Chapter 85

Looking at this giant creature, Du Qian's heart turned cold. The number of lightning spiders is not large, and few people have seen a live one, but the knowledge about them is well-known to everyone. After all, on the shipping routes, the threat posed by lightning spiders to passenger ships is the greatest. Even those who never leave home know about them.

The lightning spider is an extremely terrifying creature. From birth, it is a spirit beast that does not need to cultivate. As it grows, it begins to accumulate energy, forming lightning spider silk within its body. The longest known lightning spider silk is over ten thousand meters long.

This is not ordinary spider silk. It is not only highly resilient and strong, but also carries the power of lightning. Once entangled by the silk, the entire body feels as if it is being electrocuted. The current is not very strong, but it can accumulate. The more silk that wraps around, the stronger the lightning power becomes.

If the entire body is wrapped in silk, death is almost certain. Most people are electrocuted to death before they are even wrapped into a cocoon.

Lightning spiders do not eat live prey. After using their silk to entangle and electrocute their prey, they suck out the bodily fluids. They do not eat meat. After the fluids are drained, they can continue to absorb the spiritual energy from the bodies of martial cultivators, converting it for their own use. This natural ability is similar to what battle masters use with spirit horns, but it is even more effective.

Therefore, once a lightning spider reaches adulthood, it becomes very powerful, and its combat strength increases much faster than other creatures.

Such a powerful spirit beast seems to be truly cursed by heaven, as it is almost never seen in the south. After all, the south has warm weather, frequent rain, and high humidity, with many thunderstorms. Lightning spiders, which are fond of lightning, can easily be reduced to ashes by the power of the heavens.

In contrast, the northern environment is more suitable for their survival. After summer, they are rarely seen for several months, until the eggs in their nests naturally hatch into spiders, and a new batch of lightning spiders appears.

This results in the number of lightning spiders never being very large. In some years with many thunderstorms, it seems as if they are all dead, and only a few are seen throughout the year.

No matter how severe the thunderstorms, this creature has always managed to survive, never being completely eradicated by the power of the heavens.

However, from the habits of this creature, it is clear that the survival of lightning spiders is already quite difficult, and growing to a larger size is even harder. A lightning spider with a diameter of five meters has never been heard of.

A lightning spider of this size would be difficult for even a battle master to escape, let alone defeat.

The special skill of the lightning spider, shooting silk, is many times more powerful than the most advanced firearms. It can shoot through alloy steel plates from hundreds or even thousands of meters away. As long as it is seated in the center, it can control all directions. Anywhere its lightning silk can reach is within its attack range.

Lightning spider silk is a treasure. The silk extracted from a killed lightning spider remains active and, after simple processing, becomes a prized possession for martial cultivators.

It can be used for attack, defense, and support. Martial cultivators typically do not use external objects, and the effectiveness of firearms is far inferior to spirit martial techniques. Cold weapons made of alloy are not comparable. In this vast world, there are always some things that can surpass spirit martial techniques and reach another level.

Such things are naturally rare, making them even more valuable. Du Qian has heard of lightning spider silk, and it is said that the entire Pingchuan City cannot produce even a few meters of it.

The giant lightning spider, with its large compound eyes, scans its prey. Those who try to escape are the first to be targeted by the silk. Regardless of the level of the martial cultivator, a single strand of silk can instantly pierce the body, and the silk quickly wraps around, cocooning a person in just a few seconds.

Stronger martial cultivators struggle for a few seconds in the cocoon before becoming still. Most are electrocuted to death by the lightning power on the silk as soon as it touches their body.

The lightning spider has enough time to eat everyone on the ship clean.

Even if it is eventually destroyed by lightning, by then, they would already be spider feces.

"Strange," Du Qian stared intently at the lightning spider. It was indeed using its rear end to feed. The silk wrapped around the prey and was brought to the rear end. Du Qian could see a tube-like structure extending from its rear, inserting into the prey's body and then pulling out after a while, before moving on to the next prey.

"There's not enough time," the disgusting man holding Du Qian's arm whispered.

"It's using its rear end to feed," Du Qian's thoughts were clearly not on the same wavelength as the disgusting man, and they were talking about completely different things.

Whether there was enough time for the clouds to come was not something Du Qian could control. Even if he was waiting to die, he wanted to understand why the lightning spider was using its rear end to feed.

"No, no, the lightning spider uses its mouthparts to feed," the disgusting man finally noticed the strange behavior of the giant spider several hundred meters away.

"It's not feeding. It's defecating," the disgusting man, who seemed quite knowledgeable, said with certainty after just one look.

"Not defecating, it's laying eggs," Du Qian felt like he was about to faint. If he was going to die, he didn't expect to be used as a toilet by a lightning spider. What bad luck, dying in such an unpleasant way, and encountering a perverted spider.

"Laying eggs," Du Qian's education was not high, but he had learned the basics and quickly understood. Many creatures have the characteristic of laying their eggs in corpses, using the corpses as nutrients to help them safely pass through the larval stage.

"Definitely," the disgusting man, who looked quite lewd, spoke in a voice so low it was hard to hear, but his knowledge was quite good, at least better than Du Qian's.

"Really disgusting, to die like this," Du Qian sighed. Even if it wasn't defecating, it wasn't much better. To become a bed for lightning spider eggs was too disgusting.

"We might not die for now," after Du Qian's reminder, the disgusting man finally shifted his attention from the clouds to the lightning spider and quickly came to a conclusion. His knowledge was indeed good.

"Why?" The lightning spider was disgusting, and the short man beside him was equally disgusting, but at this moment, Du Qian didn't care. As long as he could survive, who wouldn't want to live?

"We are food, so we won't die for now. We are being saved for its children," the disgusting man said.

Du Qian quickly understood what he meant. To be continued.