As the last wisp of evil energy was drained from its body, the fallen giant spider completely lost all movement, resembling a golden statue.
Yu Qing reached into his collar and pulled out the pendant, but could not see any abnormality in it.
He wanted to know what this thing actually was, why it was inside Yun Xi’s body, and why the vast amount of evil energy within Yun Xi seemed unaffected by this bead.
After thinking for a while, he could not find an answer. This place was not somewhere to linger, and to avoid any unforeseen changes, he had to leave before those giant spiders returned.
He flashed back to the side of the golden coffin, but it seemed God was playing a joke on him. Just as he was about to shoulder the golden coffin again, another anomaly appeared.
In front of the cliff face, a continuous rustling sound rang out. He turned his head to look and saw gravel falling like rain.
He looked up at the top of the cliff and saw a streak of golden flash. Although he could not see it clearly, it was obvious that the group of spiders had returned, and the continuously falling gravel proved that the giant spiders were descending.
The situation seemed unfavourable to him, but he still breathed a slight sigh of relief. The fact that those giant spiders returned so quickly at least indicated that they had failed to entangle with Wu Hei and the others, proving that these giant spiders could not catch up to them.
Looking back, he knew it was impossible to carry the golden coffin back to the opposite bank where he had come from. Therefore, he shouldered the coffin and headed in one direction, hoping to bypass these already alerted giant spiders.
However, before he could go far, he saw the giant spiders coming down to check the abyss again, descending rapidly while hanging upside down.
Several of them landed one after another with a buzzing thud right in front of him, locking their sights on him.
Several more descended on his left, right, and behind him, including directly above his own head.
Even more heart stopping was the end of the path ahead, where it seemed some massive creature was approaching, causing the ground to rumble and tremble.
Yu Qing quickly put down the golden coffin. With his previous experience, he took the initiative, dodging the giant spider’s frontal pounce and bite, landing on its back, and once again thrusting his sword upside down into the weak spot of the giant spider’s hind neck shell.
There was no other way. These creatures were too large, and if he stabbed directly into their backs, it was questionable whether he could even pierce through.
As evil energy erupted again, the giant spider let out a terrified hissing sound. Yu Qing, having drawn his sword, soared like a flying dragon, dragging a trail of cloud like evil energy. He leapt up again, dodged another spider’s pounce, landed smoothly on its back, and thrust his sword upside down into its hind neck once more.
Strike and flash away. Leaving the frenzied creature behind, he pounced on the blind spot of another giant spider’s defence, its back!
After engaging in close quarters combat, Yu Qing could truly appreciate that the real deadly move of these giant spiders was not their seemingly terrifying and powerful bodies, but rather their spider silk. Not just any animal could be as agile as a cultivator. Once entangled by that silk, one would have almost no power to resist in front of these spiders.
One after another, after stabbing over a dozen of them, the other surrounding spiders seemed to be frightened. They retreated one after another, or even crawled back onto the cliff face, causing their kind to retreat like a receding tide in a panic effect.
The dozen or so stabbed spiders were also fleeing in terror. The ones stabbed first had already fallen dead, while the others could either no longer crawl or had already climbed onto the cliff face. The spiders that were still moving had trails of extracted evil energy connecting them to Yu Qing.
Yu Qing, standing on the ground, looked as if he had grown over a dozen tentacles on his body.
He could no longer care about the other spiders and stared at the rumbling massive creature approaching. It was a mountain sized behemoth, a golden spider as large as a mountain. It had broken through layers of spider webs along the way, but now it suddenly stopped, staring at Yu Qing from a distance.
Facing it with a sword in one hand, Yu Qing was deeply alarmed. According to Wu Hei, to what stage must such a huge spider have advanced? After fighting the spiders, he understood what size meant. The larger the size, the more powerful the attack. How could he possibly handle the one before him?
Let alone Wu Hei and the others, he suspected that even someone with High Xuan realm cultivation might not be able to block a direct strike from this behemoth.
Yu Qing subconsciously looked at the sword in his hand. Even if the behemoth before him allowed him to attack the weak spot on its hind neck, the length of his sword would definitely not be enough to pierce through. The only place he could probably breach was its eyes. However, unlike the back, the eyes were protected by the defensive capability of its appendages. A frontal attack would be very dangerous. If he were swept by one of those appendages, with his current level of cultivation, there would be basically no chance of survival.
The giant spiders connected to him by evil energy, whether fleeing or climbing on the rock walls, crashed to the ground one after another, losing all movement.
The dozen or so cloud like trails of evil energy also gradually converged and vanished into his chest.
The mountain like behemoth seemed to notice this scene. It began to slowly back away, and after retreating some distance, it suddenly turned around like a gust of wind. Then, it ran away quickly with a thunderous rumble, causing the ground to tremble for quite a while.
Soon, the abyss fell silent.
It ran away? It took Yu Qing a good while to come to his senses. He looked around, swept his gaze over the fallen giant spiders, and picked up the pendant to examine it again, still agonising in his mind over what this thing actually was.
What made him even more surprised and suspicious was the reason why this bead continuously absorbed evil energy, and whether continuing like this would trigger some kind of reaction.
He stuffed the pendant back inside his clothes, looked at the quiet surroundings once more, found the golden coffin again, hoisted it onto one shoulder with one hand, dashed quickly to the cliff face, and then climbed up rapidly like a streak of smoke.
This time, he did not encounter any interference from the golden spiders.
The moment he jumped onto the cliff top carrying the golden coffin, he suddenly saw a group of familiar faces.
