“Roar–!”
The monstrous insect let out a piercing, malicious shriek that tore through the air.
Its target was clear, with no hesitation.
Its massive body whipped up a fierce wind and splattered mud and stones as it lunged toward the lone blue figure atop the mountain like a blood-red meteor falling from the sky.
The stench nearly sprayed onto Lu Qiancha’s face.
Not good!
Lu Qiancha’s pupils constricted sharply as the Demon Cube in her claw buzzed, emitting a flowing light.
“Zeng zeng zeng zeng—!!!”
Several streaks of crimson light shot out, arriving before the insect’s attack.
They pierced through the giant’s colossal body with surgical precision from an oblique angle in the void.
Puchi, puchi, puchi.
The sound of blades cutting into flesh echoed in rapid succession.
With each crimson slash piercing through, a faint buzzing could be heard.
It was as if a hidden oil depot had been ignited.
Furious flames so intense they seemed to distort vision erupted from every wound the blades had inflicted, flooding out like a raging inferno unleashed.
The massive, ominous crimson shell before Lu Qiancha’s stunned gaze was rapidly corroded, carbonized, and crumbled away before her eyes.
“Hoo!”
The giant insect let out a sorrowful, piercing wail as its tremendous momentum abruptly halted.
In just a breath’s time, that ferocious shadow that once blotted out the sky was utterly reduced to charred ash midair.
Only a wisp of reluctant blue smoke curled up, a silent trace that it had ever existed.
Before the swirling ash had fully settled—
“Shiu—!”
A fiery figure, as dazzling as a phoenix of flames, streaked through the sky and landed deftly beside Lu Qiancha.
Shangguan Yunzhu’s feet danced on a spirit sword, her robes billowing as her amber eyes locked onto the chasm below, gushing forth the insect tide.
“There’s a large nest underground.”
Her voice was cold yet grave, the tip of her sword pointing sharply at the deep fissure still wildly spewing waves of insects.
“If we don’t destroy this root of calamity, the insect tide will only become endless.
“I do have a way, but it will cause a lot of commotion…”
Lu Qiancha’s gaze swept over the churning darkness of the abyss.
Her fingertips unconsciously stroked the surface of her Storage Ring, but her tone carried a rare hesitation.
Her eyes involuntarily drifted toward the villagers below the platform—those still being parasitized by the insects, feasting on the sacrificial peach flesh.
Shangguan Yunzhu keenly caught the direction of her gaze.
Without a word, she immediately understood Lu Qiancha’s concern and spoke gently:
“Qiancha, don’t worry about those people down there. I’ve fully scanned with spirit sense—they’re already dead.”
Hearing Shangguan Yunzhu’s words, Lu Qiancha was momentarily stunned before turning her attention back to the villagers below.
The spiritual sense revealed faint writhing beneath their bodies’ surfaces, but the pervasive Sterilizing Mist in the air was temporarily suppressing any movement, preventing them from breaking free.
Indeed, Shangguan Yunzhu was right.
Those villagers were already dead.
What remained of their bodies were more like humanoid insect pupae than humans.
With that realization, Lu Qiancha’s hesitation vanished.
A cold gleam flashed from the Demon Cube in her claw.
Several heavy Potion Bottles, filled with a viscous, colorless liquid, arced through the air with precision.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The bottles shattered on the bottom of the huge fissure.
The strange, gelatinous oily liquid instantly splashed and greedily seeped into the damp porous stone walls, spreading rapidly along cracks and crevices, covering nearly every exposed inch around the insect nest’s entrance.
“Now’s the time!”
Lu Qiancha’s mind raced.
The spiritual light at her claw’s tip suddenly flared brilliantly.
A fist-sized Fire Seed of spiritual energy took shape with a hum in her palm.
Shiu!
The Fire Seed transformed into a blinding white streak.
It shot with perfect precision into the insect nest’s entrance, freshly bathed in the sticky oily liquid.
The moment of contact—
Boom!
The fissure abruptly contracted inward.
