Chapter 4: The Cub’s Big Brother Arrives
In the various-sized caves of the desolate underground, chelicerae covered in black bristles crawled out from the cave entrances, revealing their true forms.
Each spider was three meters long, their bodies a dark brownish-black. Their backs and abdomens bore hourglass-shaped markings, and several pairs of ruby-like compound eyes shimmered.
The Latrodectus tredecimguttatus—commonly known as the Black Widow—was fierce, highly aggressive, and possessed venomous fangs.
One by one, the three-meter-long Black Widows squeezed out of the holes. The sight of them jostling against each other was enough to make anyone’s skin crawl. They seemed to have been startled, forced to flee their burrows.
The Ghost Vines followed closely behind, their tendrils stained with spider egg fluid. Within the slime, one could still see the severed limbs of unhatched spiderlings.
The female Black Widows were in their special incubation period, a time when their temperaments were exceptionally violent. The Ghost Vines had not only destroyed their nests but also brought with them an odor that drove the spiders into a frenzy. These females had lost their young and were subsequently evicted from their homes. Even the best-tempered creature would go mad under such circumstances, let alone a swarm of brooding Black Widows.
The Black Widows went completely berserk!
On the surface.
Several small starships bearing bounty hunter insignias followed a signal, skimming low over the ground. They kicked up the wild, desolate grass, sending withered yellow debris dancing through the sand and wind.
Suddenly, the unremarkable ground bulged into several large mounds. Black Widows the size of millstones burst out. Their spinnerets fired highly toxic silk that clung tightly to the starships, while their eight slender legs exerted simultaneous force.
The small starships, weighing at least a ton, were actually dragged down by several Black Widows to a distance favorable for the spiders. Their sharp forelegs easily punctured through the star-iron hulls of the sturdy vessels.
The accident came so suddenly that the people inside the ships had no time to react. The internal structures were severely damaged and began to self-destruct, resulting in instantaneous explosions in the air.
“Are these Black Widows insane?”
A bounty hunter witnessing this scene couldn’t help but curse.
“Look! Below us!”
Fear filled someone’s eyes, their pupils reflecting the dense swarm of Black Widow spiders emerging below.
“It’s a Black Widow tide! Why would they appear on a waste planet?!”
The bounty hunters on the ships cursed incessantly, trying to put distance between themselves and the spiders.
The Black Widows possessed incredible leaping ability. Even with the starships hovering twenty to thirty meters above the ground, the spiders could easily leap up and attack the flying vessels with a single bound.
The bounty hunters finally regained their senses and began to retaliate. Piercing lasers fired, blasting deep craters into the barren land.
A layer of pale pink mist seeped out from the soil, causing the spiders’ compound eyes to grow increasingly cloudy as they sprayed toxic webs at the ships in the sky. They were clever; using their webs for leverage, they leaped several times in a few breaths. Their sharp chelicerae easily pierced the hardened hulls, triggering a series of explosions.
About a hundred meters away from the battlefield, a pitch-black starship hung silently in mid-air. Its hull was etched with dark-gold patterns and shaped like a long spear or a sharp sword.
The man sitting in the primary seat of the command cabin wore an ink-blue combat uniform. He watched the situation outside the starship with a calm gaze. Looking further down, one could see several layers of gauze wrapped around his sturdy, powerful waist, and blood was still seeping through the bandages.
Being in a state of prolonged blood loss made his sharp, rugged face look exceptionally pale, yet it couldn’t hide the razor-sharp intensity of his eyes.
“Major General, the behavior of these Black Widows is abnormal. Furthermore, they are too close to the Young Master’s incubation room. Should we go out and clear them?”
Combining the information gathered by the starship, the adjutant consulted the young man in the commander’s chair.
Shen Zeyu raised his hand. “Wait a moment.”
The adjutant was puzzled. When they learned that bounty hunters had taken a contract to find the Young Master’s location, Major General Shen Zeyu, the eldest son of the Shen family, had come straight from the battlefield to Waste Planet X-00176 without even changing his uniform.
Why was it that now they had reached their destination and the Young Master was in danger, the Major General wasn’t in a hurry? After all, the Shen family had no history of internal strife between siblings. At most, if a younger brother was disobedient, he’d get a beating.
As countless thoughts swirled in the adjutant’s mind, another tremor came from the ground.
One green vine after another burst from the earth, indiscriminately strangling both the starships and the frenzied Black Widows. Giant Ghost Vines, resembling massive serpents, rose from the underground. The dancing tendrils stabbed toward the ships in the sky, causing a chain reaction of explosions.
The adjutant gasped. “How did these Ghost Vines become so violent?!”
“There, the reason is right there.”
Shen Zeyu’s gaze locked onto the pink mist spreading across the ground, gesturing for the adjutant to look.
“That color…” The adjutant’s expression shifted. “An inducer?”
