Spider Detective

Li Banfeng crossed Jiangyue Mountain in Outer Valley and walked more than 100 li of mountain road. At three o'clock in the morning, he arrived at a canyon.

According to Yu Nan's description, the land of rebirth lies beyond this canyon.

This canyon is difficult to traverse; at its widest point, it is two or three meters wide, and at its narrowest point, one can only pass by turning sideways.

Li Banfeng walked sideways through a narrow crevice for more than a mile. According to his perception, this mile was more effective than walking ten miles in Inner Gully.

Just as he stepped out of the crevice, Li Banfeng didn't notice that there was a cliff more than ten meters high beneath his feet, and he fell straight down.

Fortunately, Travel Cultivator was good at walking and cushioned his fall along the slope, so Li Banfeng was not injured.

The clothes were torn, but it didn't matter; they were the uniforms of the Geng family's guards.

But Li Banfeng felt a little sorry for the shoes because they were worn through.

Brushing the dust off his clothes, Li Banfeng looked back at the cliff and suddenly saw a spider crawl out from a crevice, hanging on a spider silk, slowly falling down.

What's so special about a spider?

This spider is quite special; it's huge. Excluding its legs, the diameter of its body alone exceeds one meter.

What's even more special is that this spider was wearing a black top hat. When it got to Li Banfeng's side, it took off the top hat and gave Li Banfeng a very gentlemanly bow.

Not only can it bow, this spider can also speak, "Madam, why are you traveling alone in this treacherous place?"

Miss?

Li Banfeng stared at the spider for a long time. "You've mistaken it for someone else, haven't you?"

Upon hearing Li Banfeng's voice, Spider was stunned for a moment. This "woman" with heavy makeup and a handsome face was actually a man. "So you are a gentleman. My apologies. Are you going to the new land to reclaim wasteland? We happen to be going the same way."

Clearing land?

Farming?

"Are you Farming Cultivator?" Li Banfeng asked.

"Farming Cultivator?" The spider laughed. "You're joking. Judging from my appearance, you should know that I'm a physical cultivator."

The way this spider speaks is different from the locals, and also different from the modern society that Li Banfeng is familiar with.

This person speaks with a tone similar to that of a dubbed film.

Of course, the tone of voice is not the point.

The key point is that he is a talking spider.

At Geng Family Medicine Shop, Li Banfeng met Song Baiming, who, as a body cultivator, looked somewhat like a crab.

Before this, Li Banfeng had also seen a body cultivator on Bitter Mist Mountain; that person had a set of armor that he carried with him.

Now I see a spider. The Daoist practice of body cultivation has a wide variety of forms.

The road ahead was quite wide, and Spider quickened his pace to walk alongside Li Banfeng: "Friend, judging from your steady steps, you must be a Travel Cultivator. Travel Cultivator's medicine powder is very expensive, so you must be a wealthy person."

"So-so," Li Banfeng replied casually.

"My life is miserable. I have no money to build a foundation, nor money to buy medicine powder, so I can only try my luck at Three Heads Junction."

The spider was very talkative, and when it brought up the Three Heads Junction, Li Banfeng was quite interested.

"Are you building a foundation at the Three Heads Junction? Have you grown three heads yet?"

The spider chuckled, "Are you deliberately making fun of us body cultivators?"

Li Banfeng shook his head. "I've never left Medicine King Gully in my entire life, so I don't know much about Three Heads Junction."

As the spider walked, it said, "Even if you haven't been to Three Heads Junction, you should have heard of the origin of body cultivators. All body cultivators in the world come from Three Heads Junction. For poor people who want to gain cultivation, this is the only way."

"Why poor families?" Li Banfeng didn't care about showing his ignorance and asked without hesitation.

The spider chuckled, "Friend, are you feigning ignorance? Poor people can't afford elixirs and have no money to acquire the Dao Affinity, so they can only try their luck at Three Heads Junction."

