V2C12

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“Crap, it really is venomous!” Lin Jue exclaimed sadly, looking at his finger.

“Give me your hand.” Song Hanzhang walked down the stairs. In the dim and barren area, it was as if he was glowing.

Lin Jue obediently passed his left hand to him, worried whether or not the venom would affect his fighting.

Song Hanzhang’s hands were warm and dry, a clear-cut contrast to his personality. He took a closer look at Lin Jue’s wound and used a clean dagger to cut the skin near it, carefully avoiding the tendons and nerves. Dark purple blood oozed out and Lin Jue felt his skull tingle.

What surprised him more was yet to come. Song Hanzhang took his curled finger into his mouth.

Lin Jue was stunned. The warmth of those lips was even hotter than his finger, and the soft tongue sweeping over his wound brought with it a wet and itchy feeling. His soft flesh was bitten into and the tissues underneath the skin sucked vigorously, then squeezed and sucked again.

What oozed out with the blood seemed to be more than just venom.

An odd flush crept up his face as Lin Jue awkwardly watched Song Hanzhang let go of his hand. “I didn’t wash my hand…” he stammered.

Song Hanzhang glanced up at him, calmly spat out the blood in his mouth, and rinsed his mouth out with a swig of bottled water.

“A hand wound will affect your ability to use your weapon one way or another so I’ll use the healing spell on it as well.” Song Hanzhang pulled Lin Jue’s hand over as silvery white particles began to dance midair, a faint light coming from them and the tattoo on Song Hanzhang’s wrist.

The wound soon disappeared without a trace.

Lin Jue was a little lost in thought. That warm and fuzzy sensation that his finger was still immersed in along with the comforting feeling from the healing spell somehow made his heart feel like it was soaking in a hot spring.

It was a strange, indescribable feeling.

“I won’t get poisoned like this now, right?” Lin Jue curled his finger- the wound hurted a little bit, but not so much that it would affect his fighting skills.

“Normally, spider venom isn’t fatal, but it can lead to allergies which can then lead to death,” Song Hanzhang replied coldly.

“Eh? But didn’t you let out the blood already?” Lin Jue felt a little bit depressed.

“The venom enters the body through the capillaries; just letting out the blood won’t be enough. Spider venom mainly consists of proteins which can often cause allergic reactions which if you’re unlucky, can result in laryngeal edema and suffocation. Laryngeal edema is in simple terms, when your throat constricts so much you have difficulty breathing.”

Lin Jue touched his throat, suddenly thinking that it hurt a little there.

“That won’t be the problem though, it’s not too difficult to perform emergency first aid to treat it. You’ll be able to live for a few more minutes if I cut your trachea open and place a hollow pen inside.”

Just thinking about it made Lin Jue’s throat throb.

Just as he was considering how to write his will, Song Hanzhang suddenly smiled and Lin Jue finally understood. “You were lying to me, weren’t you?”

“No, I simply stated a possibility.” That brief smile had already disappeared as Song Hanzhang returned to his previous expressionless form.

Lin Jue was deeply doubtful. “So it is venomous?”

“It is.”

“Ah! Really!?”

“Mildly.”

“……”

“All in all, be careful, there’ll be spiders in every corner. Don’t let your guard down,” Song Hanzhang said.

“Ah… Okay.” Lin Jue still oozed in that indescribable suspicion that his Xuezhang was just trying to scare him. It turned out that even Song Hanzhang had his strange hobbies.

No, no, no, Xuezhang was just scaring him to make him more guarded against his surroundings. Yes, that must be it!

The two continued to go upstairs. The corridor on floor two was covered in darkness as well; apart from the green light from the emergency exit, the entire level was steeped in dreamless black, like it would never wake up.

Lin Jue took a step forwards and a crisp crack sounded from beneath his feet. He looked down to see a crushed insect, half of its body wrapped in white spiderwebs.

Right, the spider webs.

Lin Jue looked around carefully and finally realized how much danger surrounded them in this dark environment.

Thin white webs were hidden by the night, filling every corner and crevice, spiders behind each and every one, ready to move at a moment’s notice.

“There are so many webs,” Lin Jue said quietly.

Song Hanzhang didn’t reply at all, grabbing the nearest classroom door and pushing it open.

The scenery inside stunned Lin Jue greatly.

Every desk was covered in white webs, the corners and windows also overtaken by spiders, overlaid with thick layers of pale silk. A particularly large spider slowly crossed the webs across the table and crawled towards a trapped fly.

Song Hanzhang walked into the room, slashed through a spider with ease, then ripped off the spiderwebs clinging onto the window and the vines outside.

From here, they could see the fountain in the southern plaza.

It was already completely different from just a few minutes ago.

With the fountain as its center, the entire plaza was becoming a huge web! From every building, strands of spiderwebs stretched towards the fountain’s core, and even though it was only a brief outline, it was already easy to see that it would soon form a terrifyingly large spider web. Spiders of all different sizes were crawling out from the dried fountain, joining in with that giant web’s construction. More and more spiders glided in from over the walls of the buildings and elegantly stepped across the strands to join the workforce too.

This place; it was turning into a true spider’s den!

Ants were gradually starting to arrive, but they were all trapped by the webs one by one, wrapped up into a cocoon by the swarm and transported away.

“They stopped them! The spiders can stop the ants!” Lin Jue felt his spirits brighten up considerably.

