As the shout echoed through the clearing, an uncountable tide of spiderlings poured from the forest, swarming over one another to reach the front. They were larger now than when Jin Shu had first encountered them. Either they grew at impossible speed—or they had been feeding on something, perhaps someone.

"Time for battle," Jin Shu muttered. "Bing Huo, with me."

He started climbing the sniper nest the treants had created for him, while Bing Huo leapt effortlessly to the top of the three-meter perch. By the time he pulled himself over the edge, she was already waiting.

From above, he caught his first true glimpse of the battlefield. The treants below lashed out, commanding the forest itself—roots and vines erupted from the earth, wrapping around the spiderlings, crushing and tearing them apart. But the creatures were not helpless. Their broken bodies ignited, bursting into explosive flames that burned through the roots restraining them. Each fiery detonation tore open a gap in the treants' assault, allowing more spiderlings to surge forward into the clearing.

The battle unfolded too quickly for Jin Shu to take it all in. Again the treants struck, impaling spiderlings from below with jagged roots. Again, their bodies exploded into searing bursts, sacrificing themselves to clear the way for those behind.

"Bing Huo!" Jin Shu shouted. "Cast a mist—it's the only way to weaken their flames!"

"On it," she replied, her voice calm amid the chaos.

Cold fire flared around her, freezing the air itself—and Jin Shu, standing beside her, felt the chill bite at his skin. Then her cold blue flame split into strange dual attributes: ordinary orange fire interwoven with crystalline ice, spinning together in a dance of heat and frost. From that union, a heavy mist spread outward, rolling over the battlefield.

The spiderlings' explosions lost their edge, their flames smothered and weakened by the frost-laden fog. It was the opening Tian Li and Li Xue's squad needed. Tian Li remained at the rear with her rifle, coordinating four other women in a barrage of long-range fire. To Jin Shu's surprise, Li Xue led the rest in a direct charge, blades flashing as they met the spider tide head-on.

What shocked him most was not her bravery, but the strip of cloth tied firmly around her eyes.

Jin Shu froze. What in the hell…?

Through his bond with the wind element, Jin Shu sensed currents twisting and curling around Li Xue. She was channeling her wind qi much like she had during the tournament—only now it was far more refined. No longer just a chaotic cyclone wrapped around her body, her qi spread carefully through the mist, mapping the battlefield like a second sight.

By blinding herself, she had found a way to overcome her fear of the spiders. She didn't need to see them directly. But that choice came at a cost—without vision, she couldn't call upon her Vector. She was forced to rely solely on the blade in her hands.

Jin Shu didn't have the luxury to focus on her alone. He needed to oversee the entire battle, to strike where his support mattered most. Drawing his sniper rifle from storage, he pushed qi into its frame, a shimmering scope blooming along the sight rail.

"Want to stay up here?" Jin Shu asked, adjusting his aim.

"I'll stay," she replied steadily. "For now."

"It's going to get loud," he warned.

Boom!

The rifle roared, flames spitting from the barrel as the first bullet tore into the swarm.

He felt Bing Hou flinch beside him at the rifle's roar. But a heartbeat later, icy spears rained down from their tower, stabbing into the swarms below—mirroring the treants' roots that still writhed and struck across the battlefield.

Even with the mist dampening the spiders' sacrificial flames, the treants faced new problems. The spiderlings began clawing and gnawing at their roots, their razor-sharp limbs shredding wood as easily as paper, mandibles crunching through everything they latched onto.

The open stretch between the treeline and the treants' barricade shrank as the tide advanced, a churning black mass inching forward no matter how many fell. Women armed with Jin Shu's makeshift grenades hurled them into the swarm, activating the runes. Each detonation tore apart clusters of spiderlings, spraying ichor and legs in every direction—but the horde only paused before more poured from the forest to replace them.

