8. Spider Tag
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Wu Lianlei stared at the pieces in Qi Yuan's hands as her mind turned blank. She could still hear his earlier words in her head.

The Primordial Heavens Mirror...

A relic from ancient times...

The basic rules in this world were: the older a weapon, treasure, or tool, the more powerful they were. Those from ancient times were exceptionally rare and barely left the strongholds of the sects that owned them. And now one of them had shattered into pieces by her feet.

But to break from something like this, isn't that mirror a little too weak?!

Her doubtful eyes trailed over and happened to meet with Qi Yuan's own. She gave a guilty start before waving her hands sheepishly. "I'm sorry, I'll find a way to pay for--"

"You wouldn't be able to pay this back even if you took ten lifetimes to earn the money," Qi Yuan cut her off.

Wu Lianlei gaped. "T-then, how about I owe you a favor?" She regretted it as soon as she spoke--what could a fourth-rank cultivator do that a seventh-rank couldn't? "...I have a really good green thumb, I could grow you some fresh vegetables?"

Qi Yuan looked noticeably lost with 'green thumb' and even checked Wu Lianlei's fingers to confirm her claim. When he only saw flesh-colored skin, he arched a brow. Wu Lianlei instantly withered.

"I'm..I'm sorry..."

"Don't bother," Qi Yuan replied. His tone was the same as always, without a hint of emotion. But this time his words sounded particularly cold. As Wu Lianlei winced, she heard him give a soft sigh. "This was foreordained as well."

Wu Lianlei's head whipped up. "Ah?"

Qi Yuan just waved a hand airily. "Master divined it. Come on, let's catch up with your senior sister."

Wu Lianlei was still gaping when Qi Yuan stepped past her in a flurry of wind. Seconds later, she came to her senses and hurried after him.

"So I don't have to pay for damages?"

"I won't accept it. For something this inevitable, I'd only be incurring a debt."

"But...isn't it an ancient relic?" Wu Lianlei was surprised. Most sects treated relics with more care than their own disciples. Countless more had died guarding them or snatching them from others, but it looked like Qi Yuan didn't care at all.

Instead, he turned to give her an indifferent look. "Ancient, present, what does it matter? All things meet their end in time."

His words were food for thought that left Wu Lianlei mulling as they circled around the barrier. Abruptly, she blurted out, "How did it break?"

"I don't know," Qi Yuan said. "One minute it was glowing; the next moment it fell."

Hah? "Then, what about the guqin?" Wu Lianlei followed up instantly. Perhaps it was stray energy from rogue cultivator that disrupted the channeling?

"What guqin?" 

"The one that was playing moments before the mirror broke!"

"I heard nothing." Qi Yuan gave her a strange look. "We're within range of a highly complex spatial distortion barrier. It's not odd for the place to pick up strange sounds and sensations from elsewhere while we were draining its qi."

"Is that so..." Wu Lianlei didn't feel that was right, but it'd all happened so fast that she was hard-pressed to explain her doubts. Maybe I misheard...

She shook her head to clear her thoughts. Whatever the case, rescuing Li Hanlan was more important now. The two caught up with Wu Yelin, who was perched on a tree branch. Li Hanlan's tassel had found the weak point in the barrier some distance up and was hovering around it impatiently. It was impossible to see or sense with the naked eye, but the next thing they knew, Wu Yelin started stabbing at the suspicious spot with her sword!

Snnzztt! The barrier crackled as it gave way, but tried to close up immediately. In response, Wu Yelin channeled a burst of Fire qi into her blade to force it open. Once that stabilized, she unsheathed her other sword and stabbed it next to the first, before forcibly tearing out a human-sized gap. Li Hanlan's tassel didn't hesitate before it zipped into the hole.

"Hurry in, this won't hold for long!" she yelled to the other two. Without hesitation, Qi Yuan jumped up first, using the tree as ballast to propel him above the barrier. He saw the opening, raised his arms, and slipped inside. Wu Lianlei followed after him, floating down in a cloud of fluttering robes. Wu Yelin was the last to enter, summoning her swords after her as she dropped in.

There were no trees inside the barrier, but a stagnant clearing void of anything except an old, dilapidated temple. The burst of demonic qi was much stronger here, almost like a suffocating shroud. Wu Lianlei looked up in curiosity and only saw cloudy black skies--whatever had blocked their view of the place from outside didn't hide anything here.

