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The ice spider charged through the passageway of the cavern violently, bumping into the walls from time to time, and occasionally launched attacks on Lily and Shimizu with its limbs when it got jammed by the walls of the cave.
Lily also looked for certain regions while running and turned around to send a crescent beam of crimson sword light when she reached them.
These crescent beams of sword light weren’t effective towards the spider, but they damaged the walls of the caves or the weaker stalactites and produced some minor cave falls. Even though these cave falls couldn’t stop the spider’s pursuit, they slowed down the spider greatly. As such, Lily continued attacking the cave walls in such a manner even though she couldn’t see the spider anymore.
Ordinary samurai couldn’t perform such a feat, but Lily had abundant spirit power to do this, and she had also stored a huge amount of spirit power within her cursed katana from animas absorbed in the battle before they entered the cave.
The sounds of the spider charging through the collapsed cavern passageway finally turned faint a while later.
Lily and Shimizu sighed in relief as they thought they had finally managed to escape this calamity, yet they heard the sound of surging water from ahead of them at this moment.
The duo turned around a corner and arrived at a spacious cave room that had a radius of 16 meters. Nanako stood here alone while trembling in fear with the Sakura Parasol in hand and behind her laid a chasm that was 60-70 meters wide.
Lily and Shimizu were dumbfounded by this scene.
“Nanako?” Lily sprinted before Nanako and saw that she was actually unscathed but appeared a bit dazed.
“Sister Lily…”
Lily surveyed the surroundings skeptically and only saw precipices while a chasm that even Lily and Shimizu couldn’t cross laid ahead of her. The chasm was several hundred meters deep and a torrential undercurrent surged through it while the passageway of the cavern rested on the other side of the chasm.
“Nanako. How come you’re here alone? Where are the others?” Shimizu inquired doubtfully while examining the surroundings.
Nanako’s gaze slackened a bit as she answered her, “There was a suspension bridge here originally, but they cut it off after crossing over to the other side.”
“What?!” Lily was shocked after hearing this. She then scoured the place and indeed found the vestiges of a suspension bridge but even the wooden logs had been pulled off thoroughly, so they couldn’t cross over with the help of a rope or anything else.
“Absolutely disgraceful! Why did they cut off the suspension bridge?” Shimizu inquired irately.
“Most of the disciples were hesitant to do so and even opposed the notion, but that Itamoto said that they would all welcome death unless the path of the pursuers was cut off. That they didn’t need to do this if Sister Lily and Sister Shimizu were able to defeat the pursuers, but they would definitely die if the pursuers caught up with them because you failed to do so.”
Nanako’s voice contained no hatred in it, “They didn’t cut off your path of escape on purpose. This is was a rational and forced choice.”
Lily and Shimizu froze after hearing this. Lily had even saved Itamoto’s life, but he had sacrificed Lily and Shimizu’s lives to increase the chances of the others surviving through this ordeal.
“Why didn’t you escape with them then, Nanako?” Lily inquired.
“There’s no way I would leave you behind and go anywhere else, Sister,” Nanako stated calmly without any hesitation, a relieved smile cropping up on her face.
“Nanako…” Lily felt like a speck of dust had entered her eyes at this moment and she hugged Nanako tightly.
The sounds of the ice spider crashing through the obstructions arrived from behind them at this moment and it seemed like it would catch up with Lily and the others soon.
A dead-end ahead of them and a pursuer from behind. The lives of Lily, Shimizu and Nanako had been sacrificed to save those dojo disciples, yet Lily didn’t know whether she should detest them for doing this. However, she knew that she would have never made such a choice as there was no guarantee cutting off the bridge would ensure their survival. Although Lily found it hard to determine whether it was right or wrong to sacrifice them, the protectors of the disciples, just for the sake of this tiny bit of hope, she knew it was a cowardly choice.
“This chasm is too wide and even I won’t be able to leap across it. The stream below is also pretty fast and seeped in miasmic energies, so not only is it dangerous to jump into it, it might even be poisonous,” A few beads of sweat seeped out of Shimizu’s forehead.
The crashing sounds got closer and closer from behind as time passed…
“What do we do? Is there anything we can use to cross past the chasm?” Lily hadn’t given up even now and examined the surroundings prudently to look for something that could help them, but no matter hard she looked, all she saw was a dead end.
“What do we do…”
“Miss Kagami!” A voice echoed out from the other end of the chasm at this moment.
Lily raised her head and saw the ponytailed female disciple.
“Senior!” Lily turned ecstatic for a moment.
The ponytailed disciple donned a guilty face, “Forgive me, Miss Kagami. I-I couldn’t stop them yet also couldn’t stand alongside with you on the side like Nanako to face this deadly ordeal…”
Lily smiled faintly, “It doesn’t matter, Senior. This method is indeed the best one to have minimal losses, so it isn’t an irrational choice. It’s already enough that you have come back to see us regardless of the danger. However, the thing pursuing us isn’t something on a level that you can respond to, so leave quickly now, okay? There’s no way for you to help us cross this chasm even if you remain here.”
“No! There’s a way!”
“Hah?”
“Well…” The ponytailed disciple blushed, “P-Please don’t stare, okay?”
Lily and the others were puzzled by her behavior.
The ponytailed disciple turned around and disrobed herself, revealing the white silk cloth coiled around her bodacious figure.
“Senior…”
“D-Don’t stare.”
The ponytailed disciple began to unwind the silk cloth coiled around her body as much as possible. The ponytailed disciple was a girl from a traditional noble family, so she also used silk cloth as an undergarment. The length of the cloth had come to several dozen meters as she unwounded it layer by layer, but it was insufficient to cover the gap of the chasm.
