"Sigh, it's gone."
Yang Shining sighed to herself, also letting out a breath of relief. A bead of cold sweat trickled down her fair cheek.
"'It'?"
Xia Qimeng repeated the question. "And what you just said about 'Spider Lord'..."
"That's right. Just now, there was the silhouette of an adorable and enormous spider right here. Although I couldn't make out its specific appearance, through my 'Spirit Eye,' I could perceive its general outline."
Yang Shining pointed at the ceiling.
"Moreover, judging by its size and invisibility ability, I suspect that the departing spider is very likely the 'Nyx' who humiliated 'Xingtian' and drew the attention of the entire Federation..."
Xia Qimeng's expression froze. She took a sharp breath on her own. "You're saying 'Nyx' was right above our heads just now?"
Yang Shining nodded slightly. "That's right."
"And from the look of it, this Spider Lord doesn't harm humans casually—or rather, has no interest in human lives. We should both be grateful for that."
"Otherwise, if a real fight had broken out, neither you, I, nor Nine-Tails would have escaped. The barrier shielding ordinary people would also have shattered, and everyone in this building would have been buried along with us."
Hearing this, Xia Qimeng fell deep in thought, staring for a long time at the spot where the blue-violet lightning had flickered.
Suddenly, Yang Shining turned to face Xia Qimeng, her expression serious. "Alright, it's getting late. I should escort you back now."
Xia Qimeng looked puzzled and was about to refuse, thinking she didn't need an escort.
But she saw that Yang Shining's hands were already swiftly forming seals. The Nine-Tailed Spirit Fox's eyes shot out beams of light, which shot directly into Xia Qimeng's forehead.
Instantly, Xia Qimeng felt as if her body had been immobilized—unable to move a single inch. Her gaze became as vacant as an ancient well.
"Retract."
When Yang Shining finished forming the hand seals, two lines of light sailed in from the walls at both ends of the corridor. The light traced the contours of the walls, finally withdrawing into the Nine-Tailed Spirit Fox's body and disappearing.
At the same time, the lights in the hallway returned to normal. Even faint voices from within the dorm rooms could be heard.
It seemed the barrier had been withdrawn.
"Bye-bye, Senior Xia. I believe we'll have a chance to meet again, but by then, you certainly won't remember me."
Yang Shining then shifted her gaze to the Nine-Tailed Spirit Fox at her feet and rapped it sharply on its flat forehead:
"Hmph, this is all your fault for not controlling your mouth! Not only did you scare Senior Xia, you also attracted mutant insects."
Ignoring the Nine-Tailed Spirit Fox's tearful, pitiful expression, she placed an index finger against her perfectly contoured chin and murmured:
"Still, there were some unexpected gains tonight—to actually see such a huge spider."
"Though it's a shame I didn't get to see its true appearance. The videos online really can't compare to the feeling of being up close in real life. When I discovered it, I felt both terrified and thrilled."
"I clearly knew it was dangerous, yet I still couldn't help but want to get closer..."
As Yang Shining was murmuring, she suddenly felt her pants being tugged. She discovered it was the Nine-Tailed Spirit Fox.
"Meow."
The corner of Yang Shining's mouth curved upward. She stroked the Nine-Tailed Spirit Fox's head and scooped it up in her arms, teasing, "Feeling jealous, little one?"
"If you dare to disobey again in the future, I won't keep you anymore..."
The figures of the girl and her fox receded, gradually disappearing at the end of the corridor.
What Yang Shining didn't know was that, a dozen or so seconds later, Xia Qimeng came back to her senses, cast a deep look toward the direction the girl and fox had vanished, then turned and headed for the stairwell.
Yang Shining would be even less aware that
Bai Jie had not gone far—and had, in fact, taken in all of Yang Shining's actions.
"Interesting. Yang Shining actually possesses such strange arts and techniques. Not a parasite of the eerie purple light, yet with abilities surpassing Zheng Yueling's, and she can even discover my presence."
"The hallway was in such an uproar, yet no one came out—likely because of the barrier she deployed."
"Could she be from the Wu Gu Clan? Ah, forget it. Even if she has secrets, without a spiritual essence reaction, she's irrelevant to me. If anything, having her here can help protect the safety of some students."
Thinking this, Bai Jie paid no more attention to Yang Shining and the meowing pink fox, resuming his search through this girls' dormitory building.
Ten floors in total. Nothing was found.
No Spider Sense alerts, no spiritual essence reaction notifications.
But he wasn't in a hurry to move on to the next dorm building, because this very building had just witnessed an Eldritch incident!
"After all this effort, I still haven't found Wang Miaoyin. But since so many mutated cockroaches appeared here, there's a very high chance that meteorite fragments are also present!"
"The rooftop, the toilets, the laundry room, the shower rooms, every nook and cranny—I've searched them all, and none had any spiritual essence reaction."
"Then where did these cockroaches come from?"
Now, there was only one place left in the entire building that hadn't been searched: underground.
With this thought, Bai Jie slipped directly to the base of the building and pried open the manhole cover...
...
Suppressing his discomfort and disgust, Bai Jie searched through the sewers beneath the campus.
From the very first moment he entered the sewers, Bai Jie regretted it.
Because it was too foul—utterly, intensely foul.
The demonic spider crawled upside down along the ceiling of the sewer, doing its utmost to avoid touching the filthy water below.
Fortunately, Yongan City had always placed great importance on the quality and maintenance of its underground sewer systems—after all, it was the city's second face.
Thanks to this, the demonic spider didn't have to crawl with its legs cramped up.
At the same time, it swore inwardly: once it got back, it absolutely had to jump into Bai Huahua's pool of clear water and wash thoroughly, and have her use her pure water to give it a spa treatment.
Because just smelling the stench in here made it feel unclean.
As for whether Bai Huahua would be happy about her pool being contaminated—that didn't matter. She could probably purify the water on her own. And if she really got upset, the demonic spider could just give her a couple of injections to soothe her.
What entered Bai Jie's senses was the piercing smell of mold, the reek of rotting flesh, and the foul stench of the sewer, all blended together.
"Is this the sewer under the girls' dorm? It's this terrifying..."
"Come to think of it, that ditzy airhead leaking water and drooling in her sleep doesn't seem so hard to accept anymore..."
The smell was beyond anything an ordinary person could imagine. Even Bai Jie, with his exceptionally high Vitality, couldn't bear it, making him want to return to his comfortable, fragrant spider nest immediately.
"Waaah!"
Bai Jie was hesitating over whether to come back another day when he suddenly heard an eerie wail. Every bristle on his body instantly stood on end!
That wailing cry sounded disturbingly like an infant's—so sharp it could pierce the marrow, carrying an air of utter misery.
It startled him so badly he almost wanted to kick out his Urticating Hairs!
This was a sewer! How could there be the sound of an infant?
Bai Jie speculated: could a child have fallen into the sewer, trapped and wailing so miserably? Or had someone pulled a prank, leaving a looping tape recorder down here?
But that sound was hair-raisingly terrifying—anyone could tell it was abnormal, and it didn't sound like a recording either.