"Where's the tassel?" Wu Yelin asked from her right. Wu Lianlei tore her eyes from the skies and pointed towards Qi Yuan, who was standing some ways away from the temple. 

"Over there."

With a frown, Wu Yelin approached the building with caution, a sword in each hand. Seeing this, Wu Lianlei hastily took out her own sword--Beilei (蓓蕾) or Flowerbud. It was a long, thin blade, as graceful and lithe as its owner. She kicked away a few chunks of rubble from the deteriorating stone stairs as she stepped into line with the other two. The tassel hovered over the trio uneasily, not daring to approach the building a step. Wu Yelin squeezed her eyes shut and tried to sense for Li Hanlan. But the demonic interference here was so fierce that she didn't have any luck. 

"I can't tell if he's inside..." Wu Yelin trailed off. "Or the level of the thing that's trapped with him."

And then the roof exploded.

***

30 Minutes Ago

Li Hanlan had a particular distaste for demonic qi. As it was, he was extremely sensitive to its existence, so he'd sensed the cloud of it flying his way long ago. It was obvious that it belonged to the mastermind behind the horned beetle beast, so he didn't resist when it pounced on him. In fact, this could even lead the rest of them quicker to the source, so he simply activated the tracking spell implanted in his tassel and left it behind moments before he was whisked away.

The next time he opened his eyes, it was to see a shabby hall covered in dust and cobwebs. The dim lighting didn't affect his vision nor his senses, and he instantly caught sight of the four missing Skyedge Sect disciples grouped in a heap and wrapped up in a bundle of white threads. They were unconscious, their faces pale and wan.

As he took a step towards them, webs shot out from the corners to aim for his ankles and wrists. He snapped out his metal fan and sliced through the threads, even as more took their place. After a few minutes of dancing around, the attacks stopped and a net fell from above. Li Hanlan skidded out of the way and made to slice again, only to find that more webbing had caught the edges of his fan. He gave it a hard wrench while swiping in an arc with his other arm; hidden daggers shot out of his sleeve, slicing through the net above and the webs stuck to his weapon.

Finally, the attacks stopped. Li Hanlan didn't relax, his posture still on guard. Out of the corner of his eyes, he could still spot the other disciples as he edged towards them. When he was only three feet away, the bundle of disciples suddenly shifted and rose up towards the ceiling, where they hung suspended from the rafters. The moment Li Hanlan raised his head to follow them, a rain of spiders fell from the sky.

They were tiny, nasty things, some the size of his nail, others the size of his fists. He immediately whipped up a whirlwind of ice-laced qi and leaped into the air, the wind currents keeping the flood of arachnids from touching his body. As they fell to the ground, they converged into a large, seething mass that writhed and formed itself into eight hairy legs attached to a female torso and a human head. Li Hanlan landed on the rafters by the tied up disciples at the same time the spider demoness regained her full form and leered at him from below.

Low-tier eighth rank!

Li Hanlan narrowed his eyes. The gaps between low, mid, and high tier ranks within the same level was already wide enough, but this spider demoness was one whole level above him. Defeating her in a one-on-one battle would be impossible.

"You dance so well, why did you stop?" the spider demoness crooned. She was half beast, half human; the top portion of her body was a lovely proportioned woman with two arms while her lower half was pure spider. Her silvery-white hair draped loosely behind her bare back, and a pair of seductive amethyst eyes glittered at Li Hanlan from the dark. Aside from her shoulder guards and a silver-hued forehead protector on her head, she was only dressed in the bare minimum that exposed her abdomen and an ample chest.

Li Hanlan simply looked at her and said nothing. The spider demoness giggled, then waved at him with a wiggle of her fingers. "You've really made my night! I like pretty men, but you're the prettiest one I've seen in a while! My name's Zizhu (紫珠), what's yours?"

Li Hanlan ignored her to look around the hall. There were supposed to be more victims, but all he could see were the Skyedge Sect disciples. "Where's the rest?"

"They served their purpose, so why should I keep them around?" Zizhu fluttered her eyelashes coquettishly. "The decor here is shabby enough without their corpses rotting about. Aren't you glad I tidied up ahead of time?"

Dead. Li Hanlan filed the thought away to examine the four unconscious disciples. They seemed to be caught in a state of stasis, their bodies stiff and unmoving. He touched the skin of one and found him ice-cold; fortunately, there was still a pulse. Zizhu tailed after him from below, her legs scrabbling against the old wooden floors.

