The Cage

"What trapped me was the very Gold-Eating Ants attacking you."

The queen ant's voice rang out again.

"There can only ever be one queen in the Gold-Eating Ant lineage. Only when the old queen dies can a new queen be born. The queen's life or death determines the survival of the entire colony."

"That is why the colony, though it obeys the queen's every whim, refuses to let her leave her nest, lest she encounter danger."

"The stone sphere you just burned away wasn't built by me or any of the queens before me. It was the handiwork of these ordinary Gold-Eating Ants, built solely to protect their queen. Yet it became a cage imprisoning me and every queen before me."

"I've been trapped inside that stone sphere since birth, never taking even half a step outside. Now that I've escaped, I have you four to thank."

"To repay you, I've decided to scatter your souls and deny you reincarnation forever. Hahaha..."

Along with the queen's wild laughter came a powerful blast of Divine Sense.

The Divine Sense assault took the form of transparent spikes, stabbing straight toward the four cultivators' heads.

Lan Chen flipped her right hand, and a palm-sized bone bottle appeared in it.

The bone bottle was translucent and lustrous, resembling the finest white mutton-fat jade.

As Lan Chen poured magical power into it, a pearly white light lit up across its surface.

All four of them, standing relatively close together, were enveloped in the white light.

The bone bottle was, unmistakably, a high-grade soul-defense magical treasure.

The transparent spikes pierced the white light as though plunging into a mire, their speed plummeting and their power sharply diminished.

Rather than attacking the others, every one of these spikes shot toward Lan Chen.

The queen clearly understood that