The place of Three Heads Junction is inherently imbued with a Daoist Dao Affinity, but not everyone can benefit from it. Of ten people who go there, nine become three-headed monsters. Such people can only remain monsters for the rest of their lives.

Only one person with a strong physique remains, capable of achieving enlightenment; therefore, our path is called physical cultivation.

"Does achieving enlightenment mean becoming a spider?"

"I always feel like you're mocking me," the spider said, its eight eyes rolling upwards. "What form one can take depends on each person's luck and talent."

Some have cultivated into birds, some into beasts, and quite a few into scorpions and spiders. Do you look down on my appearance?

Li Banfeng shook his head and said, "No, this road is so difficult to travel, yet you walked it more smoothly than I, Travel Cultivator. That's a real skill."

"Thank you for your compliment," Spider said, lifting his top hat and bowing again. "I've told you all this to let you know that I'm an honest person. If you're also going to help the Lu Family clear land, let's be partners."

To be partners?

This reminded Li Banfeng of his painful experience of forming a partnership.

"I'm really not going to reclaim wasteland," Li Banfeng politely declined Spider's invitation.

"If you weren't going to pioneer this land, then you can't blame me..."

"What's it to you?"

Li Banfeng smiled as he looked at the spider.

The spider's eight eyes looked at Li Banfeng's two eyes.

The two stared at each other for a moment, then the spider suddenly spat out a mouthful of spider silk.

Li Banfeng's smile remained, because the spider silk wasn't being spit out at him, and he didn't sense any malice from the spider.

The spider silk got caught on the rock wall in front of the canyon. The spider retracted the silk and continued crawling along the rock wall.

"If you weren't a pioneer, I wouldn't have taken you with me, hahaha!"

The road ahead was narrow and muddy. Li Banfeng struggled through the mud and water, watching helplessly as the spider triumphantly moved freely on the rock face.

A few minutes later, the spider disappeared from Li Banfeng's sight.

Two more hours passed before Li Banfeng finally reached the end of the canyon.

No wonder Yu Nan came here to seek refuge. As a first-level Travel Cultivator, Li Banfeng had such a difficult journey. If it were anyone else, they would have been badly injured just from this trip.

The end of the canyon was not the normal exit Li Banfeng had imagined; it was another cliff.

To be precise, this canyon is a crevice embedded in the cliff face, and now Li Banfeng is about to emerge from that crevice.

Standing on the edge of the cliff, he had two choices: either jump down directly or use his hands and feet to climb down the cliff.

The cliff below is hundreds of meters high, and neither of these two options seems logical.

Li Banfeng ultimately made the most scientific choice.

He opened the Portable Abode and threw the key off the cliff before entering.

After waiting in the house for a while, Li Banfeng left Portable Abode and picked up the key under a tree.

Trees were all around him, their dense trunks and branches occupying more than 90% of Li Banfeng's field of vision.

Li Banfeng took a step forward, and the fallen leaves and branches on the ground covered his ankles.

Taking another step forward, he tripped over a tree root hidden under the fallen leaves and stumbled, stepping into the mud.

That step went deep enough that the mud completely submerged his upper thighs.

Li Banfeng was quick; he grabbed a vine and pulled his thigh out. Just as he regained his footing, he suddenly sensed danger approaching.

It's not just approaching, it's already here.

Li Banfeng felt a tingling and itchy sensation in his calves. When he rolled up his trouser leg, he saw countless leeches sucking on Li Banfeng leg, as if they were wearing a pair of woolen Li Banfeng.

Li Banfeng ripped off a leech. This was no ordinary leech; it was incredibly strong and bit down very hard, tearing a piece of flesh off Li Banfeng's leg.

If you were to tear off all of these "hairy pants," Li Banfeng's legs would probably be covered in skin.

He returned to his Portable Abode, took off his trousers, took out a jar of salt, and sprinkled it on the leeches.

