Chapter 7: Unlocking the Spider Maiden

In the cold room, the chains binding Ella had already been removed.

She barely moved anymore. 

She simply leaned against the corner like a corpse, arms wrapped around her knees.

Silver hair spilled over her shoulders and onto the floor, matted with dried blood. 

The gash on her forehead had stopped bleeding, but the ugly split remained open, its edges slightly everted as the skin slowly knit itself back together.

Her eyes were open. 

Crimson pupils stared at some point in empty space. She did not speak. 

She did not tremble. 

She did not cry.

Even her breathing was so shallow it was almost undetectable, like a machine whose power had been cut, leaving only the last traces of warmth slowly fading away.

But deep in her consciousness, inside the insect nest network that had once blazed with starlight, she was still screaming.

Come back! Is anyone still there? Anyone at all!

Ten years. Tens of thousands of insects. 

All gone in an instant. She refused to believe it. She dared not believe it.

Wait… there seemed to be one…

Her consciousness brushed against a faint glimmer. 

The light was so weak it was almost nonexistent, flickering alone in a place infinitely far away.

Someone had answered her.

One was still alive.

But that tiny spark lasted less than a second before it winked out. 

Even if one remained, what difference did it make? Without her swarm, the Insect Mother was, in her own eyes, no different from the lowest plankton drifting in the sea.

A thousand-mile dike can collapse because of a single ant hole.

She was beginning to understand.

She had considered the possibility that the nest might be destroyed by some disaster—storms, tsunamis, some never-before-seen deep-sea leviathan—but she had never imagined it would happen like this, destroyed by her own discarded failures.

Every one of those failures harbored an unimaginable blood feud against her. 

She did not dare imagine what fate awaited her next. 

Perhaps torture. Perhaps something worse than death…

Yet amid that terror, she unexpectedly felt a sliver of… relief? 

Or perhaps… release?

She interpreted it as the final self-defense mechanism of a mind already shattered by grief.

But what was the point of lying to herself? 

She even thought it would have been better to perish with the swarm in the explosion.

At least then she would not be sitting here in this cold, unfamiliar ship cabin, waiting for a group of beings she had once casually thrown away to decide her fate.

The door opened.

Ella did not look up. She did not even care who had entered. She was pondering whether she could bite off her own tongue and end it before the pain made her pass out.

“Hello, Your Majesty.”

The voice was cool and flat, lacking any rise or fall.

“I am Zhuluo. As the name implies, I am the spider-form humanoid you created roughly seven years ago.”

Ella gave no response. 

Seven years ago had been one of her most intensive cultivation periods. Dozens of individuals were evaluated and classified every week.

How could she possibly remember the name of every failure?

“Let me start with some good news,” Zhuluo continued, her tone completely emotionless.

“The perfect humanoid insect maiden you created just today has also been brought aboard the ship. She is still asleep.”

Ella’s eyelashes trembled faintly.

“So?” Her voice was hoarse and dry.

She finally lifted her head. 

Standing before her was the black-haired girl—the one who had pierced her abdomen with spider legs back in the laboratory. 

The legs were now retracted.

She looked like an ordinary human girl: tall, slender, expressionless, like the top student from the class next door.

But Ella noticed the things on her collarbones—three small eyes on each side, complete with pupils and irises that could blink. 

At the moment those six eyes were half-closed, clearly carrying spider genes.

“What do you want? How do you plan to torture me?”

“I have no intention of torturing you,” Zhuluo said.

“My emotional senses are not fully developed. I don’t really feel extreme emotions like hatred. I’m here to deliver your food.”

A piece of bread and a cup of milk were placed on the floor in front of Ella.

Ella looked down at the two items. The corners of her mouth curved into a mocking arc.

“I won’t eat this garbage. How about this? You chop off your own head right now and set it beside me. Then I might force myself to take a few bites.”

“You are—”

“Get out.”

The word exploded from Ella’s mouth carrying all the arrogance and ferocity of her time as Insect Mother.

She kicked out. The milk cup toppled over. White liquid splashed across the floor. 

The bread rolled into the corner.

Her chest heaved violently. 

If her current body had not been that of a fragile girl, she would have slaughtered everyone on the ship and given these failures—the ones who should have died long ago—the fate they deserved.

There was only one thing she would apologize to them for: not killing them the instant they had been judged as failures.

“Hah—” Zhuluo made a single syllable sound, crouched down, and began cleaning up.

“Listen to me, Your Majesty. You may have forgotten, or perhaps your memories were erased, but destroying the insect island was something you asked us to do.”

The room fell silent.

“How is that possible! Do you take me for a fool?!”

Ella shot to her feet, lunged at Zhuluo, then stopped. 

Only then did she realize how tall the black-haired girl actually was. 

She had to tilt her head back to meet her eyes.

“Let me explain it clearly,” Zhuluo said, lowering her head. Golden pupils met Ella’s gaze as the six eyes on her collarbones opened fully.

“You realized the swarm was eroding your will, so you gave us failures the chance to destroy the nest. That was an order you issued to us many years ago.”

Ella’s lips trembled.

“How is that possible! I! I am the sole master of the swarm! My will would never be eroded!”

“You simply couldn’t detect it,” Zhuluo said with absolute certainty.

“You believed it was your own will, but in truth, you had become nothing more than a part of what is called the insect nest will.”

She spoke each word deliberately.

“That was not your will.”

Ella’s body went rigid. 

Those late nights when she had suddenly woken and begun a new round of experiments. 

Those moments when she was exhausted to the limit yet still could not stop the urge to expand the swarm. 

Had all of those things truly been what she “herself wanted”?

“No! Impossible!”

She thrust out her hand and shoved Zhuluo’s chest with all her strength.

“Get out! Get out! Get out of here!”

She pushed Zhuluo out of the room and slammed the door shut.

Bang.

Ella leaned back against the door. 

All strength drained from her body as she slowly slid to the floor. Her eyes remained open, staring at the blank wall opposite her.

“That was not your will.”

The sentence echoed over and over inside her mind.

She closed her eyes, opened them, closed them again.

She remained submerged in those words, as if drowning in a boundless, viscous swamp. 

Every attempt to struggle only dragged her deeper.

She was no longer herself? 

How could that be… it was impossible!

She was the Insect Mother! She herself was the one and only insect nest will!