The Insect Queen Appears

“Hooooowl—!”

The giant insect let out a malicious shriek that tore through the air.

Its target was clear, and it showed no hesitation.

Its massive body, wrapped in a foul wind and spattering mud and stones, lunged down from the mountaintop at the lone blue figure, like a falling blood-red meteor.

The stench was so close it nearly hit Lu Qiancha in the face.

‘Not good!’

Lu Qiancha’s pupils constricted, the cube in her paw just beginning to hum and glow.

“Swoosh swoosh swoosh swoosh—!!!”

Several streams of crimson light, arriving after the insect had already moved, shot out from the void to the side, accurately piercing through the giant insect’s massive body.

Squish, squish, squish.

The explosive sound of sword blades entering flesh became one continuous roar.

At every point where a crimson sword mark pierced—

Voom.

It was as if a deeply buried reservoir of kerosene had been detonated.

Flames, so violent they could almost warp one’s vision, burst forth from every piercing wound in its body like a breached sea of fire.

The huge, crimson, and demonic carapace, under Lu Qiancha’s astonished gaze, was burned, carbonized, and disintegrated at a visible rate.

“Gah!”

The giant insect let out a mournful cry, its massive charge coming to an abrupt halt.

In just a single breath.

The ferocious giant shadow that had blotted out the sun had been completely reduced to black ash in mid-air.

Only a wisp of unwilling green smoke, lingering in the air, proved its former existence.

Just as the sky full of ash had yet to settle—

“Swish—!”

A figure, as blazing as a firebird, cut through the sky and landed nimbly beside Lu Qiancha.

Shangguan Yunzhu stood on her spiritual sword, her robes fluttering, her amber eyes locked on the cracked earth below.

“There’s a large insect nest hidden underground.”

Her voice was cool and grave, the tip of her sword pointing directly at the deep fissure below, from which a tide of insects was still madly spewing.

“If we don’t destroy this root of disaster, the swarm of insects will be endless.”

“I do have a way, but this method will cause a huge commotion…”

Lu Qiancha’s gaze swept over the churning dark abyss, her fingertips subconsciously caressing her storage ring, but her tone carried a rare hint of hesitation.

Her gaze involuntarily drifted to the villagers below the platform, those who had been parasitized by the swarm of insects and were still enjoying the sacrificial peach flesh.

Shangguan Yunzhu keenly caught her gaze, and without a word, she instantly understood the concern in Lu Qiancha’s heart.

She spoke in a gentle voice, “Little Qiancha, don’t worry about those people below. I have fully investigated with my spiritual sense, and they are already dead.”

Hearing Shangguan Yunzhu’s words, Lu Qiancha was first stunned, then she turned her gaze to the group of villagers on the ground.

Under her spiritual sense’s investigation, there were indeed things squirming on the surface of their bodies, but they were likely being temporarily restrained by the insecticidal white mist that permeated the air, and did not dare to break out of their bodies.

Indeed, Shangguan Yunzhu was right.

The villagers below were already dead.

The bodies that remained were less human and more like humanoid insect cocoons.

With this, Lu Qiancha no longer had any scruples, and a cold light flashed in her paw.

Several heavy, potion bottles filled with colorless, turbid, viscous liquid, were accurately arced through the air.

Thud thud thud!

The potion bottles shattered at the bottom of the huge fissure.

The strange, gelatinous, oily liquid inside the bottles instantly spilled out, greedily seeping into the damp, porous rock walls, spreading rapidly along the cracks and crevices, and covering nearly every inch of exposed rock near the entrance of the insect nest.

“Now!”

Lu Qiancha’s thoughts raced.

The spiritual light at her paw tips suddenly flared.

A fist-sized spiritual fire seed took shape in her palm with a hum.

Swish!

The fire seed turned into a dazzling white line.

It shot with pinpoint accuracy into the fissure of the insect nest, which had just been thoroughly bathed in the viscous, oily liquid.

The moment of contact.

BOOM!

The opening of the cave suddenly imploded.

And then—

An indescribable, splendid flame, like a torrent of suns imprisoned for ten thousand years, violently tore open the earth’s crust.

A fiery tornado, carrying a howling blast wave and scorching heat, shot into the sky.

It tyrannically devoured all the space at the entrance of the cave, even distorting the shape of the air above.

