The cave was no longer silent. It sounded like a thousand dry leaves skittering across pavement, but those "leaves" were hairy legs and dripping fangs.
"Get back! Get back!" Xiao Yan yelled, swinging his arm. A whip of red lightning lashed out, frying a circle of spiders that tried to jump on Jinyao.
"There's too many!" Lieya shouted. She was back-to-back with him, her fists glowing orange. Every time she punched, a spider turned into a toasted marshmallow, but for every one she killed, three more dropped from the ceiling. "Xiao Yan, that demon freak is getting away!"
Xiao Yan looked through the chaos. The demon disciple was retreating into the dark, laughing as he led them deeper into the "Mother's" territory.
"Let him go! We have to get to that opening!" Shuya pointed toward a crack in the wall behind the massive, glowing eyes of the Spider Mother.
The "Mother" finally moved. She didn't scuttle; she drifted. Her body was bloated and translucent, filled with a glowing green poison that sloshed around inside her like a disgusting soup. When she opened her mandibles, a hiss came out that made Xiao Yan's ears bleed.
(Michael, tell me she has a weakness. A big, glowing 'hit me here' sign?)
[Master, her underbelly is soft, but if you puncture it, the poison mist will kill everyone in this room in ten seconds. You need to pin her legs first.]
"Pin her legs? With what?!" Xiao Yan ducked as a glob of web flew over his head, sticking to the wall and melting the stone. "Lieya! Aim for the joints on the right! Jinyao, give us some light, I can't see her feet!"
Far away in the Frost-Wolf Beast City....
While their brother was fighting for his life in a bug-infested hole, Yanfeng and Yanxue were having a very different kind of struggle.
"Again!" the Beast Shuanglang roared.
Yanfeng was flat on his back in the dirt, gasping for air. His wooden training sword was snapped in half. Beside him, Yanxue was trembling, trying to hold a heavy stone bowl full of water above her head without spilling a drop.
"Is this... really how... we get stronger?" Yanfeng wheezed, wiping mud from his eye.
"You want to help your brother, don't you?" Shuanglang asked, pacing around them like a hungry predator. "Xiao Yan is out there facing the world. If you stay weak, you are just a weight around his neck. Do you want to be a weight, or do you want to be a weapon?"
Yanfeng's eyes sharpened. He gritted his teeth and pushed himself up from the ground. "A weapon," he muttered.
"I didn't hear you!"
"A weapon!" the boy yelled, grabbing a new training sword.
Yanxue didn't say anything, but the water in her bowl didn't shake a single millimeter. Even though they were safe, they could feel the weight of the future. They didn't know about the mountain or the demons, but they knew their brother was fighting, and they refused to be left behind.
In the Spider Cave, tension was intense...
"I'm out of breath!" Jinyao cried, her spirit shield flickering as spiders threw themselves against it like hail on a windshield.
Xiao Yan saw the Mother raising her massive front legs to crush them. This was it.
"Lieya, jump!"
Xiao Yan didn't wait. He ignored the vertigo, ignored the fear, and sprinted straight between the Mother's front legs. It was a messy, terrifying move. He felt a sharp leg graze his shoulder, tearing his robe and drawing blood.
Stupid, stupid, stupid! his brain screamed.
But he reached the soft spot. Instead of piercing the belly, he slammed his palms onto the ground.
"Red Thunder... Earth Pulse!"
Instead of a bolt, he sent the energy into the floor. The ground shattered, and the Mother's heavy body tilted into the crack, pinning her own legs under her weight.
"Now! Run!" Xiao Yan grabbed Jinyao by the waist—not elegantly, more like he was grabbing a sack of potatoes—and hauled her toward the exit.
They scrambled through the crack in the wall just as the Mother let out a roar that shook the entire cliff. They tumbled out onto a grassy ledge, covered in spider silk, soot, and sweat.
Xiao Yan lay on his back, staring at the sky. His heart was finally slowing down, but his hands were still shaking.
"We're... we're alive?" Jinyao asked, sitting up and picking a spider leg out of her hair with a look of pure disgust.
"Barely," Shuya said, leaning against the cave entrance, panting. She looked at Xiao Yan with a strange expression. "That was the clumsiest, most dangerous thing I've ever seen. But it worked."
"I aim to disappoint," Xiao Yan joked weakly.
But his smile faded as he looked across the valley. From this height, he could see the Mist Forest. And in the center of that forest, a black pillar of smoke was rising.
The demons weren't just hunting. They were burning the mountain.
TO BE CONTINUED!!!!