Simultaneous traversal: All Abyss difficulty.

Chapter 763 The Path to Nascent Soul
As soon as you step into the entrance to the Crimson Forbidden Land, darkness descends upon you, instantly swallowing up all the noise and light from the outside world.

Fang Yu felt as if he had been stuffed into a giant ink bottle. It was pitch black all around, and even the outline of the rock wall that was right next to him was blurred. All that was left was the cold, damp air of the miasma, which carried a rotten, sweet smell and was sticking to his face.

"Tsk, this awful place is even darker than the storage room where we used to play hide-and-seek in the summer when we were kids. But that place was much nicer for getting close to older girls who were six years older than me."

Fang Yu muttered something to himself, instinctively annoyed by this environment that completely deprived him of his sight.

Without the slightest hesitation, he swiftly formed hand seals, his chest suddenly bulging.

"Art fire escape ho fireball!"

"call--!"

A massive, blazing fireball, several meters in diameter, suddenly burst forth from his mouth!

The orange-red flames, carrying scorching heat, burst open like a sun exploding out of nowhere, instantly tearing through the thick darkness and illuminating the surroundings. Light and shadow danced wildly on the jagged rocks.

The firelight revealed an enormous and astonishing underground cavern.

The dome soars high like an endless night sky, and the cave walls are rough, covered with traces of the erosion of time.

However, what is most chilling is that, as far as the eye can see, the rock face is covered with countless holes of all sizes, like a giant ant nest that has been hollowed out.

The deep, winding paths stretched into the unknown darkness like a maze, and the cold wind howled through these openings, whistling like ghosts, as if countless giant mouths were waiting to devour people.

Those "colleagues" had already each chosen a spot to crawl into a hole; in their view, those who ran slowly wouldn't get anything to eat.

Fang Yu squinted, his gaze slowly sweeping over the seemingly bottomless forks in the road, a rare seriousness creeping into his expression.

"Ha, it really is a 'popular tourist attraction' that our predecessors racked their brains to find." He could imagine that over the centuries, those passages marked as "safe" or valuable had probably been combed through countless times by countless batches of cultivators like combs. Even if there were any remnants, they would probably be scraps or old pits buried very deep.

Picking up scraps? Picking up the bits and pieces that leaked out from under someone's fingernails?

Fang Yu curled his lip, showing absolutely no interest in this kind of "group tour".

His inherent unconventional spirit instantly took over.

His gaze was no longer limited to the obvious cave entrances in front of him, but instead sharply swept upwards towards the more concealed rock face.

Soon, dozens of meters above his head, an inconspicuous fold in the rock wall caught his attention.

There, a few wisps of fine dust were being blown upwards by a weak but continuous airflow.

"A new opportunity?" Fang Yu's eyes lit up. "After all these years, the places that have been exploited are probably all gone. If we want to do something big, we have to—start a new business!"

Once the thought was made up, his body rose lightly upwards, as if lifted by an invisible hand, and hovered steadily in front of the gap from which the airflow was surging.

The crevice was extremely narrow, only a finger's width wide, and bottomless. The rock walls were pitch black, exuding a cold and hard texture.

Fang Yu stretched out his finger and gently tapped the hard rock next to him, making a dull "tap-tap" sound.

"Hmm, hard enough, thick enough, fresh enough that no one's been here before." He nodded in satisfaction, as if he had discovered a treasure. "This is it!"

The next moment, he opened his arms, palms facing the hard rock wall. Purple light flowed in his Samsara Eyes, and an overwhelming and terrifying repulsive force began to condense wildly in his palms. The surrounding air was distorted and trembled because of this force.

"How many flights of stairs do you have to carry a bag of rice up?"

"Shinra Tenzheng!"

“Rumble——!!!”

The accumulated power, like a galaxy bursting its banks, erupted with a deafening roar!
There was no earth-shattering explosion, but there was a dull, deafening sound as if space was being instantly squeezed out and torn apart!

