615 Execution
Our group moved out of the village, with some provides and our belongings given again to us. The tribesmen had no have to inconvenience us after having confirmed our power. Since I will win in opposition to their former chief, and was not utilizing my Cultivation, combating or making bother with me won’t be of any use or assist to them. The inaugural add of this chapter happened by way of N0v3l-B1n.
The street forward was perilous, seeing from the map and the main points on it, many risks awaited us. We took a path that crossed behind the village’s waterfall and went deeper into the Darkish Backyard.
As we are actually, we’ve not explored a fraction of this huge biome that appeared to increase to an unimaginable distance beneath the bottom. The life that had lived right here struggled and managed to search out success wasn’t a mild caring life. Every part right here was nothing however vicious and murderous, from the smallest critters and bugs to man-eating timber and gargantuan beasts and monsters of nightmares that roamed the place.
Right here, every little thing is a hunter, and every little thing is prey. It was an ungainly ecosystem the place the pyramid of predation was not accurately.
As soon as we arrived to the bottom of the waterfall, proper subsequent to its basin, was the place the primary highlighted space of the map given to us was to begin.
“It says that is the hope of a metal jaw ant colony. They use this waterfall for water and ingesting and have a burrow that they use as a base close by. Make certain to steer away from something unusual, together with that,” I pointed.
There was a inexperienced sludge on a damaged piece of tree bark on the bottom.
“What’s that?” requested the captain.
“It smells, and that is all you could know, it is a marker, and if that is the territory of ants, and that factor remains to be right here, then it signifies that they positioned it. It is a lure of sort if I had been to take a guess, contact it, and you can be marked for each ant within the neighborhood,” I added.
The cultivators round me realized that we had been simply beginning within the Darkish Backyard, and shit was going to get uglier and uglier the extra we journey by this place. However we had no selection or possibility however to maintain transferring ahead.
“I am shocked,” mentioned outdated Fu.
“Of?” I requested.
“You by no means requested the tribe to indicate you ways they managed to reside right here. As in how they obtained their power, up to now they’re far stronger than us, excluding you in fact. We misplaced most of our cultivation base. Whereas these tribesmen had been in a position to exert a profound stage of power with out even utilizing Qi,” outdated Fu mentioned.
“They had been utilizing Qi,” I mentioned.
“Now that is much more shocking,” mentioned outdated Fu.
That is what I preferred most about this outdated man, he did not disagree with me like would an individual with none understanding. However he mentioned that it was shocking as a substitute of claiming they don’t have any Qi similar to themselves.
Throughout us, and up above, increasingly ants confirmed up. They had been trying on the ant on the bottom that was struggling.
And shortly the struggling ant’s head started splitting open, releasing a protracted thorn line vein from its cranium.
The ants round us started speeding in direction of it. Utterly ignoring us as they rushed on the ant. They then started clamping on the unlucky ant’s limbs and commenced tearing her aside, little by little piece by piece, and solely left its cranium that had the vine propping out of.
Each ant holding a bit of the ant limb was then seen transferring away from the remainder of the group, whereas the remaining group of ants started piling up items of wooden and bark from throughout the forest and inserting them on high of the solitary ant head. Putting increasingly as time goes by.
Our group had already moved again and away from this ritual however I used to be concerned about seeing this by.
“Why are we ready? Did not you say it was harmful?” outdated Fu mentioned.
“Consider me if I let you know, irrespective of how far we go, the ants know the place we’re,” I mentioned “So I would as nicely use the time to see what they’re doing. And the hazard I used to be speaking about wasn’t the ants themselves, certainly they’re sturdy and act like a military, however that’s the most harmful half,” I mentioned as I pointed on the ant with nothing however a head on it that had wooden piled atop it.
From the shade and darkness of the compiled picket particles, there was a small glistening glow that was popping out from beneath the picket items.
“That is… the identical shade because the eyes of the individuals who turned to Walkers,” mentioned Outdated Fu.
“Sure, that is one other piece of knowledge we did not have…”
“Additionally pay attention to that,” I mentioned as I pointed at a brand new ant that arrived on the scene. This one was far bigger than the group right here, it was nearly the scale of an elephant and had sharp mandibles that had been holding an enormous piece of… flint.
The huge ant quickly arrived and commenced dragging the piece of flint throughout the bottom, sparking lots of of sparks all around the dry wooden that was piled up over the zombified head. Not lengthy after, flames and smoke caught up, and the wooden wiped out quickly roasting the ant’s head and destroying it.
“Very fascinating,” I mentioned. “The ants know that the sort of illness is harmful to their colony they usually tailored a method to fight it. Which means that they’re sensible sufficient to do different issues,” I mentioned.
“Different issues? Like what?” requested outdated Fu.
“Like laying traps, look behind us,” I mentioned.
And behind us had been a few dozen ants that crept up on us with out us seeing or listening to them.