In the Enchantress Queen's palace, the Lightning Shadow King held his head high with defiant pride, looking as though he'd sooner die than submit.
Yang Kai gave him a casual glance and waved his hand. "Scram. I have no interest in killing you."
The Shadow King stared at him in surprise, clearly not expecting Yang Kai to let him go.
All these years, the reason he'd hidden his identity and lived as a beggar was fear that the powerhouses of Zhongdu would come after him. Now that he'd fallen into Yang Kai's hands, he still had a chance at survival?
"Did you not hear me? Scram," Yang Kai snapped.
The Shadow King gritted his teeth, veins bulging on his forehead. Once upon a time he had been the great and noble Shadow King—to endure humiliation and survive on scraps was one thing, but now this young man was barking orders at him without a shred of respect. It made his blood boil.
He looked as though he was about to fight Yang Kai to the death.
In the end, he forced himself to hold back and spoke in a cold voice: "Before Shan Qingluo left, she visited the Spider Mother's Nest. It seems she discovered something there. If you're looking for her, there may be some clues."
With that, the Shadow King vanished like a bolt of lightning.
"The Spider Mother's Nest…" Yang Kai murmured to himself. He remembered the place clearly. Back then, a seventh-rank demon beast—the Spider Mother—had lived there, one capable of communicating with humans through divine sense.
She had been the only seventh-rank demon beast in the entire world.
Shan Qingluo's Black Widow constitution originated from her, and the love poison sealed within her body had been neutralized by the Spider Mother's inner core.
"Young Master Yang…" Yunli called softly. "Are you going to find Her Majesty?"
"I'll go take a look. She may not still be there. No—she's almost certainly long gone."
"Then please be careful on your journey, Young Master Yang." Yunli, Ruoyu, and Ruoqing bowed their heads slightly, making no effort to keep him.
Yang Kai looked at them and suddenly asked, "Your mistress is no longer here. Why are you still staying?"
Yunli smiled, a trace of melancholy in her eyes. "Where else could we go? At least here we have shelter. If we went somewhere else, with our appearance and no real strength, you know very well what would happen to us, Young Master Yang."
The two young girls and the older woman were all quite pretty. None of them had any real cultivation. Without this place's protection, they would simply become playthings for men.
"Come with me. Will you go?" The idea had just struck Yang Kai.
Yunli's eyes lit up. She glanced at Ruoyu and Ruoqing, and the three nodded together. "Of course! If Young Master Yang ever reunites with Her Majesty, we'll be able to serve her once more."
"Then pack your things. I'll be back soon. Oh, ask the others in the palace if they want to leave too—I remember there were two more handmaidens?" Yang Kai instructed, and Yunli quickly agreed.
Half an hour later—the Spider Mother's Nest.
Yang Kai hovered in the air, gazing down at the enormous spider statue below.
He had never given much thought before to how such a massive spider statue had come to be. After more than a decade, returning here now, it suddenly felt… off.
In the past, this place had been crawling with giant spiders, and the Spider Mother herself had made her lair here. But they were demon beasts—there was no way they could have constructed a statue of this magnitude.
Moreover, the statue radiated an aura of primordial antiquity. It was clearly tens of thousands of years old at the very least.
Now, the Spider Mother's Nest was utterly lifeless. After the Spider Mother's death, the giant spiders that once inhabited the place had vanished without a trace. When Yang Kai arrived, he saw not a single living creature.
He descended, landing before the statue, and entered through the gaping maw of the giant spider.
Inside, there was a vast chamber. Sticky spider silk coated every surface, and a thick layer of dust blanketed the ground—clearly no one had set foot here in years.
Yang Kai scanned his surroundings. Suddenly, his expression froze, and his gaze locked onto something in the distance: an altar-like structure covered in crisscrossing grooves that formed a strange, arcane diagram. Within the grooves, something dark lay congealed.
At a single glance, Yang Kai recognized it—dried blood.
The altar was small, large enough to hold only two or three people. Yang Kai focused his perception and could clearly make out two distinct pairs of footprints on its surface. Because they had stepped through blood, the marks had been permanently seared into the stone.
Were these the footprints of Shan Qingluo and Biluo?
He couldn't be certain. But from the altar, he sensed the faint lingering presence of the void—barely perceptible, yet impossible to miss with his awareness.
The altar was damaged. A web of cracks ran across its surface. Yang Kai reached out to touch it, but it couldn't even withstand that small force and crumbled to dust before his eyes.
He stared at the ruins, emotions churning within him.
A strange formation diagram on the altar. The residual aura of void energy. It wasn't hard to deduce what had happened here: a Space-Time Tunnel had once opened at this spot.
If those two bloodstained footprints truly belonged to Shan Qingluo and Biluo, then they had passed through the Space-Time Tunnel and left this world.
Where had they gone?
When he had last parted with that bewitching woman, her cultivation had been only at the first stage of the Transcendent Realm! Such strength meant nothing on the Tongxuan Continent.
Yang Kai searched for a while longer but found no further clues. He had no choice but to leave the enormous spider statue and press his palm against the void.