Seconds bled into minutes. Minutes stretched into half an hour. Jin Shu kept his rifle working, cutting down targets with precision fire, while the treants—forced to abandon their roots and vines—waded into the melee. Towering and armored in bark like knights clad in living plate, they fought as living bulwarks, shielding the women as they battled at their feet.

Even so, the price mounted. Jin Shu spotted blood on the women, their movements slowing as injuries piled up despite the support.

"Yi, Er!" he shouted from his perch.

The twins broke from their waiting post without hesitation, weaving through the chaos. Jin Shu sniped anything that dared approach them as they reached the wounded. Working in seamless unison, the two hauled their sisters back to safety, patching them up with practiced hands before shoving them back toward the fray.

After another hour of brutal, bloody combat, the tide finally seemed to wane. Only scattered groups of spiderlings remained, stragglers falling beneath treant roots, blades, and bullets. The battle felt nearly won.

Boom!

The ground convulsed as an explosion ripped through the clearing. It hadn't come from Jin Shu's rifle or the women's makeshift grenades. The shockwave blasted fighters off their feet and tore through the mist, scattering it into the night air.

Jin Shu's head snapped left, then right, scanning frantically. His eyes caught the smoking crater—and the mangled upper body of a treant slumped over its edge, lifeless.

"What—?!" he started, when another blast shook the battlefield.

This time he saw it. A grotesque spider, different from the rest. Its body was swollen and thick, far removed from the thin, translucent black of the others. It reminded him of the broodmother—except instead of birthing swarms, its death unleashed a devastating, all-consuming explosion.

And then the treeline erupted.

Dozens of the swollen spiders skittered out, joined by hundreds of other twisted shapes—new variants, each more unnatural than the last.

"Mutants?" one of the disciples gasped. "But how are there so many?"

Jin Shu's mind raced. Mutations weren't unheard of—demonic beasts sometimes transformed when their qi reacted with something they consumed, or when they absorbed ambient elemental forces. But never like this. Never so many, all at once, all different.

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"Aim for the swollen ones!" Jin Shu barked. "Don't let them near the frontlines!"

Bing Huo and the other ranged fighters unleashed a storm of elemental attacks, along with Jin Shu and Tian Li's bullets. Explosive spiders burst mid-charge, with their fall, their deathbursts tore holes in the advancing horde. But their sacrifice bought time for the others. A new breed emerged, their bodies shimmering with multicolored shells that emitted translucent, near impenetrable barriers.

Jin Shu's first shot cracked one, but it took half a dozen more attacks before the barrier shattered like glass, the spider collapsing dead along with it. By then, the creatures had already closed the distance, slamming into the defenders' front.

Click!

His rifle locked, the mechanism seizing with a dull snap as the runes within overheated. Jin Shu hissed and set it aside, knowing the weapon would need time to repair itself.

"Damn it!" he snarled, drawing his sidearm—the heavy Desert Eagle gleaming in his hand.

He emptied mag after mag into the advancing swarm, dropping spiders like flies. But for every one that fell, it seemed like a hundred more surged forward. Explosive spiders. Barrier spiders. And others with abilities Jin Shu couldn't even comprehend.

At the front, treants fell one after another, their massive bodies collapsing under the endless assault. With each loss, the women behind them took heavier wounds.

"Yi! Er!" Jin Shu shouted over the battlefield's cacophony, his voice nearly lost in the shrieks of beasts and the screams of the dying.

The twins staggered into motion, their own bodies battered and bleeding. Together they dragged a woman who had lost her leg from the field, staunching the bleeding as best they could. It was no battlefield cure, only a desperate prayer that she would survive long enough for a true healer.

Another scream cut through the chaos—another woman, her arm crushed in a spider's jaws. Jin Shu killed the beast with a precise shot, then called the twins again. They limped forward, weaving under treant legs, ducking behind bark-covered giants as they braved the storm-like massacre. Their breaths came ragged, their legs dragged across blood-soaked grass, but they never once stopped moving.