Song Hanzhang shook his head. “Only for now. The only way to defeat army ants is to run faster than them, any other method will lose in the face of sheer numbers.”

“Then… how long will they last?”

“At the very most, until the buildings collapse. Without the protection of the webs, the spiders will never be able to win against the ants.”

Lin Jue let out a long sigh when he suddenly heard Song Hanzhang’s voice. “Behind you, careful!”

Lin Jue sweeped his spear out first entirely on instinct, then the feeling of physical contact made him snap into focus.

In the dimly lit room, a large spider rolled around on its webs before climbing back up again steadily.

Lin Jue narrowed his eyes and slowly approached it. The spider immediately jumped onto the webs behind it.

It hid itself within the complicated field of webs, ready to jump out at any time. If he wanted to attack the spider, he would have to drag down the webs blocking the way in front of him. By doing that though, he would also expose himself for attack. He was still disadvantaged by being unfamiliar with his weapon, and lacking experience in fighting. That fight with the ants had been completely beyond his expectations and abilities, and he couldn’t rely on himself entering that state of supernatural instinct at all.

Footsteps sounded behind him. Song Hanzhang walked to his side and slashed through the spiderweb in front of him; the remaining strands clung to his machete, revealing a huge space behind it.

The spider suddenly jumped up. Lin Jue felt his eyes clear, the dim lighting seeming to suddenly brighten and the movements of the spider creep slower until it was like watching a slow motion video, allowing his eyes to see every detail of its movements.

-To the left, it was trying to attack Song Hanzhang!

Lin Jue sweeped forwards with his spear, pushing the pouncing spider onto the ground and with another stab, watching it twist around the stick through its abdomen before finally going still.

Song Hanzhang pushed up his glasses, and observed Lin Jue carefully. Feeling a little awkward, Lin Jue asked, “Why are you looking at me?”

“You never received any professional training, nor do you have much experience in fighting. I’ve only trained you for three days so technically, it should be impossible for you to do what you just did, your prowess when fighting against the army ants even less so. How did you do it?” Song Hanzhang looked at him cautiously.

Lin Jue scratched his face. “How do I put this… Sometimes I’ll enter this state of really high concentration and then movements kind of slow down in my eyes? Sometimes, I can even predict their movements, but if I stay like that for long then my head starts hurting like there’s a hole being drilled in it. I was on the verge of breaking down back on the bridge.”

“Battle instinct? Interesting. Your headaches are probably from over-concentration. I’ve never experienced such a state so I don’t know how to help you. All I can say is that you are more talented than others and will adapt to this environment better than they will. That’s very good.” Song Hanzhang looked at him, his expression complicated.

“But Xuezhang was able to judge the direction of the bees, even in the night and through the fog back at the greenhouse. I can’t do that.”

“You will be able to with some extra training, it’s not very hard. As for your situation, you should ask Lu Ren on how to deal with it. That man is like a beast trained by the very laws of the jungle; he will have more experience than I.”

Lin Jue’s face filled with unwillingness. “No, I don’t want to talk with psychos.”

Song Hanzhang didn’t force him. “Let’s go. Shentu should’ve arrived at the laboratory building opposite us. We can get there through the sky bridge in the other two connected buildings.”

“You want to work with them? But Judas…”

Song Hanzhang picked up a strand of spider web and tested its adhesiveness. “It will be fine if we kill Dan Liang. Of course, don’t let Shentu see.”

Lin Jue was shocked. “Are you sure he’s Judas? But didn’t Lu Ren say that Judas didn’t appear in the plaza?”

“I didn’t say that. But the same thing wouldn’t happen three times, he was too obvious,” Song Hanzhang said lightly, murderous intent icing over his voice.

“What… three times? Did he do anything except for switching the reward in the plaza?” Lin Jue searched through his memories but was unable to find any other loopholes.

Song Hanzhang looked at him without speaking, but Lin Jue still felt as if his intelligence was being looked down upon by that glance.

Lin Jue tried his hardest to remember when something clicked in his mind. “Was it when we were fighting against the ants? Lin Wei, Qin Hanwen, and I were on the first line of defense, and Shentu Ming and Dan Liang were responsible for the second line while you took care of the ants that managed to cross the river. After Qin Hanwen made his mistake, Shentu MIng went to help him but Dan Liang didn’t cover up the hole in the second line which resulted in the defense collapsing, right?”

Song Hanzhang raised his eyebrows and retorted, “Then what about Shentu Ming? He also didn’t defend the backline. If Judas really is one of those two, then Shentu Ming is much more suspicious than Dan Liang.”

“But isn’t he your classmate? And he’s really nice,” Lin Jue defended.

“He is very nice, but he shouldn’t be this nice,” Song Hanzhang said, looking outside the window, his voice lowering.

A sudden coldness spread across Lin Jue’s chest.

“Go eat something and take a small break, we’ll go find Shentu after that. Dan Liang might not be with them; if we meet him alone, capture him, I have things I need to ask him.”

“Okay.”

***

Vera’s Notes:

Utterly exhausted. Been a terrible day, no less than three separate stomachaches, and I’m super tired while editing this. But hey, that’s what the second edit is for- my tired self fixing up my other tired self’s mistakes. I seriously considered waiting to publish this, but ultimately… well. I got through it.

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