Spider Web of Grief (3)
Monster Mountain—the nameless mountain, at least until Baek Sang-ah gave it a name—had once been peaceful.
Spiritual veins had rooted themselves deep within it, so spiritual energy was abundant, and with no human gaze to disturb it, everything flowed according to its own natural law.
Beasts grazed on grass. Others hunted their fellow creatures to fill their bellies.
Death was simply part of that law, part of the cycle, no different from the order that ruled Monster Mountain itself.
“Shaaa.”
And so it was with the spiders, too.
They spread their webs between the branches and ate the tiny insects that were trapped there.
The spiders gathered together, filling their stomachs side by side, and sometimes they even played with one another by using their webs.
Baek Sang-ah drifted into those fragments of memory and slowly followed after the spider.
It was an odd sensation.
She had no body—only a mind sliding through the forest as though it were floating.
The thick scent of moss, the unfamiliar fragrance of wild grass, and the touch of tiny legs brushing against blades of green all reached her at once.
Muyeonja and the teddy bear don’t feel like this.
A small black spider was climbing carefully along a branch.
It held a thread many times longer than its body between its fangs, joining two branches with meticulous care, as though it were weaving cloth.
There were other spiders nearby.
They were small, young spiders that had not yet shed their transparent shells.
They laughed, flicking their threads, rocking back and forth like swings, playing among the clear strands.
They’re playing.
Unlike the spider yokai Baek Sang-ah had once seen, this spider held no trace of sorrow.
Only warm, peaceful feelings lived within it, flowing outward as intent.
And that only made it more difficult to understand why the spider yokai she had seen had howled so miserably.
Because she couldn’t understand, she wanted to know even more.
Let’s look at another memory.
The spider’s memories began to flow faster.
Before long, its form changed. Its body, once no bigger than the joints of a little finger, grew larger.
Spiritual energy could be felt within it, and in that span the spider yokai had become a true beast spirit.
Its torso grew plumper, and its legs became longer and more supple.
Its threads were spun with greater strength and elasticity than before, and the dew caught on them lingered longer.
And yet, even then, there was no trace of the ominous demonic energy that would later cling to it.
“Shaaaaa!”
Just as Baek Sang-ah was staring for a long while at the spider no bigger than a palm, birds suddenly burst into alarmed cries and took flight.
Somewhere deep in the forest, the ground shook, and the animals, startled by something they had seen, began fleeing toward the inner mountain.
Baek Sang-ah glanced once more at the spider beast spirit, then moved toward the source of the commotion.
From there, everything grew hazy.
That sight wasn’t contained in the spider’s memory, so it made sense.
But what Baek Sang-ah was sensing now was not only the spider yokai’s memory—it was the memory held by this land’s spiritual veins.
When her instinctively black inner core drew in the yellow-brown spiritual energy of the veins, the world before her eyes sharpened again.
This is…?
At the foot of the mountain, near the entrance, she saw a human.
He wore clothes stained with dirt and dust, but his face was clean enough.
Judging by the tiny inner core within him, he was probably only at the early stage of the Foundation Establishment Realm.
“Hah, I came all this way because I thought it might be true, but I never expected to find so many beast spirits here.”
The man curved his lips and strode up the mountain path without restraint.
He killed the deer beast spirit and the fox beast spirit he met along the way without mercy, absorbing the spiritual energy they held.
He trampled insects, caught and killed birds, and set trees ablaze.
Before long, peaceful Monster Mountain was filled with the shrieks of beasts.
Startled, the spiders hurriedly tried to hide themselves as well.
“Rejoice. It will become fertilizer for my cultivation, so isn’t this good for you as well?”
And then it happened.
“Krrr-wooo!”
A giant tiger appeared before the man.
The tiger’s proud black stripes and orange fur shimmered with spiritual energy as they swayed.
Its eyes glinted in the darkness with a blue light no ordinary tiger should have possessed.
