Blood trickled down Xiaoshu's forehead. He dropped the branch and his pack, wiped the water from his face with the back of his hand, and rolled his eyes. "I think I've been disfigured. A spider just crawled onto my face and spat venom—it burned like fire."

I gripped his shoulders, turning him into the firelight for a closer look. His left cheek was a mess of torn flesh, a piece of muscle sunken inward from top to bottom, like a savage scar carved across his face. I gave him a thumbs-up, praising him admiringly. "That's cool. You look weathered by experience already. Countless girls will fall head over heels for you in those ridiculously baggy trousers of yours!"

"Hmph," Xiaoshu scoffed, shoving me aside before walking straight to the lake's edge. He washed all his wounds with the water from the Sea of the Undead.

Just then, the spiders scattered with a rustling sound, leaving behind a ground littered with corpses, signaling the failure of their assault.

I hoisted the pack onto my back and rinsed the slick raincoat in the lake. That coat had just saved Xiaoshu from the spider horde, so I spread it out to dry, hanging it over my backpack.

"Let's hurry up and go. We burned one spider, and a whole swarm came for revenge. Now we've wiped out another group—we've really dug ourselves into a deep hole," Xiaoshu said, rising from the lake.

After all that commotion, dawn was just breaking. A sliver of rosy morning light peeked over the eastern horizon. Xiaoshu and I linked arms, truly brothers in misery, and walked east into the nascent light.

"I've learned a lesson: you can't just go around making enemies when you're out in the wild; sometimes, you just have to endure. Like yesterday, if I had patiently shooed that spider away and then come back for you, perhaps we wouldn't have fought this massive battle against the spiders tonight," I lamented with a hint of self-reproach.

Xiaoshu disagreed entirely. "I don't see it that way. If you hadn't burned that spider to death, what if it had returned and trapped you in a cocoon too? We might not have clawed our way back with half our lives intact."

"Alright, I admit you have a point. Sometimes, constant yielding only gives the other side an opportunity to press their advantage and bully you further. Today’s situation, at least, showed the spiders our strength; they'll feel a twinge of fear when they see us now." I conceded.

Xiaoshu shook his head, disagreeing with my conclusion again. He pointed toward the crimson Sea of the Undead and remarked with wry humor, "It's not fear they feel; it's the fear inspired by a borrowed tiger’s might. They aren't afraid of us; they’re terrified of this bizarre pool of blood. The Chuan Chang Gu inside your gut loves this water, yet those spiders treat it like an insurmountable threat. Just a drop or two makes them stiffen up as if petrified."

Hearing this, a curiosity sparked in me. They are both living things, yet this substance saves lives on one hand and kills on the other. Why would this pool of bloody water be the spiders' bane? I couldn't fathom it. I patted my stomach, rousing the Chuan Chang Gu to ask the Hunchbacked Granny for an explanation. During the battle with the spiders, the Gu had been remarkably well-behaved, staying dormant in my abdomen and causing no trouble—they likely understood the principle of shared vulnerability.

After a long moment, the Hunchbacked Granny's voice finally echoed back: "Stop overthinking it. Finding the Ghost Infant is what matters. Everything else is superfluous."

Those last few words, "superfluous," echoed in my mind, and a growing sense of mistrust solidified in my heart. This old hag clearly knew nothing about the Sea of the Undead. Her only purpose in stuffing my belly with Chuan Chang Gu must be to monitor my condition and, should she wish, remotely torture me until I'm writhing in agony. Everything she said about mutual benefit was a lie. I suspected that once we found the Ghost Infant, she would use my body as leverage to force us to bring it back to Reflection Villa, fulfilling some scheme of her own."

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