283: Chapter 283 The Past of Yun Kingdom, A Global Insect Plague!

"Qitian Temple?"

Lin Xiao repeated those three words. "What is its function?"

Yimu took the stone slab.

This time, her fingers finally touched it.

Her fingertips slowly traced the curves of the cloud-water pattern, her movements gentle, as if she were caressing a fragile antique.

"The territory of the Kingdom of Heze is not just this boundless plain before us; this nation consists of two parts..."

Yimu explained, her tone neither hurried nor slow.

"The commoners living on the ground, and the royal nobility living in the Cloud Palace.

"Therefore, among the surrounding tribes, Heze has another name: the Cloud Kingdom!

"At the middle and end of every year, the commoners living on the ground can ascend to the Cloud Kingdom for an audience through the Qitian Temple.

"Of course, not everyone is qualified. Each time, only a very few... lucky ones are permitted an audience."

"An audience?"

Hearing Yimu's description, Lin Xiao was quite curious about these words.

"An audience with the Cloud Kingdom's royal family."

Yimu flipped the stone slab over, where some traces of joining could be seen on the edges. "At that time, a grand celebration would be held in the palaces. If a commoner was favored by a member of the royalty, they could stay and live in the Cloud Kingdom. Their family could even ascend to the Cloud Palace together, escaping the hardships of the ground from then on."

Speaking to this point, her tone remained steady, but the edge of her veiled hat swayed slightly.

It wasn't blown by the wind.

Lin Xiao glanced at her and asked calmly, "So, you come from above?"

Yimu's slender fingers stopped at the edge of the stone slab.

After a moment of silence, she nodded slightly, and the veil swayed along with the movement.

"Yes."

"Royalty, or nobility?"

"I..."

This time, she answered with some hesitation.

As if she were avoiding this question.

Yimu handed the stone slab back to Lin Xiao, her movement carrying a clear implication of wanting to end the topic.

Lin Xiao didn't want to make things awkward, so he took back the slab and changed to a more practical question.

"How many such Qitian Temples are there on the ground in total?"

"Nine," Yimu's tone returned to its usual coldness. "Distributed in different directions of Heze's borders, the nine Qitian Temples look up at the ring-shaped cloud layers ten thousand meters high, like stars surrounding the moon."

Lin Xiao held up the stone slab. "Then what role does this thing play in the Qitian Temple?"

"You can call it a key."

Yimu extended a finger, pointing vaguely at the center of the cloud-water pattern. "Every Qitian Temple has a stone platform, and nine complete stone slabs were originally embedded in that platform.

"When the nine stone slabs are joined together, they can open the portal to the core of the Cloud Kingdom.

"However, after the war broke out, the royal family sealed the passage and reclaimed the vast majority of the stone slabs. What are scattered in various places now are likely just fragments they didn't have time to reclaim back then."

"War?" Lin Xiao paused, his brow furrowing slightly. "It couldn't be internal national strife caused by Calamity Creatures again, could it?"

"Yes, but not entirely."

Yimu shook her head, an imperceptible bitterness in her words.

"Unlike the Di Peoples Kingdom, the Cloud Kingdom had extremely strict hierarchical rules. A seemingly prosperous nation was not actually as beautiful as outsiders imagined; the people on the ground lived very difficult lives."

She bent down and picked up a Scarab Beetle molt from the ground.

The elytra reflected a beautiful colored halo in her translucent palm.

Then, her long fingers gently closed, crushing the insect shell in her palm.

"Scarab Beetles have always been a major industry of the Cloud Kingdom. Their elytra are the core material for making magic element stones, which are then used by the royalty to maintain the operation of the Cloud Palace, forge weapons, and even serve as currency for trade with surrounding tribes.

"But how could the supreme palaces floating in the clouds raise these lowly insects?

"Therefore, the royalty placed all the Scarab Beetles on the ground to be cared for by the commoners. Every middle and end of the year, they would dispatch Magic Users to the ground to collect the Scarab Beetle molts."

