun drew her military knife and tapped the skull of a humanoid skeleton with the tip.

"Don't touch those things!" Seeing what Zhong Lichun was doing, Mo Li immediately panicked and shouted a warning. Unfortunately, he was too late. Zhong Lichun had already touched the skull with the tip of her knife.

Bzzzz~! The instant the knife tip touched the skull, a strange sound came from inside it. It was not very loud, sounding like a mosquito flying beside one's ear at night. But Zhong Lichun and Mo Li had both fallen silent, and the cave was exceptionally quiet, so they heard it clearly.

Almost at the same time as the sound emerged, a ghostly green light lit up in the skull's eye sockets. It was far brighter than the glow emitted by the skeletons themselves. At a glance, it looked as if two green flames had ignited inside the skull's eye sockets.

The light flashing inside the skull grew brighter and brighter, eventually spilling out through the eye sockets. Only then did Zhong Lichun and Mo Li see what the green light actually was: a spider about the size of a baby's palm. Its entire body was black and red, while the light came from its abdomen. Zhong Lichun and Mo Li both knew about fireflies, but this was their first time seeing a Firefly spider. What kind of species was this?

Just as the two of them stared blankly at the spider, it suddenly leaped off the skull without warning and landed directly on Zhong Lichun.

No matter what, Zhong Lichun was still a woman, and women had an instinctive fear of bugs. Almost the instant the spider landed on her, she screamed, then instinctively slapped it off and sent it crashing to the ground. She immediately stomped on it.

With a crisp smack, Zhong Lichun crushed the spider's abdomen, which had been glowing with green light. A large amount of luminous green fluid splashed in every direction. However, the spider's vitality was incredibly tenacious. Even with its abdomen crushed, its head was still alive, and it even let out the same strange buzzing sound as before.

Seeing that one stomp had not killed the spider completely, Zhong Lichun stomped on it again. This time, the spider was crushed utterly, and the buzzing stopped abruptly. Zhong Lichun lifted her foot with lingering fear and glanced at the spider's mangled body. When she saw the green fluid coating the sole of her shoe, she rubbed her foot against the ground several times in disgust.

However, just as Zhong Lichun was scraping the sticky fluid from her shoe, buzzing once again rang out from the surrounding walls. This time, the sound did not come from a single skeleton. It came from the cave walls in every direction.

The next scene made Zhong Lichun and Mo Li's scalps prickle, because they saw countless ghostly green lights flare up from the skeletons embedded in both cave walls. Then, innumerable Firefly spiders crawled out of those skeletons.

"Damn! This is a spider nest! Run!" Mo Li was the first to react. He let out a strange yell and ran toward the depths of the cave. Hearing his shout, Zhong Lichun finally reacted as well. She turned and hurried after him into the depths of the cave.

As Mo Li and Zhong Lichun began to flee, the spiders surged after them like a tidal wave. Mo Li glanced back while running, and his face instantly turned deathly pale. Behind them, the cave was packed with countless spiders frantically giving chase. The dark green light emitted from their abdomens merged into a vast expanse, and the ghostly glow even illuminated the dark cave somewhat.

Mo Li did not dare imagine what would happen to him and Zhong Lichun if these spiders caught up with them. Why was this damned cave full of bizarre insects?

With their lives at stake, Mo Li and Zhong Lichun unleashed nearly all their potential. They ran incredibly fast—rabbits would have been left in the dust. Mo Li was especially fast. Even with Wei Dengke on his back, he ran almost twice as fast as Zhong Lichun. Before long, he had pulled far ahead of her, until Zhong Lichun's figure vanished from sight.

Moreover, Mo Li had not paid close attention to the path while fleeing. As a result, he did not even notice the fork when he reached a two-way intersection and ran straight into the passage on the right. When Zhong Lichun arrived, she had no idea which path Mo Li had taken. With a mass of spiders chasing her from behind, she did not dare waste time and plunged into the passage on the left. Thus, Zhong Lichun and Mo Li became completely separated.