"Were you born pretty, or did you grow into your looks?" She was still trying to make small talk. "What's under that mask? Let me see your face already~"

As usual, Li Hanlan ignored her questions. "What did you do to them?"

"I'm prepping them for dinner," Zizhu giggled. "Well? Will you join me?"

Li Hanlan ignored her again and went to pry at the sticky webbing coating the four disciples. The stuff barely budged beneath the edge of his blade. He tried to shake them awake, but they remained hopelessly unconscious. Just when he was about to channel qi into their bodies, there was a lurch from below as Zizhu propelled herself towards the rafters. Li Hanlan immediately edged towards the corner, his metal fan at the ready as he narrowed his eyes.

"Pretty boy," Zizhu leaned forward with hands clasped behind her back. "It's not nice to ignore a lady."

The next second, she lunged as countless strands of sticky webbing shot towards him! Li Hanlan immediately leaped for the floor, but Zizhu arced the spider threads to follow after him, twisting and darting around the temple until they formed an intricate web within. He had already tried the doors and found them sealed shut by an unseen barrier; now he was forced into the very center of the temple, where an old, dust-covered statue stood behind a long-ruined altar table. Unlike the rest of the hall, Zizhu gave this place a wide berth, leaving it free of spiderwebs. Li Hanlan could sense the faint pulse of qi emanating from the statue behind him and wondered if it was repelling the demoness.

"Pretty boy, stop being so shy," Zizhu said with a trace of a whine. "Come here, that dusty old thing will dirty your clothes!"

Li Hanlan didn't reply. He placed a hand on the statue and felt it thrum in response; at the same time he had a flash of its connection to...a barrier outside?

Zizhu loomed up to her full height. "Don't think I can't touch you just because I can't get close!"

She immediately began to weave a web cocoon around him while an unaffected Li Hanlan went to study the statue at length. It was made of stone and depicted a figure in long flowing robes, holding the broken remains of a sword in his hand. His left arm had been snapped from the elbow down and it looked like something had cleaved straight through his neck, leaving no head. But the rubble around the statue had none of the missing body parts.

Too many gods wielded swords and wore flowing robes, so it was impossible for Li Hanlan to identify the statue. If its temple had been used to seal such a high level demoness, then it must have existed before the old war between the demonic and celestial realms when demons still roamed the earth. To trap a Zizhu in such a sacred space... He wrinkled his forehead.

Demons aren't fitting companions for gods.

Meanwhile, Zizhu's first layer of cocoon had reached from the floor to the ceiling, confining Li Hanlan in a narrow space around the statue. He could see her legs weaving frantically around him as she laughed, though the sight was getting fainter as the layers of webbing thickened. As his surroundings grew dark, Li Hanlan abruptly reached for the statue's base with both hands. It was at least twice his height and weighed a good few hundred pounds, but lifting it as a cultivator was effortless. Puffs of dust rose into the air as he clenched his arms and threw it towards the roof.

All seal arrays and barriers needed anchor points. Sometimes they were set in the surroundings, such as the one used to trap the horned beetle in the forest. Other times, it drew power from a central focal point, such as this statue. While the former was susceptible to changes in the environment or placement of the seal array talismans, the latter formed a self contained loop between the anchor point and the rest of the barrier. In other words, as long as the statue remained unbroken within the barrier boundaries, he could take it anywhere he wanted.

Such as outside. 

The temple walls were too far away and the door still sealed, but the root up above was currently undefended. With a force akin to a bomb, the statue crashed through the timber and tiles to claw out a section showing a cloudy night sky. Li Hanlan was quick to follow the flying mass of stone to freedom outside.

Thus, between defending themselves from flying rubble, the rescue trio in front of the temple heard a resounding boom as both statue and Li Hanlan landed on the ground. They didn't have time to react when a shrill screech followed in his wake. Zizhu crawled out of the roof, laughing wildly as she leered at them from above.

"Pretty boy, I only wanted to talk! Why are you playing hard to get?"

--

Chapter Visuals:

A dilapidated temple.

Spider demoness (approximation) - Zizhu (紫珠)

Zizhu literally means "purple pearl," and sounds similar to zhizhu (蜘蛛), or "spider." \o/

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