Chapter 559: Breakthrough
"The bio-wave signal has been cut off," Lu Wenquan said, his speech quickening. "They’re acting on instinct now, so the threat is greatly reduced. Xu Wuyi, you have one hundred and fifteen seconds."
"That’s enough."
Xu Wuyi moved.
He used Quicksand Step, his form streaking across the ground like a dark golden stream of light, heading straight for the position directly above the nest that Lu Wenquan had marked.
At a distance of fifty meters, he brought his hands together in front of his chest without letting them touch.
The phantom of a great, dark golden marsh appeared behind him, and a two-meter-wide Returning Ruins Seal rapidly took form. The Seal Platform was archaic and heavy, with a flat bottom and the faint outline of a Golden Crow visible on top, naturally exuding an oppressive Intention.
"Returning Ruins Seal: Space Suppression."
The Seal Platform didn’t crash down. Instead, it hovered in mid-air, slowly rotating.
With the Seal Platform as its center, the Gravity Field within a hundred-meter radius began to distort and undergo Compression.
The rocks on the ground groaned and caved downward. The alien insects trying to approach slowed by a factor of ten, as if trapped in an invisible mire.
This was Xu Wuyi’s new understanding of the Returning Ruins Seal—not a single, devastating strike, but sustained area-of-effect suppression to create a favorable environment for his next move.
He himself remained unaffected by the Gravity Field. Using Quicksand Step again, he arrived directly above the nest.
The ground here bulged noticeably, with dark red biological tissue exposed like blood vessels. In the center was a three-meter-wide hole, bottomless and reeking of a thick, foul stench.
Without hesitation, Xu Wuyi leaped into the hole.
As he fell, he fully extended his Heart Image perception.
The walls of the hole were not rock, but some kind of tough, biological membrane covered in mucus. After a vertical descent of about twenty meters, the passage began to slope and split into several forks.
Xu Wuyi chose the direction with the strongest Energy Fluctuation and continued deeper.
The deeper he went, the wider the passage became, and the denser the surrounding biological tissue grew. Glowing fungi were embedded in the dark red fleshy walls, providing faint illumination.
Thirty meters, thirty-five meters, forty meters...
The space ahead suddenly opened up.
A spherical chamber over twenty meters in diameter appeared before him.
In the center of the chamber floated a three-meter, tumor-like object covered in pulsating veins that emitted a pale green, fluorescent glow.
That was the nest core.
Around the tumor, countless alien insects were packed as densely as mountains. They didn’t attack but instead prostrated themselves on the ground as if on a pilgrimage, their limbs trembling slightly and low hisses emitting from their mandibles.
The moment Xu Wuyi landed, all the alien insects raised their heads in unison.
Hundreds of pairs of compound eyes lit up with an eerie green glow in the darkness.
Then, the charge began.
There was no commander, only pure instinct. Any creature that intruded upon the core of the nest had to die.
Xu Wuyi took a deep breath, his hands tightening around the Liaoyuan Long Spear.
He didn’t use the Returning Ruins Seal; the underground space was too narrow, and area suppression could trigger a collapse. Nor did he use Flame; the area around the nest core was riddled with energy conduits, and igniting them could set off a chain reaction throughout the entire underground nest.
He would have to use the purest method.
The spear shot out.
Under the faint fluorescent light, the dark golden spear tip traced a cold arc as it precisely stabbed into the first alien insect’s compound eye. The tip plunged in and pulled out, bringing a spray of viscous fluid with it as the insect crashed to the ground.
The second, the third, the fourth...
Xu Wuyi’s figure weaved through the swarm. He combined Quicksand Step with micro-adjustments of Gravity, allowing him to perfectly evade every lunge and land every thrust precisely on a vital point.
There were no flashy Techniques, only the simplest, most direct killing efficiency.
But there were too many of them.
For every ten he killed, twenty more swarmed in; for every twenty, fifty more appeared. They threw themselves at him one after another, building a wall with their bodies in an attempt to trap and overwhelm him.
The seconds ticked by.
Forty seconds of Lu Wenquan’s countdown had already passed.
Xu Wuyi glanced at the nest core. The pulsations on the tumor’s surface were intensifying. It seemed to have sensed the danger and was mobilizing the entire nest’s Energy for defense.
’I can’t drag this out any longer.’
Xu Wuyi took three steps back, temporarily breaking free from the swarm’s encirclement. He planted his spear in the ground beside him and brought his hands together before his chest.
In his sea of consciousness, the "breathing" of the great, dark golden marsh suddenly intensified.
It contracted.
Extreme Compression.
The Power of Heart Image surged forth, condensing, solidifying, and compressing again above his palms.
A drop of water.
It was dark golden, the size of a pinprick, and it floated three inches above his palm.
No Energy Fluctuation escaped it, and it emitted no light, but the air in the entire spherical chamber grew heavy. This was the natural diffusion of a Mental Realm of extreme "weight."
The movements of the surrounding insects, which had been charging, faltered simultaneously.
Their biological instincts told them that the Water Drop contained a fatal threat.
Xu Wuyi flicked his finger.
The Water Drop vanished.
It traced a faint, dark golden trajectory through the air as it shot toward the nest core.
The alien insects in its path tried to block it, but the Water Drop was too fast. They had just begun to raise their limbs when it had already pierced through their compound eyes, exited the backs of their heads, and continued onward.
One, two, three...
After piercing through seven alien insects in a row, the Water Drop struck the nest core.
TSS—
It was a faint sound, like a needle piercing a water balloon.
On the surface of the tumor, a pinprick-sized hole appeared.
There was no explosion, no shockwave, only ultimate penetration.
Around the hole, the tumor’s tissue began to rapidly wither and carbonize.
The pale green fluorescence rapidly dimmed, the pulsations ceased, and the light in the entire spherical chamber faded.
The alien insects that had been attacking so frantically all froze at once. Then, like puppets with their strings cut, they collapsed in droves.
With the nest core destroyed, they had lost their source of Life Energy and become true corpses.
Xu Wuyi pulled his spear from the ground and walked up to the nest core.
The tumor had completely lost all signs of life, its surface covered in grayish-white necrotic tissue.
Around the hole pierced by the Water Drop, a peculiar crystallization had occurred. It was the crushing pressure of extreme "weight," which had directly compressed the biological tissue into a dense crystalline structure.
’The Penetration Power is even stronger than I estimated,’ Xu Wuyi assessed internally. ’Against biological tissue, its effect is even better than against energy defenses.’
He raised his wrist and sent a signal to the surface. "First nest core has been destroyed. You can begin the recovery operation."
"Received," came Lu Wenquan’s voice. "Forty-two seconds remaining on the interference field. Seventy percent of the surface swarm has been cleared. The recovery team will arrive at the entrance in one minute."
Xu Wuyi turned and began to clear the passage.
His return to the surface was smooth. Having lost the nest’s command, the remaining alien insects acted purely on instinct and couldn’t form any organized resistance.
As he leaped out of the hole, Tie Zhan was just smashing the head of the last alien insect with his warhammer.
"All done?" Tie Zhan asked, flinging the slime off his hammer.
"Mhm," Xu Wuyi nodded. "The core is destroyed, and the underground swarm is completely wiped out."
Lu Wenquan walked over, the tactical tablet in his hand displaying energy readings. "The nest’s Energy Fluctuation has completely vanished. Destruction confirmed. The recovery team has already gone down."