Volume One: Soul-Luring Gourd, Soul-Burning Lamp Chapter 89: The Blessed Crow's Mouth

“Reinforcements are here!”

The moment those words rang out, Gu Mo and Li Hetang both stiffened in alarm and gave a violent shudder.

They had only just taken a brief respite; neither their stamina nor their nerves had recovered. They had never imagined the Ant Legion’s reinforcements would arrive this quickly.

Truly, they were like a haunting spirit that would not be shaken off.

At once, Li Hetang hurriedly opened his tactical pack, glanced inside, then slung it back over his shoulders and asked the others, “Daoist Xiao, what do we do now?”

At that, the ethereal Xiao Yulou turned his gaze to the Glutton Ghost in Gu Mo’s arms.

“Brother Gu, lend this little furball to this poor Daoist for a moment.”

Gu Mo, hearing this, simply handed the furball of a Glutton Ghost forward. He had no idea what kind of mischief this lecherous Daoist was about to make.

The lecherous Daoist took the Glutton Ghost into his hands and whispered a few words to it.

That pitch-black little thing immediately opened its terrifying maw, revealing four rows of sharp, gleaming fangs.

In an instant, the Glutton Ghost was like a fire hydrant, spraying a stream of vivid red liquid under high pressure toward the mountain of piled ant corpses.

Before long, a blood-colored lake had once again spread across the battlefield around them.

The air was instantly thick with the stench of blood.

Seeing this, Gu Mo merely raised an eyebrow. What the furball had spewed from its mouth was nothing else at all; it was that calm, blood-red lake in its belly.

And the reason Xiao Yulou had done this was to disrupt the Ant Legion’s senses.

That blood-colored lake would not only draw the vengeful Ant Legion, but also every nearby insect. When that happened, a savage battle among the gathered forces would be inevitable.

With other insect species drawn in to interfere, the three of them would have a chance to flee in safety.

Now that matters had reached this point, Gu Mo also stood up and slammed the sky-measuring ruler heavily into the ground.

With a dull thud, Li Hetang looked at Gu Mo curiously.

The moment Gu Mo released his hand, the sky-measuring ruler slowly toppled to the left.

After a clatter, Gu Mo lifted the ruler, looked at Xiao Yulou and Li Hetang, and said solemnly, “Come on, this way.”

The instant he said it, Li Hetang was petrified on the spot.

“Damn it! Could you not be this casual about it?”

Hearing that, Gu Mo frowned in confusion at Li Hetang. “Then does Brother Hetang have a better idea?”

At that, Li Hetang only grew more embarrassed.

In the intelligence they had gathered earlier, aside from a few scenes from the microscopic world, these black flying ants had merely been responsible for foraging and resisting enemies. There had been no useful clues at all.

Since the Ant Legion’s reinforcements were about to arrive, the three of them could only take things one step at a time.

After exchanging a look, the three of them ran off in the direction Gu Mo had pointed.

...

As they fled in panic, Gu Mo glanced at Li Hetang beside him and asked, “Hetang, what kind of extraordinary art did you just use?”

Li Hetang watched the surroundings calmly and said offhandedly, “Nothing much. I can just read the memories of living beings.”

Hearing this, Gu Mo found Li Hetang even more mysterious than before. But if Li Hetang truly possessed such an ability, then their chances of successfully completing the rescue mission had risen significantly.

...

In the darkness, the damp smell around them abruptly vanished. It seemed the three of them had already escaped the Ant Legion’s territory.

No one knew how long they had run. Panting hard, the three looked around at the darkness and once again felt a little lost.

After stopping, Gu Mo and Li Hetang bent over, gasping for breath. Xiao Yulou, meanwhile, flicked his Daoist robe sleeve and began making calculations on his left hand.

Gu Mo and Li Hetang, seeing Xiao Yulou’s otherworldly bearing, felt a surge of admiration.

Then, in the span of a breath, a very ugly expression suddenly surfaced on Xiao Yulou’s face.

Seeing that, Gu Mo and Li Hetang immediately felt a jolt of alarm. They instantly leaned back to back, warily scanning their surroundings, afraid some grotesque insect might suddenly appear.

