Insect Nest? Insect Tide!

After racing through the night, Chu Wen followed the familiar wasteland and arrived at County 0618.

County 0618 appeared to be only a few kilometers from County 0617, but the entire town lay sunken below ground level. To enter, one had to cross a small hill.

A fierce battle had once taken place here, leaving the entire town in a state of collapse.

He took out his optical computer and began recording the surrounding conditions, keeping a close eye on the network signal.

"The signal's fine... so why did they lose contact?"

He pushed aside the vines blocking his view and continued until he neared the town's entrance.

Then suddenly—

The signal bars on his optical computer vanished. The distant sky darkened, as though a bank of black clouds had swallowed the town.

It should have been dawn, yet this place seemed to have sunk back into the dead of night.

A bleak wind wailed, tree shadows mottled the ground, and the wild grass beside him bent down in unison, revealing a deep, shadowy path.

"So there really is something strange here..."

Based on the records so far, he could not determine what lay inside. Chu Wen withdrew from the signal-blocked area and uploaded everything he had encountered along the way.

That naturally included footage of him casually killing high-rank beast soldiers with a single slash.

But Chu Wen had no time to edit it. He was deeply curious about this place.

Or rather, the Primordial Source Pearl seemed to hunger for this place, continuously emitting abnormal fluctuations of blood energy.

He possessed perfected movement arts. After his blood energy had broken past its limits, his burst speed was even faster than that of some beginner beast kings. Naturally, he did not fear the anomaly here. If he truly encountered a high-rank beast general, he could use it for practice.

He slowly approached along the shrubs.

The shrubs of this era were all three meters tall. Chu Wen felt as though he had entered a land of giants, with the vegetation around him seemingly ready to bury him alive.

Sinister. Eerie.

"The network's completely cut off..."

The moment Chu Wen stepped onto the sunken ground, he saw the offline notification on his optical computer.

And the Primordial Source Pearl's fluctuations grew stronger and stronger.

Yet before he had taken more than a few steps, the sight before him made Chu Wen's breathing quicken—

A gigantic python seven or eight stories tall lay dead on the ground! The blood around it had not even dried, and beneath its empty snake head, both mutated venom sacs had been removed.

The instant Chu Wen drew near, the blood energy value on the Primordial Source Pearl began to surge wildly.

[Blood Energy Value: 100/100]

[Potential Points: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5...]

The overflowing blood energy value frantically transformed into potential points!

This was a beast king! A beast king on the verge of transforming into a demon king!

Yet it was dead—and had only just died!

Chu Wen immediately sensed danger. At his command, the soaring potential points began pouring into Shadow Follows Form!

His comprehension of Shadow Follows Form soared without pause, the numbers visibly climbing until they finally stopped.

Shadow Follows Form Returned to Simplicity (Limit Broken 0 Times).

Grrrululu~

It sounded like insect mandibles scraping against reinforced concrete. Chu Wen did not even have time to collect the beast king's main materials before he kicked off the ground and fled at full speed.

Not long afterward, dense swarms of black insects seeped from underground, surging in the direction Chu Wen had fled like a tidal wave.

"Damn! This isn't an insect nest—this is an insect tide about to take shape!"

The optical computer had definitely analyzed the possibility!

From the birth of an insect nest to the formation of an insect tide was a long process. The queen within the nest would never allow any living creature to leave with information about it.

She had to grow cautiously, until she could stand on equal footing with those demon kings.

She needed to beware not only of human martial artists, but also of beast kings that wished to devour her intelligence—and even more so of demon kings wary of her abilities.

It could be said that she had never made a single mistake in growing to this point!

"So slow. This insect tide is moving far too slowly."

In Chu Wen's eyes, the movements of these insects seemed slowed down countless times, far slower than the PowerPoint slides of his previous life.

His own movements, however, were exceptionally crisp, without the slightest wasted motion. Every step he took landed upon the optimal path.

