Spider Nest

In the giant spider's eyes, Lin Yi's actions at this moment were nothing more than the instinctive vigilance of prey sensing danger, no fundamentally different from the prey it had hunted before.

What it did not know was that Lin Yi's Spirit Eyes had already seen straight through it.

From the moment it had lurked upon the tree trunk, his platinum-gold gaze had pierced through layers of flesh beneath its shell, accurately capturing the complete paths of those gray-black Divine Markings.

On the surface, Lin Yi maintained a vigilant defensive stance, but in truth, he had already devoted half his attention to running his mind at full speed, engraving the Divine Markings on its body.

Spirit Eyes combined with Super Brain—the efficiency was outrageously high.

From discovering this spider until now, in merely a few breaths, he had already engraved around thirty percent of the complex, tangled Divine Markings on its body.

Those patterns were roughly comparable to the Savage Bull King's coarse power patterns, and slightly simpler than the Inkshadow Leopard's speed patterns.

No matter what, this trip hasn't been a loss, Lin Yi thought to himself.

By then, the spider had silently circled around behind him.

Its eight slender spider legs shifted across the high branches without causing even the slightest tremor.

When it felt the time was ripe, its eight dark-green compound eyes lit up at once. The foremost limb on its right suddenly shot out like a pitch-black short spear, stabbing straight at Lin Yi's heart from behind!

Lin Yi had initially intended to turn and smash it with a punch. His Savage Bull Diagram had already been activated; one hundred and sixty thousand jin of force was enough to send any ferocious beast in the Dragonlike Realm flying.

But at the very instant his body was about to turn, an unprecedented, intensely powerful sense of danger exploded from the depths of his mind!

The sensation came fiercely and abruptly, like a basin of icy water dumped directly onto some nerve at the back of his head.

He instinctively activated Fleeting Shadow. The blood-gold patterns on his legs suddenly blazed brightly, leaving an afterimage where he stood as he flashed three zhang away in an instant.

Whoosh!

That spider leg pierced through his afterimage, releasing a sharp, brief shriek through the air. Even the air where its tip passed rippled with faint distortions.

The instant Lin Yi landed, he had already turned around, staring intently at the spider whose form had been exposed.

Cold sweat had soaked his back. Though he had dodged that strike, the lingering echo of that danger still danced along the tips of his nerves.

That sense of danger... It wasn't fatal, but it was incredibly strong.

He swiftly replayed the sensation from that instant in his mind. This thing's attack isn't merely powerful. There must be something else to it.

Having missed its strike, the spider was visibly stunned as well.

Its eight compound eyes focused in unison on Lin Yi, as though reassessing the prey before it.

It slowly emerged fully from the shadows of the tree trunk. Its body, over two zhang long, spread out amid the dim forest. Its eight spider legs were half-bent and half-extended, while gray-black Divine Markings silently flowed across its surface.

Man and spider faced each other in the woods.

Lin Yi did not rush to attack. His Spirit Eyes continued to pierce through the spider's carapace, closely observing the operational details of those Divine Markings.

To maintain its attacking state, the spider's Divine Markings were flowing more clearly than before. Every method of connection and convergence was laid bare before his eyes.

While maintaining their standoff, he rapidly advanced the completeness of the Divine Marking diagram in his mind—fifty percent, sixty percent, seventy percent... At the same time, he separately picked out the Divine Markings on the spider legs for a shallow examination, trying to understand the source of that sense of danger.

He quickly found the answer.

The focus of this spider's Divine Markings was entirely concentrated in its eight spider legs.

Especially at the ends of those legs, where layers upon layers of gray-black patterns converged like invisible armor, repeatedly tempering the tips.

When the spider legs launched a piercing attack, those Divine Markings would activate simultaneously in an instant, turning the already hard tips of the leg joints into spearheads forged from refined iron. Their penetrating power far exceeded the limits that normal strength should have allowed.

If he had not dodged just now and had instead received the attack head-on with his fist, his fist would likely have been pierced through on the spot. It would not have been fatal, but his combat power and mobility would have immediately been greatly reduced.

So that's how it was... Lin Yi let out a delayed sigh of relief. If I'd taken that punch head-on, my arm would've been crippled.

He raised his eyes toward the spider before him, which was still restless and eager to move, and his gaze darkened.

Next time, I need to figure things out before attacking. There are too many things in this Great Wilderness that stab people in the dark—impossible to guard against them all.

