parentshiftbook Chapter 56: After the Desperate Strike
Chapter 56: After the Desperate Strike
"Pfft! Crack—!"
First, with his left fist, the true essence spiral drill slammed into the three closely arranged, eerie green compound eyes on the left side of the Spider Queen! There was little resistance; like a hot knife cutting into solidified grease, the viscous, icy compound eye tissue, mixed with hard crystalline fragments, instantly exploded and splattered! A foul-smelling liquid gushed out.
Immediately following was a heavy, mountain-like strike from the right fist. A muffled thud, like a giant hammer striking a massive bronze drum, was both dull and awe-inspiring! It slammed solidly into the thickest, purplish-black carapace where the Spider Queen's head and breastplate met! Centered on the point of impact, the carapace suddenly caved inward, leaving a clear fist-shaped indentation. Fine, spiderweb-like cracks spread out with a "crackling" sound, instantly expanding to the size of a washbasin! The terrifying shockwave penetrated the carapace!
"Squeak—creak ahhhhh!!!"
The Spider Queen let out the most piercing, agonizing, and distorted scream since the start of the war! The sound was incredibly penetrating, causing the remaining phosphorescence in the distance to flicker violently! Her massive body was struck head-on by a real battering ram, violently falling backward. Her eight thick, segmented limbs swung and stomped wildly and unconsciously, carving several terrifying trenches over a foot deep into the mud, bones, and even the hard rock beneath her. Mud and bone fragments shot into the sky like fountains! The left side of her head was a mess, her compound eyes shattered, slime flowing, and her carapace cracked; the excruciating pain and bone-deep tremors from the junction of her skull caused the surging demonic power within her to momentarily halt, resulting in a brief period of disorder!
However, this was, after all, a Swamp Spider Queen at the peak of the mid-stage of the Profound Realm, with an incomparably strong physique and a vitality as tenacious as an ancient ferocious beast! The excruciating pain, which should have been fatal, not only failed to immediately take away its life force, but instead completely ignited the most primal, most frenzied, and most reckless ferocity and destructive instinct deep within its bloodline!
Its swollen, sac-like abdomen, now riddled with ruptures, instead of succumbing, contracted and swelled violently at an abnormal and astonishing speed! Its color deepened to a dark purplish-black, and the eerie dark red patterns on its surface seemed to come alive, writhing and bulging wildly, as if countless earthworms were burrowing beneath its skin. A terrifying energy, far more dangerous and unstable than the venomous poison it had previously spewed, filled with the aura of pure destruction and annihilation, frantically gathered, compressed, and boiled around the Purple-Patterned Spider Queen's demon core deep within its abdominal sac—it was recklessly determined to reverse the demon core, self-destruct its origin, and drag this terrifying human who had so severely wounded it and desecrated its majesty, down with it to eternal silence and destruction!
But Lin Yan had been waiting for this opportunity all along! The Spider Queen lost her absolute composure due to the excruciating pain and rage, focusing all her demonic power and attention on preparing for self-destruction, while instinctively sweeping towards and locking onto him with her remaining forelimbs and demonic energy!
As the spider queen struggled backward and her abdomen contracted and swelled violently, the vital abdominal sac beneath her body, which was lighter in color and relatively softer in texture compared to the thick carapace on her back, was slightly exposed due to her posture, creating a very brief and fleeting defensive gap!
For Lin Yan, who had pushed his [Swiftness] talent and his own spiritual sense to the limit and whose mind was like the most precise compass, this one flaw was enough to decide his life or death!
His movements were ghostly and elusive, like a boneless serpent. In the nick of time, he narrowly avoided the Spider Queen's frenzied, blood-stained, sharp forelimb afterimages. His foot even lightly touched the joint of one of the Spider Queen's twitching limbs, the force so exquisite that he defied all logic, performing an incredible mid-air turn, headfirst, transforming into a swooping, gray-black meteor, carrying his entire weight and the lingering force of his punch, hurtling towards the Spider Queen's exposed, slightly bulging, light-colored abdomen!