When the ponytailed disciple unwrapped the entire silk undergarment, a pair of unimaginable knockers that simply couldn’t be seen from outside sprung out from within, and this made both Lily and Shimizu sigh endlessly.
“So you actually had such an impressive pair, Senior…”
The ponytailed disciple was also a samurai and thus broke free from the embarrassment quickly. She wore her robes simply and threw one end of the silk cloth across the chasm while holding on to the other end and it managed to reach a little over the halfway point of the chasm.
“It’s long enough!” Lily and Shimizu arrived at the same conclusion.
“Eh? But I can’t cover such a distance,” Nanako stated worriedly.
Lily smiled, “You don’t need to jump, Nanako. Just be prepared to open the Sakura Parasol when we’re at the highest point of ascent.”
“Huh? H-Highest point? W-What do…”
Lily rolled up her sleeves and picked up Nanako into her embrace before she could finish speaking.
“Hey-hey. Sister Lily, you haven’t gone crazy, right? Don’t tell me you’re planning to—”
“Lily…” Even Shimizu also tensed up a little in astonishment.
“Go! Nanako!” Lily launched Nanako towards the other side of the chasm with all her strength.
“Kyah—!” Nanako screamed in fear.
“Open the parasol!”
“Wham—!” The Sakura Parasol opened by itself when Nanako reached the highest point of the ascent and slowly glided Nanako over to the other side of the chasm, the scene seeming just like a beautiful painting in an ancient picture scroll.
The rumbling sounds had almost reached Lily and Shimizu at the same time when Nanako landed on the ground.
“Boom!” The final obstruction had been finally broken through and the giant spider charged over towards them.
“We don’t have enough time! Let’s jump together!” Lily yelled out.
Saying so, she leaped forward before the ponytailed disciple could even hurl the silk cloth over.
“Hey!” The ponytailed disciple threw one end of the silk cloth in a rush and from an aerial perspective, the silk cloth looked just like milk that was slowly spilling over into the water.
Lily managed to grab it with much difficulty and turned ahead to see Shimizu who was right behind her.
However, Shimizu still a bit far from her and Lily couldn’t reach her as the ponytailed disciple was tugging back on the silk cloth. In this critical moment, Lily took out her Crescent Moon and stretched its sheath towards Shimizu to grab.
“Grab it, Sis!”
With her exceptional reflexes, Shimizu grabbed onto the sheath immediately.
However, the spider spewed out a thread made of glacial spirit power at this moment that coiled around Shimizu’s foot.
Lily felt her hand turn heavy and the silk cloth also stretched because of the huge tension placed on it.
Nanako hugged the ponytailed disciple’s waist from behind and pulled her back in a rush, but the spider thread seemed to pack an unsurpassable force, so they were unable to hold on for long!
Shimizu unsheathed her blade and sliced at the thread, but the thread was pliable and tough, and she also couldn’t muster much strength in these circumstances, so she couldn’t cut through it.
“Let me go, Lily! Or else we’ll both be doomed!” Shimizu yelled anxiously yet her dark pupils actually contained a trace of brilliance in them.
“I absolutely won’t let you go, Sis!” Lily, on the other hand, had a resolute look in her eyes, and held onto the sheath tightly. However, even if Lily was able to contend with the strength of the spider, Nanako and the ponytailed disciple couldn’t do so, so she was stuck in a dilemma.
Do I have to make a ‘right’ choice like those disciples as well and sacrifice Sister Shimizu’s life for our sake?1
If Lily were the final person left behind, she may perhaps have found the choice rational. However, when such a choice was presented to her, she actually couldn’t accept it at any cost!
“Sister Shimizu, I cannot sacrifice the lives of Nanako and the innocent senior, so I would rather let go of the silk cloth than let go of you!” Lily resolved herself to plan for the worst in case there were no other means to escape this situation.
She examined the surroundings then looked at the thin spider thread that wasn’t actually pulling with all of the spider’s force. She then looked back at the ponytailed disciple and Nanako who had been pulled to the edge of the chasm and her gaze landed on the Sakura Parasol on Nanako’s back.
“Nanako! Throw the Sakura Parasol over here!” Lily shouted.
Nanako followed her instructions and threw the Sakura Parasol over to Lily anxiously. As Lily couldn’t receive it with her hands, she used her foot to kick it with all her might and that Sakura Parasol shot over towards the silk thread while rotating energetically and opened up suddenly when it approached the thread.
The edge of the Sakura Parasol actually managed to cut off the thread and circled in the air once before flying back to Nanako’s hand by relying on the stream of air produced when it opened up.
The ponytailed disciple pulled with all her strength at this moment and finally managed to pull Lily and Shimizu over to the edge of the chasm.
On the other side, the spider stretched its body halfway past the precipice, yet it had no means to cross the chasm.
Lily didn’t choose to escape right away after escaping this calamity and revealed a sneer on her face instead. She pointed her Crescent Moon towards the spider and gathered her spirit power before sending a few beams of whooshing sword light at it.
These crescent sword beams didn’t attack that spider and instead attack the precipice under its legs.
“Boom!” The precipice crumbled under the might of the explosions and the unsuspecting phantom spider fell into the rumbling chasm along with it!
The phantom spider only followed the orders of the summoner and wasn’t an actual lifeform, so it had no sense of self-protection. As such, it fell into the river at the bottom of the chasm and was washed away to lands unknown.
“Whoosh—!” The ponytailed disciple and Nanako finally heaved a breath of relief and sat down on their buttocks to gasp for breaths in an unladylike manner.
“Let’s go,” Shimizu said.
The ponytailed disciple picked up the silk cloth and threw it into the bottomless chasm since she didn’t have the time to wear it again.
The group of four turned around and rushed into the passageway behind them.2