I plunged downward, but the insect suddenly began to chirp.
The sound was piercing. Those four shrill squeaks carried far into the distance, and soon the same cries echoed back
from afar as swarms
of insects rushed toward us.
I glanced back. A dark mass of insects was flying our way. At a glance, I couldn't even tell
how many there were. Too many... far too many
for me to count.
I ignored them and kept descending with Ning Jing in my arms...
Descending wasn't quite the word. I was falling. Without beating my wings, I even used the force of my glide to drop faster,
my enormous, three-meter tail trailing
behind me like a rudder, controlling my balance and angle.
Now I understood why my tail had so many barbs. They caught the wind and, in turn,
controlled my direction.
That bit of evolution surprised me.
I fell faster and faster, and the ground came into focus. Sure enough, it was a midsize city. Roughly
two kilometers from its walls,
hundreds of tanks were firing nonstop, their guns roaring across the battlefield. Around ten kilometers from the city, almost
at the riverbank, countless insects
were pouring through an... invisible breach.
These insects were clever. Two enormous ones stood on either side, as if showing the others where the breach was.
Across that nearly five-hundred-meter-wide opening, countless insects surged through, spread out, and charged
toward the city.
The city's defenders weren't about to let their numbers grow unchecked. They kept using artillery,
missiles, and even powerful incendiary
bombs to thin the swarm.
Boom! Boom!
The explosions kept coming. Beneath them, the skin-crawling clatter of insects on the move reached my ears.
I was only seven or eight hundred meters above the ground when a huge swarm suddenly pointed
their backsides