Chapter 28
The number of ants grew increasingly large, and suddenly, a new ant trampled over another and lunged toward Wen Jing's back.
With other ants swarming from this angle as well, there was no retreat left.
Facing this scenario, Wen Jing struck first by acting last; she jerked her head up and clamped down on the ant's mouthparts a step ahead.
Secret technique, Energy Amplification Method!
The next moment, energy fluctuations condensed within the blue-purple bug's mouthparts, abruptly igniting a sharp, cold light.
"Click!"
The opposing ant's mouthparts snapped straight in half at the sound.
A flash of pleasant surprise swept through Wen Jing's compound eyes; she had reached a 2.5-fold amplification when using this secret technique for human-body reinforcement, but she had not expected that applying it to the Wilderness Body would yield an enhancement that 'adapted to local conditions'.
Then let's try the others...
The ant whose mouthparts had been shattered lost none of its ferocity; it raised its tail abdomen and drove its sharp stinger fiercely downward.
"Bang!"
At that exact moment, a layer of white spherical shields popped out from Wen Jing's body.
Viewed from afar, the blue-purple bug looked like a manga-style 'Qi explosion'; it not only blocked the damage, but also consequently repelled the ant swarm's encirclement.
For other Awakeners, skills learned on the human body could not necessarily be applied to the Wilderness Body right away, usually requiring multiple practices and adaptations. They might manage to use it by chance once, but there was no guarantee they could do so the next time.
After all, before reaching a 60% compatibility rate, one could not convert the Wilderness Body in the material universe, and could only elevate application ability in this aspect while exploring the Ancient Wilderness-yet exploration in itself was dangerous, and surviving at all was no easy feat, so who would dare risk their life to practice?
As for Wen Jing, it remained the same old story: as long as she mastered something once, she mastered it completely.
When she applied martial arts to the bug body, she had already completed the adaptation to different bodily combat styles. The moment she used the secret technique for the first time, the bottlenecks of the combat skill vanished along with it.
Following the breakthrough of this ability, a wonderful prompt once again came transmitting through Wen Jing's consciousness:
[Mastered 'Grappling - Advanced Grappling Lv2', skill points +5]
[Mastered 'Movement - Advanced Movement Lv3', skill points +5]
"Hhahahahah!"
With another 10 skill points credited, Wen Jing was so happy she flew up to the skies. She had no appetite to keep fighting; time spent exploring the Ancient Wilderness was precious, and she had another goal today-exploring the map.
And this map exploration, of course, was not going to be done by her alone as a bug.
"Come on, come on, come and chase me!"
Wen Jing easily dodged a dozen resin cannonballs, preparing to lead the ant army out on patrol just like last time.
However, the subsequent situation exceeded her expectations.
She saw that the large ants on the tree trunk stopped continuing after releasing a wave of long-range attacks, staying put one by one instead, raising their heads and waving a pair of antennae back and forth in the air as if determining something.
Wen Jing stared compound-eye to compound-eye with them in mid-air.
A moment later, the ants' bodies spun around, and they actually directly disbanded on the spot!
No, why had they learned to bully the soft and fear the hard?
The entire bug that was Wen Jing was left speechless. Recalling when she came last time, they had possessed the posture of chasing her to the ends of the earth.
Was this right now? This was not right!
Naturally, she would not give up; she slid down on a Gravity Silk and once again began a random bout of biting wildly into the ant swarm.
"Click click!"
The large ants that suffered the attack instantly revealed their fierce nature, immediately turning their heads to lunge and bite at her.
Wen Jing did not linger in the fight; after exchanging blows for two rounds, her figure flashed, pulling away distance using a Gravity Silk.
The bitten large ants pursued, lunging and biting at her several times in succession. A few ants nearby also caught wind of the movement and followed her for a distance.
Yet just as Wen Jing felt this wave of aggro had been firmly drawn, the movements of the few ants slowed down again, showing signs of retreat.
Could it be that she beat them too severely this time?
Wen Jing was baffled, unable to understand the ants' internal communication mechanism. Clearly they were locked-on monsters that pursued her for a thousand miles last time, so how did they turn into area-of-effect attack monsters this time?
Unwilling to give up, she thought for a moment and simply probed directly inside the tree hole of the ants' lair.
Pitch black inside the tree hole, her compound eyes began adapting the moment she poked her head in, the world she saw seeming covered with a layer of blue-purple-toned cold light, while the chemical signals she received formed noise dots capable of distinguishing the rough shapes of objects.
As expected of level-two compound eyes, they even came with night vision.
In that case, exploring the ants' lair might be possible too.
No sooner had this thought arisen, before she could probe even half her body further into the tree hole, Wen Jing's fine bristles felt a rich pheromone the next moment, and her normally-adapting vision was covered by a sheet of static.
"Click click click click..."
She once again felt the aura of the ant swarm's former wrath. The moment she retreated from the tree hole, quite a few large ants emerged from within in a stacked-arhat posture, their sharp mouthparts acting like automatic iron pliers to block the trespasser, and the previously scattered ant swarm also hurried over.
