Chapter 842: Chapter 842: Damn These Crazy Cultists

"Where are the rest?" Yuan Ming could not contain his curiosity and asked.

Noah turned his head in his direction before looking around. "We might not have any competition for now."

He paused and fixed his eyes in a certain direction, "but... we are not alone."

From the same direction, a small shadow seemed to crawl up from the edge of the platform as if it defied gravity.

"An Enemy?" Yuan Ming was instantly alerted. He raised his sword sharply, ready to attack.

Under the glow of flame torches, the appearance of their enemy finally became clear.

Clank!

Its sharp limbs struck the stone platform as it moved. Eight legs moving so smoothly that it appeared as if the creature were floating.

Sixteen eyes of different sizes but similar shapes, all staring at them. Just looking at the creature made Yuan Ming shiver.

"A... spider?" his voice quivered a little.

The moment the word left his lips, the platform erupted.

From cracks in the stone, from shadows pooling in the corners, from openings Yuan Ming hadn’t even noticed—spiders began to emerge. Dozens.

Then hundreds.

They poured like a living tide, their pale bodies catching the torchlight in a sickly white glow, each one marked with patterns of crimson that looked disturbingly like fresh blood.

Bodies white as rice, marked with bloody patterns, in such numbers looked like a long piece of beautiful cloth.

"Incoming!"

Noah did not even need to warn Yuan Ming, as the boy had already moved before he did.

Sword flashed, the blade connecting with the nearest spider in a spray of luminescent fluid. The creature crumpled, but three more had already taken its place.

He slashed again, his movements becoming more frantic.

’They just keep coming.’ Yuan Ming started to panic for the first time. If things went on like this, he would eventually be overwhelmed by the numbers and be devoured by the spiders alive.

The most ridiculous part about the spiders was that they were growing in size as they were growing in numbers.

Some spiders were no larger than his fist. Others were as broad as his torso, their eight legs skittering across the stone in perfect synchronization.

The smaller ones moved in swarms, their needle-sharp legs clicking and clacking against the platform in an endless, maddening rhythm.

The larger ones were slower, so they were left behind, but the energy they radiated from the distance was no joke.

"This is bad. "There are too many," Yuan Ming breathed, his eyes wide. He turned to Noah, sword still raised but his movements becoming defensive rather than offensive.

"This trial... it’s not meant to be won, is it? We have to escape somehow." With their energies sealed and them only having access to the power gathered by just the energy gathered by the Nine-Slaughter Blood Meridian Technique.

But no matter how much of a genius one was, there was no way they could defeat all the spiders with merely a year’s worth of cultivation.

"Judging from their speed, we can still escape." Noah nodded, thinking along the same lines. "But there is another problem."

Yuan Ming understood what Noah meant once he looked around. There were just too many escape routes.

The countless caves around them, each one of them, were an escape route. Each one looked identical. Each one could lead to safety or straight into a trap. "We can’t just—"

"Wait." Noah suddenly paused, his eyes narrowed as he studied their surroundings. The spiders continued their relentless advance, but the two of them were also moving with enough speed to maintain their distance from the spiders. "I think I found something."

Without explaining anything further, Noah picked what seemed like a random path and charged right in that direction.

"That’s..." Yuan Ming hesitated for a second but followed along nonetheless. ’It is a dead end.’

Since there was no bridge in that direction leading to the cave opening, it meant they had to Jump.

Through it all, Yuan Ming did not doubt Noah once and followed his lead without question.

He had no doubt that the man would not lead him to a situation of danger, and even if there was any danger, the two of them could handle it with their powers unsealed.

"This trial isn’t just about survival," Noah said quietly, even as he ducked under the leg of a massive spider and ran forward without looking back. "It’s not even about the escape. It’s about the decision itself."

When he reached the edge of the platform, he crouched and put the weight of his body into his legs by crouching down.

"The real trial is making a choice. Making it quickly. Making it correctly even when there is no time to even think if you can make it out alive or not."

Saying this, he jumped up like a spring. Just with his sheer body strength, he easily crossed twenty feet of height and landed on the edge of a path and turned to face Yuan Ming, who had just reached the edge of the platform. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

"Jump!"

One word from him and Yuan Ming lunged upwards with nothing but strength and faith. But unlike Noah, he did not have an easier time landing.

Just as he was about to fall back down, Noah grabbed onto his collar, which was closest to him, and pulled the boy up.

"Phew..." Yuan Ming plumped down on the floor, gasping for breath. His chest moved up and down, still trembling from the experience he just went through.

Noah looked down at the spiders, which should have stopped on the edge of the platform, and realized that they did not seem to have any intentions of stopping.

Some of the spiders fell down into the darkness of the abyss below the platform, but the others climbed on the backs of one another and started to build a bridge just so they could reach Noah and Yuan Ming.

"Oh heavens. These cultists and their creatures, everyone is crazy!" Yuan Ming yelped in shock and despair as he watched the spiders closing in on them.