Mother Spider

The moment his consciousness returned, that voice appeared right on time.

[The Abyssal Void has opened]

[Return countdown: 23:59:57]

Still 24 hours. The time hadn't changed.

Jiang Ran opened his eyes and sat up in bed.

Everything in the room was exactly as he'd left it. The compound bow leaned against the wall, the quiver hung from the back of a chair, and the Tang Dao lay across the desk.

He walked to the window and pulled back a corner of the curtain.

Across the street, the window on the fourth floor of the residential building was still shattered. Glass fragments littered the sidewalk below.

Jiang Ran looked at it thoughtfully.

It seemed that the damage inside the Abyssal Void remained even after leaving and returning. It didn't reset.

Jiang Ran drew the curtain closed again. He didn't hurry to leave.

Instead, he took out the Bagua Copper Coin and silently made a wish, then tossed it into the air...

The next moment, the coin simply fell. Nothing unusual happened at all.

Jiang Ran froze. Just before it hit the floor, he caught it again, frowning.

What he wanted most right now was undoubtedly the Seed of Return to Void, or Spirit Crystals and things like the Bagua Copper Coin.

But the Bagua Copper Coin could only answer one question a day, and naturally Jiang Ran had wanted to use that question on the Seed of Return to Void.

But it was clear the coin couldn't divine the Seed's location.

That left using it to find something like the Bagua Copper Coin.

After all, Spirit Crystals could be found in the heads of all kinds of monsters. There was no need to use the coin to search for them specifically.

So Jiang Ran silently asked: Where's the nearest thing like the Bagua Copper Coin?

Then he tossed the coin...

This time, the coin finally reacted, spinning rapidly in the air.

At the same time, a direction appeared in Jiang Ran's mind...

West, about twenty kilometers away!?

Twenty kilometers wasn't far under normal circumstances, but this was the Abyssal Void.

Who knew what he might encounter on the way?

Should he go or not?

Jiang Ran hesitated for only three seconds.

He'd go.

The Abyssal Void had only just opened for the second time. Most people were still panicking, feeling their way around, and trying to adapt.

Even if the various organizations and factions had already begun to act, their efficiency would still be limited.

This was a window of opportunity.

Once everyone had reacted, organized themselves, and established their territories, taking anything valuable right under their noses would become exponentially harder.

The early stages were all about competing.

Competing for resources, opportunities, and anything that could make him stronger.

Jiang Ran opened the map on his phone.

The fastest route from his current location to the target was along the main roads, but it was also the riskiest.

If a monster spotted him on an open street, there would be almost nowhere to take cover.

He ran his finger across the map and finally chose a more winding route, one lined with buildings.

It was longer, but at least it offered places to hide and room to maneuver.

Once he'd planned the route, Jiang Ran quickly checked his gear.

He slung the compound bow over his back, hung the quiver at his hip where he could reach it easily, and secured the Tang Dao diagonally across his body with paracord.

He packed the essentials and the Bagua Copper Coin into his tactical waist bag.

Finally, he pulled up the hood of his black sweatshirt and covered the lower half of his face with a mask.

He opened the door and stepped outside.

By the time he left the building, the sky was dark, with only a little moonlight.

Most of the time, Jiang Ran kept up a pace somewhere between a fast walk and a jog, his body always ready to spring into action.

With Combat Intuition fully active, he pushed his senses to their limits.

His eyes swept the road ahead and the windows and rooftops of the buildings on either side.

Along the way, Jiang Ran encountered three monsters wandering alone.

They were the same gray-green, lizard-like creatures he'd seen before.

He didn't get tangled up with them. If he could go around, he did. If he couldn't, he took them out with quick shots from his compound bow.

With his current arm strength, the 156-pound compound bow sent every arrow through the skull at a range of fifty meters or less.

The monsters didn't even have time to raise the alarm before they dropped dead.

Jiang Ran quickly cut open their corpses, took out the Spirit Crystals, and immediately left the scene.

No drawn-out fights. No wasted time.

An hour and a half later.

Jiang Ran stopped at the corner of a street.

The sight before him made his pupils contract.

The road looked as if a giant beast had gnawed at it. Potholes were everywhere, some so deep he couldn't see the bottom.

The buildings on both sides had been savagely wrecked.

Bloodstains had dried and turned black, splattered all over the ground.

There were also lumps of unidentifiable tissue.

How could this still be the High-Tech District...

It was no exaggeration to call it a war zone.

Jiang Ran had no choice but to slow down.

Several kilometers away, on another street.

Zhou Ming gasped for breath. Sweat ran from his forehead into his eyes, stinging.

He didn't dare wipe it away. If he stopped, those things behind him would catch up.

"U-Uncle Wang... wait for me..." His voice trembled, almost breaking into a sob.

The man running ahead didn't look back. Instead, he sped up.

"Move it! Quit fucking dragging your feet!" Uncle Wang snapped impatiently.

The two had met half an hour earlier.

Zhou Ming had remembered Jiang Ran's advice. As soon as he was outside, he contacted the Federation. Someone had soon gotten in touch about sheltering him and told him to wait at home for rescue.

But plans couldn't keep up with changes.

Not long after entering the Abyssal Void today, a monster had come straight to his door.

