After the immortal disappeared

More than two months later, in the southern forest of Rongshan Mountain.

A bat flew down from the sky and landed on Dong Rui's shoulder. He listened carefully and became energetic: "The town is five miles ahead, only five miles left!"

The snow has melted and the ground is often damp.

But they couldn't ride the snail toad because Dong Rui performed two more operations on the snail toad, and the latter then went into a state of sleep. It didn't move or consume anything, and didn't even need to eat prunella vulgaris. Dong Rui hid it in his backpack. .

Previously, snail toads carried people on their backs, but now people carry snail toads on their backs.

Dong Rui himself was tired and wanted to find a place to hide and take a nap.

He looked at He Lingchuan and Aunt Zhu, like two tireless monsters.

Especially Aunt Zhu, she has become extremely energetic since she separated from her sisters and got a child. No matter how harsh the mountain environment is, it is always happy.

In Aunt Zhu's own words, it has slept enough in the past three thousand years and should get out more.

It adapts well to its new body.

Zhu Erniang fills the body with flesh and blood and then gives it to it, which is equivalent to letting it take over a soulless and blank body. The difficulty is almost zero, except for the possibility of losing a little memory.

According to the observation of the soul-capturing mirror, the recent two arrivals of the Emperor's Ooze have made the spiritual energy of heaven and earth more active again, which is exactly conducive to Aunt Zhu's control of this body.

However, it is now the second player on Lingxu City’s most wanted list. In order not to cause trouble, Aunt Zhu made some changes to her appearance. First, she put away her iconic abdominal star map and changed it into red and black. It has a special color for poisonous spiders, and its body is also square in shape with spikes on the edges. It has shrunk by two sizes overall.

This didn't look like a burrowing spider at all. He Lingchuan gave it a thumbs up: "It looks like a big crab."

The crab also has eight claws, a square shell, and serrated edges...

And crab paste.

Dong Rui yawned again: "Aren't you curious at all, Aunt Zhu, about where this kid has been in the past two months?"

"No."

"..." After spending a lot of time together, he could easily tell the difference between the Spider Queen sisters.

Aunt Zhu is very upright and doesn't like many twists and turns, but Erniang Zhu has a brain and can think like a human being.

Dong Rui rubbed the mud off the soles of his shoes on the tree trunk, and suddenly pointed to the sky: "Tianluo star has been out for a long time, you know that, right?"

"uh-huh."

"I don't know when it started, but it dimmed and never lit up again."

He Lingchuan stroked his chin: "When you say that, it's true."

Dong Rui turned around and glared at him fiercely: "Is it related to the things you snatched from the Tiangong Zhaixing Tower?"

He looked up at the stars recently and realized that Tianluo Star was missing!

Is Tianluo Star important? Of course!

If there were no Tianluo Star in the sky, there would be no He Lingchuan’s Xushan plan at all!

"Yes, of course." He Lingchuan smiled, "This is a top secret. Anyone who knows is in extreme danger. It is more dangerous than escaping from the Heavenly Palace. Do you want to hear it?"

Dong Rui sneered: "Isn't our current situation dangerous?"

Seeing He Lingchuan opening his mouth to speak, he said first, "Forget it, later."

He wasn't mentally prepared yet.

After walking two miles, the forest was dense and the evening wind was howling.

They found the road again, and it was repaired by hand, and the ground was quite smooth.

"Hurry up!" Dong Rui urged, but He Lingchuan and Aunt Zhu slowed down and looked left and right.

"What's wrong?"

"It's too quiet in the forest." Even in winter, when tired birds return to the forest in the evening, it will be noisy. There was no sound at all.

Not to mention that Aunt Zhu’s eight claw tips have extraordinary touch. Even if there are voles burrowing or walking under the snow, they can’t hide it.

But now it says: "I can't sense any life. Look at these trees again."

Tree?

Dong Rui raised his head and observed carefully.

Trees in autumn and winter have basically lost all their leaves, leaving only bare branches and dead branches, still covered with thick snow, and they cannot be as lush as in spring and summer.

But Dong Rui still found a round hole in the tree, with a diameter about as thick as his little finger.

What caused it, someone driving nails into a tree?

After paying close attention, he discovered that there were at least seventeen or eight round holes in the tree.

This tree has it, that tree has it... Dong Rui checked more than a dozen trees in a row. No matter how big or small, they were all full of round holes!

Aunt Zhu suddenly said: "This is caused by the mouthparts."

He Lingchuan struck the tree with his palm.

The big tree they were hugging broke into two pieces with a snap, the sound was too clear.

There was a big piece of wood above, and it fell down with a bang.

Just like that, it didn't scare the birds.

It was still eerily quiet in the woods.

"Look." He Lingchuan pointed to the cross section of the tree, "It's completely dead inside."

Dong Rui leaned over and took a look. The cross section he snapped was gray-black with countless radiating cracks.

From the inside out, the tree has no moisture or activity at all.

He Lingchuan randomly interrupted a few more trees. This was the case regardless of the species, thick or thin.

Dong Rui's bat demon also found a dead hare in the rock crevice.

Not rotten, but shriveled.

"Being sucked dry." When Dong Rui said this, he looked at Aunt Zhu, "Is this the same kind as you?"

He has studied burrowing spiders and seen how spider queens eat humans. It is true that they first inject venom, then pierce the bottom with their mouth extensions, sucking out the dissolved essence of flesh and blood.

He also pointed out: "Look, there are spider webs there."

Deep in the dense forest, white silk threads floated in thin strands in the wind. He Lingchuan stretched out his knife to stir up a few pieces of white silk and observed carefully. He found that it had high viscosity and good toughness.

"Nonsense." Aunt Zhu doesn't want to take the blame, not even her peers.

He Lingchuan also said: "This is not a spider web."

Zhu Erniang's spider silk has many uses, and he knows every type. This kind of white silk looks a bit like spider silk at first glance, but in fact its strength and weaving method are completely different from those of burrowing spiders.

Dong Rui yawned: "Standing here, I can't draw any conclusions."

The two of them temporarily suppressed their doubts and continued to move towards the town.

Soon, patches of farmland appeared. But the fields were covered with white wire mesh.

They ignored it and moved on.

Finally, the town arrived.

The small town in the forest was extremely quiet, with no sound of people or lights.

Dong Rui sighed.

Dinfeng had been sleeping rough for two months, and he still thought that he would be able to eat hot meals when he got to town, take a nice hot bath, and live a life that a human being should have.

As a result, all these little wishes came to nothing.

Dozens of houses in the town were eerily quiet. Some had their doors wide open and creaked loudly due to the north wind.

He Lingchuan looked at the street: "Look at the footprints on the ground, no one has moved around for at least half a day."

It started to rain last night, and there was some mud on the ground, but there were no new footprints.

The permanent population of this town is at least three to five hundred, right? No one is out and about?