Chapter Fifty-Six: The Black Spider

The next day, Lu Sheng woke up as usual.

As soon as he stepped outside, he saw Mu Kui, who was visibly excited.

Lu Sheng looked at Mu Kui in surprise, for the dark circles around his eyes were far too obvious.

“What’s wrong? Didn’t sleep all night?”

“My life card has finally reached green quality!” Mu Kui was exhilarated—truly elated—for the quality of one’s life card determined their fighting prowess among those of the same rank.

Most people in the settlement within the safe zone only had white-quality life cards; possessing a green-quality card marked one as a top combatant.

As long as his strength continued to improve, becoming a squad leader was assured.

Lu Sheng didn’t quite understand Mu Kui’s feelings. The truth was, he simply couldn’t relate to the struggle of upgrading a life card.

After thinking it over for some time, he finally understood the reason.

His own talent was too high, his own power too great, and so he couldn’t share in the joy felt by those weaker than himself.

Lu Sheng harbored no sense of superiority—he was simply searching for an explanation.

“Congratulations! After your little earthworm’s quality increased, did it get any bigger?”

Mu Kui’s life card was an earthworm—a purely possession-type card. Summoning the worm to fight was clearly unrealistic.

However, the pure possession-type boost it provided was formidable.

The earthworm endowed Mu Kui with stamina and regenerative power, raising his combat ability by several notches.

Mu Kui’s face darkened at Lu Sheng’s words. The nickname “little earthworm” was hardly flattering, but he had no way to retort; once summoned, it was only about that size—how could it possibly become bigger?

...

The squad assembled.

Shi Jiu addressed the group, “Today, we’ll be assisting a small settlement of over a hundred people, under the command of the chief. Let me brief you on the situation...”

In short, a dungeon had appeared near the small settlement.

The monsters inside were too strong for them to handle, so they paid a price to ask Wang Ziping to intervene.

Wang An, the team’s scout, was always alert to information. After Shi Jiu finished, he looked puzzled.

“Captain, if that settlement of a hundred can’t handle the monsters, shouldn’t they just relocate? Moving camp isn’t hard—pack up their furniture and pitch camp somewhere safer, right?”

Shi Jiu hesitated for a moment. “I don’t know the answer to that either. But the chief has already agreed to help them, so let’s not overthink it. Just follow orders.”

Since Shi Jiu put it that way, no one argued.

Soon, the hundred-strong team gathered and, under Wang Ziping’s leadership, set out in a certain direction.

After about an hour’s walk, they arrived at the foot of a mountain.

A makeshift camp appeared before them.

But it was clear the camp was in dire straits.

Corpses littered the ground; not a single living soul remained. The air was thick with the acrid stench of blood.

Wang Ziping frowned at the sight of the carnage. The leader of this settlement had only contacted him yesterday, and now the entire population was wiped out.

The deaths had come too swiftly.

“Judging by these wounds, it was the spiders nearby that did this.”

Because Wang Ziping’s own life creature was a spider, he recognized the injuries instantly—they’d been killed by spiders.

The settlement’s leader had asked him here specifically to exterminate a nest of spiders.

There was no need to guess who the culprit was.

“Bury the bodies. Afterward, we’ll go and wipe out that spider nest!”

At his command, the squad leapt into action.

They buried the bodies and gathered whatever useful supplies remained in the settlement as their compensation. After all, the dead could hardly use them.

Regardless of the payment, Wang Ziping could not, in good conscience, leave the spider nest unchecked.

Once the bodies were taken care of, Wang Ziping led the way onward.

He also relayed details about the spider nest to the team.

There were about a hundred large spiders—meaning each person would have to face one.

From what he’d learned yesterday, these spiders were formidable, at least mid-tier first rank, and the abundance of webs inside the nest would make combat tricky.

Fortunately, they weren’t a band of reckless fools.

“Everyone has their torches ready?”

Rather than charging blindly and getting tangled in webs, burning them with torches was far simpler.

“All set, more than enough,” Liu An replied confidently from behind Wang Ziping.

After crossing a mountain path, the group arrived at a cavern at the foot of the mountain.

The cave was enormous, its entrance thick with tangled white spider webs.

On these webs clung spiders whose outstretched legs spanned wider than a human, waiting for prey to stumble in.

Some silk cocoons hung from the ceiling, their shapes disturbingly reminiscent of humans.

“Light them up!”

At Wang Ziping’s order, torches were distributed and lit.

Once every torch blazed, Wang Ziping signaled with a sweeping gesture. “Throw them in!”

With a single command, a hundred torches flew into the spider cave, igniting the webs the instant they landed.

Black smoke billowed, and the flames quickly spread.

Within moments, the entire cave was engulfed.

The fire flickered, and the spiders inside shrieked in agony.

But this blaze alone wasn’t enough to kill them all.

Wang Ziping’s real aim was to drive the spiders out; after all, they couldn’t risk fighting inside the cave.

The hundred spiders surged out in a frenzy. Aside from those on the surface, badly burned, most suffered only minor injuries.

In fact, the burns made the black spiders look even more grotesque.

Enemies locked eyes and hatred flared. The black spiders, upon seeing the squad at the entrance, instantly understood what was happening.

The battle erupted in an instant. The spiders charged on their sharp legs, racing toward the team.

Weapons at the ready, the squad had long been waiting. As the black spiders lunged, they were met with drawn blades.

Lu Sheng wielded his long saber, bringing it down in a sweeping arc toward a black spider.

The spider tried to block with its foreleg, but it had underestimated Lu Sheng’s strength.

With unstoppable force, he hacked off its foreleg and cleaved straight through its head.

There was no resistance at all, as if the spider’s body were as soft as tofu, sliced cleanly in two by Lu Sheng’s blow.

As the strike ended, Lu Sheng glanced down at his saber.

As expected, cracks had appeared along the blade—his strength was simply too great, his attacks too wild and unrefined. There was no skill—only raw, overwhelming power.

Such a fighting style demanded a weapon of the highest quality; otherwise, it simply couldn’t withstand him.

Mu Kui, watching beside Lu Sheng, felt a chill in his heart. Earlier, he’d been elated about his life card advancing to green quality.

But after witnessing Lu Sheng’s strength, he could no longer feel happy.

Lu Sheng dispatched a black spider with ease—not because the spiders were weak, but because he was simply too strong.

If the spiders were weak, why was Mu Kui still locked in a protracted struggle with the one before him?