“Oh? So you’re the master of this mountain? Hah, hah. You do have quite a lot of spiritual energy. I can capture you alive and refine you after all!”
The cultivator laughed and drew out a magical artifact.
Flames danced from his fingertips, and a defensive barrier spread around his body.
Then the tiger and the cultivator clashed.
As expected, the upper hand belonged to the Foundation Establishment cultivator.
That’s Rangi.
Baek Sang-ah understood that the tiger facing the cultivator was none other than Rangi.
The cultivator was definitely stronger, but Rangi knew Monster Mountain’s terrain by heart.
Cultivators trained for enlightenment rather than strength, while beasts trained for strength rather than enlightenment.
That was the difference between human cultivators and beast spirits, and the reason the Foundation Establishment cultivator could not kill Rangi.
Rangi used the landscape—brush, trees, every obstruction—up to its limits, but her whole body was scorched by fire, her skin burned raw, and all her fur went up in flames.
Still, just before her consciousness went out, she managed to bite down on the Foundation Establishment cultivator’s neck and survive.
Rangi won.
Even after defeating the cultivator, Rangi struggled not to close her eyes. If a predator showed weakness, another hunter would kill her.
Rangi collapsed.
But this was not something willpower alone could solve, and in the end, Rangi fell.
Then something astonishing happened.
One by one, the beasts that had been hiding from the cultivator began to gather around her, approaching Rangi with caution.
They must have thought she had collapsed while protecting them, because they licked her wounds or brought medicinal herbs to try to heal her.
Ordinarily, none of that would have done Rangi any good—but perhaps because their hearts were so earnest, heaven responded on their behalf.
As the beasts placed their paws on Rangi’s body, the spiritual energy they carried was absorbed into her, and little by little, she began to heal.
“Krrr-woof?”
“S-she woke up!”
“The Mountain Lord has awakened!”
Of course, the beasts did not actually speak. They made sounds more like “hee-hin!” or “moooo.”
For some reason, Baek Sang-ah could understand those cries, and so they sounded to her like human speech.
“Mountain Lord! You’re the hero of our mountain!”
“We always thought you were trying to eat us, but we never knew you’d protect us.”
“Mountain Lord!”
The beasts expressed their gratitude to the Mountain Lord, who had protected their only home.
The spider beast spirit was there as well.
So cool. So noble. How can she be that strong? And her heart is warm, too. I want to be like that.
Hidden among the branches, the spider beast spirit looked at Rangi and felt admiration.
After that, Rangi continued to guard Monster Mountain.
She didn’t kill the old man who came to dig up herbs, but she did chase him back to the village.
She killed the cultivator who had wandered in by accident, and she drove off the humans who came with hostile intent.
Perhaps thanks to that, people’s feet no longer touched Monster Mountain from some point onward.
It’s all because the Mountain Lord protected us. As long as the Mountain Lord is here, we’re safe.
If Rangi remained, Monster Mountain would surely be peaceful forever.
That was how it should have been.
“Then are you saying that Elder Daoist truly died here?”
“I happened to cross the sea and came looking for a faint trace of Elder Daoist’s energy on this mountain.”
“Hmm. We should take a closer look. There seem to be a strangely large number of beast spirits here as well.”
One day, men appeared on Monster Mountain wearing the same clothes as the Foundation Establishment cultivator Rangi had killed first.
They briefly read the spiritual veins buried beneath the ground, then smiled as if they had felt something.
“No, to think there would be a spiritual vein of this caliber in a place like this. We came to learn how Elder Daoist died, but isn’t this practically a windfall?”
“We should be careful. I heard cultivators live on the mountain right next to this one, so we ought to handle things as quietly as possible.”
“Rest assured. I obtained a magical artifact to conceal our aura with my permission from the sect master. Unless they’re at least Golden Core cultivators, they won’t know we’re here.”
With the appearance of those cultivators, the mountain fell into chaos once more.
The birds that saw them first flapped their wings and searched for the Mountain Lord with their “chirp-chirp” cries.
