This Thousand-legged Ice Worm was of the Catastrophe Bright Level, and even the slightest movement on the ice surface would awaken it.
"We need to drive it out," Ji Xinghuo said.
On Ji Xinghuo’s wrist, the Spirit Sword Bracelet came off a bit and, powered by Spiritual Energy, extended into a red-hot sword, radiating intense heat.
The tip of the sword emitted a straight beam, stabbing into the ice surface.
He operated it carefully and delicately.
Amid sizzling sounds, the ice quickly melted, forming a small hole straight through to the water underneath.
"Go," Ji Xinghuo commanded.
Ji Xinghuo pulled out Qing Hong from his pocket.
Despite its dislike of cold temperatures, it swiftly jumped in and crawled through the small hole into the cold, dim water below. Via the Audio-Visual Bracelet, Ji Xinghuo synchronized his vision and hearing with Qing Hong’s, guiding it to find the entrance of a hidden pathway. It first dived down in the water, then surfaced after reaching halfway.
A passageway, several meters wide, appeared before it, and Qing Hong, being extra cautious, entered and slowed its steps down, clinging to the icy walls of the corridor as it moved forward.
It moved very slowly, trying not to make any noise.
At the end of the corridor, a spacious cave over a hundred meters in diameter appeared, its rugged floor and walls thickly coated in ice. Ice columns hung down from above, and white, fog-like cold air flowed inside, partially concealing an immense creature.
It was indeed the Thousand-legged Ice Worm!
Curled in a coil, its hundreds of slender legs spread out in arrays, its eyes closed, it exhaled cold air with each breath.
The moment he laid eyes on the Thousand-legged Ice Worm, Ji Xinghuo felt Qing Hong stagnate slightly.
In terms of strength, it was significantly outmatched by the monster before it.
"Don’t be afraid," Ji Xinghuo reassured Qing Hong, "sneak up closer and blow up its lair!"
Qing Hong hesitated not, infiltrating the nest as directed by Ji Xinghuo. Using the rocky ice chunks on the ground as cover, it climbed up along one of the ice columns.
Even though it had shrunk to just two or three centimeters in size, it still crawled gingerly behind the ice column, yet it still produced a faint noise.
Suddenly, one of the many slender legs of the Thousand-legged Ice Worm twitched.
Qing Hong halted, motionless.
"It’s awake," Ji Xinghuo noticed the flaring magnetic field fluctuations of the Thousand-legged Ice Worm, realizing it was awake, but it hadn’t yet detected Qing Hong. With its Perception, even a small-sized Qing Hong could not hide any movement within the nest.
Ji Xinghuo ordered without hesitation.
Immediately, Qing Hong executed the command. Instead of enlarging, it opened its mouth right on the ice column and spat out a fist-sized Light Ball.
This was a spherical lightning!
Yesterday, Ji Xinghuo, after several trials, condensed spherical lightning by combining Spiritual Energy and electrical charges, containing approximately 600 points of Star Power. This was the maximum he could control on the verge of Bursting.
If this were in real combat, forming such spherical lightning would be too slow to be practical.
But combined with the Dimension Stomach, it became a deadly move!
As Qing Hong released the spherical lightning, it lit up the dim cave. The fierce lightning and energy fluctuations fully roused the Thousand-legged Ice Worm.
It opened its eyes to a blinding white light.
However, Qing Hong’s target was not the Thousand-legged Ice Worm, but the nest’s ceiling above.
The spherical lightning struck the icy ceiling of the cave, exploding instantly. Countless currents freed from extreme heat and shockwaves raged wildly within the enclosed nest, violently shaking the entire cave as rocks and soil continuously fell from above, seemingly on the verge of collapse.
The ice column Qing Hong was hiding in also shattered, and as it fell, it released a second spherical lightning.
This time, the target was the Thousand-legged Ice Worm.
It didn’t look at the outcome, blending into the scattered debris and ice chunks, dashing through the corridor as fast as possible to escape.
The frozen nest turned into a chaos, the electrical currents shocking the passage, trembling and swaying.
As Qing Hong fled, it heard piercing shrieks from behind followed by a surge of cold air. The Thousand-legged Ice Worm caught up from behind, already having locked on the primary culprit, opened its huge mouth, and spewed a large gulp of white "Extreme Cold Breath" into the corridor.
A massive surge of cold air immediately rushed through the entire corridor, freezing everything within.
Qing Hong had nowhere to hide and was instantly Frozen into an ice sculpture.
The Thousand-legged Ice Worm roared and caught up, its speed extremely fast. Its numerous slender legs nimbly running and climbing, the front ending in a pair of large ice claws, swiped at Qing Hong.
Qing Hong’s body expanded, enlarging to twenty meters long, breaking the ice layer encasing it.
Confronting the Thousand-legged Ice Worm, it released a third spherical lightning.
The Lightning illuminated the corridor as if it were daylight.
The Thousand-legged Ice Worm screamed, and the air in front of it congealed, instantly forming dozens of layers of ice walls, completely blocking the passage, countering the spherical lightning.
In the massive explosion, Qing Hong shrank to over six meters long, using the explosive shockwave to leap forward, escaping through a water channel below, desperately swimming toward the ice surface.
Undercurrents surged at the lake bottom, and seconds later, the Thousand-legged Ice Worm also burst from the entrance of the channel.
Its hundreds of slender legs moved together, faster in the water than Qing Hong, simultaneously, countless bursts of cold air erupted from its body, rapidly freezing the water at the lake bottom, slowing Qing Hong down as frost encrusted its body, the cold penetrating its flesh.
The distance between them rapidly closed.
Fortunately, before being completely frozen, Qing Hong reached the ice surface first and tore open an opening with Sky Splitting Claw, leaping out.