Immediately after, a dazzling blaze, indescribably brilliant as if the imprisoned flood of a millennia-old sun had been unleashed, tore apart the earth’s crust.
A Fire Tornado, engulfed in roaring winds and scorching heat, shot straight into the sky.
It ruthlessly devoured every inch of the nest’s entrance, even warping the air above it.
And this was only the beginning.
Following the path of the viscous liquid deeper underground, Bang bang bang! Bang! Bang!
A series of muffled explosions, as if the beating heart of the abyss itself was detonating, erupted layer upon layer in succession.
Each blast was accompanied by more violent upheaval and collapse of the ground.
The earth seemed to scream in pain.
Countless insect tides hiding in the depths, waiting to prey upon the living, were now like hellish dross thrown into a furnace.
Before they could even see the light of day, they turned to ash in this chain of sacrificial blasts.
“Ji—zhe—!!!”
A piercing, hoarse shriek full of boundless resentment suddenly tore out from the boiling, burning abyss below.
Rumble. Crackle crackle.
The entire mountain seemed split by a giant axe.
Burning rock slabs crazily rose and fractured.
A storm of dust and sparks whipped up like the apocalypse.
At the heart of this destructive eruption, a massive, terrifying spherical insect cloud surged upward, dark as the abyss, blocking sight like a black sun.
It hovered midair, chilling and voracious eyes like tangible tides instantly locking onto Lu Qiancha and Shangguan Yunzhu on the mountain peak.
“The main target has appeared!”
Lu Qiancha’s pupils shrank.
Every nerve in her body tightened like a drawn bowstring.
Her left claw gripped a murky Potion Bottle tightly.
The Demon Cube in her right claw buzzed, red-gold light swirling inch by inch, ready to strike.
The suffocating enormous insect cloud trembled violently as it rose.
Sssssk.
Countless charred insect corpses rained down like black rain.
As the ashes and carcasses dispersed, the hideous true form inside finally revealed itself.
It was a giant orange-yellow moth as large as a small fortress.
Its entire body covered with a sickly, slimy orange-yellow skin, speckled with countless black spots like congealed blood clots.
A pair of enormous Membrane Wings unfolded, the spots patterned like leopard print across the wing surfaces.
But the most chilling part
was the grotesquely swollen, layered, tumorous segments on its abdomen.
Those alternating yellow and black deformed flesh sacs writhed, twitched, and pulsed with each foul breath of the moth—making one’s scalp tingle with horror.
Through the thin, nearly transparent oily membrane, countless pure black insect eggs, as small as rice grains and densely packed to induce nausea, were clearly visible.
Layer upon layer, filling the entire body cavity.
The flow of light shifted as Lu Qiancha raised the Demon Cube in her hand.
Her mind transformed the cube into a spear and shot it forward…
Whoosh—pa!
Just as the spear was about to strike.
The enormous Insect Queen’s seemingly cumbersome body suddenly burst forth with ghostly speed.
Its huge, bizarre leopard-print membrane wings flapped once, leaving a blurred afterimage.
By mere millimeters, the deadly spear grazed past its swollen body, tearing through the air.
A strike missed.
“Zhe!”
The giant insect emitted a sharp scream and wildly flapped its massive wings again.
Its enormous bulk became a yellow-black streak ripping through the air.
It dove downward.
Its target was a villager on the ground, fortunate enough to be farther from the explosion’s center.
Puchi.
Like a steel needle piercing soft tofu.
The Insect Queen’s sharp tail needle, shimmering with eerie oily light, precisely stabbed into the villager’s chest.
“Ugh—!!!”
The villager painfully doubled over, eyes rolling back to show only white.
A sudden stifled groan squeezed out from deep in the throat.
Then, Puchi! Zhi la—!
A horrifying tearing sound followed.
A slightly smaller yet blood-red, fierce larva covered in dark red wet scales and exuding the scent of fresh blood tore through the villager’s chest cavity.
Its sharp mouthparts and limbs, stained with scarlet fluid, emerged.
From the Insect Queen’s evasion and dive to egg-laying and tearing the body open, all of it happened within the blink of an eye.
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