The forest was drenched in darkness even though it was still day. Beneath the heavy rain, the mountains exhaled steam like dying beasts, and threads of mist coiled between trees like wandering spirits.
Ningyue moved silently through the underbrush, her bare feet leaving no trace. Everywhere she passed, the plants withered, their vitality sucked dry in an instant. Birds hiding from the storm trembled; small animals collapsed as if their hearts had been cut away by invisible knives.
Her skin glowed faintly—soft, pale, flawless—yet everything near her dimmed and drained as though swallowed by an unseen abyss.
She was searching for yang herbs.
Her fingertips brushed a moss-covered stone, and she paused.
Deep within the mountain wall, behind a veil of hanging vines, she sensed it—heat, tension, a volatile pulse of life.
A cave.
She slipped inside.
The moment her feet touched the damp stone floor, the stench hit her. Rotten meat. Blood. Molted shells. The air crawled with movement.
It was a nest.
Dozens—no, hundreds—of spiders, their legs as long as swords, their bodies swollen with venom and eggs. Webs layered atop each other, sticky, trembling, vibrating with restless hunger. Countless corpses were wrapped in cocooned bundles: humans, deer, jaguars, monkeys, bears—everything the forest had birthed had died here.
The spiders were in mating season.Bloodlust, instinct, madness filled the cavern.
A soft string of tension snapped beneath her foot.
The entire nest reacted.
Before she could turn back, the walls erupted. Spider legs slammed into the stone, and shimmering threads shot from every direction. Webs thick as ropes wrapped around her arms, her legs, her throat, trying to bind her into a helpless cocoon.
Clicks, chittering, shrieks, hissing venom.
But Ningyue only lowered her gaze.
A demon does not fear beasts.
A demon hunts them.
Her lips curved slightly—a gentle smile, beautiful and terrifying.
A burst of Extreme Yin surged from her core.
Not cold, but burning, like an invisible black-purple flame. The webs wrapped around her ignited instantly, crackling as they shriveled to ash. The nearest spiders screeched, legs collapsing under them as the heat of the yin scorched through their shells.
They fled.
But once attacked, the Heaven-Devouring Demon never allowed escape.
She drew a hairpin from her hair—simple golden, slender as a needle.
With a flick of her wrist, it shot through the air with a guided red thread.
The needle entered a spider's carapace like it was soft tofu. A heartbeat later, the Extreme Yin surged through the pin. The flesh inside the creature ignited and burned from the center outward. Its shriek echoed off the cave walls as its body swelled, then burst into black smoke.
Another hairpin strike.
Then another.
Each time, the spiders died from the inside—legs curling inward, abdomens splitting, bodies falling like rotten fruit.
Ningyue moved through the chaos like a composer in underworld.
Silk burned around her.Smoke coiled between her fingers.Her shadow stretched along the cavern walls like an ancient serpent waking from slumber.
Some spiders tried to flee deeper into the cave. With a soft exhale, Ningyue pressed her palm to the ground.
A wave of Extreme Yin surged outward, sealing the entire chamber with a shimmering layer of burning purple-fire. No spider could leave.
With nowhere to run, they turned on her in desperation.
She welcomed them with open arms.
Her hairpin lengthened into spear burning in flames. She seized a lunging spider by its fangs, crushed its mouth, and drained its vitality in a single breath. Her eyes darkened to an inhuman shade, filled with swirling demonic patterns.
When the nest finally quieted, only a few trembling juveniles remained—small, venom bright but weak. She knelt, placed her hand on their heads, and fed them a single thread of her yin.
The one's bowed.And submitted.Became hers.
The rest were devoured—burned to ash, dissolved, consumed into her body like offerings thrown into a sacrificial furnace.
A pulse of energy exploded from her.
Her hair grew wildly, cascading like a waterfall of black silk down her back. Her limbs lengthened slightly, her figure became even more perfect, her presence overwhelming.
Her cultivation surged—
Core Formation, ninth realm.On the verge of breaking through.
She exhaled, and the flame-yin around her dimmed.
The presence.
Very faint.Very sharp.Vanished instantly.
Someone decided to run away.
Far away, on the other side of the mountain, Han Tianci stopped mid-step. His face tightened, his eyes grew colder.
He said nothing.
He only adjusted his grip on the horse leash and climbed down.