The Enchantment Spider
"I only knew there was something nearby capable of controlling minds," Mo Fan told Zhao Manyan. "I was heading back to warn you all to get out — I didn't expect you'd already be tearing into each other."
"Then go kill the damn thing! With anything mental or psychic, once you take out the source, everyone snaps back to normal." Zhao Manyan snapped.
Zhao Manyan was baffled. Mo Fan was usually ruthless and decisive in a fight — why was he being so thick-headed today?
"All right. I'll hold back the people under control. You go kill whatever's causing this." Mo Fan said.
Zhao Manyan had nothing to say to that.
Mo Fan had no real desire to go, and for good reason — any creature that could dominate this territory and leave behind that many skeletons was not something to trifle with.
He didn't particularly care about the others. Mu Nujiao had fallen under the influence too, but he could just knock her out and drag her away. The sooner they left, the better.
While he was working out how to retreat, a graceful figure came gliding toward him at remarkable speed from not far away, her long silver hair streaming freely in the wind.
"Come with me!" Mu Ningxue rode Wind Track straight to Mo Fan and seized him by the wrist.
"Where are we even — slow down, slow down, there's a bog up ahead —" Mo Fan yelped. He simply didn't want to go.
Dragged bodily along, he couldn't have been more reluctant — but as the pool drew nearer and nearer, he resigned himself to the fact that whatever lurked beneath it was not going to survive the night.
He was still wondering what kind of monster might crawl out when he noticed a faint crimson tint between Mu Ningxue's brows. The touch of red transformed her icy, pristine beauty into something darkly seductive — and his heart gave a lurch.
*Wait — what am I thinking?* She'd been taken too!
But something didn't add up. Everyone else who'd been compromised was attacking each other — as if every grievance they'd ever buried was finally bursting free. Old grudges, old hatreds, all dragged into the open.
Mu Ningxue had been enchanted just the same — so why was she dragging him straight toward the source? Was she fully under control, deliberately offering him up to the creature in the pool? Or had something deeper inside her simply been amplified — a resolve to kill, sharper than ever?
"Bedrock Ice — Ice Vine — Cover!" Without a word, Mu Ningxue unleashed her Ice Element magic straight at the eerie pool.
Her eyes held nothing but cold killing intent. She had indeed been enchanted — but the emotion amplified in her was simply the will to destroy the creature causing all this harm.
Mo Fan still wore his Focus Pendant, which had been shielding him throughout. Now that Mu Ningxue's only obsession was slaying the monster, he had no choice but to see it through alongside her.
What a remarkable woman. Everyone else under the enchantment was acting out — driven by fear, rage, jealousy, desire — some long-buried impulse that sent them tearing into one another. But not Mu Ningxue. What had been amplified in her was nothing but a cold, unwavering will to kill.
The Ice Vine spread rapidly across the pool's surface. Mu Ningxue intended to freeze the entire thing solid with her bedrock ice.
Whatever lurked beneath couldn't possibly stay calm against such bone-deep cold. Mo Fan waited quietly to the side, mentally bracing for what was coming.
*If something comparable to a Dread Mimic comes crawling out, I'll knock Mu Ningxue out first, then Mu Nujiao, grab Bai Tingting and Zhao Manyan, and run.*
This wasn't about pride. The world was full of things beyond reckoning, and Mo Fan was under no illusion that his current strength could handle every threat. If you can't win, you run — simple as that.
**Crack… crack… crack…**
Frost spread across the pool, the surface nearly frozen over, reflecting cold glints of starlight.
As the ice moved to seal the pool entirely, dozens of tiny creatures — spider-shaped, with unsettlingly strange eyes — came skittering out from within, scattering into the surrounding scrub as if they hadn't a care in the world.
Moments later, Mo Fan noticed that several of the Water Spiders had crept silently toward him and were climbing up his trouser legs.
He hadn't caught on at first — they were tiny, and moved with uncanny agility. Anyone passing through this area under normal circumstances would never feel them crawling aboard. Fortunately, the Focus Pendant around his neck sent a sharp pulse through him, breaking the creeping influence before it could take hold…
*Was that it?* he thought. *Was Mingcong enchanted by one of these Water Spiders when he came here to fetch water?*
*Had to be. Nothing else would've triggered that strong a reaction from the pendant.*
*And if I'd been hit — my first instinct would've been to bolt. Amplified, I'd have cleared out without a second glance at anyone. Or maybe I'd have gone after Liao Mingxuan, that two-faced little snake. God, even thinking about him makes my blood boil.*
**BOOM!!**
Mo Fan was still lost in thought when the pool erupted with a deafening blast.
Every last shard of ice shattered at once, sending crystal fragments spinning through the air like a blizzard. The half-frozen water surged upward in a massive white wave.
The wave crashed outward and flooded the wasteland in every direction.
More alarming still — an uncountable swarm of Water Spiders, identical to the ones before, thrashed and leaped wherever the floodwater reached, scattering in all directions.
From within the churning surge, a massive black head emerged — grotesque and terrifying, its rows upon rows of eyes blazing with sinister red light, some fixed on Mo Fan, others on Mu Ningxue.
A spider's head — half the size of a room. Eyes clustered densely between skull and face, the face itself like a warped, grotesque mask, twisted with a chaotic web of fleshy ridges.
Its body was dominated by that monstrous head; the torso was comparatively small. But what truly seized the eye were its eight long legs — bristled with dense, coarse hairs and keen as blades. Legs? No. They were eight skewers, each fully capable of driving straight through a living creature's chest.
Spider-kin. This lineage was infamous for its sinister, cold-blooded nature — hunting methods bizarre and unpredictable, its arsenal of traps, curses, poison attacks, and enchantments nearly impossible to guard against.
No question about it. This was an enchantment-type Spider-kin Demon-Beast.
No telling how many years this Enchantment Spider had lurked here, how many creatures it had consumed to reach a size this staggering — especially since spider-kin that specialized in these insidious arts were rarely powerful in direct combat.
Mo Fan drew a slow breath — and caught a faint, peculiar odor drifting off the creature.
*Not overwhelmingly strong. We can take this.*