Rebirth as a Demonic Cultivator: Starting with a Zombie Planet

Chapter 35: Holy Shit, a Sword Immortal?

Led by Tang Jinchuan, the three men slipped into the abandoned bus depot.

The compound was no different from the rest of the ruined city. Mutated weeds choked the cracked concrete, their unnatural growth fueled by ambient psionic energy, tearing through the solid ground.

The depot was a graveyard of rusting metal and dead silence. Not a single Zombie roamed the lot. It felt less like a sanctuary and more like a colossal web, patiently waiting for oblivious prey to wander in.

Tang Jinchuan instinctively felt a cold knot of unease tighten in his gut.

“Fuck!” a man behind him yelped.

Tang Jinchuan spun around. The scavenger had just ground a palm-sized spider into a viscous paste beneath his heavy boot.

“Jesus, that thing dropped right in front of my face,” the man gasped, his chest heaving.

“A little bug got you shaking?” one of the others sneered. “What’re you gonna do when a high-tier Zombie shows up? Piss yourself?”

The man’s face flushed crimson.

“Shut your mouths,” Tang Jinchuan hissed, his voice like cracking a whip. “What did I say before we crossed the gates? Did you forget?”

Silence instantly fell over the trio.

Tang pointed to three battered buses parked in the central lot. “One bus each. Sweep them for parts. I’m taking the warehouse.”

The vehicles had been rotting in the elements; the odds of an engine turning over were abysmal. But in the apocalypse, you didn’t leave stones unturned. What if one of them still had a working block?

The three men nodded, splitting up to inspect the rusted hulks. Tang Jinchuan drew his weapon and headed straight for the warehouse. There had to be spare buses or parts inside.

He had barely taken ten steps toward the warehouse’s rusted roll-up doors when a blood-curdling scream shattered the quiet.

Tang’s heart hammered against his ribs. He whipped around, sprinting back toward the lot. The other two scavengers abandoned their searches and converged on the sound.

“Help… help me…”

The screaming man staggered out of the first bus. Clinging to his neck was a blood-red spider the size of a tire hub. Eight thumb-sized eyes twitched erratically. Its serrated fangs were buried deep in the man’s jugular.

The victim’s face was already swelling, turning a sickly, bruised purple as venom pumped directly into his bloodstream.

The two scavengers froze, the blood draining from their faces. They had never seen a monster like this.

But Tang Jinchuan was a veteran. He drew the combat knife at his waist and slashed his own stomach. Instead of blood and viscera, thick yellow fat spilled out, instantly hardening under his command into a four-foot javelin.

With a guttural roar, Tang hurled the spear.

*Whoosh!*

The projectile tore through the air. The arachnid, entirely focused on liquefying its prey, never saw it coming. The hardened fat punched clean through its thorax. The bloated carcass plummeted to the concrete.

The bitten man collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut. His comrades rushed to catch him, but his eyes were already glassy and vacant. A wet, bubbling gasp escaped his lips.

Tang Jinchuan looked down, his expression hardening. “Spiders hunt by injecting digestive enzymes to liquefy their prey’s insides,” he said quietly. “He’s already hollowed out. End it. Spare him the agony.”

Faces pale with grief and terror, the two men drew their blades and put their companion out of his misery.

Tang knelt and carved open the dead spider’s abdomen, searching for a Psionic Core. Nothing.

His stomach dropped. It didn’t even rank as a Level One mutant, yet it had effortlessly dropped a strong, grown man. If there were higher-tier spiders lurking in this depot, they were all going to die here.

“Brother Tang,” one of the surviving men said, his voice trembling but resolute. “That bus can barely turn over, but it’s missing an alternator. We need to scavenge the others to see if we can cobble one together. I have the toolkit.”

Tang nodded. “I’ll find the parts. You two stay put. Stand in the open. Do not go near the buses or the shadows.”

“Understood.”

Tang approached the second bus, his senses dialed to the absolute maximum. The moment he stepped aboard, a dark mass lunged from the gloom at the back of the aisle, aiming straight for his throat.

Tang reacted on pure instinct, ripping a cracked plastic seat from its bolts and throwing it up like a shield.

*Clang!*

The fangs struck the hard plastic with the force of a sledgehammer. Denied its kill, the spider let out an ear-piercing, rhythmic shriek.

*Squeak! Squeak! Squeak!*

Almost instantly, a chorus of chittering screeches echoed back from every dark corner of the depot.

Tang’s face drained of color. He thrust his fat-spear forward, impaling the creature against the roof of the bus, then bolted out the doors.

“Run! Run for your lives!” he roared, abandoning all pretense of stealth.

He never imagined this depot was a goddamn spider nest! If he had known, he wouldn’t have come within a mile of this hellhole.

The two scavengers didn’t need to be told twice. They sprinted toward the exit, abandoning their mission, their tools, and their pride. Survival was the only metric that mattered now.

A tidal wave of arachnids poured from the shadows. Thousands of palm-sized spiders carpeted the concrete, mixed with hundreds of the blood-red, tire-sized variants. Glancing over his shoulder, Tang spotted two monstrous spiders the size of office desks hauling themselves over the rusted buses. Their bristling setae, venom-dripping fangs, and clusters of soulless compound eyes were pure nightmare fuel.

Suddenly, a massive shadow blotted out the sun above the main gate.

*Boom!*

A colossal mass slammed into the exit, kicking up a blinding cloud of dust and pulverized concrete. As the dust settled, Tang stared in horror. The gate was completely sealed by a thick, impenetrable wall of webbing.

He traced the anchor lines back. Over a dozen strands of spider silk, each as thick as a man’s thigh, stretched all the way back to the dark maw of the warehouse.

Tang didn’t hesitate. He burned through his fat reserves, manifesting a heavy throwing spear and hurling it at the barricade.

*Clang!*

The impact rang out like steel striking an anvil. The spear ricocheted off, instantly dissolving back into useless, flaccid fat upon hitting the ground.

Gritting his teeth, Tang burned more of his body mass, forging heavy broadswords and massive axes, hacking frantically at the cables.

Within seconds, two-thirds of his body fat was gone. The webbing of his hands was torn and bleeding from the violent recoil. The spider silk didn’t have a single scratch on it.

“It’s harder than iron,” Tang gasped, his eyes wide with absolute terror. “The Broodmother… It’s a Broodmother!”

He realized with sickening clarity how close he had come to death. The warehouse was her throne room. If he had taken five more steps toward those doors earlier, he would have been ripped apart instantly.

Before he could catch his breath, a massive, sprawling net of silk erupted from the warehouse, casting a shadow over the three men. It was too wide, too fast. There was nowhere to run.

*Thwack!*

The sticky, suffocating net slammed into them, pinning them to the concrete. The harder they thrashed, the tighter the razor-sharp threads constricted.

“Fuck… is this it?” Tang Jinchuan whispered, the cold grip of despair crushing his chest.

Suddenly, a sharp, resonant hum sliced through the apocalyptic sky—the unmistakable ring of unsheathed steel.

Tang forced his head up, peering through the gaps in the webbing. High above the ruined depot, a lone figure hovered in mid-air, standing effortlessly atop a glowing, levitating blade.

Tang’s eyes bulged from their sockets.

*Holy shit? A Sword Immortal?*