So that's how it was?

Lin Xiao snapped back to his senses, looking at the insect corpses on the ground, his gaze suddenly darkening.

If he remembered correctly, the full name of these insects was [Carnivorous Sacred Beetles].

And their introduction in the bestiary also indicated how difficult they were to raise.

"[Extremely cruel predators, possessing a hair-raising pack hunting instinct...]"

"The breeding quantity and area expanded year by year, but the powerless commoners simply couldn't truly control these insects.

"They would dig through fences, burrow underground, and emerge silently from the sand while the guards were sleeping, causing casualties.

"Yet the Magic Users sent by the royalty each time only counted the number of molts and never asked about the losses on the ground."

Speaking to this point, Yimu paused.

Her slightly trembling intake of breath could be heard.

It seemed she was calming her mood, and also trying her best to suppress some strong emotion within her.

"Finally, one day, an unexpected... evolution occurred in one of the Scarab Beetles.

"This evolutionary pattern spread frantically through the swarm like a contagious disease, from one to a group, and from a group to the entire breeding area.

"The evolved insects were no longer satisfied with staying within the designated areas. They began to expand outward, began to attack living creatures on a large scale, and began to treat everything on the ground as food."

Yimu looked up, gazing at the boundless desert outside the train window.

The sunlight hit her veiled hat diagonally from the side, making the veil translucent as the light passed through it.

"When the middle of that year arrived and the Magic Users descended to the ground, they found..."

She could no longer continue.

The scorching wind blew over the roof of the car, lifting a corner of the veil and opening a very brief gap.

But in that one instant.

Lin Xiao saw her eyes.

Sky-blue pupils, like two glass beads polished by seawater for thousands of years, so clear they didn't look like they had experienced any wind or sand.

But above those eyes, in the very center of her forehead, was a tattoo.

It wasn't like the elegant rune tattoos of the Merfolk Tribe, but rather some kind of hideous brand.

It looked as if it had been forcibly branded on with red-hot metal, leaving a permanent scar on her skin that was so fair it was almost translucent.

Lin Xiao's gaze froze slightly.

Sensing his gaze, Yimu immediately gripped the veil tight, pulling the gap closed again, and continued the rest of the story.

"When the Magic Users reached the ground, they found the towns had been completely destroyed. As far as the eye could see, there were only Scarab Beetles in the grasslands, countless Scarab Beetles.

"When the lords in the Cloud Palace learned of this news, they immediately sealed all the Qitian Temple portals and launched indiscriminate destructive strikes against the ground.

"The magic element stones made from Scarab Beetle elytra destroyed the Scarab Beetles, as well as the innocent commoners...

"In this war, one Scarab Beetle that had been kept in the palace as a pet survived.

"Then, this Scarab Beetle underwent an unimaginable change.

"The evolution of the swarm reached its peak in it; its size gradually became as massive as a mountain range, and its shell shimmered with a golden glow all over.

"It even gained wisdom, continuously splitting to produce new offspring, and soon established an even more powerful swarm—powerful enough to destroy the Cloud Palace in an instant."

After hearing Yimu's story, Lin Xiao frowned.

Could this be... the Insect Emperor?

In the thousands of cycles of his previous lives, in most cases, he would encounter the Universal Insect Disaster.

He had always thought it was just a random planar event.

But thinking about it now, could the source actually be in the Kingdom of Heze?

No, the planes are not connected.

For example, the plane where the doomsday train is located, the plane where the entire planet is covered in mist, or the planes of oceans, lava, the bizarre, catacombs, and so on, are all absolutely independent.

How could...

While Lin Xiao was thinking, his gaze fell on the stone slab in his hand.

The Cloud Kingdom had invested in portal technology.

Thinking of this, he couldn't help but sigh.

As an emergency event that every plane would experience, the Universal Insect Disaster was the most difficult to deal with.

If he could find the juvenile Insect Emperor, perhaps he could nip these annoying insects in the bud.