"As for that immortal body she mentioned..."
Zhu Xi Ning rested her chin on her hand. "I don't think it's her own doing; that mask is also very strange."
She had felt something was off about that mask before; she saw a very peculiar aura on it, much like the village itself.
It held a spark of life, but it was overwhelmed by a thick, decaying stench of death.
Perhaps that mask was the key to her so-called immortality and why the Ant God doesn't target her.
She would have to find an opportunity to snatch that mask later.
"Is it feasible to kill Ga Ya now? She's useless now, and she's just a human anyway."
Shang Xi had a fiery temperament; waiting passively like this made her uneasy, and she desperately wanted to do something to break through this anxiety.
"No. If the sacrificial rite requires her as a switch, she might be the only one who can control the direction of the whole thing. If she dies now and the Ant God loses control and comes out early, we'll be in trouble."
Huo Fuyu took a couple of sips of water, and his spirits recovered significantly.
"She's like a switch—seemingly useless, yet indispensable."
"Unless someone else can take her place."
Huo Fuyu's voice was very soft, as if he were talking to himself, but the moment he finished speaking, a small knife was already pressed against his neck.
"I promised to give you a hand, but if you say something like that again, your little favor won't be enough to save your life."
Huo Fuyu smiled and raised his hands in surrender, his gaze deep.
The survivors present weren't all Nan Yue's people, but the extreme dominance she displayed temporarily suppressed any other burgeoning thoughts.
Time passed slowly in the searing tension. Even though it should have been nightfall, the sky remained an abnormal shade of red.
It was as if night had vanished from Antswamp Village, leaving only a blood-red sky waiting for the final revelry.
Ga Ya slowly stood up and looked at the sky. She spread her withered hands and put on the black ant mask.
Her voice came from behind the mask, sounding somewhat muddled.
"The sacrificial rite has begun."
The sky looked like a glowing red iron pot; every breath made the mouth and tongue feel scorched.
The surrounding air seemed to have solidified; even moving was a struggle.
The sound of rustling footsteps came from nearby. It was the villagers who were supposed to be sleeping in their stone coffins.
Nan Yue focused her gaze and realized something was wrong.
The only ones appearing here were women.
"The memories of Antswamp Village only return on the day of the sacrificial rite. On this day, the villagers' resentment, anger, and despair... all are fully unleashed."
"Then their memories are wiped again, and they continue to live the next year in a state of constant anxiety."
Ga Ya wore the black ant mask. It was much larger than her face, making her proportions look somewhat discordant.
The mask was also far too lifelike; it truly looked like a thin human body topped with a giant ant head.
Ga Ya's voice came from behind the mask in an ancient, mysterious tune that sounded like a prophecy of the village.
The melody was somewhat jarring and strange, yet filled with a certain mysterious power; it felt inexplicably well-suited to this bizarre weather and the village.
The women walking out of the ancestral hall also joined Ga Ya. Countless voices overlapped in a strange way, as if they had rehearsed countless times, incredibly harmonious and unified.
Following the song, everyone felt as if they had returned to the ancient, primitive, desolate village. They saw the celestial anomalies and the countless villagers on the brink of starvation due to famine.
They saw a massive ant nest and a giant ant that shouldn't have existed.
Humans slaughtered ants to satisfy their hunger. The ant queen's blood spilled all over the ground, only to be licked clean.
From then on, the villagers loved to eat the roots of plants near the ant nest. They didn't know why they liked them, only that they were sweet and delicious.
But those were clearly the ant queen's rations.
The resentment of countless slaughtered lives intertwined with the consciousness gained after being worshipped, bringing a curse down upon the village.
The villagers would unconsciously turn into ants and feed on humans.
Acid rain would fall from the sky. In the past, ants feared such rain the most.
Now, it was the cursed humans who suffered its effects.
Nan Yue even saw Xie Roufen and Li Jiao in the crowd.
The smiles on their faces were identical to those of the surrounding villagers. Aside from their different features and builds, they looked exactly like people of Antswamp Village.
They sang the same ancient tune, their expressions somewhere between joy and sorrow, as if they held infinite despair yet also the mercy of a god.
The layers of song drifted melodiously into the distance, and faintly, some massive sound seemed to echo back.
It was like the sound of the earth splitting and mountains collapsing from the dawn of creation.
Everyone exchanged terrified looks.
Something was coming out of the ant nest.
Everyone began to slowly back away. The women didn't approach them, merely standing at a distance as if forming a circle.
Gu Xiang Kai had the sharpest eyes, and his widened slightly.
"What... what is that thing?"
A mountain-like silhouette slowly approached. It was a giant ant.
No, rather, its appearance resembled an ant.
It was an ant composed of humans.
Countless Antswamp Village villagers had their limbs twisted and knotted together to form a massive ant of human flesh.
Their intertwined limbs struggled and writhed incessantly. From a distance, it looked like the ant had countless bristles, and those bristles were trembling against the fiery red sky.
The villagers' skin was dark and their features flat. Clumped together like this, they looked like the black chitinous shells of an ant.
Their faces looked like countless wailing, hideous features on a flat shell surface.
At this moment, the villagers remembered everything: the ancient curses etched into their blood, the stench of blood from devouring their own families, and the agony and despair that sprang from their very souls.
Giant groans and pleas for mercy mixed with painful shrieks and meaningless begging, drifting over like mutterings.
It was interspersed with the ancient tune of the female villagers, creating a bizarre harmony.
Everyone hid in the stone house, watching this shocking scene.
There were about three to five of those ants made of human bodies, varying in size, as they moved slowly and clumsily toward the village.
Every step was accompanied by the agonizing cries of the villagers who made up its flesh.
The world seemed to have turned into an ancient field of chaos from millions of years ago. There were no tiny humans, only primitive, hideous creatures that exceeded the bounds of understanding.
Mingled with death and blood, it approached step by step with a heavy sense of history.
The red sky was its bloody witness and its stage.
Everyone simultaneously felt a strong sense of dizziness. They all heard that massive rustling sound.
Accompanied by a clicking noise, it gradually became clearer.
Now they knew. This was the sound of human bodies rubbing against the ground, the sound of flesh.
It was the sound of different people's limbs colliding, twisting, and snapping as bones broke.
Boundless terror appeared in everyone's eyes. It was the instinctive human reaction to a massive creature.
Like a tiny ant desperately scurrying away when it sees a human's shoe stepping down.
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