His right hand, with its five fingers pressed together like a sword, and the muscles on his arm bulging as if about to burst, compressed and condensed the gray-black Devouring Spirit True Essence to its extreme at his fingertips. It was no longer just a devouring power, but also incorporated a resolute sharpness that could cut through gold and jade and pierce through all defenses. This was his deeper understanding and temporary application of the characteristics of his own True Essence when he devoured and refined the three-headed spider guard's demon core!
"Open it!!!"
The fingertips, like the sharpest awls, with an unwavering determination, pierced fiercely into the relatively soft carapace of the spider queen's abdominal sac!
"Pfft!"
A soft sound, yet it seemed to herald the end. The fingertip pierced through without any resistance!
Lin Yan's right arm, elbow-deep, plunged into the Spider Queen's sticky, slippery body, filled with highly toxic corrosive fluids and shattered internal organs! An indescribable, burning, yet chillingly numb, stinging pain, like countless fine needles, instantly spread along his entire arm from the wound. But his mind was as hard as iron; disregarding everything, his five fingers, embedded in her abdomen, suddenly opened wide. The power of devouring spirits was no longer gentle or gradual; instead, it transformed into the most greedy, domineering, and icy tentacles of plunder and destruction, precisely grasping the Purple-Patterned Spider Queen's demonic core, hidden deep within her abdominal sac, frantically throbbing, expanding, and emitting a heart-palpitating destructive aura!
"Devour—Annihilate!!!"
This absorption was unlike any before. It wasn't a slow extraction and refinement, but the most savage plunder! It was the most complete annihilation!
Lin Yan transformed the still-untamed, violent demonic power he had obtained by forcibly fusing the three demonic spider cores, along with his own Soul Devouring True Essence which had reached its peak, into a gray-black torrent filled with the will to destroy and wreak havoc. This torrent, like the waters of the Styx bursting its banks, poured into and crashed against the demonic core that was about to explode, along with the right arm that had entered the Spider Queen's body!
Instead of slowly draining it from the outside, it's about forcibly detonating it from the very core inside!
Using the power of devouring as a catalyst and his own berserk true essence as fuel, he ignited, stirred, and propelled the already extremely unstable and near-explosive destructive energy within the Spider Queen's demon core!
"No--!!!"
Within the Spider Queen's mind, a silent shriek seemed to erupt, filled with endless fear, resentment, and despair. She could clearly sense that the extremely violent energy within her demonic core, instead of exploding and annihilating everything according to her will, was forcibly invaded, disrupted, ignited, and stripped of its last shred of control by an external, colder, more tyrannical force, one filled with devouring and destructive properties!
"boom--!!!!!"
A terrifying roar, deep and seemingly originating from the depths of the earth, yet containing the power to destroy the world, suddenly erupted from the very core of the Spider Queen's enormous body! It was not the sound of muscles and bones breaking, nor the sound of carapace shattering, but the muffled sound that struck the very soul when the source of energy collapsed and annihilated!
The Spider Queen's already bloated abdomen, which was now contracting and swelling violently, suddenly expanded to an exaggerated and bizarre degree. The carapace and skin of her abdominal sac were stretched to almost transparent, and the destructive energy inside, in shades of purple-black and dark red, flickered, intertwined, and boiled wildly, as if countless thunderbolts were being conceived and exploding within it!
immediately--
"Bang!!!!!!"
Like a giant sac filled with lava and venom, crushed by the foot of an invisible giant! The Spider Queen's entire abdomen, along with most of her body, collapsed, disintegrated, and exploded inward with a deafening roar! The viscous, gelatinous, deep purple-black venom, mixed with shattered and decaying internal organs, carapace fragments, and at its very core, the Purple-Patterned Spider Queen's demon core fragment—completely shattered into countless pieces yet still radiating chilling energy remnants—erupted like a volcano suppressed for millennia, erupting violently in all directions—up, down, left, and right—centered on Lin Yan's inserted right arm! The shockwave of the explosion even violently blasted away and shattered mud, bones, and even the remains of some nearby low-level demon spiders within a radius of several feet!
"puff--!"
