Peerless: Auspicious Beast's Star Revival Plan

Chapter 157 Gardens and Pests

The wild little mine cart jolted its way into the deep darkness.

But the underground world is not entirely dark.

In addition to the seemingly endless and interconnected tunnels, the car also passed through a deep blue underground lake. Huo Yuqing was sure that her spirit had detected some kind of huge and terrifying soul beast lurking underwater. There was also a cave that was brightly lit. They passed on a track in mid-air where huge and sturdy soldier ants were tending to the luminous plants unique to the underground. There was also a deep valley where a faint ray of light could be seen between the towering stone walls.

Huo Yuqing also keenly noticed that the traces on the excavated stone wall were becoming increasingly older, and the car seemed to be approaching the older part of the ant nest.

After a few hours of bumpy ride, the car finally braked suddenly and stopped at the entrance of a fork in the road.

Wen Qiang climbed out of the car as if nothing had happened, but Huo Yuqing was in a much worse situation.

The girl climbed out of the small mine car tremblingly, her movements were only slightly more agile than those of an 80-year-old woman. Although her stomach was empty, it was still churning. Huo Yuqing retched a few times, slowly stood up against the wall, and then rubbed her face that was stiffened by the wind.

Wen Qiang was silent for a moment, and out of teacher-disciple love, decided not to remind her what the coating on the wall was.

Seeing that she had almost recovered, Wen Qiang took the lead and walked deeper into the tunnel.

For some reason, Huo Yuqing felt that the darkness here was deeper and thicker, giving her a chilling feeling of uneasiness that sent a chill down her spine.

It seemed as if even the sound of footsteps was absorbed by the darkness.

"This place... seems a little different from the tunnel just now?" she asked hesitantly.

"Because this is the older part of the anthill." explained the scarab.

"At the beginning of the Ant Nest Project, different nests were connected to each other, and then formed into a whole, which was jointly maintained by the ants and other underground soul beasts."

Huo Yuqing hesitated for a moment and asked, "Are the different underground spirit beasts... so united?"

"Of course not, they were all defeated by fighting." Wen Qiang said lightly, "Ten thousand years ago, the auspicious beast saved the ant tribe's fierce beast Tianyu, and then led Tianyu's tribe to physically persuade a total of 28 ant nests under Xingdou that have been passed down for more than 100,000 years - ah, I just heard it from others." He looked a little regretful, "If Sun and Moon collided earlier, maybe I could also join in the fun."

“On the stars… there are so many hundred thousand year old ants?” Huo Yuqing felt a little numb behind his back when he heard this.

How many ants are there in a nest of ants?
"No, that's not how it's calculated." Wen Qiang seemed amused by her. "The inheritance time of the ant nest has nothing to do with their cultivation. The cultivation and potential of a nest of ant-like soul beasts are mainly related to their mother. The ordinary offspring of the queen ant will reach a cultivation level similar to that of the queen ant herself in a very short time after birth, but their lifespan is also much shorter than that of other soul beasts.

If the queen ant is strong, the ant colony will also be strong; if the queen ant is weak, the ant colony will also be weak... If the queen ant dies, her offspring will also die one by one after the offspring of the new queen ant grow up. Similarly, if a large number of ordinary ants in an ant colony die, the queen ant will also be severely damaged. Moreover, the queen ant itself is extremely weak. They have no attack power and are easy to die. To this day, there is only one queen ant who has cultivated for more than 100,000 years, Queen Tianyu. "

"This is a very complex operating mechanism. We still don't understand the specific principles, but the strength of a single ant-type soul beast is actually much weaker than other soul beasts of the same level. Their soul rings are the same, and the situation is similar for bee colonies."

The level of cultivation here is not calculated according to the number of years the ants live, but according to the color of their soul rings after death. Wang Rui once thought that this was a way to improve the overall strength of star fighting soul beasts, but after learning a little more, he realized that the growth mechanism of insect soul beasts has no reference value at all.

The cultivation of the ant soul beasts is seriously inflated, but the saying that ants can kill elephants is still quite meaningful. It's just that they are obviously not suitable for individual combat, and they are completely unsuitable for being soul ring donors, but as a labor force... they are really suitable.

Look at this great underground maze!
"And this is one of the earliest anthills." Wen Qiang raised his hand and knocked on the stone wall. "This tunnel existed more than 100,000 years ago. Later, this area was transformed into a planting room, but due to various changes, the planting room here was abandoned."

His voice echoed in the tunnel, with a kind of hollow echo. Perhaps because this planting area was abandoned, the light of the luminous plants and mushrooms in the tunnel here was very dim.

Huo Yuqing's delicate eyebrows were knitted.

"But... I still feel bad here. Unlike the tunnel just now, this place is a little... creepy." She whispered, and deep in her tone there was an uneasiness that she herself was not aware of.

Wen Qiang looked at her thoughtfully.

"You're right. This place down there is not a good place. They dug too deep, and this land is too ancient. There are many things that cannot be understood by modern intelligent creatures..." He paused, choosing his words carefully, "Things. They will reappear in the world as the excavation progresses. But don't worry. The location here is still shallow, so you won't encounter anything. Besides, my strength is enough to handle 90% of the unexpected situations."

Huo Yuqing was not comforted by him.

Why don’t you tell me what that one percent of accidents are that even the ferocious beasts can’t deal with!

But Wen Qiang obviously had no intention of explaining.

They walked forward along the tunnel for a while, and Huo Yuqing began to hear some suspicious, wet sounds of mucus-covered mollusks wriggling at some forks in the road, but when she extended her mental detection there was nothing.

But Wen Qiang only said that they were almost there.

The dark tunnel would naturally put a lot of pressure on people. When Huo Yuqing began to suspiciously use her mental detection to scan every crack on the rock wall, she finally heard human voices in the distance.

"Ah - this day - when will it end - ah!!!!!!!" the voice shouted in despair, "I really want to go to school!!!!"

Despite the echoes, the noise still sounded very familiar.

Wen Qiang took her through a narrow cave - inside the cave were three young men who looked like they had been beaten up many times by life.

There was An Wen, who had a gruff look on her face, supporting herself on the ground with her martial spirit and then pressing her whole body weight on it. She now had a second purple spirit ring; there was He Cai Tou, who had a calm and numb look on his face, carrying a gun barrel and holding a row of cigars in his mouth; and there was also a strange young man with a gloomy face. Huo Yuqing noticed that his facial features were somewhat familiar.

"You're here too." Anwen greeted her listlessly and blew a smoke ring at Caitou. The strange boy also waved weakly.

"In short, ignore the cause and effect." He Caitou's voice was full of numbness and fatigue. "Welcome to join our insect extermination team."

"And the hell of trypophobia," the strange boy added.

Anwen raised the tip of the gun and poked it down hard.

The thing that Huo Yuqing had always thought was a black shadow began to wriggle - it could even be said to be boiling, accompanied by a disgusting sound of slippery mucus wriggling. In that black shadow - in the black mud, countless eyes of different sizes and colors opened, trembling and turning in different directions.

"Here, these are pests."

(End of this chapter)