Wait, when she first entered the Ancient Wilderness?
Her memories returned. Putting them together with the unfamiliar yet familiar nighttime surroundings, Wen Jing understood everything in a flash-
She had arrived at the coordinates of her first crossing into the Ancient Wilderness!
Her memories of being controlled by the ant queen had not disappeared. Receiving its mating signal, nearly being treated as food, working for the super ants... everything surfaced clearly in her mind.
When day turned to night in the Ancient Wilderness, she had instinctively used her Gravity Silk coordinates. Instead of falling into an unfamiliar night, she had arrived at the place she had crossed over to during her first encounter with the raiders.
That was close!!
If she had been in human form, Wen Jing would have been drenched in cold sweat from the lingering fear.
That control had suppressed her individual will, making her integrate completely into the ant kingdom and truly believe she was one of them, without even interfering with her ability to take initiative.
If not for the Ancient Wilderness's multilayered spatial structure, with night and day occupying separate spaces, combined with the awakened's ability to cross over, she really might have spent her entire life as a worker ant in that nest.
Her only possible chance of escape would have been to regain her senses by briefly leaving the ant queen's control while out hunting by chance. But who knew whether that would happen, or how long it would take?
Wen Jing could not help recalling how the ant queen had apparently thought she was a male ant and sent her a mating signal.
If her panel had not been bound to her subjective consciousness, if the mind control had been just a little more advanced, she might already have spent her skill points evolving her reproductive abilities to satisfy the queen.
Those were the skill points she had worked so hard to save! It looked like she absolutely had to evolve an ability to defend against mind control!
A single ant queen had such a powerful ability. Who knew how many similar creatures existed in the Ancient Wilderness?
"Snap."
Coming back to herself, Wen Jing spat out Gravity Silk and stuck it to the ground, steadying herself.
Not far away, a pair of emotionless red eyes came into view through her compound eyes.
This time, she had eyes. With her night vision and the distant blue firelight, she finally saw what kind of creature had eaten her when she cocooned herself to leave last time.
A wolf?
More precisely, a wolf that looked as though it was made of shadows.
Wen Jing recalled the pebble stained with its digestive juices. Xie Ming had mentioned then that the researchers apparently called them Shadow Creatures.
Because she had successfully returned from inside this creature's throat last time, she had crossed over into its throat again this time.
"Smack!"
With a rush of wind, those scarlet eyes rapidly enlarged in Wen Jing's vision. The Shadow Wolf greeted her with an unhesitating pounce.
Gravel flew as its pitch-black forepaw pressed down on the spot the little insect had just occupied.
Then the Shadow Wolf lifted its forepaw, lowered its head, and opened its mouth, intending to eat the little insect again.
But the next moment, its black nose twitched, as though it had noticed something wrong.
-There was nothing beneath its lifted forepaw.
At the same time, Wen Jing, who looked like a mutant ant, appeared above the Shadow Wolf's head and spat out more than a dozen strands of Gravity Silk, attaching them to its two blood-red eyes.
The little insect's compound eyes were cold and filled with killing intent. She had not forgotten the fury she had felt the first time she came close to death.
She was no longer who she had been!
"Whoosh!"
From the Shadow Wolf's perspective, the little black insect hurtled toward it. Her body, already growing larger as she rapidly approached, abruptly expanded again as a pointed cone made entirely of energy sprouted out of thin air.
It instinctively shut its eyes at once, but this attack had been prepared in advance and was a step faster.
"Pfft..."
The Shadow Wolf let out a howl of pain and shook its head wildly.
Wen Jing used her Gravity Silk to cling tightly to its eye, preventing herself from being shaken off. At the same time, she controlled her energy, changing the shape of her Energy-Shaping Weapon to inflict more damage.
Even attacking its most vulnerable eye felt like stabbing into a rock. The resistance was enormous.
But she had strength and methods to spare.
After the initial pointed cone, Wen Jing formed horizontal and vertical blades, elongated spikes, curved hooks, and other shapes in succession. She intended to repeat the trick she had used against the lizard, penetrating directly through the eye socket into the Shadow Wolf's brain and destroying it.
However, before she had used more than a few weapons in her arsenal, energy suddenly surged around the Shadow Wolf, one of its eyes already more than half destroyed.
Wen Jing immediately grew alert, changing her energy frequency and preparing to turn her Energy-Shaping Weapon into an energy shield at any moment.
Unexpectedly, the next instant, all the feedback and resistance she felt vanished.
The distant blue firelight seemed to flicker almost imperceptibly. Then the Shadow Wolf before her abruptly collapsed like liquid, falling onto the ground and becoming a true wolf shadow.
With its physical structure gone, even the ever-versatile Gravity Silk slipped straight off its eyes.
Wen Jing instinctively used her other Gravity Silk anchors to suspend herself in midair, warily watching the eerie wolf shadow on the ground, which was darker than a normal shadow.