Surprisingly, these leeches were incredibly tenacious; even after salt was sprinkled on them, they still wouldn't let go.

Li Banfeng was about to cut the leech's body off with a knife when he suddenly saw the record player spewing out a cloud of steam.

Under the intense heat, the leeches, in excruciating pain, released their grip.

The record player then used steam to blow on Li Banfeng's legs several times to disinfect the wounds covering his legs.

It hurts a little.

But the pain was followed by a feeling of comfort.

The record player also played a song to comfort Li Banfeng:

"How could we live without me...?"

I remember the original lyrics were "If it weren't for you".

My Wife, are you trying to comfort me or bragging?

Geng Zhiwei's soul had long been devoured, and his corpse had also been consumed by the Copper Lotus. The lotus flower was still refining pills with its petals tightly closed.

There was a lot of debris scattered on the ground. Li Banfeng quickly cleaned it up and, taking advantage of the fact that Copper Lotus was too busy to eat, he quickly gathered up the weapons of Geng Zhiwei and the two martial artists.

Their weapons were all quite good. One martial artist's weapon was an Iron Thorn more than a foot long, with two smaller spikes three inches long at the base of the Iron Thorn.

Li Banfeng called it Iron Thorn, but the record player mercilessly mocked it.

"Why are you laughing at me? Do you even know what this thing is called?"

The record player doesn't respond.

The other weapon is also very special, resembling a fork made of two intersecting crescent moons, one large and one small.

Li Banfeng called it a fork, and the record player laughed at him for it.

Geng Zhiwei has a pistol, and the magazine is still loaded with bullets.

Li Banfeng put away his weapons, threw away the useless items from his Portable Abode, and continued to travel through the forest according to the map drawn by Yu Nan.

After walking for more than an hour, Li Banfeng checked his Pocket Watch.

It's almost nine o'clock, why isn't it light yet?

Medicine King Gully, Jiangyue Mountain New Land, Lu Family.

A ray of sunlight shone into the main hall. Zhuo Yuling, the Second Aunt of Lu Dongliang, the head of the Lu Family, picked up her teacup, took a sip of tea, and quietly waited for the guests to arrive.

After waiting for about an hour, a man of medium build walked into the main courtyard, led by the butler.

The man was dressed in a black tailcoat, wearing a black top hat and black round-framed sunglasses. He had full cheeks, regular features, and exuded a gentlemanly air.

He took off his hat and bowed to Zhuo Yuling: "Private investigator, Dabo Ensi's at your service."

Dabo Ensi?

The person standing opposite was clearly a local with yellow skin and black hair, but he had given himself a foreign name.

Moreover, he and Zhuo Yuling were old acquaintances.

Zhuo Yuling didn't return the greeting. She didn't even stand up from her chair. Looking at the man who had bowed, she only responded with a slightly contemptuous sneer, "Haven't seen you in years, how come you've become a fake foreigner?"

The voice was gentle, but the words were harsh.

Dabo Ensi politely replied, "Madam, gentlemen are not defined by blood, and manners are not limited by nationality."

Zhuo Yuling pointed to the chair next to her. "Sit down."

Dabo Ensi put on his top hat, somewhat displeased with Zhuo Yuling's arrogance, but still sat down in the chair.

Zhuo Yuling lit a cigarette, took a puff, and slowly said, "I've called you here to do three things. First, to clear the land; second, to find someone; and third, to kill someone."

There's no need to go into the land reclamation; you know the market.

I told you about the search in my letter; it's my daughter, and this is the most important thing.

Regarding the murder, the man's name Li Banfeng. Here is his photo and intelligence; it would be best to capture him alive.

Dabo Ensi looked at Li Banfeng's photo, remained silent for a moment, and then said, "What a pity."

"What's a pity?" Zhuo Yuling was taken aback.

Dabo Ensi laughed and said, "It's nothing, I just feel it's a pity about this young man."

P. S.: Dear readers, please have a chat with Salad! Salad can't live without you!