Chapter 77: The Colossal Egg

“Everyone withdraw, there’s poison in here…” Qin Fei warned those beside him.

Marsh gas was flammable. To avoid the risk of an explosion, Qin Fei and his companions had already extinguished their torches and switched to electric lamps for illumination.

Qin Fei was well aware that the toxic gas mine in the Ark’s mangrove forest was poisonous. In the game, when players entered the toxic mine, their characters would continuously lose health due to the poisonous air. However, in reality, the situation was somewhat different. The damage caused by the gas in this cave wasn’t as severe as in the game. With a simple homemade mask and some adsorbents, one could withstand it.

Once everyone had retreated to a safe area free of toxic gas, Qin Fei took out two pieces of gauze bandage from his backpack. He gathered some charcoal, cotton, wood shavings, and lime, then wrapped them up using the bandages. These common materials all had strong adsorptive properties or filtering functions. Fortunately, Qin Fei had a habit of collecting any useful materials he came across and storing them in his backpack. Thanks to this, he was able to quickly make a variety of adsorbents in such a short time.

After preparing the adsorbent packs, Qin Fei tied the gauze over his face. The materials within the gauze could effectively filter and absorb the toxic substances in the air. In this way, the harm caused by the gas to Qin Fei was greatly reduced. The others immediately followed his example, using items from their own packs with similar adsorptive properties to fashion makeshift gas masks.

With these masks on, the group proceeded unimpeded and soon reached the innermost chamber of the cave. This was the room where the immunity artifact was kept.

Outside the artifact room, about a dozen orange-red giant eggs were piled up, all entangled in countless white webs. Each of these eggs was roughly the size of an adult human. Qin Fei examined them closely. He noticed that the eggs seemed to be pulsating—expanding and contracting as though they were beating hearts.

These eggs… were alive!

Qin Fei remembered that in the game, the toxic mine also contained such giant eggs. However, in the game, they were merely part of the background and could not be interacted with or destroyed.

But here, things were different. Now, standing before the eggs in person, Qin Fei truly felt the primal fear that arose in humans when facing the unknown. What kind of creature could lay such enormous eggs…

His teammates were equally unsettled. The three of them moved past the eggs in complete silence, united by an unspoken understanding.

Carefully, they skirted around the eggs. Though they didn’t know if noise would awaken whatever was inside, their fear made them instinctively keep quiet as they passed by.

The chamber containing the immunity artifact was a narrow passage, barely wide enough for one person at a time. Qin Fei and his companions entered the artifact room. At the far end, bathed in a faint red glow, lay the immunity artifact. From a distance, it resembled an oval egg, with dark red veins running across its surface—like the blood vessels of a living thing. The entire artifact had an eerie, unsettling appearance.

Qin Fei reached out, took the immunity artifact, and stowed it in his backpack.

[Ancient Artifact of Immunity: Serenity of mind, invulnerable to all poisons.]

…

Crack!

The moment Qin Fei picked up the artifact, a series of sounds like eggshells breaking echoed from outside.

“Something’s happening out there!” Qin Fei thought grimly.

The sound was unmistakable—it was as if the giant eggs outside were hatching. Had he triggered some mechanism in the cave by taking the artifact, causing the eggs to break open?

He glanced at Xie Nainai and Caesar. The three exchanged looks, then, gripping their shotguns, moved to the entrance of the artifact room.

Peering out, Qin Fei saw that the eggs outside had all split open. From within crawled more than a dozen giant spiders, each nearly two meters tall.

Qin Fei recognized them at once—their appearance was strikingly similar to the Broodmother, the ultimate creature from the Ark. Or rather, these were miniature versions of the Broodmother itself!

If Qin Fei guessed correctly, these eggs must have been left by that Broodmother, and the spiders hatching from them were its juvenile offspring.

Aside from their size, the only difference between these young spiders and the adult Broodmother was that the juveniles lacked eyes.

As the giant spiders emerged from the eggs, countless egg-sized spiderlings poured out from their tails. Each giant spider could give birth to dozens of small spiders at once. In an instant, the ground was swarming with over a hundred spiderlings.

Faced with this, Qin Fei and his team, along with their direwolf and the devil frog, were forced back into the artifact room.

“Set them on fire!” Xie Nainai suddenly suggested in desperation.

“No, there’s marsh gas in here—if we light a fire, the whole place will explode,” Qin Fei immediately refused.

In an environment so saturated with marsh gas, any open flame could cause a deadly explosion. Whether the spiders survived or not was uncertain, but the three of them would surely perish.

Because of the marsh gas, they couldn’t even risk using their guns—the muzzle flash could ignite the gas as well.

Outside, the giant spiders, too large to fit through the narrow entrance to the artifact room, halted at the threshold. However, the smaller spiderlings streamed in through the gap.

The Broodmother’s spiderlings ought to be as large as cats or dogs, but these juveniles were smaller than the mature ones, so their offspring were tiny as well. Though disgusting, these small spiders posed little threat to Qin Fei and his companions—they could be crushed underfoot.

Seeing that the giant spiders couldn’t enter, and that the spiderlings were harmless, the team finally breathed a sigh of relief. The sense of dread in their hearts eased somewhat.

Of course, being trapped in the artifact room by those giant spiders was not a solution. Aside from the fact that their mission was time-limited, the toxic gas in the cave would eventually take its toll. No mask, especially a homemade one, could filter out every trace of poison. With each breath, some toxic substances would inevitably enter their bodies, and over time, the concentration would only increase.

Dragging things out would only worsen their predicament.

What now?

“Hey, the big spiders are dispersing!” Xie Nainai suddenly exclaimed.

Caesar rolled his eyes. “What good does that do? We still can’t get out…”

Qin Fei glanced outside. Unnoticed, the giant spiders had already moved away from the entrance.