The rock wall, as hard as iron, crumbled instantly before this pure, absolutely repulsive force of law, like a brittle biscuit struck by an invisible giant hammer!

Countless pebbles were swept up by the violent repulsive force and shot into the depths of the cave like cannonballs, filling the air with smoke and dust!

On the spot, a huge gap, several meters in diameter and with strangely smooth edges, suddenly appeared!
It was pitch black inside, and a stronger wind, carrying the scent of dust and earth, howled out from the opening.

Fang Yu was highly skilled and daring. Without even glancing at the bottomless new passage, he moved with the agility of a fish and plunged directly into the dark opening that had just been forcibly created.

Upon entering, the space suddenly tightened.

This is not a pre-carved path at all, but a naturally squeezed crevice deep within the rock strata.

The passage was winding and extremely narrow. At its widest point, it was only wide enough for one person to barely squeeze through sideways. In many other places, one had to curl up or even crawl like a lizard to get through.

The rock walls were slippery and cold, with sharp edges that were uncomfortable to look at. Every now and then, protruding boulders would get stuck in the middle of the passage, forming a narrow "bottleneck".

This scene is very similar to the death caves that those reckless explorers abroad challenge. Once you go deep in, it is difficult to even turn around. If you are not careful, you may get stuck in some corner with no way back and become a skeleton.

However, Fang Yu showed no fear on his face; instead, he exuded a pioneering excitement.

He felt the obstruction of the rocks ahead and grinned.

"Shinra Tensei!" "Boom!"

With another muffled roar, the huge rock blocking the passage ahead instantly turned into powder, and the space in front was forcibly widened once again.

"This hole looks like intestines!" he muttered to himself, when the force of the repulsive force tore through another blocking rock, and suddenly the view opened up!
An indescribable stench, a mixture of putrid sweetness and a strong, fishy smell, rushed towards us like a viscous wave!

The smell made Fang Yu's stomach churn; it was a hundred times stronger than the miasma he had encountered at the entrance.

He frowned, looking towards the source of the stench, and his brow furrowed even more!
Before me lay an enormous underground cavern, its high ceiling disappearing into the darkness at the far end of my sight.

In this vast space, the most shocking sight is the dense, layered cocoons that almost cover the entire dome and the huge rock walls on both sides!

These cocoons varied in size, some as small as millstones and others as large as houses. They were not pure white silkworm cocoons, but rather made of a viscous, grayish-black substance that seemed to be a mixture of congealed blood and filthy spider silk. Their surfaces were covered with a nauseating dark green slime, reflecting a wet, greasy, and ominous sheen in the remaining light of Fang Yuhao's fireball.

"What the hell?" A warning screamed in Fang Yu's mind.

He steadied himself, his Rinnegan glowing with purple light, his sharp gaze piercing through the thin light in the cave, carefully scanning the giant cocoons hanging there.

This sight made him frown even more!

The surface of many cocoons is not completely sealed.

Some cocoons were torn open, and what was revealed in those openings were human limbs!
"Hiss!" Fang Yu gasped, a chill instantly running down his spine.

"Hanging up cultivators like dried meat to air-dry?"

His eyes turned cold, and killing intent began to gather.

He immediately thought of the ancient strange insect that Li Huayuan had mentioned, and several dangerous guesses flashed through his mind.

Shashasha. Shashashasha.
In the instant his thoughts raced!
A series of extremely dense sounds, like countless withered leaves being swept up by a gale, or like millions of tiny feet simultaneously rubbing against rocks, came without warning from the depths of the cave, from all directions, and from the darkness above!

The sound was faint at first, but it instantly transformed into a deafening roar of "black waves" that filled the entire cave!

Fang Yu suddenly looked in the direction of the sound!

At the bottom of the cave, the dark area that was originally shrouded in shadow was now surging violently, like boiling ink!
Those aren't ocean waves!
That's a sea of ​​insects!

