At the same time, worker ants kept bringing food from storerooms excavated nearby and feeding it into the queen ant's mouth.
If one pulled the view higher and farther away, disregarding the ants' individual identities, the scene looked much like a human heart at work-blood flowed from all parts of the body into the heart, was converted into fresh blood, and flowed back out to every part of the body.
Wen Jing's presence here made her an outsider, out of place in both size and appearance.
But in her eyes at that moment, she was wholly a member of the ant kingdom.
Immediately afterward, the queen ant before her sent her a mating signal.
Without question, Wen Jing's first impulse was to obey, but after moving helplessly from side to side, she regretfully discovered that she lacked the necessary function.
Should I evolve it?
The thought instinctively flashed through the little bug's mind, but the moment this expression of individual free will appeared, it was instantly overwritten by "devote everything to the being before you," leaving her unable to recall it at all.
The Evolution Panel seemed to be bound to Wen Jing's independent will, while the mechanism of the queen ant's brainwashing ability did not permit that part to exist. Otherwise, it really might have received an unexpected "surprise" on the spot.
When the queen ant saw that the mating signal had failed, it gave up and issued another command instead.
The next instant, the worker ants feeding it received the signal, and a group broke off and approached Wen Jing.
"Click, click, click, click..."
The worker ants advanced and began biting her body.
When the first worker ant's mouthparts bit down, she dodged almost instinctively, taking the opportunity to knock aside another worker ant's attack.
But as she began to resist, the queen ant's crystalline body started glowing red.
A stronger controlling force began to take effect.
Wen Jing's consciousness felt as though it had sunk underwater, separated from her body by another layer. Her newly awakened urge to resist vanished at once, and she lay motionless as the worker ants gnawed at her.
Becoming food for the queen ant was also a form of devotion...
The little bug lay in the ant hall, her body covered in worker ants, seemingly about to meet her death.
Yet as the minutes and seconds passed, she remained perfectly alive.
Because the worker ants soon discovered that they... couldn't bite through the creature before them!
Even what should have been her most vulnerable parts-her compound eyes-were covered by a layer of cornea. Repeated attacks from the worker ants' mouthparts could leave only insignificant scratches on it.
Wen Jing was long past what she had once been. Back when her individual stat had been only 0.01, she had still needed to guard against the ants' attacks when fighting them.
But now, she had a full 20 HP. That two-thousandfold difference in HP was concentrated into a body only twice her former size. Every part of her was pure essence, far beyond the elite insect mobs on the branches.
As a result, even when she gave up resisting and let the worker ants bite her like this, they could not bite through her.
If the queen ant's feeding ability had been as powerful as its mind control, eating Wen Jing would still have been a viable option.
Unfortunately, all the queen ant's ability points had clearly gone into a single area. It needed worker ants to feed it even when eating, so it could do nothing either.
Moreover, suppressing Wen Jing's instinct to resist while the worker ants kept attacking her also consumed energy.
Thus, after the attacks continued for some time without results, the queen ant had no choice but to abandon its second plan for her.
The worker ants received their orders and withdrew, revealing Wen Jing, who could be described as completely unscathed.
Unable to do anything to her, the queen ant could only issue her a third command-
Go to work.
The little bug waved her antennae upon receiving the order and immediately set about carrying it out with vigor.
Devotion!
Devotion!
Devotion!
Wen Jing regarded herself as a worker ant, joining the enormous, constantly running machine that was the ant nest and voluntarily becoming one of its gears.
And she was a powerful, all-purpose gear.
Compared with the other worker ants, once Wen Jing started doing their work, her efficiency was an era ahead of theirs.
At the emerald crystal rice-grain mine, she was a mechanized excavator with built-in energy detection. While the ants beside her were still searching for a spot among the fibers, her perception had already generated a mineral scan model, and she dug rapidly along the optimal route.
Along the transport routes, she was a super truck. While the other ants carried loads overhead toward the storerooms, she used Gravity Silk to stick a long chain of items together and dragged them along.
When defending against invaders, she was the strongest warrior, killing all manner of small creatures that accidentally entered the nest in a single encounter...
After Wen Jing became a member of the ant kingdom, she alone could be said to have completed work that would have taken the entire ant collective months.
Unfortunately, these earthshaking achievements would have earned her noble titles in any other kingdom, but here, no ant knew how to appreciate or admire them, including Wen Jing herself at that moment.
