Missing?

On a strand of spider silk, a little child with a human face and a spider's body swung back and forth. When Shen Leyan looked toward the voice, the silk swung right up to him.

The child let out a strange cry. "Ahh—I can't stop!"

Then she swung straight into Shen Leyan's arms.

Shen Leyan: "..."

He looked at the sticky spider silk covering his hands, then at the Little Spider Demon, whose eyes were brimming with frightened tears.

The child was quite cute, with big eyes and a small mouth, but her body was unmistakably a spider's. Her eight legs were fuzzy, and she was about the size of a baby.

"...I suggest you pull back your silk and get off me right now." Shen Leyan took a deep breath. "I'm scared of bugs. In a minute, I might lose control and slap you."

At that, the Little Spider Demon began kicking all eight legs like spinning wheels, almost fast enough to throw sparks. But the tangled silk only bound them more tightly together.

"...My hand is ready."

"Wait, wait, wait—"

"Can't you pull back your own silk?!"

The Little Spider Demon sounded aggrieved. "I'm still a child! I'm not very good at controlling my silk yet!"

Shen Leyan said, "Jiangxue Sword, give me a hand!"

The Jiangxue Sword hesitantly left its sheath and severed the silk tangled between them with a single slash.

Then it flew back into Lu Yuanyi's hand, signaling for its master to clean its blade.

Shen Leyan breathed a sigh of relief. As he tugged off the remaining silk, he gave the Jiangxue Sword a grateful look.

That silk was surprisingly strong. It could even cling to the Jiangxue Sword.

After gathering up her silk, the Little Spider Demon looked at them curiously.

"Were you just talking about Glory Ancestors Village?"

Shen Leyan's gaze sharpened slightly. "How did you know?"

"Because my mother told me that all my brothers and sisters came to her from Glory Ancestors Village.

If I hadn't heard you talking about Glory Ancestors Village from far away, I wouldn't have crawled over to listen and then fallen into your arms!"

"Wh-what do you mean..."

For a moment, he could not understand the connection between Glory Ancestors Village and the Little Spider Demon.

By rights, the Little Spider Demon's mother ought to be a big spider demon.

Could it be...

"You mean your father is a villager from Glory Ancestors Village? Your father and mother... had a forbidden romance between human and demon?"

The Little Spider Demon put all eight legs on her hips. "No! I don't have a father! Only a mother!"

[(⊙o⊙)]

Shen Leyan turned to ask Lu Yuanyi, "Can spider demons reproduce asexually?"

"She isn't a true spider demon."

Shen Leyan: "?"

"She was originally human, but after being nourished by a spider demon's demonic energy for years, she became like this, with a human face and a spider's body."

"So she was adopted by a spider demon?"

Lu Yuanyi nodded.

After speaking quietly with Lu Yuanyi, Shen Leyan overcame his urge to swat away any bug he saw and stroked the Little Spider Demon's cheek.

"Then where is your mother now? What about your brothers and sisters? Why are you here alone?"

"I wanted to play, so I ran out by myself! My brothers and sisters are all sleeping in the cave. As for Mother... she probably went hunting today."

Hunting?

"Where did your mother go hunting?"

"To Glory Ancestors Village, of course. Mother said there are lots and lots of people there burdened with the sin of killing. There's nothing tastier than eating them and draining their vital essence!"

Shen Leyan handed the Little Spider Demon the remains he had gathered from the Abandoned Infant Tower.

"Sorry for the trouble, but could you make a grave for them here?"

"Were they killed by the people of Glory Ancestors Village?"

"...Yes."

The Little Spider Demon began digging with all eight legs. "No problem. I'll give them a proper burial—are you going back to Glory Ancestors Village? Judging by your clothes, you must have come from somewhere else. You don't look like bad people. Be careful that Mother doesn't hurt you by mistake."

Shen Leyan jumped onto the Jiangxue Sword and waved to the Little Spider Demon.

"She won't—this white-haired guy beside me is terrifyingly strong!"

Glory Ancestors Village lay silent beneath the hazy moonlight. It seemed no different from when they had left, as peaceful as any ordinary mountain village.

But as Shen Leyan stood on the Jiangxue Sword and drew closer, he sensed the dense demonic energy hanging over the village. Invisible spider silk woven from spiritual power wrapped the village in an enormous cocoon. All the villagers trapped inside were the Spider Demon's prey, helpless before her.

