Chapter 201: Entire Army Converges

Second, General Nanke had clearly realized the Baling troops did not follow them into the Guizhen Stone Forest, so Panlong City’s forces needed to change tactics. They had to regroup and leverage their numbers to fend off the burrow spiders’ assault.

“There is an exit, but the river won’t take us there,” the guide said after some thought. “Once we go ashore, we’ll still have to march several kilometers to reach the rally point, and then another six or seven kilometers to get to the northeastern exit.”

The Guizhen Stone Forest was vast.

“Damn it,” Willow spat. “If we can break out of the stone forest ahead of schedule, we might slip the Baling encirclement.”

“Or those from Baling have already set the trap,” He Lingchuan said, scanning the shadows. “If I were General Nanke, I wouldn’t be in a rush to leave the stone forest. The burrow spiders are a nasty enemy, and the Baling would not want to risk coming in.”

“If we can just find a way to counter them...” Liu Tong frowned. “This cursed place sets my teeth on edge.”

The light was so poor that no one could make out exactly what the spiders were doing, but they could hear the scrape of those long legs through dead leaves and twigs. Layer that sound a thousand times over, and it curdles one’s blood.

A merchant could not help asking, “Are they going to follow us the whole way?”

What sane man would dare go ashore like this?

No one had an answer. They could only take things one step at a time.

Sun Jiayuan, the patrolman, happened to be walking beside He Lingchuan. His wrists and neck were pocked with spider bites. He Lingchuan glanced over and suddenly asked, “How’d you lose your fingers?”

He had noticed that both of Sun Jiayuan’s hands were missing their little fingers. Where others had ten, he had eight.

Sun Jiayuan said nothing.

Just when He Lingchuan figured he was not going to answer, the man spoke, “A few years back, two mantises advanced into monsters after consuming imperial nectar. Their guillotine arms were sharp.”

He Lingchuan let out a long “Oh.”

What are the odds? Both little fingers were lopped off by mantis monsters, and neatly, he had only lost the pair of digits that least hindered work or fighting.

So there was a story there.

He Lingchuan did not press the man, though.

Before long, a scorched, acrid stink drifted on the wind.

The farther they went, the thicker and harsher it grew, until they were coughing nonstop.

They even came upon broad swathes of riverside brush burned down to ash.

It was all just the remnants of a forest now. The sight before them was filled with nothing but charred trunks, blackened earth, and patches of soil that even vitrified into glassy crusts.

The deeper they pushed toward the stone forest’s heart, the worse the devastation looked.

“This is bad,” Willow murmured. “The Baling set the woods on fire. They must’ve burned out the burrow spiders’ nests. No wonder they’re in such a killing rage.”

Those spider monsters likely could not tell those from Baling apart from those from Panlong anyway. Humans torched their lairs; humans would be their targets, simple as that.

She shot the earlier loudmouth merchant a pointed look. “See? The spiders went berserk because their nests were destroyed. Under normal circumstances, any guide could’ve led you through.”

The merchant had no comeback. Sun Jiayuan gave Willow a grateful glance, then tossed a few choice curses at the man, settling the score from before.

This time, the fellow did not dare talk back. He still needed the patrol to get him out alive.

They waded on for another half an hour before the swaths of ruined forest and burrows began to thin. According to the guide, they were nearing the central region of the Guizhen Stone Forest. This was territory that the burrow spiders never allowed humans to approach. In ordinary times, caravans would never take this route.

There were more spiders here, and bigger ones. Every so often, He Lingchuan glimpsed hulking shapes among the swarms. Unfortunately, the light was too dim to make out their full forms.

Seeing the numbers massing on the banks, with spiders piling up in living ladders, Liu Tong’s gut tightened. At last, he ordered the torches doused.

He Lingchuan’s party pushed on, wading through the dark.

After dousing the torches, the agitation along the banks did subside. For all their dozens of eyes, most spiders only sense changes in light; their actual vision was poor. They hunt mainly by scent and sound.

They kept moving. Along the way, they even came upon a half-grown wild boar standing midstream to drink. It looked to be fifty kilos at most, and it had likely been chased into the river by the spider swarms.

At He Lingchuan’s urging, Doorboard took the boar alive, trussing all four legs with rope and slinging it over a saddle. He stuffed a rag in its mouth so its squeals would not rip through the night.

Another two hours on brought them to the end of this stretch of water.

Now, they were at another deep pool.

Above it, a waterfall plunged about seventeen meters.

𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

The cliff was sheer and treacherous. Even if the patrol could climb it, the traders and wagons could not. Pressing upstream was out of the question; they would have to come ashore here and head east toward General Nanke’s designated rally point.

Over the past four hours, the signal flares had gone up three more times, guiding soldiers through the dark.

They had crossed several boulder-choked rapids along the way, leaving them soaked from head to toe. Perhaps the roar of the water masked the sounds of hoof and foot; the spiders trailing them had dwindled and dwindled.

By the time they reached the deep pool, there were no spiders left on the banks.

The guide gauged the distance and broke into a grin. “At most a kilometer and a half more and we’ll be able to join up with the main force!”

He meant a kilometer and a half as the crow flies, of course.