“Oh no, this is bad!”

At the cry, Li Hetang hurriedly asked in a low voice, “Daoist Xiao, is something wrong?”

To their surprise, the ashen-faced Xiao Yulou looked around and said something utterly shocking.

“This poor Daoist’s finger has cramped up!”

The moment those words were spoken, Gu Mo and Li Hetang both turned and glared at Xiao Yulou with murder in their eyes.

Before they could even begin cursing him out, Gu Mo suddenly felt the ground beneath his feet begin to crack at alarming speed.

With a thunderous boom, the three of them plunged downward at high speed. A fierce current of air whipped across their faces.

Aaaahh—

From the collapsing edge came waves of heart-rending shrieks. Looking up, Gu Mo saw one monstrous black ant after another baring its maw and staring fixedly at the three of them. Its blood-colored eyes were full of unwilling fury.

Suspended in midair, Gu Mo gripped the sky-measuring ruler tightly and unleashed a string of curses. A blast of cold air rushed straight down his throat into his stomach.

“Baldy, if there was trouble, why the hell didn’t you say so earlier?”

The other man only shook his head, face still grim. “This area is indeed rather strange. This poor Daoist feels even my methods have started to fail.”

The moment he said that, Gu Mo and Li Hetang, still falling, stared at him as if struck dumb.

In the span of a breath, the three of them, still plummeting, bounced several times as though they had landed on a soft hammock, and then just stopped suspended in midair.

“Fortune will surely come after surviving catastrophe!”

The moment he said it, Xiao Yulou immediately pulled out a yellow talisman and twisted it between one hand.

With a boom, the talisman in Xiao Yulou’s fingers instantly burst into flames.

The three of them, hanging there like on a hammock, instinctively looked around in curiosity—and immediately sucked in a sharp breath of fear.

What came into view was not anything else, but a vast gray-white web stretching across the darkness. Gu Mo and the others were tightly bound within it.

Looking more closely, the immense gray-white web spanned an estimated four hundred square meters or more. Even the thinnest strands were as thick as water buckets, and the patterns on the silk looked like tightly wound ropes.

“Hell, first ants, then insects, then mantises, and now spiders?”

As soon as he finished speaking, there was a metallic flick.

Li Hetang used only his left hand, the only one he could move, to draw out his specially made dagger. Gu Mo and Xiao Yulou, however, did not even dare breathe loudly.

On a spiderweb, any violent struggle from prey would only make the web’s master even more excited.

With a face still grim, Li Hetang held the dagger glinting with cold light and made a careful cut, but he could not slice through the great web of silk in front of him at all.

Frowning, Li Hetang looked down at the special dagger in his hand. It felt as though this thing was utterly useless.

Then, with his usual air of detached elegance, Xiao Yulou said softly, “Please do not panic. In this poor Daoist’s opinion, the master of this web has likely already gone away. Why not take this chance to get some sleep?”

Gu Mo and Li Hetang both shot him a vicious glare.

“Are you an idiot? By the time the three of us wake up, we’ll probably be a puddle of filth!”

No sooner had those words fallen than the darkness around them suddenly lit up in rows and clusters of crimson light, arranged with eerie regularity.

Looking closer, eight blood-red eyes like lanterns were staring fixedly at the three of them on the “hammock.”

At that sight, Gu Mo nearly clamped up in terror, shuddering all over, his soul almost leaving his body.

Losing control of his bowels and bladder at the same time would have been perfectly normal at this point.

“Crow’s mouth!”

After cursing, Gu Mo glared at Xiao Yulou, who looked utterly drained.

Xiao Yulou then loosened his fingers, and the burning yellow talisman dropped straight into the abyss...

Immediately afterward, he yawned and said softly, “Do not be alarmed. So long as we do not move, the spider will not do anything to us.”

At once, Li Hetang slowly pulled down the orange face shield on his helmet and pressed the stealth button.

He certainly did not believe this brain-dead suggestion.

With a faint blue shimmer, Li Hetang, that lecherous freeloader, activated stealth mode and vanished soundlessly into the darkness.

