Ghost-Faced Spider

Xia Leng stared at the ghastly white face less than half a meter away. A bead of cold sweat trickled down from his temple.

A Ghost-Faced Spider?!

When had it crept in?!!

The Ghost-Faced Spider was another mutant creature from the post-apocalyptic world.

It wasn't very large—at least, not by the standards of creatures nowadays—measuring only about a meter. But it was notorious for its deadly venom and the human-face markings on its round abdomen.

If this kind of spider bit you even once, you'd be paralyzed from head to toe and collapse within three seconds.

Then your muscles, internal organs, and even your bones would rapidly melt into a pool of blood within a minute, until all that remained was a human-shaped skin sack full of liquid!

Worst of all, you'd remain fully conscious throughout the process, feeling the Ghost-Faced Spider suck the delicious fluids from your body.

Finally, to make up for the organs you'd lost, it would "apologetically" lay hundreds or even thousands of eggs inside you. Then you'd get to experience all over again what it was like to have baby spiders burst out of your body...

Xia Leng stared at the ghastly face on the spider's abdomen. Even his breathing grew faint, then stopped altogether.

Beneath that ghastly white face were two fist-sized disks glowing with an eerie red light, along with six smaller red dots below them.

They were the Ghost-Faced Spider's two main eyes and three pairs of secondary eyes.

Its head was pointed at the Giant Armor Beetle carcass on the ground, a third of which Xia Leng had already dismantled. It was clearly weighing whether the beetle was worth spending the precious venom stored in its glands.

The Ghost-Faced Spider had been drawn here by the faint, fishy stench of the Giant Armor Beetle's corpse!

Perhaps this three-story abandoned building was its territory to begin with.

If the Ghost-Faced Spider faced away from you, its pitch-black shell would blend easily into the surrounding darkness, making it hard to spot. That was why Xia Leng hadn't noticed it when he first came in and checked the place.

Xia Leng held his breath and quietly reached for the bone dagger at his leg. With great effort, he even managed to make his heartbeat almost inaudible!

This vicious arthropod was the sort that attacked on sight. Any living creature or animal that entered its scarlet gaze would provoke a lightning-fast strike from its fangs!

For now, however, its attention was fixed on the Giant Armor Beetle carcass in front of it.

Xia Leng knew that this beetle, which yielded less than two pounds of edible meat, wouldn't provide enough for even one proper meal. Once the spider finished this little appetizer, it would notice the much bigger "lump of meat" behind it, waiting to be eaten.

So he could only wait for the right moment to strike first!

He waited for the Ghost-Faced Spider to waste its dwindling supply of venom on the beetle. He waited for it to start greedily sucking on its prey. He waited for the few people outside to move farther away. That would be his chance to attack!

But what awaited Xia Leng next was a cruel twist of fate.

Perhaps the Goddess of Luck had stopped favoring him because of his lone-wolf ways.

A palm-sized Blood-Sucking Mosquito happened to fly in from outside at exactly the wrong time and in exactly the wrong place, buzzing away without the slightest awareness of the awkward tension in the room.

It seemed to have been drawn to the drop of sweat that had slid from Xia Leng's temple to his chin. It immediately raised its sharp proboscis, almost as long as his middle finger, and eagerly flew toward his face!

The giant mosquito's rapidly beating wings finally drew the Ghost-Faced Spider's attention too!

Xia Leng saw the eyes on the ghastly face in front of him bend into a smile. It was "laughing"!

The Ghost-Faced Spider's abdomen tightened. It was about to launch a fierce attack!

In the next second, it would seize the giant mosquito and, in the same motion, pounce onto Xia Leng's face, which was smeared with black ash!

At last, Xia Leng stopped waiting. Hesitation meant defeat!

Hiss!!

The Ghost-Faced Spider let out a hiss like escaping gas and shot a basin-sized green web from the tip of its abdomen. In an instant, it wrapped around the Blood-Sucking Mosquito that had been about to fly into Xia Leng's face.

At the same time, Xia Leng had already prepared to dodge a second earlier. Otherwise, that corrosive web would have smacked right into his face too!

With a practiced roll, he evaded the theatrical hunting attack.

But he also rolled onto the broken rubble scattered around him, crushing it with a sharp crack that rang especially loud in the stillness of the night!

He'd deliberately placed that rubble around him to guard against stealthy mutant creatures or other people attacking while he was half asleep. Anyone who stepped on it would make a noise, giving him time to react.

But he'd never imagined that a ridiculous turn of events would make him sabotage himself...

"Boss, did you hear that strange noise from the building beside us just now?"

The five men were still on the street beneath the blood-red moon. Thanks to senses honed through years of training, they'd naturally heard the sharp crack too.

"Yeah, I heard it."

The man in the lead signaled for his men to stop. He quickly found a huge chunk of concrete to use as cover, hid behind it, and fixed a sharp gaze on the direction the sound had come from.

Crack—

Several more sharp cracks came from the building, clear as day to all five men!

"Boss, could it be a Night Demon...? We should get out of here."

A thin, tall man spoke with a tremor in his voice. The mutant creature called a Night Demon had clearly left him badly shaken.

"Hmph, you coward. If it were a Night Demon, it would've already pounced down and eaten us. You think they're smart enough to set an ambush first? I'd say there's a fight going on up there. Maybe it's between mutant creatures, maybe it's between drifters. Heh."

The burly leader gave a sinister grin. His meaning was obvious: when two rivals fought, a third party could profit.

Whatever was fighting up there, one side would die, and the other wouldn't come away unscathed.

If a Night Demon were hunting up there, it wouldn't make such a racket. The moment one of those monsters set its eyes on you, you'd see the blood gushing from your neck the very next second. It wouldn't give you any time to fight back.

Thinking about it that way, the Night Demon was actually a rather "kind" creature. It killed you with one blow and ended your life without making you suffer any longer than necessary.

"Come on. Let's go take a look."

Meanwhile.

Xia Leng knelt on one knee, panting lightly as he looked at the lump of black, rotting flesh still twitching in front of him. After a hard-fought battle, he had finally killed the Ghost-Faced Spider.

But the price was a face, arms, and body covered in shocking cuts from the spider's sharp limbs. Some of the wounds were deep enough to expose bone.

Still, compared to being bitten by the Ghost-Faced Spider's fangs, these flesh wounds were a blessing in disguise.

Of course, Xia Leng didn't let his guard down for a moment. He knew the people outside had their eyes on him now...