Chapter Eighty-Nine: The Hundred-Footed Heavenly Worm

A handful of bodies lay scattered across the frozen river. The bitter cold of the north had already sealed this great waterway in ice; these corpses stood no chance at all.

A sheen of frost crystals clung to their limbs and garments alike.

Ye Ran went over to inspect them and found that they were all masters from the temples. Some wore the insignia of the Sixth Heaven Temple, some bore the mark of the Scarlet Flame Palace, and others the emblem of the Thunder Temple. The variety was endless.

From the rolling mountains ahead came wave after wave of howls, and more than one mountainside was being smashed apart by the impact. Yet the three familiar auras had grown ever fainter.

Ye Ran was just about to go forward when Pandora seized his hand.

"Boy, are you in such a hurry to drag Purple Girl down with you?"

Ye Ran frowned. "I can help somehow. Otherwise, why would my benefactor have called me?"

Pandora gave a soft, amused laugh. "Boy, this is not where you help."

A heavy thud sounded beneath their feet.

Looking down, Ye Ran saw a strange insect with four legs and a body covered in black armor battering at the ice below.

The thing was as long as an arm, pitch-black from head to tail, its shell resembling iron plate. Its head was huge; at first glance it looked like a centipede missing several legs, except that the spike on its head was extraordinarily sharp.

With a single upward jab of its head, a white spot appeared in the thick ice beneath. Then, in the once blank and gleaming frozen expanse, one black spot after another emerged.

One strange insect after another swam up from beneath the water and slammed into the ice. They clawed and lunged, alternately driving the black spike on their heads into the ice, biting with their jaws, and raking with their short legs. Their appearance was bizarre and frenzied.

Thudding sounds rang out, and in no time the ice below had become a mass of black.

With a crack, several of the creatures swiftly broke through the surface, thrust their heads out of the water, and then, with their arm-length bodies pressed against the ice, flew toward Ye Ran and Pandora.

"Boy, move!"

Even Pandora changed color at the sight. She snatched up Ye Ran and shot toward the mountain range.

When they rose into the sky, Ye Ran was even more shocked.

Looking down from above, he saw the endless river of ice entirely occupied by those black monstrosities, so densely packed that the eye could not see their limits. The ice kept splitting open as one insect after another crawled out, devouring every living thing on the surface like a black tide.

The corpses of temple experts, seagulls resting on the ice, playful seals, penguins... all of them were swallowed whole in an instant. The scene was countless times more terrifying than the underground nest. Wherever the black storm passed, nothing living remained upon the ice.

Meanwhile, in the snow mountains ahead, the blizzard raged wildly. Great sheets of snow were hurled high into the air, nearly twenty meters up, as several colossal figures fought a desperate battle within the storm.

A golden-headed centipede and a giant millipede charged and rampaged through the mountains, while a purple-haired woman wielded a sharp sword, its light crossing and flashing. Yet even she was forced to fight while retreating, clearly unwilling to be entangled further in the blizzard.

A gigantic black insect was in relentless pursuit of the three great insect races.

Black shell, ten iron legs, a spined head, its appearance was identical to the creatures in the frozen river, but its body was fully forty meters long. Its frame was incomparably hard; wherever it passed, mountains collapsed one after another. Neither the golden-headed centipede nor the giant millipede dared to meet it head-on.

Though the black monster was powerful, the three insect races were no less ferocious. Outnumbering it three to one, they tore it apart after only a short while. Despite suffering serious injuries, they left it riddled with gaping, hideous blood holes, a sight gruesome enough to make one’s scalp crawl.

Yet from the surrounding snow mountains, six more giant black monsters were rushing to the battlefield. The largest of them was sixty meters long, like a writhing mountain range.

Merely seeing that scene made Ye Ran’s scalp tingle. No wonder the purple-haired woman had been wounded so badly. First came the pursuit of so many temple experts, and then such dreadful black insects. Even a second-generation god of Thor’s caliber would likely find them hard to withstand.

Ye Ran drew in a sharp breath. "What... are those things?"

He had never seen such terrifying insects.

Pandora said, "Sky Centipedes. The tyrants of the insect race."

Wind and snow poured into their collars as the two of them halted atop a high peak, looking down below.

"Their strength is judged by the number of their legs. It is said that in ancient times, the strongest among them had one hundred and thirty legs. They slew gods and gods alike, and could even confront the strongest of the Hundred Clans, the locust-men, head-on."

Pandora was a high-ranking demon. When faced with bloodthirsty blood goblins or savage ogres, she could remain calm and unhurried, but before the former overlords of the insect race, even she could not help being cautious.

Among the Hundred Clans of antiquity, the divine and demonic races were by no means the strongest. At the very least, the combat power of the insect race was enough to rival both gods and demons.

The few Sky Centipedes in the snow mountains had clearly not yet cultivated to their final form. They had only ten legs, the most numerous among them possessing sixteen at most, still far from the one hundred and thirty-leg stage. Yet the savage aura rolling off them already struck like a gale. With Pandora’s strength, it would be nearly impossible to resist such creatures.

Ye Ran said, "Is that the insect race that originally lived on the seventh level of the nest?"

He had read the records at Tiding Academy, and naturally knew of the old switch performed by the insect race.

The queen ant had given birth to zombie ants, while the gatekeeper of the seventh underground level had silently departed from Flood City.

Pandora nodded. "The insect race needs a great deal of nourishment to grow. Flood City could not provide the sustenance it required. By the time it left, it was already enormous. After so many years, who knows what size it has reached now?"

Her heart was both tense and expectant.

This was undoubtedly a perilous place, but she very much wanted to see what manner of earthshaking spectacle the resurrected overlord of the insect race would reveal on this ancient battlefield.

"Since they belong to the same race, why would the descendants of the Sky Centipedes attack them?"

Ye Ran kept his eyes fixed on the battlefield in the snow mountains. The golden-headed centipede, giant millipede, and purple-haired woman fought while retreating, with six Sky Centipedes in relentless pursuit. Soon the three great insect races were driven into a ravine.

Pandora smiled. "I said it already: the insect race grows through nourishment."

"The insect race has two branches of development. One is the transformation path, like Purple Girl’s, which then cultivates arts and combat techniques. The other is the path followed by most of the insect race, centered on bodily gigantism and the growth of power, acting on instinct and living by slaughter and feeding. The Sky Centipedes are of this kind. In their eyes, their own kind are the best food and nourishment."

Ye Ran’s heart quivered at the thought of devouring one’s own kind for food and sustenance.

He stood motionless on the peak, watching the purple-haired woman in the blizzard. Though wounded and bleeding, she remained peerlessly radiant.

Could such a woman truly be part of the insect race?

Ye Ran thought of the spider that had appeared in his imagination. Was that her true form?

After a long while, he cleared his mind and said, "I still do not understand. What help could I possibly offer if my benefactor called me here?"

Pandora gave another light laugh. "You’ll know soon enough."

Whoosh, whoosh.

Another rush of slicing wind came from afar.

Turning his head, Ye Ran saw countless figures already crossing the silver-clad forest and the snow-covered plains, flying swiftly toward them, while wave after wave of vast auras spread through the air.

"The temple army has arrived as well."

Pandora glanced back, the smile on her face deepening.