My blood is still rushing, as all I hear are the low sounds of spiders moving around and munching, throughout the alleyway.

I throw out a pulse, to see if there are anymore enemies or surprise guests.

Based on my scan, most of the people who lived around here have run away from the area. There are still a few spies watching, but they look ready to bolt away, at any second. One is frantically writing notes, on a pad at their side.

That… was intense. I didn’t think that he could still be alive when such a large portion of his body was gone. It’s clear that he was going to take me out with him.

What scared me the most, is that for any normal human, those wounds would have put them down for good. Being a cultivator, as should have been obvious to me, really enhances you beyond common sense.

Even if you are the weakest type of cultivator…

I find myself staring at his body, seeing the arachnids swarm in and around his body. His hands, arms, and head, mangled from trying to kill the spiders which were devouring him.

Looking at the spiders even closer, I can feel their emotions and thoughts.

Delicious. Fun. Exciting. Yay!

Feelings of joy emanates from the group of spiders, now taking pieces of the man’s body and shuffling it off elsewhere.

My stomach turns at the thought and sight. Their simplistic happiness throws me for a loop, contrasting my natural disposition.

I feel my hands shaking and I realize I’m now bent over, looking at the ground. I still can’t handle the idea of this happening to someone. Even if, in every sense, they deserved what was coming to them.

It’s me.

I’m having a hard time reconciling my actions. Yelling out to murder this man. To attack certain parts of him and devour him. To make the decision to actively kill him. Without provocation.

Hell. He even gave me advice on the way out, as a human. Clearly, I could have just left and ignored everything I was seeing.

The blood below him is continuing to pool on the ground. The smaller spiders either float upon it using webs or by piggybacking on top of the other, larger spiders, trudging through the slop. Trekking through to help lay webs and carry things off, together.

My thoughts drift back to my actions.

I get that in order to help people, some people need to be stopped… But, at what point am I deciding that myself? Making arbitrary decisions that what I’m doing is the only right way?

Could I have convinced people like him?

Fuck.

…

…

Well.

At least I can feel assured that this isn’t the case in this situation. This guy killed a child without remorse.

Like they were trash.

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I’m not going to let myself feel too much pity for someone like that.

Swallowing, I push off of my knees slowly, to stand up. Taking a deep breath.

A noise sounds off behind me.

I immediately flip to face that direction, a cold chill running down my back and my breath quickening. My heart pounds in my chest, with my fist clenching. Ready to fight.

A cat sized spider looks at me, shocked at the sudden attention. It has some type of bird in its mouth, covered in web.

I swallow again. Looking up at the sky. Birds scattering. Back at the spider and bird. Poisoned and web covered bird.

My shoulders slowly relax and I feel slightly faint. My eyelids shuddering. I close my eyes and hold a hand to my head.

There’s… been way too much going on. Every time I go out, there’s something.

I just want to relax. To feel safe. To not see people get murdered or practically so, for one day.

I find myself trudging in the direction of home. The spies nearby, start to follow, but are stopped by the spiders covering the nearby rooftops. They begin to spread out, even reaching the feet of the spies. Quickly, the spies retreat.

Likely believing that their cover has been blown.

I find the more I relax, the easier it is to subconsciously feel what the spiders are experiencing.

Maybe… if I keep the spiders around, just on every surface, people will start viewing them as something to watch for?

No… that will be like setting up a surveillance state. I can’t get into that mindset.

…

Do I have that luxury, though? In a world like this, where everyone in power already has their ways to look at what you are doing and stopping it, does it even matter?

For that matter, how is Gong using the spiders? I can’t imagine she wouldn’t be utilizing this.

A brief dive into the spiders memorized actions, lets me know… that Gong is already doing that, as I had just suspected.

She has the spiders camping out different locations. Not as police, but as informants.

Unlike me, she does not move when she sees horrible things happen.

She moves on.

She still notes it. But moves on, nonetheless.

This is probably why she was so callous when she was slaughtering the Vermillion Stripes. Not only because of what she had seen them do, assuming that things like what this murdering bastard was doing, is condoned by them.

And… she has probably seen too many people die. She just does what she can.

Do I want to be like that? Do I think I should become like that?

These kinds of thoughts occupy me the whole way home. The spiders are fanned out, but begin scattering the closer I get to the gate of the border.

As I approach the gate, the local architecture has become noticeably better. To be specific, it has been rebuilt and I find myself looking closer at it.

Possibly to distract myself.

Like cement, the stone walls of the buildings have been placed back together with web serving as the cement. The gate, located in the middle of an alleyway spanning two building. A look to my left and right, show architecture that seems older than the ones I’ve seen near the slum street and especially the main street.

Worn away by time, subtly elegant designs of dragons and giant sea creatures battling, with men facing rising tides of water, decorate and repeat across the bottom and top surface of the buildings. The reddish tinged, upturned roof corners catch my eye, filling me with curiosity.

How was something this old and made of stone, able to be preserved so well? And how was Gong able to know how put it back together?

As I continue to gaze at these structures, I find it remarkable that each building is slightly different.

The designs remain the same and are symmetrical for each individual building. However, the adjacent buildings change a few aspects, like a variance in eave size or change in (now worn) decorative columns.

Somehow, even with these changes, they form a collective beauty. All into one cohesive whole, formed of different parts.

It reminds me of the stone army from Earth, locked in a tomb, until it was unearthed later. Each unique, but part of one army.

This path of thinking drifts me away from my thoughts, for the briefest of times, and lets me just take in the beauty of the world around me.

That it’s not all bad. That there are beautiful and good things here, as well.

Jumping back into the real world, I can see through the gate that Gong is organizing some demi-humans to head to the small village being built within the gates. Waving them through, with a smile and what appears to be kind words. She seems busy enough, just trying to guide them.

Turning my eyes away from her, I begin to notice that Gong and the spiders have repaired and reinforced all the buildings that line the web walls and gates.

The gate itself rises higher than the walls, splaying over the buildings and onto the walls, formed on the other side of the buildings.

Utilizing scavenged stone from buildings outside the gates, it looks like giant stone gate, with thick wooden doors. The doors seem to be reinforced with web and my assumption is that it would be quite difficult to beat down.

However, my attention is stolen away from these structures, as I see Gong turn toward me. And gives me a big smile and wave.

Hesitantly, I wave back. Returning the smile.

I think I can go on a bit longer… before staying in for a while.

I step towards her. Feeling the slightest bit better.

I’m back.