“Be careful,” Liu Tong said. The shadows under the trees writhed; who knew what might be lurking in there? It was time for the boar to prove its worth.

He pulled the rag from its mouth. The moment its hooves hit the ground, before it could even stretch its legs, it splashed toward the shore and bolted.

Branches snapped in a staccato crackle as it crashed through the brush, and its indignant grunting faded into the distance.

Everyone stood in the water, holding their breath and listening.

They heard no telltale spider rustle on shore. The boar kept pounding along out there, untroubled by anything obvious.

Only then did Liu Tong give the order, “Ashore. Head for the rally.”

No one dared dally. They scrambled up the bank, swung into the saddle, and rode east at a gallop.

* * *

At a river valley in the northeastern region of the Guizhen Stone Forest, the site of the signal flares.

General Nanke’s forces were reconstituting here. Over the past few hours, more than thirteen hundred people had trickled in, including upward of nine hundred Panlong soldiers and more than four hundred merchants.

They arrived battered and bedraggled, web clinging to their hair and wounds on their bodies, yet they had somehow saved seventy percent of their cargo.

For the moment, this was the liveliest spot in the entire stone forest. The racket of the flares had drawn the enraged spiders in from all sides.

From the valley floor, all one could see was a heaving black sea of spiders, not a bare patch of ground anywhere.

The river ran in an L-shape along the ravine bottom, with the water at least three meters deep. The Panlong troops had learned the spiders would not enter water, so General Nanke had planted his base squarely in the crook of that L.

With the river guarding their rear, the troops could focus on the enemy in front.

Against spiders that can find a way through any crack, General Nanke’s answer was a wall of fire.

There were countless burrow spiders driven by true spider monsters. They could suppress their fear of flame for a time, but they did not have any fireproofing divine techniques. A good roasting still killed them, leaving them charred and, frankly, smelling... edible.

The Panlong soldiers fought as they worked, felling a dozen towering trees. They chose the ones with the heaviest crowns, soaked them with lamp oil, and set them aflame.

Whoomph!

Flames roared sky-high.

In short order, they had thrown up a firebreak more than three meters wide, creating a barrier that most spiders simply could not cross.

Deep water to the rear, a wall of fire to the front, the makeshift camp was, for the moment, out of immediate danger.

But General Nanke was a veteran of many campaigns. He now ordered the northernmost section of the wall of fire shifted aside to leave a gap no wider than a meter and a half.

The spiders outside saw the gap in the wall of fire and, without a second thought, came surging straight for it.

They crashed like storm waves against a seawall, but the Panlong troops held the line, spears leveled. Any spider that got through was skewered and flung back into the flames to feed the blaze.

There were casualties now and then, but nothing like the losses suffered in the earlier headlong retreat.

One of General Nanke’s confidants could not help asking, “General, why not seal the wall of fire completely?”

That way, the men would not have to take more wounds.

“These spider monsters aren’t stupid. If there’s no gap, they’ll try every trick to break through, and we’ll be racing around plugging holes.” Seeing the situation settle under his hand, General Nanke finally had a moment to pull a waterskin for a drink, and to offer some to the black-spotted goshawk perched on his shoulder. “Better that we open a controlled gap and funnel them all there. It keeps the rest of the wall safe.”

Control versus chaos, this was both art and timing. Otherwise, fewer than a thousand soldiers facing several hundred thousand spiders would never hold, origin energy or not.

General Nanke glanced at the sparrowhawk. “How long until reinforcements arrive?”

“Before dawn,” the sparrowhawk replied, preening the feathers along its back. “Not long now.”

It had flown from Puxi Gully to Panlong City for aid, then back to the Guizhen Stone Forest to report—an urgent triangle flown at breakneck speed.

In another hour, the horizon would begin to brighten.

General Nanke looked northeast, his expression grave. Even if they broke out of the stone forest, a brutal fight waited beyond. The men from Baling would surely have an ambush set at the exit. So no matter how deadly things were inside the Stone Forest, he meant to hold here until first light. Ideally, he would link up with the relief force and then turn the tables, springing a pincer on the Baling forces.

Just another hour.

He could not help but grumble, “If the Red General had been willing to detach a force, I’d have sent those Baling bastards home in boxes by now.”

“The Red General says the original objectives stand.”

Orders are orders.

General Nanke snorted, a hard, heavy sound.

* * *

After running in silence for another half an hour, Liu Tong suddenly raised a hand. “Halt. Something ahead.”

They dismounted and crept forward, parting the dense foliage until the view opened wide.

Beyond a low belt of scrub lay a broad, open slope—nothing like the claustrophobic jungle.

An ancient tree crowned the ridge, limbs dense with leaves, while the hillside below was carpeted with fine velvet grass—tender green, smooth, and clean, as if someone tended it by hand.

In the deepest reaches of the Guizhen Stone Forest, human feet were rare. If anything kept it so manicured, it could only be... a spider monster.

They could see the slope clearly at night thanks to the countless points of white light scattered across it.

Each glowing orb was larger than a pomegranate, pearly rather than soft, yet bright.

Doorboard whispered, “Bioluminescent spores.”

They clustered thickest around the mouth of a vast cavern.