Within the ant kingdom, labor was divided cooperatively, and each ant performed its duties. Absolute collective consciousness erased independent individual consciousness.
This also produced the ants' almost entirely uniform individual capabilities. No "genius" ant like her would ever arise.
And Wen Jing, brainwashed by the queen ant, had already become part of this place.
She had completely forgotten who she was, forgotten that she belonged to another world, forgotten... that she still needed to return before a certain time.
Until time passed, and night fell over the Ancient Wilderness right on schedule.
Inside the giant tree's ant nest, the "super worker ant," who was heading toward the emerald crystal mine to continue digging, suddenly vanished from that space.
The other worker ants heading to the same destination paused, their antennae probing the air, unsure where their capable, oversized companion had gone.
As six o'clock approached, a staff member at Red Earth Academy's exploration registration center returned to the hall after registering a student's information in the square.
He walked to the front desk and saw today's registration list on the home screen. Only one registered name had yet to return.
He glanced at the current time again. There were less than five minutes until six in the evening.
Had that name not been Wen Jing, the staff member would probably already have been unable to stop himself from worrying, but right now, he was not particularly anxious.
News that Wen Jing had cleared four consecutive floors of the Trial Tower had been announced to all the academy's teachers and students. Naturally, he had heard about it too and knew that she was exceptionally strong, a rare genius.
Not to mention that he had personally witnessed her return in the final few minutes more than once, bringing harvested materials with her.
So although he gave her the routine reminder every time, faced with this familiar situation once again, the staff member simply assumed out of habit that Wen Jing would return at the last minute, just as she had before.
He opened the Pin Hao Suan promoters' business group and watched his industry peers chatting and boasting, becoming engrossed before he knew it.
Suddenly, a warning popped up on the screen.
The staff member jolted. He stared at the warning for a moment before coming to his senses, only then realizing that the time had slipped past six.
On the list, one name automatically turned red, and an ominous exclamation mark appeared after it.
Wen Jing had not returned before six!
The staff member shot to his feet and scrambled to activate the registration center's emergency protocol for explorers who had failed to return.
Over the next twenty-four hours, the registration center and the nearest facilities would assign additional staff on duty, and backup emergency medical robots would be activated, all entering standby mode.
If an Awakened traveling to and from the Ancient Wilderness still had not returned after that period, they could essentially be declared missing.
After doing everything, the staff member looked at the red name with mixed feelings.
Usually, this happened three to five times a year, but before this, he had never imagined that Wen Jing would be the first person in this year's incoming class to actually encounter such a situation.
For an Awakened who had not returned after six, the best possibility was that they had missed their return and entered the Ancient Wilderness at night. The worst possibility, naturally, was that they had already died during their exploration.
But even the former possibility was very likely to end in the latter outcome...
Deep blue light, like a mirage, cast a hazy glow over the white stone ground in the darkness.
The creatures in this space went about their various activities beneath the cover of night.
"Awooo..."
An ethereal wolf's howl sounded in the distance, conveying some message to its companions.
Beneath a tree's shadow, a pair of cruel, merciless red eyes lit up, and a wolf-like creature that had been lying there strolled out.
A light breeze brushed over its body, stirring not fur, but wisps of shadow like mist.
This was a wolf composed entirely of shadows.
The Shadow Wolf emerged from the tree's shadow and raised its neck toward the distant howl, preparing to respond.
"Awo... choo..."
Halfway through the sound, the Shadow Wolf froze, as though something in its throat had choked it, and sneezed violently.
The Shadow Wolf shook its head, shaking off the strange sensation, then raised its muzzle to the sky to try again.
"Awoo-achoo!"
Not only did its second attempt fail, but its obstructed breathing also triggered a violent chain reaction. The Shadow Wolf coughed uncontrollably, forced to crouch with its forelimbs braced against the ground, shaking its head repeatedly in an effort to rid itself of the discomfort.
"...Cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough!"
Finally, at some moment when the Shadow Wolf was shaking its head so hard it left afterimages, a small black-and-red bug shot out of its mouth.
Chapter 41
Where the hell had she ended up?
In a daze, Wen Jing's consciousness had only just escaped the queen ant's influence when she felt as though she had spun dozens of times inside a washing machine. Then, with a violent impact, a blast of air swept her entire body up and spat her into midair.
"Clang, clang, clang..."
Carried by her momentum, she bounced off the ground, fell, bounced again... just like when she had first entered the Ancient Wilderness, like a stone skipping across water.