But the Mountain Lord was nowhere to be found.
No matter how loudly they cried, she never appeared.
Then a bird that had flown in from outside told the animals gathered in groups:
“The Mountain Lord left this place with a cultivator over ten years ago.”
“The Mountain Lord left?”
“Why did she leave?”
“What are we supposed to do now?”
“Did the Mountain Lord… abandon us?”
Baek Sang-ah flinched, her shoulders twitching.
But Rangi left with me.
She knew that the Mountain Lord the animals were searching for had left this place to cultivate alongside her.
Still, I need to keep watching. If it was because of me, then I need to know even more.
After some hesitation, Baek Sang-ah moved deeper into the memory.
This time, the cultivators who arrived were clever.
They didn’t do anything dramatic like setting the forest on fire or damaging it.
They simply used earth techniques to split the ground open and prepare to draw spiritual energy directly from the veins flowing beneath it.
They were wary of the Ungyu Sect cultivators on the mountain beside them.
Of course, that did not mean they spared the animals.
To a cultivator, the spiritual energy contained in beast spirits was something that could help with cultivation, and they had no intention of giving that up.
They killed every beast they encountered and absorbed their spiritual energy without hesitation.
The beasts did not sit still.
If the Mountain Lord was gone, then they had to defend the mountain themselves.
The bear beast spirit, the boar beast spirit, the fox beast spirit, and many others fought against the cultivators, but in the end they all became corpses.
One by one, as her friends died, the spider beast spirit could no longer remain still.
In a gathering of animals, she said, “I-I’ll stop those monsters, just like the Mountain Lord did.”
The response she received was cold.
“You? How? You’re too small. Your webs will tear in no time, and even if you bite them, you’ll just end up hurting yourself. You can’t do anything.”
“B-but I can’t just stand by and watch my friends die.”
“I told you already. You’re not helpful. You’ll only get in the way. So just run away quietly.”
In the end, there was nothing the spider beast spirit could do.
I don’t have impressive claws like the Mountain Lord, or sharp teeth. I’m not even fast, and all I can use are my webs. I’m not the Mountain Lord.
Day after day, she could only hang from a branch and watch her animal friends die at the hands of the cultivators.
They died.
They died, and then they died again.
They were all slaughtered without even the chance to resist.
The spider no longer laughed. She no longer played by flicking her threads. She merely crouched on the tree and closed her eyes against the wind.
No, if this goes on, everyone will die.
Then, one day, the spider could not bear it any longer and emerged.
The moment the cultivators were resting their eyes, she descended on her web toward them.
Of course, she was no match for them.
She clung to a cultivator’s shoulder, was plucked away by hand, and hurled to the ground.
And then—
After tumbling across the earth, the spider fell into a pit. One of the cultivators shouted, “No, that’s a path where we left the spiritual vein open!”
“What idiot did this? Get out of here now!”
Just as Baek Sang-ah was about to chase after the spider that had fallen into the pit, she felt the hairs at the tip of her tail standing on end.
The end of the memory was near, and a chill crept over her as though her skin itself were freezing.
And then—thud.
Her consciousness was kicked out to the outside.
“I knooowoooooo….”
Suddenly, silence fell.
When Baek Sang-ah came to her senses, the upper half of the spider yokai’s body was right in front of her.
“I-I’m not strooong enooough to be like the Mooountain Looorrrrd….”
The spider yokai slowly lifted her head.
Her eyes were still trembling in that bluish darkness.
Over the spider’s unfamiliar, sharp face, the mask-like shape of a human woman seemed to be layered on top of it.
It was an eerie sight.
“I-I couldn’t protecct themmmm….”
A single tear droplet fell from the corner of the spider yokai’s closed eyes.
The transparent bead slid slowly down her jawline.
“Because of meeeeee….”
The spider yokai’s voice trembled.
Her tangled intent rippled like waves, and the tears rolled down the spider’s cheeks, soaking the damp ground.
“I killed themmmmmm.”
It was a real tear.
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