Chapter 33: Hunter Becomes Prey

Everything stopped, or everything began moving rather extremely slowly. This was my mind's eye going on full throttle. This is what Elder Yun said about my thinking abilities being increased several folds in crisis. It used to happen only rarely in our games of Go, but now, it happened in reality, when the sword of this godless cultivator who I had just saved was about to chop my head off. My mind went into overdrive and in the span of a frozen moment in time, I saw everything.

I saw his focused eyes, the hairs and pores on his face, and the ugly scrunch they made, the sweat and soot and dirt from being imprisoned by the spiders. The clothes he wore, their fabric, and even the sword, every nick, crack and dent I saw it all.

And then, my mind switched from external to internal works. How was I supposed to survive, the sword is far too close for me to dodge, and I would end up with either a severed head or a torn main artery, none of which were survivable outcomes.

Suddenly something came to me, a figment of hope, doable, yet carries risks that far outweigh the benefits. If it works, it will mean my survival, but failure… failure is not an option, it will mean my death, and the end of everything. I have just started cultivating, I cannot die, in some random cave, by some random person. I have to succeed. And I will succeed!

My meridians began pumping Poison Qi and swirling it, and with the aid of the newly unlocked Dantian, the Poison Qi I had stored inside was quickly used up, all to use one single spell, that I had far too great chance to fail and for it to backfire.

"Poison Escape!"

Two words and our situation immediately switched.

The man sliced through my head, yet his sword didn't meet meat resistance, it was as if his sword had gone through smoke, and so it did.

My real body, the physical one had appeared a few steps away from the smoke-made body that the cultivator decapitated.

Then the smoke body exploded like a deflating smoke balloon, and the smoke, liquid in sight more than gaseous, floated and began seeping and coursing through the ground until it touched the cultivator's leg. Not a moment later, the smoke sensed life, and then it all began wallowing and swooping against the cultivator. It looked like the smoke was trying an awkward dance with its prey, as the cultivator cried out, screamed, and howled, in pained agony that no one was going to save him from.

Yet, in his agonized death throws, he brought about the attention of every spider in the room, and that was not the worst of it. I was unable to move, my body was in a state that it refused to properly function. A side effect of using a spell I didn't fully understand the base of. As I should have had complete mastery of Poison Tiger Claw before trying the Poison Escape.

More spiders skittered towards me and the dead cultivator, yet the moment they noticed me, awkwardly sprawling on the round, two of the giant spiders grabbed at me and began spewing spider silk on me. It wasn't fun. If I'm caught, I'll die and there is no escape. They started by my legs, and torso, the moment they reach my head, I'm done for.

And before I could be fully submerged with the spider webs, I spat out the remains of poison qi that I had inside me. Shooting out a blast of poison smog that immediately caused the spiders to shudder and shake, dying from the Bone and Body Grinding Poison that I released.

The Queen sent out a loud high-pitched screech that caused all the approaching spiders to stop and walk back towards her. She called their retreat, quite smart and that's not good. Facing a smart enemy like this spider greatly reduces my chances of survival.

Thankfully I still had one arm available and wasn't covered in silk. I pulled my sword with great difficulty -Thankfully the effects of Poison Escape didn't last long- and nicked the silk, easily ripping it off of me. The spider queen was big, so big that she could fit in four elephants in her stomach. And her mandibles were so large that I could easily fit between them.

She bulldozed her way towards me while I was still struggling to regain full mobility. Yet she made sure to keep her distance, she opened her mouth and spat out a purple-colored substance at me.

Her aim wasn't perfect, so most of it missed me, but the sheer volume of the purple liquid she spat didn't even need aim. A bit of the substance splashed against a nearby stone and hit my clothes, melting a piece of the fabric immediately. While the stone that was the primary target had melted completely.

The spider queen was competing with me in poison? Right then.

I drew my sword and slid it across my arm, causing a spray of blood to shoot out and wet my sword. The spider was about to shoot another spray of acidic liquid while I threw my sword at the spide in a spinning motion.

A cultivator has good physical strength, even if I'm old, I could accurately throw a sword wherever I wanted, and my aim was one of the spider's eight eyes.

My sword immediately lodged itself into one of the spider's eyes and dug in deep. That wasn't the end. My blood, fully contaminated and submerged in my poisonous Qi had entered the spider's body, from the eye and close to her brain.

The poison acted up immediately, as the spider's legs began shuddering and shaking, unable to carry her own massive weight. The legs fell and rose to no visible rhythm as the spider screeched from the tormenting pain that came from the lodged sword in her eye.

The rest of the spiders didn't dare come to where the queen was screeching, unlike what a herd would do when one of their members is being attacked, the spiders escaped hoping to save themselves from whatever misfortune happened to their queen.

The queen kept screeching, unable to move in a straight line, and when she locked her eyes on me, she came at me with maddened rage.

"Shit," I cursed. I was unable to move and running away was not an option as I can't outpace this behemoth.

The spider lunged at me, only to fall a few feet short, wheezing as black blood spewed out from its mouth.

I balanced myself up, holding my bleeding arm with my other hand, "I'm sorry for this. But I had no choice, you came at me." I then raised my leg and stomped on the sword that had its handle protruding from the spider's head.

The stomp was forceful and the spider jerked one last time as the tip of the poisoned blade struck deep within its brains. Killing it instantly.

A green aura began materializing over the spider.

"Huh, I didn't use Poison Breath on the spider."

"Oh, so it's definitely the poison from my blood, it has the same effect as the Poison Breath."

The green aura consumed the spider as it empowered itself and left nothing from the spider Queen but its exoskeleton and a thick purple core that I ripped out and pocketed.

The energy coursed through me as I absorbed it, healing my wound and enabling me to regain my full mobility.

"This was rather fortunate," I said as I looked at the palace that was now empty of all spiders. "I guess it's time to explore you now."

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