Inside the Nascent Soul-level battlefield.
A type of blood-colored insect resembling a grub was rampaging frantically. One powerful Nascent Soul-level demon after another was devoured to nothingness under their onslaught. It was as if the invaders were not the demons, but these blood-colored demonic insects!
These insects were only about the size of a human head. Before the massive physical bodies of the demons, they looked like tiny specks. Yet, despite such a vast difference in size, when the demons slammed their massive forms against the bodies of these insects, they only caused them to deform slightly. In the next moment, the part of the insect touching the demon would sprout incredibly sharp mouthparts. In the blink of an eye, the contact point would be sliced and devoured completely!
If the demon were even a step slow in withdrawing, the entire limb would be devoured clean! Their stomachs were like bottomless pits; anything they touched would be devoured without a trace!
Yet, this was not the most terrifying aspect of these blood-colored demonic insects. What inspired the most fear was their powerful spell-immunity trait and bizarrely resilient vitality. Any type of spell attack or physical strike landing on them would be significantly weakened. By the time the remaining attack power reached their bodies, it no longer posed much of a threat.
Even if a collection of attacks heavily wounded such an insect, they would revive as long as a sliver of flesh remained! And the most terrifying point was that there wasn't just one such insect, but a swarm! Though they had no wings, they moved as if they were fitted with rocket boosters; those with slightly weaker strength couldn't even see the shadows of their movements!
If Qi Ping were here, he would definitely discover that these blood-colored insects shared an astonishing similarity with the Demon Insect King; their entire physical bodies were practically cast from the same mold. The only major difference was that they lacked the wings of the Demon Insect King.
However, this did not seem to make the blood-colored insects any weaker than the Demon Insect King. On the contrary, under the premise of having almost no extra organs, the blood-colored insects had evolved mouthparts that could be generated on any part of their body to slice and devour everything!
The blood-colored insects did not possess the powerful spiritual soul of the Demon Insect King; instead, they had tightly fused their physical body and soul. If the body was not destroyed, the soul would not perish; if the soul did not perish, the body would not die. At the same time, they possessed powerful physical recovery traits.
However, the price for doing this was that the blood-colored insects had almost entirely lost a complete consciousness. All that remained was a chaotic and frenzied will for slaughter and devouring. Once these insects lost control completely, they would devour everything in sight until they finally devoured themselves... ultimately returning the entire world to silence!
Currently, the only thing able to control these insects was the special Insect King Mark within them. But now, under the frantic growth and expansion of the insects, that mark seemed to be wavering, and was even being influenced by the insects in turn.
And it was under the influence of this frantic insect will that an enchanting woman, whose body was covered in blood-colored mystic patterns, was using all her strength to suppress that madness. This person was, of course, Nan Jie.
After entering the World-Domain Battlefield this time, she had begun frantically testing and nurturing her taboo demonic insects! These taboo insects came from an ancient book from the Star-Sea Continent that should have been destroyed long ago, titled The Taboo Demonic Insect Manual.
This manual recorded numerous terrifying insects capable of making heaven and earth tremble and exterminating all living things. The Demon Insect King was a typical representative among them, but it was only ranked fourth. Above the complete form of the Demon Insect King, there existed three types of taboo insects abandoned by heaven, earth, and time.
The first was called Age, the second Spirit-Devourer, and the third Blood Yu.
Nan Jie had obtained this manual by a stroke of luck. Originally, after seeing the terror and destructiveness of the insects proposed within, she had planned to destroy it. But upon seeing the final sentence on the page, she ultimately chose to keep it.
'Heaven and earth have great tribulations that human power cannot block. Only by using taboos against the tribulation can one secure a sliver of hope in a desperate impasse...'
It was this sentence that made her hesitate. She felt that the previous person who hadn't destroyed the manual might have done so for the same reason. Then, thinking of the gap between herself and Qi Ping, she chose to seal it away.