The Demon-Seeking Compass Zheng Ziheng had given him began vibrating violently inside his robe. He could hear it buzzing as its needle spun wildly and struck the casing.

"That big spider demon seems to have a pretty high cultivation level..."

"Yes. To nourish so many children with demonic energy, she should be at the peak of the Nascent Soul Stage."

If a spider demon at the peak of the Nascent Soul Stage wanted to slaughter Glory Ancestors Village, it would probably have been deserted long before they arrived.

A flash of sword light swept past, cutting an opening through the tough silk enveloping the village as though it were paper. Shen Leyan followed close behind Lu Yuanyi into the village, while the web behind them stirred and repaired the breach the Jiangxue Sword had made.

"The Spider Demon will sense that we've entered her web, right?"

"Yes." Flecks of dark gold lit up in the depths of Lu Yuanyi's eyes. "But she's hunting over there right now. She probably has no time to bother with us."

Shen Leyan had barely begun to speak when a hand closed around his wrist. When he opened his eyes again, they had already moved from the village entrance into a room.

The room looked familiar at first glance.

It was the side room the woman who had taken them in had arranged for them.

The Demon-Seeking Compass inside his robe buzzed even more fiercely. Through the window, Shen Leyan saw unusually thick spider silk covering the courtyard, sealing every door, window, and wall through which anyone might escape—the Spider Demon was hunting right here!

Bang!

The wooden door across the courtyard suddenly burst open.

The woman who had taken them in that day was tangled in a mass of spider silk. She fell into the courtyard.

Immediately afterward, a spider demon as large as a carriage squeezed through the battered wooden doorway. Her face was that of a beautiful young woman, her eyes and brows as lovely as spring waters and peach blossoms, but her vivid red lips curved into a cold, mocking smile.

The woman clutched her chest and coughed several times. Her pinned-up hair came loose, revealing a few silver strands.

"...Those children, how are they?"

The Spider Demon walked up to her. One of her legs transformed into a sharp blade and hovered beside the woman's neck.

"You have the deaths of three innocent babies on your conscience, and you still have the nerve to ask?"

"...I know. I should have died long ago." There was no panic or terror on the woman's face. She seemed to have known about the Spider Demon all along, and her expression remained calm. "I only want to know whether those children are doing well... whether they've grown up safely."

Shen Leyan tilted his face upward and quietly asked Lu Yuanyi, "The children they're talking about are the Little Spider Demon we saw in the woods and her brothers and sisters, right?"

"If human children are nourished with a spider demon's demonic energy, will it affect them in any way besides giving them human faces and spider bodies?"

"Human bodies cannot accommodate demonic energy very well, after all. If those children continue growing up on demonic energy, they will gradually lose their human intelligence and turn entirely into bloodthirsty demonic beasts."

The Spider Demon's pupils were vertical, like an animal's. She stared coldly at the woman for a moment.

"Those children are doing well—at least far better than they would have if they'd stayed in Glory Ancestors Village."

The woman gave a self-mocking smile, tears glimmering at the corners of her eyes. "That's good..."

She closed her eyes, as though awaiting release.

"Miss... Spider!"

The Spider Demon paused, her slit pupils contracting sharply. She turned toward their side room, murderous intent churning in her eyes as a mass of silk formed on one of her legs.

"Who's there?!"

Shen Leyan opened the window, keeping a polite smile on his face. "Miss Spider, this is a misunderstanding... please hear us out first..."

The Spider Demon's gaze swept over their clothes. When she saw the Jiangxue Sword, a flicker of wariness crossed her eyes.

"More cultivators... what happens here has nothing to do with you. Keep your noses out of it. Get lost if you don't want to die!"

Shen Leyan raised his hand and formed a wind blade, clearing away the silk tangled around the door before walking over to the woman.

"You've met cultivators before? Then you should know that cultivators tend to stick their noses into things... especially when lives are involved. We have to find out the whole story before deciding whether to interfere."

"Half a month ago, a few cultivators spouted the same talk about chivalry and justice as you and tried to stop me. But I beat them off—

This woman allowed her husband to drown two of her daughters, then later stood by and watched her little granddaughter die before her eyes. She's burdened with the sin of killing. Even if she were handed over to the authorities, she would face death. What's wrong with me killing her?"

The cultivators who had come half a month ago should have been Senior Brother Chen Jing and the others.

Hearing that the Spider Demon had not killed those cultivators, Shen Leyan secretly breathed a sigh of relief.

