"Underground, of all places?"
Lin Yu felt as if he had been granted a detached, third-person perspective, like turning on a god view or spectator mode in a game.
Only, this view wasn't completely free to control; it surged toward a specific direction—after all, this viewpoint was meant to give Lin Yu "answers and truth."
Soon, penetrating the long layers of rock, Lin Yu sensed his viewpoint arriving deep underground.
The scene suddenly brightened—there was, astonishingly, a cavity beneath the ground!
Light flickered inside the hollow, and the source of that light was...
"Lava?"
Lin Yu looked in surprise at a winding river of molten rock.
Beside that lava river, in this subterranean depth, many ruined human buildings had settled and were shrouded in vast shadows, though it was still possible to make out that this had once been a bustling human settlement.
At that moment Lin Yu discovered that the viewpoint seemed to have unlocked a degree of control.
Confined to this underground space, he could freely move the view.
Lin Yu guided the perspective to circle around, like a ghost drifting through the old town.
The stone-paved streets were covered with thick dust, the slabs cracked like a spiderweb, revealing the sandy soil beneath.
Houses with green bricks and gray tiles had long been eroded by time, many walls and roofs collapsed.
Wooden doorframes and window lattices had rotted away, leaving only broken skeletons of frames.
His consciousness swept past house after house, from one end of the town to the other, and, unsurprisingly, Lin Yu saw an ancient stone stele standing upright, the two characters "Willow Town" carved on it.
"So this abandoned town really is Willow Town!"
Lin Yu found his answer.
But he did not forget that the thing he wanted to know was not where Willow Town was, but who the mastermind behind everything was.
He already had a vague guess about who that mastermind might be.
Lin Yu pulled the viewpoint back with his mind, and then... the image he expected appeared before him.
Even though he had anticipated it, seeing it for real still shook him to his core!
Perched above this abandoned Willow Town, clinging to the cave walls and casting a vast shadow over the town below, was the mastermind Lin Yu had been searching for.
It was a terrifying, enormous, giant demon, lodged inside this cavity.
This was its lair, and the entire Willow Town seemed like its toy!
And worse...
As if sensing his gaze, the horrific presence opened its eyes.
One by one, crimson eyes lit up—although Lin Yu seemed to lack a physical form at that moment, it still appeared to have locked onto him.
Across a strange force, Lin Yu felt his soul lock eyes with that terrifying entity!
"Click..."
A tiny, dreadful sound rang out, and Lin Yu felt chills crawl over him.
"Shhh shhh shhh!"
In the parts of the cave not lit by lava, more and more fresh red eyes ignited!
"Boss, stop looking!"
Just as Lin Yu's will was about to be swallowed, Old Zheng directly intervened with a mental ability and cut off Lin Yu's power.
The moment Lin Yu came to, a massive dizziness filled his head.
But setting aside the physical discomfort, the final image he had seen had an even harsher psychological impact—normally calm, he now had a cold sweat break out across his face.
"What did you see?"
Li Nian asked urgently.
She rarely saw Lin Yu wear such an expression, and naturally she grew tense.
Lin Yu fought to overcome the dizziness and recalled the last scene he had seen...
In the glow of those crimson eyes and the lava's light, what shone out were pale white threads spreading in all directions, a body as massive and bloated as a mountain, covered with heavy black armor, with eight long, huge legs...
"A spider."
Lin Yu exhaled.
"Directly beneath our feet, deep down, there's a huge cavity, and inside hides a spider as big as a mountain!"
He finally understood where that persistent discord in this mountain had come from.
In a place as hot as Fire Hell, insects should be extremely rare, so why were there silk threads and webs everywhere?!
And every time someone vanished, there would be spider silk left behind at the scene.
It now made sense: beneath their feet, directly under Twin Saw Mountain, a spider the size of the entire mountain was nested!
This confirmed Lin Yu's earlier suspicion that the creature could affect areas far beyond Twin Saw Mountain.
Because spiders weave webs!
Hearing Lin Yu say this, Flying Knife went pale: "What, a spider?!"
Lin Yu looked at Flying Knife. "Do you know anything about where the spider came from?"
"No, it's just that I'm especially terrified of spiders... to be precise, I'm afraid of all insects."
"Correction: spiders are not insects. They belong to the arachnid class within the arthropod phylum, parallel to the insect class," Lin Yu corrected calmly, "and they eat insects."
Flying Knife nearly collapsed: "Thanks for the science lesson, but is now really the time for that?"
"I'm not much afraid of spiders usually, as long as they don't happen to be mountain-sized," Li Nian complained, "If the mastermind behind all this is a mountain-sized spider demon, how are we supposed to deal with it?"
"I don't know either, but we'd better run first—start getting up slowly now, move carefully."
Lin Yu's dizziness had mostly faded; he stood up and said so.
"What? Weren't you saying we didn't need to run just a moment ago?" Li Nian asked in surprise. "Are we going to fight it after all?"
"Yes. That thing is perched above Willow Town," Lin Yu said, then paused before adding, "but... the problem is, as I said earlier, it's directly beneath our feet."
"The dart masters and players—aren't they all gone? Did you notice?"
As Lin Yu spoke, Li Nian realized that all the locals and players who had been here earlier had disappeared—the entire Taoist Temple was threaded with seemingly aged, but actually newly formed, pale white silk.
Those threads swayed in the air; at a glance it looked like wind, but in reality... the motion resembled antennae, with rhythm and an intent to probe.
Spiders use vibrations transmitted through silk to determine the position and direction of prey.
Even Li Nian felt her scalp go numb at the sight.
"When did this happen?!"
"Probably just now."
Lin Yu's steps were steady as he walked toward the exit without rush.
Li Nian grabbed Flying Knife and hurried to catch up.
"I spied on it with my ability earlier and already alerted it—originally it was sleeping, now it's awake."
Old Zheng's voice came at the right moment: "Boss, it found you!"
Hearing Old Zheng, Lin Yu no longer hesitated.
"Run!"
"It's exposed—run with everything you've got!"