She had not chosen to give the manual to Qi Ping for two reasons. One was that the methods for nurturing the insects recorded within were not suitable for Qi Ping. The other was that if Qi Ping saw the side effects of nurturing them, he would absolutely never allow her to use it. Because once one nurtured the Blood Yu insects, it was equivalent to walking a path of self-destruction; the only difference was whether it happened sooner or later. According to the records, no one had ever met a good end after nurturing these three types of insects.
For a period afterward, she had not entertained any thoughts regarding the insects in the manual. She only wanted to cultivate peacefully. Though she wanted to catch up to Qi Ping, she did not want to bring him any trouble.
It wasn't until the crisis of the Star-Sea Continent descended, and she learned of the demons' terror and the danger facing the continent—after talking with Qi Ping and realizing he had no absolute certainty of winning—that she began.
Through a period of research, she finally locked her gaze on the third type of insect, the Blood Yu.
Blood Yu, ranked third among taboo insects. Fusion of soul and body, possesses spell-immunity traits. Can revive even if ground into powder. Extremely ferocious temperament, can devour anything containing energy. Once nurtured, they cannot stop eating. Only the master can temporarily control them, but during periods where eating is stopped, they will rapidly devour the master's vitality. Only by continued slaughter can the devouring of the master be stopped! The Blood Yu is ferocious and uncontrollable; it will seek opportunities to devour its master and take control in turn.
To put it simply, the attack and defense of the taboo Blood Yu insects were peerless, but because of the soul-body fusion trait, they possessed only a will for destruction. Once the refinement was successful, it would result in either the destruction of the world or self-destruction. Even the master who refined them would not be able to exercise strong control during the process.
But for such a type of insect, Nan Jie specifically brought the most critical part of the process into the World-Domain Battlefield for testing. Her reason for doing so was to engrave the scent of demons into the genetic makeup of the Blood Yu insects and use the demons as the appropriate advancement nourishment for them!
Nan Jie knew very clearly that the Blood Yu was recorded as uncontrollable, and she couldn't control them either! So the only thing she could do was ensure that after devouring all the demons, the Blood Yu would not devour other types of life.
Furthermore, as a Supreme Spirit Insect King Physique, she possessed a special advantage: her strength would increase as the strength of the Blood Yu increased. Thus, she didn't need to worry about the insects' strength rising too quickly and causing them to control her instead. Normally, keeping up with the cultivation speed of the Blood Yu was a massive problem, but as a Supreme Spirit Insect King Physique, she could maximize the reduction of this problem's negative impact.
In truth, if not for the uncontrollable and extremely destructive traits of the Blood Yu, it might have been a suitable life-bound insect for her physique.
Previously, she had asked Qi Ping to help her find all the materials for nurturing the Blood Yu. After entering the battlefield and using other insects and talismans to kill many demons for their corpses, she had finally succeeded! Without Qi Ping's power, she might not have been able to even gather the materials.
At this moment, Nan Jie looked at the demons being rapidly devoured by the Blood Yu insects, and a trace of indescribable pride and satisfaction flashed through her heart. She had to help Qi Ping through this crisis! The taboo Blood Yu insects before her, ranked in the top three, were her sharpest blade!
And the Blood Yu insects truly did not disappoint her. In a short time, their aura and numbers had more than doubled! Simultaneously, under the feedback of the Supreme Spirit Insect King Physique, her cultivation was also climbing at an incredibly fast speed! This bizarre growth and reproduction speed nearly exceeded her understanding of all insects!
Thus, she had no doubt that as long as these insects were given enough time and food, they would rapidly grow into a force capable of endangering the entire Demon Realm!
Correspondingly, she had paid a heavy price. Those terrifying blood-colored mystic patterns on her body were constantly emitting a frantic and chaotic power attempting to grind away her sanity. Her eyes, currently filled with blood, had long since become saturated with chaos and madness. But her will remained deathly suppressed against this frantic power.
Currently, she was like a mortal hanging over a cliff, her hand clutching a vine covered in sharp thorns. Intense pain and fatigue attacked her will at every moment, with gales and torrential rain blowing around her. The moment she could no longer hold on, her sanity would be completely occupied by frantic chaos. But even though it was this difficult, she was still trying her best to control them.
