Mountain Spider

In an abyss where mud and weightlessness intertwined, his senses were completely stripped away.

Lu Ping's consciousness seemed to have fallen into a boundless swamp.

His limbs no longer responded, and the sounds of wind and roaring cursed energy around him were fading away.

The eight green eyes floating in midair were like branding irons, forcibly searing a false illusion deep into his subconscious.

This was a pure mental control technique.

Its power was limited, but its humiliation factor was immense, and it was exceedingly difficult for a single person to dispel.

Within this sealed sea of consciousness, an ordinary person might already have gone mad.

But Lu Ping's condition was completely different. The "Three Corpses" lurking deep within the shadows let out an incredibly piercing shriek.

They were aberrations born from human malice, and they displayed unprecedented rejection and greed toward this foreign cursed energy imposed upon the mind.

As though they had caught the scent of perfect bait, the "Three Corpses" began frantically gnawing at the alien energy invading his mind.

Through that instinctive agitation to protect their host, a crack of clarity was forcibly torn through Lu Ping's chaotic thoughts.

He still could not control his heavy body, but not the slightest ripple stirred in his heart.

Even in the face of this deadly danger, the young man's emotions remained as calm as a dry well.

Relying on the Three Corpses' extreme sensitivity to cursed energy, he sensed the rapidly shifting battle outside from an almost cruelly detached perspective.

He noticed that Qian Chun had instantly adjusted her tactical stance nearby.

This battle-hardened elite was no flower raised in a greenhouse.

During past exorcism missions, she had slain powerful enemies possessing Innate Domains before.

But the successive monsters appearing tonight carried an undisguised sense of deliberation.

This was absolutely not a naturally gathered calamity.

From the initial probing, to the Snake God forcibly deploying its domain, to the mysterious cursed spirit now launching a surprise attack from the shadows.

Every twist had unfolded like a prewritten script, opening with an impossible-to-guard-against "zero-frame initiation."

Such meticulous troop deployment was practically like someone had carefully built a nest here specifically to hunt sorcerers.

The painful experience of losing companions had long since become a scar buried deep in Qian Chun's heart.

Rather than letting the distant close-quarters battle draw her attention, she immediately noticed Lu Ping's rigid movements that defied the laws of physics.

An unprompted pause in a life-or-death battle was tantamount to a death sentence.

She rapidly compared possibilities in her mind. Those eight strange compound eyes perfectly matched an exceedingly rare illusion-type cursed spirit—

[Mountain Spider].

This legendary aberration possessed an incredibly fragile true form, unable to withstand even a full-force strike from a low-level sorcerer.

But its sole means of fighting was extraordinarily deadly.

Through the compound eyes on its abdomen, it could hypnotize any target whose gaze met its own.

The more of the target's eyes it observed, the stronger its mental control ability to construct illusions became.

Although the cursed energy within high-level sorcerers could weaken an illusion's invasion for a certain period, once they were caught, they would be completely reduced to fish on the chopping block.

Unless the victim's body suffered a direct injury from the outside, using the resulting agony to awaken their nerves, ordinary people found it exceedingly difficult to break free from these mental shackles through willpower alone.

Using the information fed back by the Three Corpses, Lu Ping quickly set his mind in motion and sorted out the entire chain of events.

No wonder.

Now everything made sense.

Suguru Geto would die here?

Impossible. Absolutely impossible.

The conditions for breaking Mountain Spider's technique seemed harsh, but in reality, it would collapse the instant its victim received any tangible attack.

But a control-type technique with such a high margin for error was nowhere near enough to completely erase that favored son of heaven.

So the other party had to still be alive.

He was merely trapped somewhere in a hidden corner of the village due to some unknown change.

The outline of the situation was already clear.

But the blade of this chained killing trap was now pressed firmly against Lu Ping's throat.

The Snake King Cursed Spirit, which had completely lost its reason, sharply seized Lu Ping's opening. Dragging its massive, heavy body, it stirred up a nauseatingly foul wind across the square.

Its head, covered in a metallic sheen, rose high into the air. Its enormous maw dripping with corrosive venom suddenly opened and bit straight toward the prey frozen in place.

The fierce wind struck his face, and Lu Ping could even smell the stench pouring from the monster's mouth.

Facing death at such close range, even his heartbeat did not falter in the slightest.

He could not escape, nor did he need to.

A familiar wave of cursed energy emerged in the distance.

