He steadied himself against the tree trunk beside him. The bark was as rough as sandpaper, scraping his palm until it burned.
A giant ant passed three steps away from him.
Su Li casually snapped off a broken branch from the ground and tentatively poked it into the ant's path.
It was not a provocation. He simply wanted to test the thing's reaction speed.
The giant ant stopped.
Its mandibles released the carapace shard, and its two antennae probed toward the branch. The next second, it charged up and bit down on the branch.
Crack.
The broken branch was sliced cleanly in two. The cross-section was as smooth as if it had been sawed through.
Holding the stick that was now missing a third of its length, Su Li took two steps back.
"All right." He tossed the remaining stick aside. "Not something I can afford to provoke."
After biting through the branch, the giant ant seemed to determine that the threat had been eliminated. It picked up the carapace shard again and continued on its way. The rhythm of its six legs did not change as it steadily disappeared behind the shrubs.
Su Li crouched down and picked up the severed section of branch for a look.
The cut was smooth. The branch itself was quite hard; he had needed no small amount of strength to snap it earlier.
In the old world, this giant ant's bite force would have been at least equal to the full-force slash of a second-tier knight.
An ant.
He looked around. Towering trees blocked out most of the daylight, their trunks so thick that five or six people could not encircle them hand in hand. The ground was carpeted in a thick layer of fallen leaves, soft beneath his feet. From time to