But now, the Divine Markings had been fully engraved.

"Alright, you're useless now." Lin Yi rolled his wrist and grinned at the spider. "Take a punch from your grandpa!"

He suddenly pushed off with his feet, shooting forward like a cannonball. His right fist carried the full force of the Savage Bull Diagram as it smashed toward the spider's head!

Sensing the terrifying pressure carried by the fist wind, the spider curled and sprang with all eight legs at once. Its entire body launched from the spot at an inconceivable angle, plunging into the impenetrable canopy above.

It moved with extreme speed and made almost no sound. Its gray-black shell and mottled moss-like patterns blended perfectly with the tree shadows, vanishing from Lin Yi's sight in an instant.

Even its aura sank away with it, as though it had completely merged into the forest.

Lin Yi's punch struck empty air, and the fist wind scattered several leaves.

After landing, he did not pause. He immediately activated his Spirit Eyes and swept his surroundings. His platinum-gold vision pierced through dense branches and dark shadows, quickly locking onto the spider again.

It had not fled.

It was perched on a horizontal branch three zhang above and diagonally ahead of him, its eight spider legs tightly gripping the bark and its body completely motionless.

Those gray-black Divine Markings still slowly circulated within its body, while its eight compound eyes coldly watched the back of his neck from the darkness.

It was waiting—waiting for Lin Yi to let down his guard and believe it had escaped before launching a second ambush.

...This beast really is like a ghost that won't leave me alone. Lin Yi was speechless. It can't beat me, yet it's squatting there waiting for me to expose a weakness. Is it determined to ambush me to death?

He directly activated Fleeting Shadow. The blood-gold patterns on his legs abruptly flared to their utmost brilliance.

In an instant, his figure appeared before that horizontal branch! The spider's compound eyes were still blankly tracking the afterimage at his original position, when Lin Yi's face was suddenly right before it.

"Stop waiting. You have no chance."

His fist, wrapped in the majestic force of one hundred and sixty thousand jin, struck precisely into the center of the spider's head.

The layer of gray-black carapace abruptly caved in the instant that immense force poured into it. Cracks burst outward from the point of impact, and dark-green viscous fluid sprayed from the fissures. The spider's eight legs twitched at once, then completely lost their support. Its entire body fell from the horizontal branch and crashed heavily onto the ground.

Lin Yi landed as well, standing beside the spider's corpse as he shook the slime from his fist. "Little punk, still trying to ambush me."

But before the corners of his mouth could fully lift, his Spirit Eyes caught a new disturbance.

It was an exceptionally fine rustling sound surging in from every direction.

It sounded like countless tiny leg joints rapidly crawling over fallen leaves and tree bark. His gaze swept over every tree trunk and horizontal branch within a hundred meters—one, two, five, more than ten.

Figures resembling the spider on the ground were converging from every corner of the Dark Forest. Eight compound eyes flickered with dim green points in the darkness, like a sea of stars slowly closing in.

"Damn... More of them?" Lin Yi immediately activated his Spirit Eyes to sweep at full power.

More than ten spiders were rapidly approaching from different directions. Though they were not as large as the first one, their numbers were there. Once he got tangled up with them, it would become a battle of attrition.

What truly made Lin Yi's back turn cold, however, was that even stronger sense of danger. It did not come from the approaching spiders, but from deeper within the Dark Forest.

Something was there—something more than a whole level stronger than the spider he had just killed.

"So you're not the overlord of this forest." Lin Yi glanced down at the spider whose head he had smashed to pieces, his tone filled with exasperation. "Turns out you're just a gatekeeper?"

He did not linger any longer.

Bending down, he grabbed the spider's corpse and took off running in the direction he had come from.

With Fleeting Shadow fully activated, his figure drew out a blurred afterimage through the woods, while continual rustling pursuit sounded from the forest behind him.

Those spiders were not slow either. Their eight legs alternated between tree trunks and the ground as they pursued him in packs.

Just as Lin Yi ran out of the Dark Forest's boundary, he glanced back. More than ten pairs of dim-green compound eyes had stopped in the shadows at the forest entrance and did not pursue him any farther.

They seemed unable to leave that dark region.

"Dogs lording it over others by relying on their master's power." Lin Yi panted heavily, carrying the spider corpse over his shoulder as he spat toward the forest entrance. "Sooner or later, I'll slaughter every last one of you."