He froze upon landing. Who else could it be but Wu Hei and the others? Yu Qing truly had not expected these people to actually go and then return.
The group looked at him, and then occasionally craned their necks to peer into the abyss, all wearing expressions of uncertainty and suspicion.
“Old Fifteen, you bastard, hurry up and tell them to let us go!”
Nan Zhu, whose stiff body could not move, cursed loudly there, his face flushed with anger and humiliation.
He had been unable to speak earlier, so apparently someone had shown great mercy.
Mu Aotie also shouted, “Let us go.”
Yu Qing nodded to the people controlling them, and Ning Chaoyi and Zhu Kuanzhen immediately released the restraints on the two men.
Having regained his freedom, Nan Zhu moved his body around, circled Yu Qing, and seeing that he was fine, breathed a sigh of relief. He immediately asked Wu Hei and the others, “What have you been sticking your heads down there looking at for so long?” He could not help but go over and look down himself, but he could not see anything as it was too deep.
Nie Pinlan said, “We are looking at a giant spider, a spider as big as a mountain. You can see it clearly even from up here.”
Little Hei, who was holding his father’s hand and looking down, immediately turned around and stretched his arms out wide, gesturing towards Nan Zhu, “Big! Very, very big, bigger than you!”
Wu Hei immediately reached out and covered his son’s mouth.
“Ah? Where, where?” Fat Nan immediately acted like a curious child, his eyes quickly scanning the abyss. “Why can’t I see it?”
Even Mu Aotie could not resist craning his neck to look around down below.
Nie Pinlan said, “It ran away. When it was rumbling earlier, right when you asked what that thing was, it had already run away, heading towards that end of the abyss.” She pointed in a direction.
Ning Chaoyi calmed himself down and said to Yu Qing, “It is good that you are fine. We had no choice but to run back. We should not have unblocked this fat man’s mute acupoint. Then his mouth went on and on, making endless noise that was enough to drive one to death, insisting that we come back to have a look. And this big guy’s words hit like hammers, one sentence after another. We were truly so annoyed by the two of them that we had to come back to check. We originally wanted to go down and have a peek, but we saw that mountainous spider, and it literally scared us so much that we did not dare to go down.”
Wu Hei also turned his head and asked, “That big guy did not attack you?”
Yu Qing was vague, “I also thought it was going to attack me, but for some unknown reason, it suddenly ran away.”
Wu Hei thought for a moment, then immediately said to the crowd, “There is something fishy about this. In a place like this, once you discover something fishy, it is better to avoid it as soon as possible.” He turned around and pointed towards the cloud mass that had already drifted far away under the setting sun. “We have delayed a bit, and the Immortal Palace has already drifted far away. Do you see that high mountain in the distance? If we get there in time, we might have a chance to enter the Immortal Palace tonight.”
Nan Zhu was suspicious, “How do we get in?”
Yu Qing observed, then suddenly turned his head to look back and forth, saying thoughtfully, “Judging from its drifting route all the way, the Immortal Palace seems to be drifting towards that high mountain. Does the master mean that when the Immortal Palace approaches that mountain, we will have a chance to fly over from the mountain?”
Wu Hei said, “I only said ‘might’.”
Although it was only a ‘might’, the thought of having a chance to enter the legendary Immortal Palace made everyone somewhat excited. They did not delay any further and hurried on their way.
High up in the sky, a bald eagle carrying Granny Rat and a subordinate of the Iron Faced Man pierced through the ethereal clouds and mist, revealing a massive golden mountain. A group of small peaks of varying heights surrounded a towering highest peak.
On the body of the highest peak, two mountain sized characters were vertically carved, which were exactly the words “Jin Xu”.
It was very obvious that the reason this immortal cave abode was named Jin Xu came from the name of this Immortal Palace.
Although they had heard about it before, seeing it with their own eyes was a different feeling. Upon seeing it for the first time, Granny Rat and the cloaked man were both shocked. This was a glittering golden mountain with a base area that could reach a thousand mu. The momentum the creator had endowed upon its shape was astonishing, giving people an extremely strong visual impact.
Especially under the shining of the sunlight, it formed a golden arc of light enveloping it, giving people an extremely magnificent and sacred feeling, allowing one to imagine the ethereal sounds of immortal music drifting in their minds.
Directly opposite the two characters “Jin Xu”, there was an entrance gate to the Immortal Palace, resembling a city gate. The gate was open, yet the Iron Faced Man and his group were standing outside.
The bald eagle arrived, and Granny Rat and the cloaked man flew down, landing beside the Iron Faced Man. They were the last two to be picked up.
The bald eagle transformed in mid air, reverting to the appearance of Gao Yuan as it landed.
Granny Rat looked around at the numerous golden pavilions and towers half embedded within the mountain body, exclaiming in amazement, “I truly cannot imagine that such a massive mountain can float in the air. The power of immortals is indeed beyond our imagination!”
Those who had arrived a step earlier could understand her shocked state of mind.
The Iron Faced Man said, “I do not know what the situation is inside, but it is a pity that we cannot find an entrance to get in. Never mind, that fellow will have to come up sooner or later. Rather than running along down there, we might as well come here first and wait. When the time comes, we can see how they get in, and we should be able to figure out some clues.”
Granny Rat nodded, “What the master says is exactly right.”
The Iron Faced Man suddenly waved his hand to signal his subordinates, pointing at four people. “You four go over there and combine your efforts to cast a spell, and see if you can break through the defence of this main gate.”
The four of them could not help but look at each other, with obvious hesitation in their eyes. Those with High Xuan cultivation were not making a move, yet they were asking the four of them to act. This…