Spider Sea!
Countless fist-sized spiders, jet black with glossy carapaces and shimmering with eerie green compound eyes!
They were like a tide surging from hell, densely packed, layer upon layer, trampling, rolling, and climbing on each other. Their sheer number filled almost the entire bottom of the cave as far as the eye could see, and they were "flooding" towards the cave entrance where he was at a terrifying speed!

The sound waves they create as they move are what make that "black wave" so terrifying!
The ground they swarmed over was quickly covered with a thick, black "carpet," which was the slime they secreted and the traces of their crawling.

Its compound eyes gleamed with a greedy and insane light, and its densely packed mouthparts opened and closed, making a teeth-grinding "click" sound, as if it could already smell the scent of fresh flesh and blood!

"Holy crap! Are you trying to play a live-action Starship Troopers game with me here?!"

Fang Yu's eyelids twitched violently as he looked at the scene before him, which was a thousand times more terrifying than a zombie apocalypse!
"Want to eat me? Fine! Let's see if you bunch of bastards have the toughest teeth today!" He began forming hand seals, aiming at the most densely packed vanguard area of ​​the insect swarm. "My flames are still more dazzling!"

"Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique!" he shouted, channeling chakra into his mouth and exhaling sharply! The terrifying fireball shot out, accurately striking the core of the surging swarm of insects!
boom!
Boom——! ! !
A deafening series of explosions erupted instantly amidst the swarm of insects!

Blinding flames, accompanied by violent shockwaves and flying spider limbs, instantly cleared a large area!

The flames ignited the spider's secretions and the hanging cocoon silk, instantly turning the cave into a sea of ​​fire, with a pungent, burnt stench filling the air!

However, these casualties were nothing but a drop in the ocean compared to the vast swarm of insects!
The spiders, fearless of death, continued to surge forward, stepping over the charred corpses of their companions, their numbers seemingly endless!

Some of the mutants, which were significantly larger and had shells that shimmered with a metallic sheen, charged ahead, braving the flames and impacts!

"Tsk, not bad! Alright, warm-up over!" Fang Yu sneered, his hands quickly forming hand seals, lightning flashing in his Rinnegan!

"One hundred thousand volts!"

Zila——! ! !
The raging blue lightning bolts exploded in all directions from Fang Yu's center!
Countless leaping bolts of lightning lashed down on the spiders that kept charging forward! The spiders struck by the lightning instantly charred and exploded, filling the air with the pungent smell of burning protein.

The 100,000 volts repelled the swarming insects that had rushed forward, temporarily clearing a scorched vacuum zone in front of Fang Yu.

Just then, Laozi's voice boomed in Fang Yu's ears.

"Kid, take care of that big spider and get its venom sac; it'll be very useful."

Fang Yu was puzzled, "What counts as big, and what counts as small? There are all sorts of things here..." Suddenly he paused, realizing what Lao Jun meant.

Right at the edge of the cave entrance lay a very inconspicuous black hill!
It's inconspicuous because it's so dark and so big!
At first glance, you would never guess that this thing was actually a giant spider the size of a truck!
Seeing that Fang Yu had not moved for a long time, Lao Jun urged, "After you have dealt with a hundred of these spiders and taken their venom sacs, I can teach you how to make a celestial medicine that will allow you to skip the Core Formation stage and become a Nascent Soul!"

Fang Yu swallowed hard. "Laojun, I'm naturally afraid of spiders, even if they're elixirs."

Lao Jun interrupted Fang Yu, the cowardly lizard, "Once you reach the Nascent Soul stage, you will be very difficult to kill. In other words, even if Thanos snapped his fingers, you could be reborn by having your Nascent Soul Yang Spirit unsheathed, either by refining it or by finding a new body!"

Fang Yu's eyes lit up. "What else is there to say? You know, the thing I'm least afraid of in my life is spiders! 6000 Million Volt Thunder Dragon!"

(End of this chapter)