Still hoarding supplies in the apocalypse? I'll just go on a killing spree and looting!

Lin You continued, "So if there are really a lot, then the only option is to use the ventilation vents."

Mu Xue became even more nervous and subconsciously moved closer to Lin You.

This reminded her of that giant meat radish in the supermarket, and the thought of it always made her feel uncomfortable.

"Is there any other way? Sister Lin, I can't rock climb..."

The two had already entered the tunnel. Lin You lowered her voice considerably, "If you're quick enough and there aren't any cars blocking the way, let the car out and drive straight through."

Mu Xue didn't dare to speak, she just nodded.

The two men, carrying torches, slowly walked into the tunnel, close to the inner wall.

The firelight stretched their shadows long and distorted, casting them onto the scratched cement wall.

The gravel underfoot crunched underfoot, each sound amplified in the empty tunnel, echoing back with a chilling resonance.

After walking about several dozen meters into the tunnel, Lin You suddenly stopped.

Mu Xue nearly bumped into her back and instinctively raised her shotgun.

Lin You didn't speak, but slowly raised the torch higher. The firelight reflected on the top of the tunnel, and Mu Xue looked up in the direction of her gaze.

Along the edge of the ventilation duct at the top of the tunnel, a large patch of grayish-white stuff was wriggling.

Not just one, but a dense mass of them huddled together, like an unfolded, breathing blanket.

It's a spider.

Mu Xue's face turned pale. She had been afraid of these little creatures with several legs since she was a child, and every time she saw them, she felt her hair stand on end.

But now, those little things have become bigger.

Each one is the size of a washbasin, with eight legs curled up on either side of its body, its abdomen swollen, and its surface covered with a layer of grayish-white down.

The downy hairs formed all sorts of patterns on its back, which looked eerie and abstract at first glance.

They huddled together for warmth, some with their legs draped over their companions' backs, twitching slightly.

The ones closest to the cave entrance seemed to sense the heat of the fire; their legs began to slowly stretch out, and their downy hairs stood on end.

Lin You lowered her voice, her lips almost touching Mu Xue's ear: "Don't make a sound. Slowly squat down."

The two people slowly squatted down in a recess in the tunnel wall, keeping the torches low so that the light only illuminated a small patch of ground at their feet.

Mu Xue's fingers were trembling as she gripped the riot gun, its muzzle pointed at the cave ceiling, but Lin You pressed down on her wrist and shook her head.

Firing now is like waking up all the spiders in the tunnel.

Lin You never expected that she would encounter the worst situation. Neither bats nor rats liked the smell of sulfur.

Of course, spiders don't like it either, but they do rely on vibrations to find their targets.

Unlike mice, which use their sense of smell, bats use echolocation.

Spiders rely on vibrations to hunt, making them even more difficult to deal with, and they are also masters at using traps to hunt.

Lin You stuck the torch into a crack in the rubble at her feet, then freed her right hand to draw her mantis knife.

She didn't stand up; she simply pointed the tip of her knife into the depths of the tunnel.

Mu Xue looked in the direction of the knife tip and saw several clumps of things wrapped in spider silk and shaped like cocoons on the ground some tens of meters away in the deeper part of the tunnel.

The surface of the cocoons was covered with a layer of grayish-white silk membrane. Some cocoons had been torn open and were empty inside, with various kinds of white bones scattered around them.

It looks exceptionally terrifying.

Further away, there were several larger cocoons, nearly a meter high, whose shapes and outlines vaguely revealed the torso of some kind of four-legged animal inside.

The cocoons were fixed to the tunnel walls by spider silk, suspended in mid-air, swaying gently in the firelight.

"What's inside those cocoons?" Mu Xue's voice was extremely low, her breath even softer than her breathing.

"Judging by their size, they should be dire beasts. There are other prey as well. They drag their prey into the tunnel and store it in spider silk. There are food storage areas for spider colonies nearby, and the fact that they can store so much food means that there are far more spiders than we thought."