This was Returned to Simplicity-level movement arts!

Shadow Follows Form! Turning form into formlessness!

No one could tell where his body truly was; every attack came up empty!

At that moment, as he watched the insect tide sweep toward him and blot out the sky, he merely calmly brushed the weeds from his shoulder.

As if out on a stroll, he paced leisurely through the endless insect tide. The tens of thousands of flying insects, no matter how hard they tried, could not touch his combat suit.

Like an insulator, Chu Wen calmly weaved through the insect tide.

At the source of the insect tide, within a brown nest, the owner of the insect nest was equally dumbfounded.

Never in her memories had she seen something so inconceivable.

The other party was like a life-form that did not exist. No matter how her subjects pounced and slaughtered, they could not even touch his clothes!

Since when had human martial artists become this terrifying?

The other party's strength appeared to be merely that of a human warrior. How could he walk so calmly before her?!

He was practically a god, ignoring everything before him!

The insect nest queen was both shocked and terrified. Her royal guards nearby began escorting her deeper into the nest, toward the ant chamber.

The worker ants serving her also nervously yet orderly began moving the larvae and eggs. They were the kingdom's future.

The queen could not move. In order to give birth to more subjects, she had shed most of her organs, leaving only an enormous pale-yellow abdomen that wriggled day and night without rest, continuously producing new subjects.

She was afraid. In her plans, she should have continued growing until she possessed the means to negotiate with those demon kings.

Yet now, an utterly ordinary human martial artist had invaded this place. His bizarre movements had shaken her entire framework of understanding.

Why couldn't her subjects touch this human?!

What was he?!

Layer upon layer of insect tide, endless and inexhaustible, completely engulfed Chu Wen, yet they could never touch even the hem of his clothing.

And as time passed, the brown beetle corpses piled on the ground began to grow thicker.

"My patience is limited..."

"These insects don't add even a single point of blood energy..."

The battle blade in his hand slowly slid free, and the air around him turned exceptionally sharp.

Invisible Blade!

Returned to Simplicity-level Burning Blade Technique!

One man and one blade forcibly cleaved the insect tide apart, creating a vacuum zone!

The insects around him grew increasingly desperate, yet they could not stop this human from entering their underground nest.

They began to scatter, because that was the queen's residence, a place ordinary subjects had no right to enter.

Within the cold underground nest, white fungi grew lushly beside the soil. Golden adult insects with enormous mandibles began guarding the final line of defense.

Their huge, metallic mandibles snapped continuously at Chu Wen, yet at the final moment, Chu Wen always evaded them with effortless ease.

Meanwhile, the fierce blade technique in Chu Wen's hand always killed with a single strike!

One had to know that even high-rank warriors could not break through their armor.

Yet against this human martial artist, who appeared incomparably weak, they had no power to resist.

How could they know that even the strongest among human martial artists had never mastered Returned to Simplicity-level Burning Blade Technique?

Turning nothing into one, making the formless take form—this was the Returned to Simplicity Burning Blade Technique!

Chu Wen had long since touched upon this realm—a realm countless predecessors had never set foot in!

"So it's an ant nest after all."

Chu Wen looked at the honey-pot ants hanging above the nest, regret in his eyes.

The missing squad members displayed by the optical computer had all perished here.

Inside those honey-pot ant abdomens were dead human martial artists and chunks of demon beast remains!

Not even one of the dead human martial artists had an intact corpse.

The nest was enormous, but the massive insect tide could not move freely through it at this moment. Chu Wen moved through this place as though no one were there.

Beside the queen stood two male black ants that had shed their carapaces. They were her personal guards, and they stared fixedly at this intruder.

But what Chu Wen had not expected was that the queen wriggled her body and rose to her feet with the support of her guards.

A pair of sapphire-blue eyes radiated soul-stealing charm.

She actually spoke human words.

"Human."

"Would you be interested in making a deal?"