And this was only the beginning.

Following the path laid out by the viscous liquid, deep underground—

Thud thud thud! Thud! Thud!

A series of dull explosions, like the drumming of a heart from the abyss, went from near to far, layer upon layer, madly detonating.

Each explosion was accompanied by a more violent upheaval and collapse of the ground.

The earth seemed to be screaming in pain.

The countless insect tides hidden deeper underground, ready to choose their victims to devour, were now like the dregs of hell thrown into a furnace.

Before they could even see the light of day, they had already been reduced to ash in this chain of explosions.

“Scree—che—!!!”

A mournful and hoarse, sharp insect cry, filled with endless resentment, like a rusty blade scraping a skull, suddenly pierced through the boiling, burning abyss underground.

Rumble. Crackle—

The entire mountain seemed to be split apart by a giant’s axe.

Burning rock plates buckled and cracked crazily.

A sky full of smoke and sparks swirled up like an apocalyptic storm.

At the core of this destructive eruption—

A terrifying, spherical cloud of insects, so huge it blotted out the view, churning with a deep darkness, broke through the crimson flames and shattered rocks and rose into the sky.

It hovered in mid-air, like a filthy black sun.

A cold and greedy gaze, as tangible as a tidal wave, instantly locked onto Lu Qiancha and Shangguan Yunzhu on the mountaintop.

“The main culprit has shown itself!”

Lu Qiancha’s pupils constricted, her entire body tensing like a bowstring.

Her left paw held a bottle of turbid potion tightly, while the cube in her right paw hummed, the red and gold light flowing inch by inch between her fingers, ready to strike.

The huge, suffocating cloud of insects, after rising into the air, suddenly trembled violently.

Rustle rustle rustle—

Countless charred insect carcasses fell off like a black rain.

As the ash and carcasses dissipated, the nauseating and terrifying true form within was finally revealed.

It was a giant, orange-yellow moth, as large as a small fortress.

Its entire body was covered in a sickly, greasy, and shiny orange-yellow skin, dotted with countless black spots that looked like clotted blood.

A pair of huge, membranous wings spread out, the spots on the wings’ surface like leopard print.

However, what was most terrifying—

Were the extremely bloated, writhing segments of its abdomen, which looked like layers upon layers of fleshy tumors.

Those deformed, yellow and black alternating sacks of flesh, with each of the giant moth’s foul-smelling breaths—

Heaved, twitched, and pulsed in a way that made one’s scalp tingle.

Through the thin, almost transparent, greasy yellow outer membrane—

Countless, fine as grains of rice, disgustingly dense, pure black insect eggs could be clearly seen.

Layer upon layer, they filled the entire body cavity.

The flow of light changed.

Lu Qiancha raised the cube in her hand, her thoughts changed, and it transformed into a spear that shot out…

Whoosh—thwack!

Just as the spear was about to hit.

The seemingly clumsy body of the huge insect mother suddenly burst forth with a ghostly, extreme speed.

The huge and bizarre, leopard-printed membranous wings only trembled in mid-air, a blurry afterimage flashing.

It had, by a hair’s breadth, dodged the fatal spear, letting it tear through the air just past its bloated body.

The attack had missed.

“Che!”

The giant insect let out a shriek, its huge wings beating wildly again!

The massive insect body turned into a yellow and black streak that tore through the air.

It dived down.

Its target was, surprisingly, a villager on the ground who had, by luck, survived due to being far from the center of the explosion.

Squish.

Like a steel needle piercing tofu.

At the end of the insect mother’s huge abdomen, a sharp ovipositor, glistening with a strange, oily light, accurately pierced into the villager’s chest.

“Ugh—!!!”

The villager’s body arched in pain, his eyes instantly rolling up to show only the whites.

An abrupt grunt was squeezed out from deep in his throat.

And then—

Squish! Hiss—!

A bone-chilling tearing sound was heard.

A slightly smaller, but covered in dark red, slippery scales, and exuding a bloody, newborn scent, a ferocious, crimson larva.

It tore open the villager’s chest cavity.

It revealed its sharp mouthparts and segmented limbs, stained with crimson fluid.

From the giant insect’s dodge, dive, and oviposition, to the larva’s emergence, all of this happened in the blink of an eye.