Chapter 31: Hunting the Symbiote, Little Spider
On a neon-lit pedestrian street.
A decayed human corpse crashed onto the tiles, making onlookers scream in terror as they scattered in every direction.
Whoosh!
A black shadow streaked by. Xi Nian landed lightly beside the corpse, his vertical pupils burning with a pale blue flame. His body, wrapped in a dark exterior, radiated a sleek and predatory muscular form.
Venom's raspy voice echoed in his mind: "It's already parasitized another human nearby. Clearly, this one is stronger than the first symbiote—it can practically choose any human host it wants."
"Which human?"
Like the most terrifying apex predator, the black kitten form of Xi Nian swept his cold feline eyes across the fleeing crowd. None of them showed obvious signs of being parasitized. He quickly understood—the second symbiote was trying to use the chaos to escape unnoticed.
"Where is it?" Xi Nian's lips twisted into a snarl, his tone edged with irritation.
The symbiote instincts tangled with the Flerken's savage nature, pushing his human rationality to the brink of collapse. Brutality, feral impulses, and cold indifference gnawed at his mind, making his actions increasingly unrestrained and violent.
Just like moments ago.
He had ripped apart both the symbiote and its human host together. He knew that the host was beyond saving, and dragging it out further would only have caused more innocent deaths. It was the right choice—but the bloodthirsty decisiveness behind the act was no longer the thought process of a normal human.
Venom said, "I can sense it within thirty meters, but there are too many people nearby—over a hundred. I can't tell which one is the host!"
Its voice grew sharper, whispering like a devil's temptation: "The optimal solution now… is to kill everyone here. If it escapes, even more will die later."
"Don't hesitate! Decide now, it's about to slip away in the crowd—"
"Shut up!" Xi Nian growled hoarsely. He looked at the scattering humans, then suddenly drove one claw deep into the ground beneath him.
Crack—
The entire pedestrian street shuddered violently. From Xi Nian's black kitten form, fissures split across the tiles like spiderwebs. Within a thirty-meter radius, black liquid tendrils burst from the ground, stabbing upward into the night sky like jagged spears.
In an instant, they formed a prison of hardened spikes, trapping every human within that boundary.
Dead silence.
The scene froze in horrified stillness. Countless people looked up in terror, trembling under the oppressive dread.
"Find it for me!" Xi Nian's claw remained buried in the ground while his other paw morphed into a tendril, slithering toward the crowd.
"Monster, stay away!" people screamed, stumbling back.
But soon, they realized the tendril was oddly soft, almost like an ordinary cat's paw pads. It only brushed lightly against shoulders or chests before sliding past, checking one person after another.
Xi Nian was inspecting each human through touch, searching for the hidden host of the second symbiote.
After all, a symbiote could parasitize silently. Without actively controlling the host's consciousness, even the host themselves often wouldn't know they'd been taken.
Halfway through the checks, a middle-aged man standing toward the back frowned, touching his chest as sweat beaded heavily on his skin.
Strangely, even though the fear had eased after realizing the tendrils weren't harming anyone, his body shook uncontrollably.
Fear. Terror. Dread of death.
The second symbiote, hidden inside him, quivered in panic. Through the man's eyes, it knew Venom's host was about to find it.
It already sensed earlier that the first symbiote had been killed. That fact alone filled it with dread.
It had been swapping from host to host to escape, but in doing so, it realized just how terrifying Venom's host was.
The difference was overwhelming.
Alone, symbiotes could barely survive. But with a host, they gained hardened bodies, shapeshifting, super strength, super speed—all depending on the host's physique.
Yet no matter how many humans it switched through, this second symbiote couldn't match Venom's host.
It couldn't have known.
Xi Nian wasn't just using Venom's powers. He was stacked on top of that—Venom parasitizing him, while he in turn had parasitized his Flerken form.
The result was far beyond one plus one.
"My symbiote leader isn't coming to save me… I'm going to die here!" The second symbiote trembled in despair as Xi Nian's tendrils drew closer to its host.
What to do? What to do?
Death loomed.
Just as panic reached its peak, it sensed something else.
The middle-aged man's head turned involuntarily, staring at a woman and a boy in the crowd.
The woman, in her thirties, held the hand of a ten-year-old boy. Though terrified herself, she whispered softly, "Peter, it's okay. Don't worry. Aunt May is here. I'll protect you."
Peter nodded, still trembling, his wide eyes flicking from the monstrous black kitten back to his aunt. Gathering his courage, he stood in front of her protectively. But suddenly, his body stiffened, and his gaze met the empty stare of the middle-aged man.
It was like being looked at by an abyss. Peter's face went pale, and he instinctively raised his finger, blurting out: "The monster the black cat is looking for… it's him!"
"Peter, what are you saying?" Aunt May froze.
"What nonsense, I'm not a monster!" the man tried to deny, but his eyes went wide in horror as gray-green sludge poured from his open mouth.
Half of it still inside him, half writhing in the air, pulsing as if alive.
The grotesque sight left everyone paralyzed with shock.
"Found you!" Xi Nian, his mind clear in his threefold state, didn't hesitate. His tendril hardened into a spear and shot forward.
Swoosh—
It pierced the air and skewered the gray-green symbiote, pinning it against the tendril cage behind.
Sizzle!
The second symbiote writhed violently, splitting itself in desperation. Half remained pinned, while the other half shot away like liquid bullets, spreading into a gray-green net toward the nearby woman.
"Aunt May, watch out!"
Peter spread his arms in front of her, and in that instant, the symbiote surged into his body.
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