Staring at the diagonally descending hole, Bai Xi's intuition told her something was wrong. She motioned for everyone to step back and glanced at the countdown timer in the top right corner of her vision. An hour and a half remained.
The crowd took a step back, staring curiously into the pitch-black opening.
Before long, the noises echoing from the hole grew louder, and even the ground began to tremble. Bai Xi frowned deeply.
She thought, "I guess I was overly optimistic. The first mission was easy enough, but there's no way the second one could be just as simple."
At that moment, a few police officers hurried out of the nearby station. Clearly, someone had run in to report the incident.
The officers quickly cordoned off the two holes—one large, one small—with police tape. A friendly-looking officer turned to the crowd and said, "Everyone, please head home! We will notify you as soon as we have any findings. We'll handle this hole."
Even as he spoke, the noises from the large hole continued to amplify.
Bai Xi wasn't sure if it was just her imagination, but she thought she heard a faint CLICK CLACK sound. A growing sense of panic urged her to quietly retreat to the edge of her ten-meter restricted radius. She hid behind a large tree and observed the situation from afar.
With eighty minutes left on the countdown, Bai Xi took a deep breath. "There are still eighty minutes left. I have to hold on. I can do this, Bai Xi. Keep it up!" she encouraged herself.
She stared at the timer, silently counting the seconds.
The crowd of onlookers had thinned out significantly, leaving only a few bold, curious youths behind.
An officer brought out a remote-controlled car equipped with a camera and a searchlight from the station. He placed it into the hole and maneuvered the remote to explore further.
"What kind of creature could dig a hole like this?"
"Is it a snake hole? It's so huge. Could there be a thousand-year-old python down there?"
"A snake that big would have become a monster by now, right?"
"Oh, come on! Stop with the wild guesses. Can we be a bit more realistic? It's probably a hole dug by a prospecting or engineering team that accidentally went off course."
The remaining bystanders threw out random speculations.
Five minutes passed just like that, but to Bai Xi, those five minutes felt as long as five hours.
Observing the crowd in the distance, she noticed the noises from the hole seemed to have died down quite a bit. However, this only made Bai Xi even more afraid to approach. All she could do was keep a close eye on them.
While watching, Bai Xi noticed a strikingly handsome man standing across the street.
He looked to be at least 180 centimeters tall, with a straight, prominent nose and slightly pursed lips. Bathed in the sunlight, he cut a remarkably picturesque figure.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk! Which wealthy family's young master is out here experiencing the commoner's life?" she wondered.
After a brief second of being awestruck by his looks, Bai Xi snapped her attention back to the police as several of the observing young men let out terrified screams.
The countdown timer read seventy-four minutes.
"What was that thing that just flashed by?"
"It looked like a leg, didn't it?"
"Why did it look like it had an eye?"
The young men were terrified, but their curiosity kept them glued to the spot.
"Officer, there isn't a monster down there, is there?"
The officers were also feeling a bit unnerved. The image that had just flickered across the screen was clearly not man-made.
"You boys go home first!" an experienced older officer ordered decisively, prioritizing civilian safety. He then turned to the younger officer beside him and instructed, "Keep exploring further in. If it really is an anomaly, report it to our superiors immediately."
The young men didn't go far. Driven by curiosity and assuming they would be safe with the police present, they hid a short distance away to secretly watch, just like Bai Xi.
Bai Xi kept her eyes glued to the police, stealing frequent glances at the countdown timer. The tension in her chest grew heavier with each passing second.
The man across the street was also staring intently at the officers. "Could he be here on a mission too?" she wondered.
Suddenly, the officer controlling the remote-controlled car shouted at the top of his lungs, urging the pedestrians on the street to find cover immediately.
Before he could even finish his sentence, a massive ant poked its head out of the hole. Its two antenna-like feelers twitched and swiveled constantly.
Bai Xi was utterly dumbfounded. The ant was as big as an adult Bichon Frise! Those massive mandibles could easily snap bones in half.
Now she knew exactly what had happened to the missing people.
Seventy-one minutes remained on the countdown.
As soon as the giant ant emerged, it crawled straight toward the nearest officer. The policeman dodged with agile reflexes, but its mandibles still managed to slash his leg.
After mutating to such a massive size, the ants' speed didn't seem particularly fast—roughly on par with a normal human's. However, they had strength in numbers and a penchant for swarming their targets.
At the mouth of the hole, more giant ants began crawling out one after another.
Seeing that things were taking a turn for the worse, the surrounding pedestrians scattered in panic. The young men hastily snapped a few photos with their phones before bolting for their lives.
At that moment, the man across the street made his move.
Wielding a sharp, gleaming dagger, he sprinted toward a giant ant that was attacking an officer and sliced off its antenna in a single, clean strike.
The agony sent the giant ant into a violent frenzy. Its six spear-like legs pierced several deep holes into the pavement tiles before it charged furiously at the man. The other giant ants immediately closed in to surround him.
The man was highly agile, dodging calmly between the ants and delivering swift, precise slashes whenever he found an opening.
Several armed officers rushed out of the station building and opened fire on the swarm. Dense, deafening gunshots echoed through the air as the scene devolved into utter chaos.
However, the ants' exoskeletons were incredibly tough. The bullets couldn't penetrate them at all, leaving only shallow dents on their armor.
The man was soon fully encircled by the encroaching swarm. Relying on his nimbleness, he plunged his dagger into the back of a nearby ant and used the leverage to vault out of the encirclement. With a backhand thrust, he drove his blade into another ant's head, continuing his deadly dance with the monsters.
But there were simply too many of them. No sooner had he broken out of the ring than a new group of ants surged forward to trap him again.
The police were also struggling to hold the line, with every officer sustaining wounds of varying severity.
Sixty-eight minutes remaining.
Bai Xi was so intensely focused on the battle ahead that she failed to notice a giant ant crawling up behind her.
Suddenly, she felt a sharp chill down her spine, a prickling sensation warning her of imminent danger.
She glanced over her shoulder, and her face paled in horror. She immediately broke into a desperate sprint forward.
The giant ant was barely three or four meters away. Its massive, crushing mandibles felt like they were snapping right at her heels.
"This is terrifying!" she thought.
As Bai Xi burst from her hiding spot, an officer spotted her right away. "Get inside the police station!" he yelled. "Hurry, get inside!"
Sprinting faster than she ever had in her entire life, Bai Xi bolted into the police station. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that the man had already killed several giant ants without sustaining a single scratch.
In contrast, every other person involved in the fight had suffered some degree of injury.
"So this is what a true powerhouse looks like," she marveled in admiration.
As time ticked by, the battle outside only grew fiercer. Bai Xi started to feel anxious.
The giant ants were multiplying by the second, and there was still an hour left on her mission. It would be a miracle if those few people could hold out for that long. Even if they did, escaping would be nearly impossible.
Bai Xi hurriedly pulled out her phone to search the internet for information. "Giant ants are still ants; surely their weaknesses are similar, right?" she reasoned.
[Ants dislike the smells of vinegar, Sichuan peppercorns, lemons, burning rubber, and similar odors.]