Nan Yue gritted her teeth tightly, her entire body trembling slightly. Her pupils dilated unnaturally, and she was filled with an abnormal sense of excitement.
This feeling was far too familiar; this was the closest Nan Yue had ever felt to the thing inside her own body.
Only this time, the Ant God of Antswamp Village made her feel the same terror and shivering sensation that the thing inside her did.
That thing she carried on her back...
Was it such a massive existence?
Nan Yue's heart began to throb uncontrollably and wildly.
If she could one day master the method to control that thing, just how powerful would she be?
No, control was not enough.
It was far from enough.
That thing had tortured her for twenty years; she was going to get it all back with interest.
Control was not enough.
She wanted to...
Devour it.
Huo Fuyu bit his lip hard, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.
"What kind of joke is this mission? This is a complete team-wipe mission."
Huo Fuyu had heard before that some mission worlds were so deeply distorted that they were completely impossible to purify.
If a scavenger was unfortunate enough to enter such a mission, they could only wait for death.
He hadn't expected to enter such a mission himself.
He was utterly powerless to fight back, completely devoid of any ability to resist.
Even escaping was a luxury he couldn't afford.
The Ant God walked aimlessly through the village, yet it managed to avoid the standing female villagers.
As the Ant God drew closer, they finally realized that it took at least a hundred villagers to form just one of these things, let alone those even more massive versions of the Ant God.
But Antswamp Village only had a little over two hundred villagers...
Zhu Xi Ning's gaze settled on one of the Ant Gods, and her lips trembled.
"... No peace even in death."
It was an Ant God composed of rotting corpses, looking somewhat thinner than the others, yet better off than the one next to it that was made entirely of white bones.
What was truly chilling was that those corpses were also twisting and struggling, and a deeper despair dwelled within their pale, clouded pupils.
"A-Nan... the noises you heard in the ant nest, do you think it was them..."
When they were in the ant nest collecting Ant-red Flowers, the villagers were all in the village; the only ones who could have made those noises were the countless long-dead villagers of Antswamp Village.
Zhu Xi Ning took a deep breath. "I thought it was strange before that the village had no cemetery."
Generally speaking, rural cemeteries shouldn't be far away, especially in such a primitive tribe.
But Antswamp Village didn't have a single grave.
A dark realization dawned on everyone. Given Antswamp Village's attitude of both reverence and fear toward the Ant God, could they have... buried the deceased villagers in the ant nest?
Their lives were given by the Ant God, so returning to the ant nest after death seemed logical.
But they didn't know that they had been cursed before they were even born; even death would bring no peace.
The villagers thought death brought tranquility, but they didn't know that the dead retained their consciousness. Their state was even more miserable than that of the living villagers, as they regained their memories.
They remembered what they had done, understood what they had become, and were fully aware of what the so-called immortality they had gained would entail.
They had permanently become the filthy, hideous ants beneath the earth.
Crawling through narrow sand tunnels, breathing thin air.
Never to see the light of day again.
Only on this day of the annual sacrificial rite did they get a brief opportunity to see the sun again.
What did they think as they watched their descendants ignorantly march toward the same fate as theirs?
Would they feel fear, grief, and powerlessness... or perhaps a secret joy?
A secret joy that such a desperate punishment wasn't happening to them alone.
That finally, someone else could experience their pain and helplessness...
Countless dark thoughts surfaced in everyone's minds along with the mutterings and the tune. Even Gu Xiang Kai, who usually had the thickest nerves, was pale now, his veins throbbing.
Nan Yue was counting the time through gritted teeth.
Almost there... almost there...
In less than an hour, they could leave this mission.
These Ant God bodies were too massive; they might not necessarily notice them. As long as they ran for their lives when the time came, there was always a chance to escape.
They didn't know how long they had been hiding in the stone house; Gu Xiang Kai had even stopped Shang Xi when she wanted to self-harm.
Time passed second by second. Just when Nan Yue felt that hope was right before her eyes, the Ant God that had been wandering aimlessly through the village suddenly came to a halt.
Before them was a leg formed by dozens of people, and Huo Fuyu even saw He Jiang among them, screaming in agony on one of the legs.
He Jiang saw him too.
An indescribable excitement erupted on his almost distorted face. His bulging eyeballs trembled wildly as he shrieked manically.
"Here! Over here! They're hiding here!"
But He Jiang's voice was too small and was quickly drowned out by the groans and howls of the others.
However, the Ant God still discovered them.
Its heavy upper body bent down. On its head were two hemispherical orbs where the eyeballs should be.
The difference was that these were composed of countless human eyeballs, densely packed and twitching wildly, looking in different directions.
The absolute visual horror made Wen Xiang Yuan turn away and vomit instantly.
At first, those eyeballs were looking around without order, but at a certain point, they seemed to discover something and looked toward the stone house in perfect unison.
In an instant, the air seemed to have been sucked dry.
Nan Yue's eyes met that massive eyeball as she struggled to breathe.
"Run!"
Her voice was sharp and cracked, yet it jolted the others out of their daze.
Everyone bolted outside. Gu Xiang Kai threw Wen Xiang Yuan onto his back and lunged out like a wolf.
Everyone scattered, running for their lives toward the forest.
Once they were in the forest, the Ant God finding them would be like them trying to find an ant in the woods.
Unfortunately, the path from the stone house to the forest still required crossing a stretch of the village.
And on that path stood the female villagers, singing their ancient tune.
The group was forced to a halt as the Ant God chased after them with a wobbling, unsteady gait.
The lack of coordination in its limbs made its speed much slower, but if it caught up, crushing a few little ants would be effortless.
"Get out of the way!"
Shang Xi drew her twin blades, the cold light gleaming as she pointed them at Xie Roufen.
Her hair was disheveled, and her eyes were filled with madness.
Xie Roufen's mouth moved with the tune as she looked at Shang Xi with a smile.
The next moment, countless ants the size of a half-palm surged out from her mouth.
It wasn't just her.
It was as if countless ants were hatching inside the stomachs of all the female residents, pushing and crawling out of their facial orifices in a frantic rush.
In that moment, everyone understood.
The female residents were the Ant God's wombs.
A tide of ants surged toward them, and Shang Xi turned to run immediately.
She could kill people and take her chances against monsters.
But facing an endless swarm of ants, she didn't want to be eaten until only her skeleton remained.
The group that had scattered was forced back together by the ant swarm. The female villagers standing around continued to produce ants incessantly, like fountains.
Rate on N.U.
