Gunshot

I feel a bit full.

It wasn't the comfortable fullness, it was overflowing. Five portions of high-level origin were pressed into the meridians in one go, and strength, blood, and spiritual power were all at their peak. Any more and it wouldn't be able to expand. The Greedy Wolf Power was still surging upwards, wave after wave, like someone continuing to pour water into an already full jar.

Lu Heng stood there for a while, suppressing the excess energy.

It can't be suppressed.

He changed his approach—pushing it outwards along the Blood Armor.

The force flowed out along the patterns on the scales and seeped into the ground. The trampled Mycelium at the edge of the wasteland stiffened for a moment, then suddenly contracted, its dark red color rising from the soil and weaving back inch by inch. The wilted grass stood up again, and the whitish soil surface became damp once more.

The Blood Taisui is sucking blood very fiercely.

After it recovered from that great surge, the pulse around the entire Shelter subsided and stabilized.

Lu Heng let out a breath; the feeling of fullness and pressure in his body subsided by half, and he was finally able to move freely.

He turned around and looked at the five corpses.

The dark brown carapace lay on the wasteland, not a single piece broken. The horizontal seams were intact, the joints were intact, and although the internal support was hollow, the carapace itself was completely undamaged.

Materials for the Bone Demon.

Moreover, they are the best kind—high-grade, complete, living carapaces with residual mutated blood energy. One of them, when made into Bone Demon, is equivalent to three he made before. If he uses all five, he can form a small team.

He squatted down, placed his hand on one of the armor plates, and remained there for a long time.

My heart was truly fluttering. And there simply wasn't enough time.

He thought of the Insect Queen.

He withdrew his hand.

He dragged the five corpses one by one into the Shelter, stacked them against the wall, and then closed the door. Only after doing this did he straighten up and dust off his hands.

Keep it for now, we'll dismantle it later.

Wild beasts on the edge of the wasteland.

With the Insect Armor Warrior dead, they have begun to return to the forest one after another, and Lu Heng has no intention of paying them any attention.

Now, there are more important things to do.

The directions are easy to find.

These five came charging in headlong, leaving a straight line in their wake. The grass lay flat in the same direction, their footprints were all the same depth, and even the broken branches were pointing in the same direction. They didn't take a detour or do any reconnaissance; they went straight from their lair to this place, fought, and then headed straight back.

When the last one turned and ran, it also ran in this direction.

Lu Heng followed that line.

At first, I walked, then I ran, and finally I picked up the pace.

The wind whizzed past his ears, and the shadows of the trees receded behind him. He ran fast, but his mind was racing with other thoughts: distance, time, the Insect Queen's position, and how to retreat after the battle.

As he ran, he suddenly realized something was wrong.

He had walked this road.

It wasn't that it looked familiar; I'd walked past it. That broken tree at the fork in the road, that slope baked white by the Geothermal —I should have seen it around the next bend.

He stopped.

The woods ahead parted, and steam rose from the valley floor, a white expanse that made the entire sky feel soft and warm.

Geothermal Valley.

Lu Heng stood on the slope, stunned for two seconds.

How did I end up here?

He went down anyway.

As soon as he entered the valley, he knew this trip wouldn't be in vain.

The valley's environment has been destroyed. Most of the steaming hot spring pools have dried up, their walls cracked, revealing the black crust beneath. The moss clinging to the rock walls is all dead, a grayish-white substance that falls off at the slightest touch. The ground is covered with a layer of something dark brown, densely packed, undulating in a rhythm like breathing.

They are insect eggs.

The entire valley floor was covered.

On top of those eggs stood insects. Some were only the size of a finger joint, while others were half a person's height. They were densely packed together, their horizontal seams facing the valley entrance, and they remained motionless.

Five figures stood in the middle of the Insect Swarm.

They were larger than the five from the wasteland, with thicker armor plates and a deeper red showing through the seams. They stood in the very center of the egg pile, as if guarding something.

Lu Heng stood in the shadows at the valley entrance, looking at everything in the valley, with only one thought in his mind:

Damn, another tough battle ahead.

He didn't reach for the knife at his waist.

Those five in the wasteland were there to hone his skills. He needed to practice his techniques to prevent himself from being clueless about how to fight.