As for Xiao Yulou, who seemed so refined and otherworldly, the man was actually yawning and sneering at Li Hetang’s shameless and sleazy behavior.

“Ah... Brother Hetang, why be so flustered? Perhaps the fellow above has already had its fill. It may not attack us.”

Hearing that absurdly casual remark, Gu Mo rolled his eyes at Xiao Yulou.

For some reason, this guy had seemed half-asleep ever since before. His intelligence was clearly not online.

Just then, the eight blood-red eyes in the darkness twitched and began to creep downward.

As the swath of red light drew nearer and nearer, Gu Mo, not daring to even breathe, held his breath and tried to pray.

Don’t see me, don’t see me, don’t see me.

Then, inwardly, he kept cursing Xiao Yulou.

Damn it, does this guy’s crow mouth have a blessing on it or what? How come the bad comes true and the good doesn’t?

As that thought flashed through his mind, Gu Mo suddenly felt the web beneath him twitch faintly.

A giant spider, like a heavy armored vehicle, had already reached Xiao Yulou.

Looking closely, the terrifying spider was pitch-black all over, covered in stiff bristles. Its eight black legs were as thick as roof beams.

From the corners of the giant spider’s eight eerie eyes seeped bursts of strange red light, as though it could peer directly into a person’s soul.

Before its bloodthirsty maw was a pair of horrifying mouthparts gleaming with cold light.

One pair of large jaws, one pair of small jaws, one tongue, one lower lip. The upper lip formed the front plate of the mouth, while the tongue was a narrow protrusion between the upper and lower lips. The large and small jaws, together with the lower lip, were three pairs of appendages behind the spider’s head.

Each of those horrifying mouthparts was as long as an ivory tusk.

Damn it, this is really over. We’re totally screwed.

Seeing that, Gu Mo’s mind went utterly blank. After several desperate attempts, he found himself firmly glued by the spider silk, unable to move at all.

With disaster looming, that fool Xiao Yulou did not move an inch, showing no intention of resisting. Gu Mo, equally trapped in peril, was helpless as well.

Thump, thump.

His blood racing, Gu Mo felt his heart pounding so violently it was about to leap out of his throat.

The giant spider before Xiao Yulou cocked its head, studying the prey beneath it.

In less than a thousandth of a second, one of its three terrifying abdominal legs flashed, and in the blink of an eye, thick strands of silk had wrapped Xiao Yulou into a giant cocoon.

It’s over, it’s over! The spider has already decided Xiao Yulou is its midnight snack!

Just as that thought flashed through Gu Mo’s mind, the horrifying spider turned again, tilting its head to inspect Li Hetang beside him, then moved its eight legs toward him.

At the sight, the latter suddenly began to doubt life itself.

What the hell? I’m invisible already. Can this damned thing still see me?

After a fierce internal struggle, Li Hetang did not even have time to resist before he too was tightly wrapped in silk.

Now Gu Mo was completely and utterly dazed.

What do I do? What do I do? Should I fight to the death, or just let myself be butchered?

Just then, Gu Mo heard beside his ear a sound of deep, sleepy snoring.

Seeing the crisis growing worse by the second, Gu Mo again cursed at Xiao Yulou in fury.

That accursed baldy has the nerve to sleep? Just how big is his heart? This is really beyond belief!

Buzz—

A faint tremor passed through the bucket-thick silk, and that eerie red glow appeared before Gu Mo’s eyes.

Seeing this, Gu Mo was instantly terrified out of his wits. The foul stench from the giant spider’s mouth hit him full in the face.

Even so, Gu Mo still let his body sink, preparing to summon the ghostly qi within him for a desperate, final struggle.

But one second later, no green ghost fire rose from Gu Mo’s body, and even the soul-binding cord inside him was being thoroughly uncooperative.

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!

In just a few quick strokes, Gu Mo was also wrapped by the giant spider into a huge cocoon.

In the span of a breath, Gu Mo felt as though all the strength in his body had been drained away, and a heavy wave of drowsiness spread through his mind.

Before long, the world before his eyes also began to blur...