"I will not fall. Before I see Little Qi's foundation is safe, even if I am ground to powder and never enter reincarnation... I will not close my eyes!"
In an instant, every part of Nan Jie's will roared frantically, forcibly dragging herself back from the brink of being devoured! After a good while, a trace of clarity finally returned to her eyes. At this moment, her body was shockingly soaked in cold sweat.
She couldn't help but feel a lingering fear. Just a bit more, and she would have been reduced to a machine for slaughter. But she felt no fear, because she had already allowed Qi Ping to set a restriction within her soul to ensure that her last thread of consciousness remained clear.
But unless it reached a point of no return, she would never use that method. Because once it was used, even if she could still control this swarm of Blood Yu insects, her control would be greatly reduced, and she couldn't guarantee they wouldn't devour the Star-Sea Continent along with everything else. So no matter how painful it was, she had to endure.
"Whew..."
After taking a deep breath, the eerie, blood-patterned Nan Jie swept her bloodthirsty and frantic gaze over the demons, who had disappeared so completely that not a single hair remained. She then looked at the world node in the distance that had been completely destroyed, and a satisfied look appeared on her face.
"Very good. A clean job!"
She then turned her gaze toward the several cute and colorful Void-Aether Fish beside her.
"Let's go. I'll have to trouble you to lead me to the next sub-battlefield!"
Nan Jie tried her best to control her aura and tone to remain kind. But in the eyes of those adorable Void-Aether Fish, she was still ferocious and terrifying.
'This is too scary for a fish!'
They were still baby fish, after all. But they couldn't disobey their master's words, and they remembered that this big sister used to be very gentle. Why had she become like this? And those blood-colored insects, why did they look even scarier than the Little Green Dragon? Where were the cute little bees from before? And that little bug that could control time? They still preferred those cute and kind bees and bugs!
But regardless of what they thought, they still led Nan Jie quickly to the spatial barrier, using their special spatial talent to take her through to another sub-battlefield. This was the task Qi Ping had assigned, and it was very important, so they had to complete it!
Some time later, under the lead of the Void-Aether Fish, Nan Jie soon reached the second Nascent Soul-level sub-battlefield. Inside this battlefield, Nascent Soul-level demons were rampaging everywhere. All traces of human cultivators had vanished, leaving only piles of bloodstained, broken armor and weapons in a devastated area. If nothing else had happened, they had likely all fallen at the hands of the demons.
In the Nascent Soul-level battlefields, the Star-Sea Continent remained at a disadvantage. But the only thing worth being thankful for was that this world node had not yet been destroyed; Nan Jie had arrived just in time.
Facing this scene, Nan Jie naturally had nothing more to say.
"Go. Devour those scents ingrained in your genes on this battlefield..."
As Nan Jie's voice, which sounded as if it came from a blood-sea hell, rang out, blood-colored figures shot toward all directions with incomparable speed. In the next moment, a scalp-tingling sound of chewing erupted.
The roars, bellows, and wails of countless demons, the explosion of spells, the shattering of the earth... none could stop those sounds of chewing. And as the insects' strength grew and their recovery speed increased, the speed of that chewing became faster and faster!
At the same time, around the world node of the Star-Sea Continent, a swarm of Nether Bees, Heaven-Emperor Bees, and Balanced Bees in a formation looked with extreme vigilance at the nearby Blood Yu insects that were attacking the demons. Facing these Blood Yu insects, even with their King-level bloodlines, they felt a fear that originated from the depths of their hearts, as if facing a terrifying existence of the ultimate level.
Only after seeing that they seemed to be allies did the bees secretly breathe a sigh of relief. But for some reason, the fear brought by these blood-colored insects could not be erased from their hearts... it felt as if they had encountered a deadly nemesis.
Just as Nan Jie led the taboo insects to begin sweeping through the battlefield, on a sub-battlefield not far away, the team of Han Li, Zhang Daniu, and Meng Yan had fallen into an unprecedented predicament.