Lin Yan was the first to be hit! Although he had used his superb perception to pull back his arm with all his might and frantically gathered all his remaining true essence to form a shield in front of him in the instant before the demon core exploded, he was still hit by the terrifyingly powerful explosion at close range. It was as if he had been hit head-on by an invisible siege hammer and was violently thrown away!
While in mid-air, a mouthful of scalding blood, mixed with fragments of internal organs, gushed out like a blood arrow! The sleeve of his right arm had already been torn apart in the previous piercing, and now his entire arm was a bloody mess, covered with horrific wounds caused by the impact of the explosion, the corrosion of venom, and the cutting of the demon core fragments. The skin was torn open, the flesh was exposed, and the wounds were so deep that the bone was visible. The arm was charred black and purplish-red, and its original shape was almost unrecognizable. The excruciating pain instantly overwhelmed all sensation in his arm.
Like a tattered kite with its string broken in a gale, he traced a tragic arc in the air before crashing heavily into a relatively soft, damp patch of mud a dozen feet away. He tumbled uncontrollably several times before finally being stopped by a pile of half-buried animal bones. The cold mud beneath him was quickly stained and soaked through with blood, spreading into a shocking dark red patch.
The Purple-Striped Spider Queen, who had dominated the Corpse-Rotting Swamp for countless years, still had a relatively intact head and part of its breastplate above its abdomen. However, its self-destructing core demonic core had completely destroyed the source of all its life and power. The eerie light in its eight compound eyes, like a candle in the wind, quickly dimmed and went out, eventually turning into a lifeless void. Its massive, mountain-like body convulsed violently a few times, and its eight limbs, which had once terrified countless creatures, finally lay limply open and drooped, sinking deep into the swamp, unable to move an inch more.
The undisputed overlord of the swamp's depths has thus—completely fallen!
With the death of the Spider Queen, the invisible pressure and bloodline connection she exuded—enveloping the entire nest and commanding countless spider demons—was abruptly severed. The low-level spider demons that had been surging forward like a tidal wave, recklessly disregarding their own lives, froze in place, like puppets whose strings had been simultaneously removed. Then, chaotic and meaningless hisses erupted. The fanaticism and emptiness in their compound eyes were quickly replaced by bewilderment and panic. Their organized attacks ceased; some began tearing and devouring each other without reason, while others squeaked in terror, frantically burrowing back into the mud or fleeing wildly into the dark swamp far from the nest, scattering like birds and beasts.
The wall of fire that had once blocked part of the attack, now broken and barely clinging to life with only a few embers on the charred remains, finally went out with a "poof." The last glimmer of light vanished, leaving only wisps of twisting, rising smoke and the thick, acrid smell of burnt flesh and blood in the air.
Lin Yan lay in the icy, sticky, filthy mud, feeling as if every bone in his body had shattered. The excruciating pain was like an endless tide, wave after wave sweeping over and washing away his almost fading consciousness. The agony from his right arm, a pain beyond the realm of ordinary agony, a mixture of corrosive, tearing, burning, and freezing sensations, was like torture from hell. The forced melting of the three demonic spider cores, resulting in the tearing of his meridians and the shock to his soul, coupled with the terrifying power of the Spider Queen's demonic core exploding at close range, had left him injured both internally and externally. His true energy was in disarray, like boiling porridge, with multiple meridians damaged, and even his dantian showing faint, unstable fluctuations.
Every breath carried the rusty, bloody smell and the dull pain of displaced internal organs.
But he bit his lip, which was already bleeding from being bitten so hard, and with his still-intact but trembling left hand, he painstakingly and inch by inch reached into the innermost pocket of his robe. His fingertips touched a small cloth bag tightly wrapped in oilcloth, still intact. A faint but incredibly clear and pure, vibrant, cool scent wafted through the fabric, like a ray of moonlight in the dark night, a clear spring in the cold winter. It cleared his mind, which was filled with excruciating pain and confusion, and forced his heavy eyelids open a crack.
The herb... Seven-leaf silver thread grass... is still there.
Su Qingyao... is saved.