Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios
The Underground Cave Magical Spiders and the Bloodthirsty Iron-Crystal Ants had been at war for tens of thousands of years. Ultimately, it was the Bloodthirsty Iron-Crystal Ants that had lost in the end, and it had been a terrible defeat at that.
If not for Meng Lei, even Little Gold, the current ant monarch, would have been wiped out by the Underground Cave Magical Spiders. This could be said to be an utter defeat for them.
With regard to this, Little Gold was filled with dejection.
“Little Gold, you’re still young. This isn’t your fault.” Meng Lei patted Little Gold on the head. “Besides, the final outcome is that you’re still alive, while the Underground Cave Magical Spider Emperor is dead. That’s the most important thing, isn’t it?”
“Yes, yes!” Little Gold repeatedly nodded, its grief turning into joy.
Yes, I’m still alive! It’s only when I’m alive that there’ll still be hope.
They went down the meandering path.
Sometimes it was spacious, and sometimes it was narrow.
Sometimes it was filled with jagged, strangely-shaped rocks, and sometimes it was surrounded by cliff and precipitous rock walls.
Sometimes there were undercurrents and corridors, and sometimes there were bottomless pits that stretched all the way down.
The terrain was very irregular, and it was dark and lightless. If not for Little Gold guiding him, Meng Lei really wouldn’t have the guts to continue forward.
One would lose their way going about in a place like this the moment they got a little careless, and once they lost their way, only death awaited them. There was no way they would survive at all.
“Ol’ President, have you ever been to the underground?”
“No…”
They chatted idly as they walked.
At last, an especially spacious underground cavern finally appeared ahead of them. Little Gold introduced the place and said, “This is one of the spatial layers.”
“One of the spatial layers?” Meng Lei turned to look.
The spatial layer was very big, and one couldn’t see to the end of it at one glance. It was also 1,000 feet tall and appeared exceedingly wide and spacious.
The amazing thing was that there were patches of glowing plants growing on the ground, walls, and ceilings, making it look as if it was a forest, and they lit up the spatial layer very brightly.
“It’s gorgeous!”
Meng Lei was astounded by the sight. The glowing forest in front of him was as if twinkling, brilliant jewels. They gave off a dreamy glow and looked splendid and magnificent.
“Even the scenery in Pandora’s night forest in the movie Avatar is nothing more than this,” Meng Lei murmured to himself.
“Who would have thought that a beautiful place like this would actually exist in such a dark and quiet underground? The Creator is amazing, indeed!”
Ol’ Amos was also pretty astounded. He stroked his beard as he gazed at the glowing forest, his speech full of admiration.
Rustle, rustle!
Just as the two of them were immersed in their feelings of astoundment at the beautiful scenery in front of them, dozens of grayish-white Underground Cave Magical Spiders suddenly emerged. They trampled freely on the glowing forest, plowing several deep ditches in the forest.
What a blot on the landscape!
“Underground Cave Magical Spiders,” shouted Little Gold, its eyes full of hatred and fury.
This particular spatial layer had originally belonged to them, the Bloodthirsty Iron-Crystal Ants and Underground Cave Magical Spiders were forbidden from entry. Yet these vile invaders were actually walking about in here unbridled now. It was simply too infuriating!
“Underground Cave Magical Spiders?”
Meng Lei’s objective in coming underground was exactly to annihilate the Underground Cave Magical Spiders. Upon the sight of them now, how would he possibly stand on ceremony?
“Go!”
The Gods-Slaying Spear hurtled out at once.
Stab, stab, stab!
The Gods-Slaying Spear formed an illusory arc in the air. Amid crisp, melodious sounds, before the dozens of Underground Cave Magical Spiders could even react, the Gods-Slaying Spear had already pierced through their heads. All of them fell to the ground, dead.
“A bunch of detestable killjoys.”
Meng Lei kept the Gods-Slaying Spear away. His gaze swept across the Underground Cave Magical Spiders carcasses, too lazy to even bother with their magic cores. The hundred thousand or so gold coins were simply too beneath his taste.
“Let’s continue forward.”