Jin Shu felt awe burn in his chest. At their determination. At all of them. The women. The treants. None broke rank, none fled, even as the odds loomed impossibly high. Guilt gnawed at him for fighting from his distant perch, but he knew his role mattered just as much—perhaps more.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw it.

A small spider scuttled into the twins' path. Small, unassuming—barely the size of a jug. Jin Shu snapped his sights onto it and squeezed the trigger.

Bang!

The bullet struck true—yet the spider blinked out of existence, reappearing yards away. Teleportation. Jin Shu adjusted, fired again. And again. Every shot missed as the creature slipped through space, its movements impossibly precise, as if it predicted his attacks.

It closed the distance.

Jin Shu cursed, frantically reloading as the spider leapt for Xiao Yi, limbs flailing like blades. Xiao Er shoved her sister aside, bracing herself to take the strike—

—but another body intercepted it first.

A one-armed woman.

The spider's razor limbs tore through her chest, blood erupting in a hot spray across the twins' horrified faces, painting their pale skin crimson.

Bang!

A .50 AE round smashed through the spider's body, blasting it off its victim, and bursting its small body—but too late.

The woman slumped in the twins' arms, her lifeblood spilling onto them in wet coughs.

"Yi… Er…" she rasped, lips trembling. "Live… for me, okay?"

She was unconscious before she could hear their reply, her life hanging by the thinnest thread.

The twins pushed themselves to the brink, dragging her toward safety. When they finally reached the rear lines, their bodies gave out, collapsing to the bloodied earth, too exhausted to rise again.

Jin Shu watched the twins' desperate struggle for only a moment before forcing himself back to the fight. They were safe—for now. But if the spiders broke through, it wouldn't just be them at risk. The children. Biyu, wherever she was. Everyone would be in danger. He wouldn't let that happen… not if he could help it.

He swapped back to his sniper rifle. The self-repair rune had finally finished its work, and he immediately resumed firing, dropping any spider that dared cross the treeline.

"Jin Shu!" Tian Li shouted from below his perch. "I'm out of ammo!"

He reached into his storage space, mind searching for more rounds, only to find nothing. His entire stockpile—his and hers—was gone.

"I'm out too!" he called back.

Grinding his teeth, he drew the Desert Eagle—only to realize the magazines for that were spent as well.

"Son of a—!"

"What is it?" Bing Huo asked, her tone calm despite the barrage of icy spears she unleashed.

But Jin Shu noticed her shoulders sagging, her movements slowing. Her composure hid it poorly—she was running dry, her qi reserves almost spent.

"I'm out of ammo," he said. "I can't fight anymore."

"That's fine," she replied, pointing below.

Confused, Jin Shu glanced down. The battlefield had fallen eerily quiet. The final spider—a teleporting one—collapsed beneath Li Xue's blade.

She ripped off her blindfold with blood-soaked hands, smearing crimson across her pale, sweat-slicked face. Her voice cracked as she shouted, "We did it!"

A scattered cheer rose from the survivors, thin but defiant. Even the surviving treants rumbled their voices in grim victory.

Of the three or four dozen treants that had joined the fight, nearly half lay dead, their splintered bodies strewn among the mangled corpses of demonic spiders. Miraculously—thanks to the treants' sacrifice—not a single Immortal Phoenix disciple had fallen, though most were wounded and two hovered close to death. Only those in the rear, with Jin Shu, had escaped unscathed.

Guilt twisted in his chest as he looked over the carnage. So many had bled, while he stood whole.

Then something caught his eye. A flicker of movement at the treeline.

He raised his scope, sweeping it across the darkened forest. Amid the broken trunks and scattered corpses, he spotted a shape—a human silhouette, half-shrouded in shadow. Even zoomed in, the figure was indistinct, but undeniably there.

"A human…?" he whispered.

"Hm?" Bing Huo grunted, slumping against the side of the nest. Her eyelids fluttered, heavy with exhaustion.

"I saw someone in the forest."

"An ally?" she asked weakly.

He shook his head, gaze still fixed through the scope.

"I don't know."