No more grinding is needed now.

He reached in and pulled out the Kiss of Nightmare.

The gun felt heavy in my hand.

Lu Heng took a step forward, stepping out of the shadows.

The five creatures in the valley turned their heads at the same time, their horizontal seams pointing at him.

He raised the muzzle of his gun and aimed it at the one in the very center.

Hopefully your armor is tough enough; you raised the gun barrel slightly, then lowered it again.

The distance was still far, the valley was churning with heat, and the trajectory of the bullet would be uncertain. More importantly—he had figured out what was going on from those five probes. He knew how fast this thing could charge, he knew exactly where its punch would land, and he knew when it would retract its grip and when it would truly strike.

Shooting from a distance forces them to scatter.

He didn't want them to scatter.

The five in the valley didn't move either.

They stood in the center of the egg mass, with the horizontal seam facing him, and then simultaneously raised their arms and pressed down.

The Insect Swarm on the ground stirred.

The small ones were as big as knuckles, the large ones as big as fists, surging up densely, like a tide pushing up a slope. The horizontal seams opened and closed, making a soft, rustling sound.

Lu Heng watched as the layer of substance rose up and suddenly smiled.

"You guys are so good at giving orders."

He pressed his hands to the ground.

"Me too."

The Blood Taisui begins its activation.

The dark red Mycelium crawled forward, as thin as a hair and as dense as a net. Waves rose between the Mycelium, not large, only a foot high, one wave after another, crashing into the Insect Swarm.

The two sides collided and rolled into a heap.

The Insect Swarm rushed forward, biting the Mycelium and tearing it apart; the waves behind surged forward, enveloping the torn piece and dragging it into the ground.

The insects died very quickly.

They have no source to absorb, but they have remnants of distorted blood energy on their bodies—the little bit of stuff left behind by parasites—enough for the Blood Taisui to eat.

For every dead leaf, the Mycelium advances an inch forward.

With every inch the arch rises, the waves climb higher.

The Insect Swarm is decreasing, while the Blood Taisui is increasing. This isn't a war of attrition; it's getting stronger the more they fight.

As more and more of Taniguchi's remains appeared, the situation began to change.

They understood.

If they waited any longer, the Insect Swarm would be completely devoured, while the person standing at the valley entrance hadn't expended a single ounce of effort.

All five moved at the same time.

This time it wasn't about lining up, blocking the line, or baiting him into giving way. The five charged together, the sound of their armor plates opening and closing blending together, the ground shaking as they were trampled, the egg piles crushed, and slurry splashing everywhere.

The fastest one is at the very front.

With each step, you cover three meters; with two steps, you cross the valley's waist; and with the third step, you can clearly see the ring of red within its horizontal crevice.

Lu Heng didn't move.

He's calculating.

It wasn't about calculating how long its fist was—that's no longer important. It was about calculating how many steps it would take before its armor plates fully opened due to its full forward momentum.

Thirty steps. Twenty steps. Ten steps.

The Kiss of Nightmare lifted and pressed against her shoulder.

Five steps.

A shot rang out.

That sound dissipated all the heat in the valley.

The last one didn't even have a chance to stop. The shotgun shells exploded in its chest, and a large number of lead pellets hit the same piece of armor at the same time, piercing through the thick armor on the spot, flipping up the edges, and the flesh behind it was directly shattered into a mess.

It flew backward half a step and crashed to the ground, its carapace riddled with holes, and the red glow from the seams went out in an instant.

The four behind were jolted into a daze by the loud noise.

That's the stagnation.

The second shot.

The third shot.

The shotgun's range was unreasonable; two shots hit, and all three were caught in the shell cloud. The armor plates of the two closest ones were cracked, and one was directly knocked over, falling to its knees. The third one was hit on half of its body, its momentum was swayed, and it crashed into the one next to it, and the two rolled into the pile of eggs together.

The slowest one, which was originally at the back, veered slightly off course and narrowly avoided the main branches of the two cloud of bullets.

But it didn't manage to hide completely.

Several bullets grazed its left arm, leaving a trail of white dots on the armor plates, and the movement of its entire arm suddenly became sluggish.

The injury is not serious and is not to the main body.

But that's enough.