This time she should have lured the mobs!
Wen Jing took flight in satisfaction, leading the ant army to advance toward the tree trunk she had not yet explored.
Ever since reaping benefits from the fruit, she had wanted to scavenge some more to eat. Barring that kind of clearly mutated situation from last time, normally, fruit stood a greater chance of growing near the treetops.
As a result, she had only led the ant army upward for a short distance when she looked back again, discovering that the number of following ants was actually growing fewer and fewer.
"It seems this still won't do..."
Wen Jing halted her actions. Exploring the map alone as a bug was not something she could not do, but the efficiency was definitely not as high as having the ant army, especially since she still harbored the intention of harvesting something.
With the ant army along, when encountering unknown enemies, there would be a buffer and containment, sparing her from relying entirely on consuming skill points to evolve for combat.
Having just newly entered 10 skill points, coupled with what she acquired previously, she currently still had a total of 22 skill points.
After weighing things briefly, Wen Jing felt it was still very necessary to evolve a means capable of stirring the ant army.
[Evolution direction determined...]
[Consuming points to evolve...]
[22 → 16]
[Evolution complete]
[Antennae II]
[Acquired traits: Pheromone Perception, Pheromone Simulation]
The antennae, which had directly risen to level two, immediately manifested changes on Wen Jing's body. The two fine bristles of hers that were originally not as long as her mouthparts began to grow rapidly, becoming not only longer, but also much more flexible.
Wen Jing novelly controlled her antennae, moving them up, down, left, and right.
Compared to the initial fine bristles, the active range and sensory range of the antennae had undoubtedly expanded too much, and many unknown auras she originally could not sense were also scanned by her, expanding her radar range all at once.
Of course, the foregoing was merely the most fundamental part; the truly earth-shattering change was that Wen Jing had acquired the ability to distinguish chemical signals contained within certain pheromones.
In the past, she could only know the ants were talking, simply distinguishing provocative tones like 'scum', whereas now she could more clearly know what they were roughly saying.
For instance, the ant army below-the pheromone noise dots secreted within their antennae for communicating with one another appeared before her eyes in colors representing different meanings.
There was red for 'danger', and blue for 'worthless'.
So in their eyes, she existed as a target that was both dangerous and not worth hunting?
Having evolved the antennae as this 'insect language decipherer', Wen Jing finally understood why the ant army refused to pursue.
As for now, however, what she had evolved was not merely a decipherer, but a simulator as well.
Thus, the blue-purple bug lowered her stance, concentrating the energy amplification onto her newly grown 'twin tails' to simulate and secrete pheromones of the exact same nature as those of the ant army:
"Scum!"
Under the effect of the energy amplification, this wave of pheromone concentration was practically like a screech amplified by a high-magnification loudspeaker with extraordinary results!
Swish!
The next moment, the red and blue noise dots on the bodies of the ant army abruptly changed color, shifting from near to far at an extremely fast speed into bright yellow representing 'charge, gather'.
"Scum! Scum! Scum!"
The ants, which had previously been hesitant about whether to retreat, stood erect one by one, just like soldiers blowing the assembly horn. Not only did they lock onto Wen Jing and follow, but at the same time they were also emitting the same bright yellow pheromone to summon other ants nearby.
"Charge!" Wen Jing resembled a fluttering blue-purple banner, charging ahead as the sole bug.
In the afternoon of the Ancient Wilderness, atop the giant trees, the winds and clouds rose once more.
Wen Jing, the ant general in name and deed, rallied the army and embarked on a crusade toward the unknown upper layers of the giant tree.
Chapter 28
Leading the ant army, Wen Jing was invincible all the way, clearing out ten thousand bugs with ease.
Taking the ant nest as the center, she first explored the surrounding circle, discovering various insects and a number of slugs emitting prismatic luster across several large branches nearby.
It was worth mentioning that near the white mutated branch where Wen Jing had eaten the fruit last time, an occupier had already appeared-a large light-cyan mantis.
Wen Jing glanced at it from afar, and upon confirming that no new fruit had grown there, she gave up on approaching.
It was pretty good to let the large mantis guard it; she would come back to pick the fruit when it grew again.
After exploring a circle, Wen Jing discovered that the approximate strength of creatures could be judged through the territory occupied on the giant tree, and the ant kingdom that monopolized the main trunk was the greatest overlord of this section.
Only, the ant army, which possessed a social structure, expanded step-by-step and would not wage wars of conquest against the surroundings at all costs, which was why other powerhouses still occupied the various branches.
Now that Wen Jing was exploiting a bug, having finished exploring the surroundings, she led the ant army to invade upward along the main trunk.
Starting from a distance of about seven or eight meters out, the color of the tree bark gradually grew lighter, and small dots resembling boreholes began to appear upon it, growing increasingly dense as well.
On the bodies of the ant army following behind, red dots of 'danger' pheromones began to radiate, and their marching speed started to slow down.