They've Arrived

The insect tide arrived right on schedule.

Rolling in with yellow sand, it blotted out the sky and covered the earth—then slammed headfirst into the heavenly barrier outside the city.

Compared to a beast tide, the insect tide looked terrifying, but in truth, it posed far less of a threat than the former.

Powerful races would always occupy the best places to survive. In theory, these insects had been driven by those demon beasts into the Great Desert, that barren sea of yellow sand where not even birds bothered to shit.

Razor-sharp blade legs, hard carapaces, and the trait of refusing to stiffen even in death were all horrors unique to insect demons, but none of those horrors could conceal the weakness of their slender torsos.

Once the carapace on their torsos was broken open, their deaths became merely a matter of time, because they could not mend their shells—or rather, their life force could not sustain the long cycle required for the carapace to heal.

But now, the sheer number of the insect tide had made up for this flaw.

The first clash between the heavenly barrier and the insect tide ended quickly. Western Pacification Prefecture City stood amid perilous terrain; to the west, only a hundred-zhang plank road connected the two sides of Thousand Thorns Gorge. Countless insect corpses struggled—

Yet before the tens of thousands of dead insect corpses could tumble into the bottomless abyss, the insect demons arriving behind them devoured them clean.

Before long, those gathered below the city walls, intending to force the authorities to open the gates through sheer numbers, witnessed what a true ant-like siege was.

At first, the towering city walls blocked their view. All they could vaguely hear were faint rustling crawling sounds coming through the walls from outside.

Before