Breaking Free

"Attack! Why have you stopped attacking?" the ant queen's smug voice rang out. "This stone sphere was reinforced by me and all the ant queens before me over more than ten thousand years. How could you possibly break through it in a matter of moments?"

As its words faded, the poisonous mist inside the stone sphere gradually thinned as the ant queen drew it back into its body.

Song Wen and the other three seized the opportunity to probe the interior of the stone sphere with their divine sense.

Inside the stone sphere lay an enormous insect more than a hundred feet long.

Its body was grayish white, fat and bloated, like a mountain of flesh.

Two dense rows of short legs grew beneath its abdomen.

Those legs were so slender that they seemed utterly incapable of supporting that enormous mountain of flesh, leaving the insect sprawled motionless on the ground.

Its black head was only the size of a millstone, looking disproportionately tiny against its massive body.

The giant insect's rear end occasionally gave a slight wriggle.

With each wriggle, a fist-sized egg was squeezed out of its body.

"I wondered what a mighty creature the ant queen would be. Who would have thought you were just a bug that could barely crawl? I imagine you've been trapped inside this stone sphere all your life, never taking a single step outside." After being mocked repeatedly by the ant queen, Mo Yexue could not resist mocking it in return.

"Stupid human. You know nothing."

No sooner had it spoken than the ant queen's fat, bloated body began to shrink, quickly becoming only ten feet long.

Now its short, slender legs and head looked far more proportionate.

"Humans, you never expected this, did you? I can change the size of my