"You mean... everyone you hunt has killed someone?"

"That's right—have you asked enough?" The Spider Demon's tone grew impatient. "My children are waiting in the cave to be fed demonic energy. I don't have time to waste on you."

As her words fell, a wisp of black energy coiled around the woman's neck, and pain appeared on her face.

Starting at the ends, her hair turned silver-white bit by bit at a visible speed...

The Spider Demon was draining the woman's vital essence. Once a person's vital essence was exhausted, they could not survive.

Shen Leyan unleashed the Azure Shadow Profound Art. After leaving several afterimages in the air, he appeared beside the Spider Demon in an instant. A wind blade slashed at her, leaving only a faint white mark on her hard shell.

But the Spider Demon was immediately enraged. Abandoning the woman, she shot a mass of web-shaped silk at him!

"Sect Master Lu—"

Relying on his agile movement technique, Shen Leyan darted and leaped around the courtyard, leading the Spider Demon on a chase.

"**Sect Master Lu—**this Miss Spider isn't like our snake friend. She seems a bit hot-tempered! She won't let anyone get a word in!"

The Spider Demon pursued him relentlessly, spitting webs at him one after another like bouncing balls.

"Who are you calling Miss Spider? Stop acting like we're family—"

A quarter of an hour later, the Spider Demon lay on the ground, trussed up in her own silk, with a red mark on her face from a smack with the flat of the Jiangxue Sword.

Her eight legs struggled against the ground, digging out a large pit and sending dust flying.

"Don't always try to reason with demonic beasts when you encounter them." Lu Yuanyi's voice was even. "If you can't win, run first. If you can win, fight. Isn't it better to talk to her now that she's like this?"

Shen Leyan raised his sleeve to fan away the dust before his eyes and looked at the immobilized Spider Demon, who was glaring with such fury that her eyes seemed about to burst.

Isn't having someone here to do the fighting the whole reason I tried reasoning with her? If he weren't here, I'd have run ten miles the moment I sensed a Nascent Soul Stage demonic beast from afar.

To uphold justice, one first needed sufficiently strong cultivation and hard enough fists.

Otherwise, one was merely throwing one's life away as cannon fodder.

"We met a little spider demon in the mountains just now. She said you were her mother."

The Spider Demon demanded, "What did you do to my child?!"

"...We asked her to help dig a grave and bury the remains we gathered from the Abandoned Infant Tower in Glory Ancestors Village. She should have returned to the cave to sleep by now."

The Spider Demon stared at them doubtfully, seeming unconvinced that they could be so kind.

Shen Leyan could not be bothered to explain further.

"Your child is safe. Shouldn't you answer a few questions for us now? You said you met a group of cultivators half a month ago. What happened then? Were they injured, and where are they now?"

"Half a month ago, I came to this village to hunt and happened to find those cultivators treating the villagers. Then we started fighting. But their cultivation levels were all low, and they went down after just a few blows.

One clueless young fool even said he would report me to his sect and have them deal with me.

Since they knew nothing about what happened in Glory Ancestors Village, I let them go. They only had superficial injuries. As for where they are now, so many days have passed. How would I know?!"

The Spider Demon's tone and expression did not suggest that she was lying.

Shen Leyan turned to the woman beside him, whose breathing was faint, and sent a trace of spiritual power into her. "Do you know about those cultivators?"

The woman's eyes were lifeless. She looked as though she had only one last breath left in her. Her voice was hoarse. "...Those people disappeared."

Shen Leyan's heart missed several beats.

"What?! What do you mean, disappeared?!"

"...After the Spider Demon left the village half a month ago, those cultivators came back to find us. I still remember a young man called Chen Jing. He said they could escort the villagers away from the village so we would no longer suffer attacks from demonic beasts.

They also took out some silver and distributed it among the villagers, telling everyone to pack their things and leave that night.

Glory Ancestors Village was already gripped by fear... all the villagers who remained wanted to move away. Now that we had enough silver and cultivators to escort us, everyone packed their belongings that night and gathered at the village entrance to leave together.

But... we waited at the village entrance for a long time, and those cultivators never came.

When we went to look in the house where they were staying, it was empty. All the bundles they had brought were gone too.

It was raining that day. So many people couldn't have left without leaving a single footprint. Besides, many of us were waiting at the village entrance, and no one saw anybody come out... that's why I say they disappeared."