Lu Ping trusted Kamo Chitsubaki, just as she had trusted that he would arrive to support her earlier.

For now, all he needed to do was silently count down the passing seconds in his heart.

Three.

Two.

One.

An incomparably dazzling crimson beam suddenly streaked across the battlefield.

Muscle memory honed through countless battles made Qian Chun instinctively choose the optimal response.

She had no time to adjust her defensive position. With a decisive aura, she slammed her hands together before her chest.

[Blood Manipulation: Full-Power Piercing Blood]!

Under the ultimate compression of cursed energy, scarlet blood transformed into a straight ray of death.

Accompanied by a piercing sonic boom capable of rupturing eardrums, it erupted from her fingertips like a red spear sweeping across the field.

During the long preceding kite-and-drag battle, the Snake King Cursed Spirit had already been worn down by Lu Ping's evasive tactics, losing far too much cursed energy.

It was now at the end of its full-force lunge, its old momentum exhausted. Faced with this thunderous supporting strike, it had no time to evade.

The crimson light swept through the air as effortlessly as a hot knife through butter.

There was no sound of resistance whatsoever.

The Snake King Cursed Spirit's head and body, covered in hard scales, split smoothly apart to either side along the beam's cutting path.

Its mountain-like body lost central control and crashed down under the inertia of its charge.

After striking the ground, it slowly dissolved into black ash that scattered through the air.

One strike. Completely exorcised.

As the behemoth crashed down with a thunderous roar, the surging storm of cursed energy, mixed with sharp fragments of stone, slammed into Lu Ping's torso.

It was not a fatal wound, but the instant that faint physical pain traveled through his nerve endings into his brain, it became the key to breaking the deadlock.

The illusionary shackles covering his consciousness finally cracked like parched earth.

Lu Ping opened his eyes again, and the Snake King Cursed Spirit's body, split in two, entered his sight.

However, at the extremely brief instant when Qian Chun had displayed her might and her old momentum was gone before new strength could rise, the situation changed again.

In battles between the strong, the deadliest hunter often appeared in the guise of the most humble prey.

The Blood Bat Cursed Spirit, which had long been beaten black and blue and fallen to the ground, seemingly incapable of resistance, was nowhere near as weak as it appeared.

It had been lurking deep within the shadows of the collapsed houses, concealing every trace of its cursed energy.

Like a cold-blooded assassin with immense patience, waiting to strike a fatal blow, it endured without acting.

This monster had not merely been enduring attacks—it had been using its opponent's strength to transform itself.

It had cleverly made use of a new ability it had concealed ever since its third molt.

A slender tail that had originally been hidden beneath its fleshy wings, tipped with a hollow bone spike, now silently slithered along the cold ground like a venomous snake leaving its den.

This was a long-planned conspiracy, its target locked onto Qian Chun, the greatest threat.

Its timing was exceptionally vicious, catching the absolute defensive vacuum that would inevitably follow the use of Full-Power Piercing Blood.

Squelch.

An incredibly faint sound of flesh being pierced rang out.

The sharp bone spike effortlessly pierced her fair skin and sank deep into the exposed ankle of the girl's right foot.

Without the slightest pause or hesitation, the Blood Bat's shriveled body convulsed violently as it launched its deadly feeding attack.

Large amounts of incomparably pure sorcerer blood, containing immense energy, surged madly into its body through that tubular tail.

For a monster like this, it was not merely the perfect medicine for healing—it also completely filled the final missing piece of energy it had lacked on its path to advancement.

The sudden agony and rapid loss of blood made Qian Chun let out an uncontrollable, low groan.

Her body swayed slightly, and the cursed energy gathered at her fingertips instantly dispersed.

Having gorged itself on blood, the Blood Bat Cursed Spirit completed its feeding and let out a shriek of extreme exhilaration.

The sound was unbearably piercing.

As the shriek intensified, the old skin covering its body, riddled with wounds, began to crack inch by inch like dried plaster, then peeled away in large patches.

With every piece of old skin that fell away, a heart-stopping light shone through the gaps.

In the end, it was replaced by an entirely new body gleaming with a dark crimson luster, its muscles streamlined and sleek.

Its wings spread wide, more than a size larger than before.

A terrifying pressure, like a tangible tsunami, instantly swept through the entire village.

After a long period of endurance and planning, the Blood Bat Cursed Spirit had finally crossed that chasm and reached its complete form.

Its current rating was—

[Special Grade]