Almost in the next instant, the adjutant looked toward Shen Zeyu. “Major General, are you alright? Do you need a suppressor?”
Shen Zeyu pressed his fingers against his temples. Bloodshot veins filled his pupils, and a phantom beast tail flickered behind him, lashing through the air with a series of sonic booms that made everyone in the command center’s scalp tingle.
“I’m fine.”
“Wasn’t the use of inducer drugs banned? Why are they still circulating in the market? Are those councilors in the White Tower just eating for free?”
The adjutant fired off three questions in a row, his face as dark as the bottom of a pot. He looked at the bulging veins on Shen Zeyu’s temples and felt his eyelids twitch. The Major General had just come off the battlefield; he had only downed a bottle of suppressor and hadn’t had a single moment to rest. His emotions were still in a state of high excitement.
Now, stimulated by an inducer specifically targeted at beastmen, the adjutant was deeply worried about his commander’s state. One must know that once an S-grade beastman went berserk, not only would their own lives be in peril, but even this entire planet could be punched through.
The adjutant was calculating the probability of successfully bringing the Young Master back safely this time.
With the development of the Interstellar era, the genes of various species had gradually undergone transformation and awakening—the closer to the primal bloodline, the better. The evolution of interstellar species was similar to the beasts following the law of the jungle: survival of the fittest. Especially as the struggle for interstellar resources grew more intense, war breaking out anytime and anywhere had become commonplace.
The destructive power of an ordinary beastman was already significant, but among them was a group of S-grade or higher “Fierce Beasts.” Their awakened bloodlines were closer to primal atavism; they were literally walking humanoid battleships.
For instance, Marshal Shen had single-handedly repelled the Zerg army that had occupied half of the Federation’s territory. He had even killed the Zerg Broodmother, which had devoured all life and resources of a medium-sized planet in less than three days, and retreated without losing a single limb. He had saved the crumbling Federation and become the undisputed God of War in everyone’s hearts.
This proved that the higher the grade of the beastman, the more formidable their strength. However, Fierce Beasts had a fatal flaw: when their bloodlines rioted, the pain they endured was ten or a hundred times higher than that of ordinary beastmen. The more times their beast blood was strengthened, the more beast markings would continuously stack on their bodies.
Eventually, beastmen with over-strengthened bloodlines would no longer be able to live a normal life like ordinary beastmen; they could only vent their energy on the battlefield. Dying in battle might at least earn them a “Medal of Honor.” If they were lucky enough to survive, they would eventually turn completely into beasts, losing the ability to think. These Fierce Beasts who lost their humanity could only die in agony amidst slaughter and madness.
Although Marshal Shen had dealt with the Broodmother, he was severely injured as a result. His beastification was complete, and even healers could not cure him. He had been forced to issue a final ultimatum: Marshal Shen only had three months left to live.
The Federation Council—members of the White Tower—were fighting so fiercely they almost knocked each other’s brains out. All they wanted was to annex the power of Marshal Shen’s Ninth Legion and ensure their own candidate took the Marshal’s position. Actually, all of that was nothing; what was truly heart-chilling was that even though Marshal Shen had fought his life out for the Federation and reached an incurable state of beastification, those people couldn’t wait to kick him out and force him to make room.
Thinking about the subtle targeting and suppression of the Shen family’s legion, as well as the fact that the Major General had almost lost his life on the border while suppressing a rebellion due to false information—not to mention the leak from the Shen estate regarding the hiding place of the Young Master’s incubation room—the adjutant’s teeth itched with hatred.
The reason Marshal Shen had hidden the Young Master was precisely because the internal undercurrents of the Federation were growing increasingly violent. Specifically, the people under the First, Second, and Third Elders of the White Tower, and the high-ranking clans standing behind those members, feared that Marshal Shen’s power was too great and that he stood too high. They also feared his affinity with the commoners. Having tasted the supreme power, they were terrified that Marshal Shen would strike them into the dust.
Especially since the Shen family had four of them!
Anyone who awakened a pure Fierce Beast bloodline would invariably possess powerful abilities comparable to a humanoid weapon. In the entire Federation, it was hard to find a single beastman with an S-grade Fierce Beast bloodline out of ten thousand people, yet the Shen family had four. Now that another Shen bloodline had emerged, it was no wonder those people in the Federation were going mad.
As the adjutant was lost in thought, his gaze fell on his commander, who was grabbing a fist-sized energy stone to absorb its power. A thick layer of dust had already gathered on the ground; he was practically using energy stones as suppressors.
Shen Zeyu’s face showed no extra emotion, but the adjutant, who knew him well, could vaguely see a hint of restrained madness through that expression. The adjutant grew even more worried. Looking at the battle on the bounty hunters’ side, his eyes filled with pity.
If the power of bloodline beastification accumulated in the body without ever being vented, an S-grade Fierce Beast going crazy would probably… punch through the planet, right?
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