After cutting through the spatial layer, they entered another dark, quiet tunnel and continued advancing. The beauty and wonder of the underground world revealed themselves bit by bit to Meng Lei and Ol’ Amos’ eyes.
All the spatial layers! All the expanses of glowing forests! They were gorgeous, magnificent, and glowed brilliantly!
As Meng Lei and Ol’ Amos enjoyed the visual feast, they also finally arrived at an entirely different spatial layer—it was gold in color.
This was a golden dimension.
Golden lands!
Golden skies!
Golden walls!
Golden plants!
Everything was gold in color!
Dazzling golden light lit up the entire world, and scattered all over the wide and flat golden lands were several holes.
There were up to a million of these well-sized holes. They were distributed evenly on the ground in a dense, packed, and tidy manner. All the holes were identical in size and the spaces between each hole less than 10 meters wide each.
It looked like a hornet nest, yet also like a beehive.
Honey-like golden liquid filled the holes, and there were even white, round ant eggs soaking in some of them.
“That’s…”
Meng Lei and Ol’ Amos’ eyes widened big and round.
“That’s my clan’s divine weapon—the Bloodthirsty Golden Nest!”
Little Gold was awfully excited. “All my subjects are born here, so they have a mysterious connection with the Bloodthirsty Golden Nest. A young ant monarch can command all its subjects through the Bloodthirsty Golden Nest.”
“I see.”
“That’s so amazing!”
Meng Lei and Ol’ Amos were greatly astounded. However, a look of grief surfaced in Little Gold’s eyes as it gazed at the quiet Bloodthirsty Golden Nest.
“Before the Underground Cave Magical Spiders’ invasion, the Bloodthirsty Golden Nest was very lively and bustling. The queen produced eggs every day, and the worker ants went in and out of the nest. But now…”
There was only dead silence.
There was no ant queen here, and the worker ants were nowhere in sight.
The Bloodthirsty Golden Nest was frighteningly quiet. Even the ant eggs soaking in the holes were still and motionless—clearly, they had already been dead for a long time.
The Bloodthirsty Golden Nest was in a bleak and desolate state.
“Cheer up, Little Gold. As long as you, the ant monarch, are still alive, reviving your past glory won’t be a problem.” Meng Lei said with a smile, “The most pressing issue now is to take control of the Bloodthirsty Golden Nest and summon back all the Bloodthirsty Iron-Crystal Ants wandering outside now so that they won’t continue to wreak havoc outside.”
“Yes, yes! I understand!” Little Gold nodded.
Then, it flapped its little wings and dived into the center of the Bloodthirsty Golden Nest, a hole about two-meters-wide.
Before long, a mystical, desolate horn blast traveled out of the Bloodthirsty Golden Nest, sending out some kind of mysterious and unknown message.
“Ol’ President, do you understand what the horn blast is saying?” asked Meng Lei as he looked at Ol’ Amos.
Ol’ Amos shook his head, indicating that he didn’t, and replied, “It’s probably the Bloodthirsty Iron-Crystal Ants’ unique way of communication.”
What the two of them didn’t know was that the bleak and desolate horn blast passed through the golden world and the thick rock layers to finally reach the Magical Beast Forest’s surface.
Then, an amazing sight happened:
All the Bloodthirsty Iron-Crystal Ants, no matter which part of Magical Beast Forest they were in, no matter where they were, and no matter what they were doing—without any exceptions, all of them came to a stop!
They miraculously froze on the spot, as if all of them had their movements sealed. All of them turned still and motionless, their actions neat and uniform.
The ones pursuing Magical Beasts… came to a stop.
The ones attacking cities… came to a stop.
The ones wandering about… came to a stop.
“What’s going?”
“Why has the ant tide stopped moving?”
Countless people and beasts under the ant tide’s threat were utterly baffled. Then, under their even more bewildered gazes, the ant tide withdrew like the receding tide.
In the blink of an eye, all of them had cleanly withdrawn.
If anyone were to be looking down from the sky at this moment, they would see an unbelievable sight—countless ants surging from all directions and converging at the same place, the entrance to the underground world!
At last, all of them dived right into the entrance and returned to their world!