He'd had no choice but to leave home and head for the police station.

That was where he'd run into Uncle Wang.

When Uncle Wang heard that the police would be sheltering Zhou Ming, he'd volunteered to protect him.

Zhou Ming had believed him.

But now...

"Uncle Wang! There's a fork up ahead! Which way do we go?!" Zhou Ming shouted.

Uncle Wang didn't answer.

He reached the fork, suddenly turned right, and vanished behind a building.

Zhou Ming hurried after him, but the moment he rounded the corner, his foot caught on something...

He pitched forward, slamming his knees and elbows against the rough concrete. Pain flared through him.

When he looked up, Uncle Wang was already dozens of meters away. He glanced back at Zhou Ming.

There was no apology in his eyes, no hesitation.

Then Uncle Wang turned and disappeared through the entrance of a building.

Zhou Ming froze.

He lay on the ground, staring blankly in that direction, his mind empty.

Then came a hissing sound from behind him.

He turned around stiffly.

Three monsters were slowly advancing from the other end of the street.

They were larger than any monsters Zhou Ming had seen before.

Their heads... were twisted human faces.

Their features were askew, with one eye higher than the other. Their mouths stretched to their ears, revealing rows upon rows of sharp teeth.

Now all three faces stared at Zhou Ming, wearing an eerie expression that was almost a smile.

"N-no... don't..."

Zhou Ming struggled to get up, but his knees hurt too much to support him.

The Human-Faced Spider at the front sped up, its eight legs moving in a blur as the distance rapidly closed.

Ten meters.

Five meters.

It raised its front legs high. The sharp ends, like scythes, aimed straight for Zhou Ming's head...

Fortunately, gunshots suddenly rang out.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Bullets whistled over Zhou Ming's head.

They brought flashes of fire—and hope.

Meanwhile.

On the roof of an office building, Jiang Ran had also found his target.

But it wasn't on the roof of his own building. It was atop the high-rise across the street.

The opposite rooftop was covered in a web of many colors.

At its center crouched a gigantic Human-Faced Spider.

Its body alone was the size of a small truck. Its eight long legs stretched out, each thicker than an adult's waist.

Dozens of white eggs were scattered across the web around it.

Each was as large as a basketball, its surface translucent enough to reveal the curled-up outline of a creature within.

It looked like a Mother Spider!?

This wouldn't be easy...

Jiang Ran only needed a few glances to reach that conclusion.

A monster of this size couldn't be easily taken down with arrows or hand-to-hand combat.

He'd have to rely on extraordinary abilities like Dragon-Tiger Fist.

But judging by the number of eggs, a large number of young monsters had probably already hatched inside the building.

The total amount of qi and blood in his body wasn't enough to deal with that many monsters.

Was he supposed to give up!?

The thought had barely surfaced before Jiang Ran crushed it.

He'd come all this way. He wasn't willing to give up now...

Just as Jiang Ran rapidly considered his options, a sound suddenly came from the rooftop across the street.

Pop.

Jiang Ran immediately looked up.

The surface of one of the white eggs across the street had cracked.

Then, like a chain reaction, dozens of eggs split open one after another.

Tiny Human-Faced Spider hatchlings crawled out, swarming over the rooftop and covering nearly half of it in an instant.

They shook off the slime on their bodies, then began pouring down the stairwell into the building.

Some even crawled straight down the outside wall of the high-rise.

The hooked feet on their eight legs clung firmly to the glass curtain wall and concrete. They moved at astonishing speed.

In only a dozen seconds, Jiang Ran saw countless monsters pour out of the building and race in the same direction.

He stared in mild surprise. Were they going out to hunt!?

Whatever the reason, Jiang Ran knew his chance had come.

Once he saw that few monsters were left inside the building, he quickly backed away to the other edge of the rooftop.

He estimated the distance between the two buildings at about twenty meters, with nearly eighty meters of open air between them.

Before, that would have been suicide.

But now...

Jiang Ran took a deep breath as qi and blood began to surge through him.

He retreated to the far end of the rooftop, about thirty meters away.

He broke into a run.

His first step landed, and the concrete trembled faintly.

On the second step, his speed surged.

On the third, his blood and qi erupted, and Eight-Step Cicada Chase kicked into full gear...

The world blurred before his eyes.

The wind roared in his ears.

By the fourth step, Jiang Ran had already reached the edge of the rooftop.

He leaped high into the air!

His body sailed through the air, covering twenty meters.

At the very same instant, Jiang Ran's left hand had already taken the compound bow from his back, while his right hand drew an arrow from the quiver.

He nocked the arrow and drew the bow.

He completed the movement while still airborne.

The bowstring drew back to a full moon, the arrowhead aimed at the enormous Mother Spider on the opposite rooftop.

Its compound eyes seemed to sense something. Its head slowly turned toward the sky...

Whoosh!

The arrow flew from the bowstring, its sharp whistle cutting through the air.

At that very moment, Jiang Ran was about to land.

He didn't even bother looking to see how the shot had gone.

Even in midair, he had already assumed the stance for Dragon-Tiger Fist...

His arms spread at his sides, his waist and hips twisted, his spine shuddering like a great dragon.

Blood and qi gathered and roiled in his right fist...

A dragon's roar exploded above the street in an instant...!!