Lin You raised the torch high, trying to shine it towards the top of the tunnel deeper inside. The light barely illuminated a few dozen meters ahead.

Deeper into the tunnel, the floor was covered with a layer of grayish-white spider silk. There were at least dozens of spiders there, larger than those in the ventilation ducts, with longer hairs on their backs that gleamed a dark green in the firelight.

Those are worker spiders guarding the food storage silos. They are responsible for guarding and repairing the webs and will not leave the silk on their own, but they will attack any creature that gets close to the food storage silos.

The firelight suddenly dimmed. It wasn't because the fuel had run out—something had blocked the light from above.

Lin You suddenly looked up and saw a spider hanging upside down from the edge of the ventilation duct, less than an arm's length away from her head.

Its eight legs, when spread out, are nearly a meter wide. The spinneret directly below its abdomen is slowly contracting, dripping out a small drop of viscous spider silk.

Its chelicerae were spread open, and the tips of its fangs reflected the dark red light of the torch.

Its several pairs of dark compound eyes were facing Lin You's torch.

Spiders have poor eyesight, but the heat of the firelight makes them mistake it for a living creature.

The spider retracts all eight of its legs simultaneously, raises its abdomen, and prepares to spin silk to wrap up its prey.

The spider silk approached the burning torch and was instantly melted, causing the torch to burn fiercely.

Lin You didn't give it another chance to spin silk. With a flick of her wrist, she slashed upwards with her mantis knife, the serrated edges cutting into the narrow stalk connecting the spider's head, thorax, and abdomen.

It was cut off with a single stroke.

The spider's abdomen fell to the ground, its legs were still twitching, and its head and thorax hung from the edge of the ventilation duct and swayed a few times before falling down and hitting the gravel ground.

"Run!" Lin You stomped on the still convulsing spider head and chest, grabbed Mu Xue and rushed into the depths of the tunnel.

The vibrations from the spider falling to the ground had already attracted the attention of the surrounding spiders.

Behind me, dozens of spiders simultaneously unfurled their curled legs and crawled down from the top of the hole, like a gray-white wall that was collapsing.

Their legs scraped against the cement wall with a dense, rustling sound, getting closer and closer.

Further away, the worker spiders on the silk mat began to stir. Several of the largest worker spiders stood up from the silk mat and turned their heads toward the direction Lin You and Mu Xue were running.

But they didn't leave; they just watched.

As Mu Xue ran, she looked back and saw that the tunnel floor behind her was covered with spiders.

They don't move in a straight line; instead, they flank from both sides of the walls and the top of the cave simultaneously. The spiders on the walls use their silk to swing over obstacles.

Spiders hanging upside down from the cave ceiling crawled rapidly, while spiders on the ground had short legs but moved at an extremely high frequency, like a group of gray shadows flying close to the ground.

The dense rustling sound grew closer and closer.

Getting closer!

Mu Xue pulled a flashbang from her waist, bit off the pin, and threw it forcefully behind her.

The flashbang exploded in mid-air in the tunnel, and the intense white light burst forth like a small sun in the confined space, illuminating the entire tunnel as if it were daytime.

The spiders emitted a sharp hiss, not from their mouths, but from the resonant sound of their chelicerae rubbing together violently under the extremely bright light.

After the white light faded, all the spiders in the front row curled up in place, their legs tucked into a ball, their mouthparts flailing wildly at the air.

Several of them fell directly off the wall and landed on the ground, their eight legs twitching and shaking wildly in the air, temporarily disoriented.

The stun effect of the flashbang only lasted a few seconds, and the spiders in the back row had already bypassed their stunned companions and continued their pursuit. Mu Xue pulled out another tear gas grenade, bit off the pin, and rolled behind her.

Tear gas exploded inside the tunnel, and white smoke quickly filled the tunnel, turning the entire tunnel into a smoke-filled area.