It was eerie because the wolf shadow on the ground was not a normal projection of a three-dimensional creature. A normal three-dimensional creature's projection constantly changed shape according to its angle to the light; from certain angles, for example, it might look like an unrecognizable blob.
But this wolf shadow was like a shadow-puppet character, using the ground illuminated by the distant blue firelight as its canvas. Even its shape had become a clearly outlined two-dimensional wolf, its head, body, tail, and sharp teeth all clearly displayed in a complete cross-sectional view.
The Shadow Wolf moved immediately after turning into shadow, charging forward and biting down on Wen Jing's shadow on the ground.
Intense pain struck in an instant.
Not a single part of Wen Jing's real body had been touched, yet she felt as though she had truly been bitten, suffering the pain of being crushed and chewed by enormous, sharp teeth.
What the hell kind of ability was this?
A Stand
attack?!
Wen Jing was horrified to discover that the health on her stat panel really was dropping.
Since it was a shadow...
The greater the crisis, the calmer Wen Jing became. Enduring the agony, she immediately used her Gravity Silk to move sideways.
The next moment, with her position changed, the little insect's shadow "flew" out of the Shadow Wolf's mouth.
"Whew... just as I thought. I have to change my shadow's position."
Wen Jing let out a breath, keenly noticing that her shadow had grown a little fainter after being bitten once by the Shadow Wolf.
Meanwhile, the Shadow Wolf's shadow had been darker than a normal shadow from the moment it transformed.
She had barely escaped its jaws when the wolf shadow immediately chased after her again.
Wen Jing immediately began maneuvering frantically, the insect shadow narrowly brushing past the wolf shadow's "mouth."
This couldn't go on!
In fewer than ten dodges back and forth, her situation grew more dangerous with each attempt. In the three-dimensional world, Wen Jing could handle the Shadow Wolf with ease. But after the Shadow Wolf entered two dimensions, only lateral movement was effective for her in three dimensions, leaving her an entire axis less room to maneuver.
Every rapid movement required her to calculate where her shadow would ultimately land. If not for her excellent combat instincts and movement skills, she would already have ended up in its jaws again.
To Wen Jing, the Shadow Wolf was unquestionably a gigantic creature. Fighting it and fighting a creature her own size were two different things.
Moreover, in this state, her insect shadow was too small to launch any effective attack against it. Shadows grew larger closer to the light and smaller farther away, but even if she wanted to move "farther away," the wolf shadow would immediately pursue her.
As long as they were the same distance from the light, the size disparity between them would always remain, to say nothing of how the Shadow Wolf's special shape had clearly been deliberately enhanced for mobility and attack power.
What could attack the wolf shadow?
In a flash, inspiration struck Wen Jing.
Immediately afterward, she formed another Energy-Shaping Weapon around herself.
But unlike the intricate, sharp weapon fitted to her insect body earlier, this time Wen Jing formed a sword.
Compared to the longsword she had formed while sparring in class, this sword not only gave off no light, but was also of extremely poor quality, with practically no thickness or hardness. Viewed edge-on, it was as thin as paper. Even a beginner student would not produce something like this.
It had only one characteristic-size!
In the world of shadows, size was what mattered!
The wolf shadow had been charging fiercely after the insect shadow, only to run head-on into an enormous sword with a little insect clinging to its end the next instant.
Judging by its appearance, it was not an insect with a longsword growing out of it, but a longsword with an insect growing out of it.
Wen Jing calculated her position and moved using her Gravity Silk. Like a shadow puppeteer operating a longsword prop, she brought the enormous sword down on the wolf shadow's head.
Slash!
The sword caught it completely off guard, merging straight into half the Shadow Wolf's head.
Being three-dimensional had its advantages too. In the world of shadows, simply overlapping shadows could indirectly achieve an effect that could "cut through anything"!
"Awooo..."
The shadow-transformed Shadow Wolf on the ground let out a miserable howl and rapidly retreated. Even its ink-black shadow visibly faded somewhat.
Kick it while it was down!
The tide of battle reversed at once. Now Wen Jing truly became a weapon master, wielding weapons with her insect body in the three-dimensional world and changing their shapes as she attacked. One moment it was a gigantic axe, the next a long spear, the next a durian... she relentlessly pursued the Shadow Wolf and unleashed a barrage of attacks.
How much prey had the Shadow Wolf hunted using this innate divine ability? How could it ever have imagined being subjected to such treatment one day?
After dodging left and right under Wen Jing's assault for a while, it finally realized that its previously invincible shadow transformation could not handle this enemy.
With a ripple of energy, the shadow on the ground gathered into a mass, and the Shadow Wolf returned to physical form.
They had fought from three dimensions into two, then from two dimensions back into three.
Wen Jing's fighting spirit surged. She immediately flung Gravity Silk at the Shadow Wolf and stuck it fast, determined to avenge being swallowed last time today.