341: Chapter 341 The clouds know not the suffering on earth; an ancient well spews forth a plague of ten thousand insects!

It was an exquisitely beautiful face.

Her features were so delicate that she did not look like a survivor of the apocalypse.

Slender, slightly arched brow bones, a straight yet soft nose bridge, and thin lips slightly parted in shock, revealing a hint of pearly, shell-colored teeth.

Her slightly pointed ears peeked out from her scattered hair, and combined with her translucent, pale blue skin, she indeed looked somewhat like a cloud elf.

Yet, on this face that should have been too beautiful to look away from, there was an uneven, ugly tattoo.

Distorted runic patterns were embedded in the translucent skin of her forehead, gleaming with a bizarre grayish-black luster.

Yimu raised her arms to cover it, but it was already too late.

She saw the gazes coming from all directions; she saw several passengers waiting in line stop and look over.

Subconsciously closing her eyes, her hands froze in midair, her entire body trembling uncontrollably.

Seeing this, Lin Xiao immediately made a grasping motion with his left hand.

A streak of shadow energy shot from his palm, precisely wrapping around the veiled hat on the ground before pulling it back.

He caught the veiled hat and gently pressed it back onto the crown of Yimu's head with one hand.

The fabric fell once more, concealing her face.

Having done this, Lin Xiao turned back to look at Sikong Xuanye, his expression turning cold.

"What is the meaning of this?"

"Please do not be angry, Your Excellency," Sikong Xuanye's smile faded slightly. "Do you know what that tattoo means?"

Lin Xiao slowly shook his head.

He was also quite interested in the tattoo on Yimu's forehead.

Based on the information he had gathered, he had made some speculations.

He had originally thought that all commoners chosen to serve in the Cloud Palace each year were marked with this brand to distinguish their status.

Or perhaps, only those commoners appointed as Magic Users would be branded this way.

But now, it seemed things were even more complicated than he had imagined.

"To be frank with you, only those with a guilty status bear this tattoo," Sikong Xuanye sighed and explained patiently. "A molten mithril cone is branded onto the forehead, and a forbidden art is used to record the crime into the bones and blood. As long as the tattoo remains, the guilt remains, never to be washed away for eternity!"

"Oh, this tattoo... Your Highness, I remember now! This woman was one of those criminals who broke into the sacred forbidden grounds!"

At this moment, a gaunt minister nearby suddenly slapped his forehead, his voice shrill and hoarse.

"I remember too!"

Minister Sikong Heng immediately chimed in, his voice rising even higher than before.

"Over a hundred and twenty years ago, a few years before the rebels stormed the Royal Court, a group of lowborns took advantage of a festival day to sneak into the forbidden grounds of the Royal Court and steal several treasures.

What was most insane was that they threw the eggs of the Scarab Beetle into the very foundation of the Heze Kingdom... an Ancient Well passed down for thousands of years!"

He pointed at Yimu with a trembling finger, his face flushed red.

"Later, the Royal Court guards captured them all. Under torture, they not only recovered the stolen treasures but also seized over ten thousand eggs from these people!

This case shook the entire court and commonality back then. The main perpetrators were all tattooed, thrown into prison, and scheduled for public decapitation. I just didn't expect a fish that escaped the net to have actually survived!"

Hearing this, Lin Xiao immediately turned to look at Yimu behind him.

"Over ten thousand eggs? Is that true?"

There was no accusatory tone in his voice; he simply wanted to confirm the fact.

At this moment, Yimu slowly raised her head.

The fabric of the veil clung to her cheeks, making it impossible to see her expression.

But her voice became calm for the first time.

"Yes."

"Why did you do that?" Lin Xiao frowned, quite puzzled by this.

Yimu responded in a hoarse voice, "Because... the Scarab Beetles on the ground were on the verge of extinction."

She slowly looked up.

Her gaze pierced through the side window of the Astral Express, looking out at the boundless desert outside.

Then, she slowly dragged out a past she was unwilling to look back on from the depths of her memory.

"The molted shells of the Scarab Beetles are the most important industry of the Heze Kingdom. To increase production and expand exports, the royal family required more and more molted shells year after year."

"In order to produce enough molted shells, the commoners on the ground had no choice but to desperately expand their breeding scale. Soon, the number of Scarab Beetles doubled, but a crisis quickly followed."

"The food consumed daily by tens of millions of Scarab Beetles already exceeded what this fertile land could bear."

"In just a few short years, the resources on the ground were completely depleted. With no food source, the beetles began to devour each other, and even escaped the breeding areas to swarm into the towns where people lived."

"They bit people to death, collapsed houses, and their numbers plummeted at an unimaginable speed. But what about the Royal Court? The number of molted shells required to be handed in each year did not decrease; instead, it kept increasing."

"Those towns that could not hand in a sufficient quantity would be punished—whipped at best, publicly decapitated at worst."

"So, in order to let the remaining people survive... we had to find a way to replenish the number of Scarab Beetles..."

Speaking up to this point, Yimu paused.

A complex look flashed deep in her eyes:

"Then one day, someone heard rumors about the Ancient Well. Legend had it that deep within the palace in the sky, there was a mysterious Ancient Well, the very foundation of the Heze Kingdom. No matter what was thrown into it, one would receive bountiful rewards!"

"So someone thought... if we threw the eggs of the Scarab Beetle into the Ancient Well, would we get more larvae? Or would it shorten the growth cycle of the Scarab Beetles?"

"Thus, a secret squad was formed, and as a low-tier Magic User at the time, I was also part of it."

"We waited until the day of the year-end grand ceremony, used the teleportation array of the Qitian Temple to reach the palace, entered the forbidden grounds, found the location of the Ancient Well by sensing it, and then threw the eggs inside... praying it would grant us a miracle."

"To our surprise, light actually emerged from the mouth of the well, and tens of thousands of eggs surged out from within..."

At this point in her story, Yimu lowered her head, her voice softening significantly.

"But as we were leaving the forbidden grounds, we were discovered by the Royal Court guards. My companions were all captured and publicly decapitated one by one. I was branded with the tattoo and thrown into death row. It wasn't until many years later, on the day the insect plague broke out, that I managed to escape in the chaos..."

"What an absolute joke!"

Minister Sikong Heng slammed his palm on the table, laughing out of sheer anger. "Our Heze Kingdom is blessed by Water and Rainbows, with thousands of miles of fertile soil and abundant resources. How could it possibly be barren? Scarab Beetles love to eat plant roots, and the ground vegetation is lush year after year. Where does this talk of 'not having enough food' come from?"

"Exactly! The Prime Minister is right!"

The gaunt minister next to him sprang from his seat, his twig-like fingers shaking wildly in the air, extremely agitated.

"In my view, it is clear that this mob of rebels took the Royal Court's silver, cared only for pleasure, and when they couldn't hand in the molted shells in the end, they fabricated such absurd excuses to escape punishment!"

The remaining two ministers exchanged glances, bowed in unison, and chimed in harmony, "The rebels stormed the Royal Court for no other reason than coveting the foundation accumulated by our Heze royal family over thousands of years. Acting in such a manner, their intentions are utterly detestable!"

Yimu suddenly whipped around to face these ministers, her voice abruptly rising:

"You royal nobles living in the palace in the sky, everything you know comes from the reports submitted from below—reports that have been filtered, numbers that have been doctored, and lies that have been deliberately beautified!

While you were raising flowers and tending to fish in the sky, the ground had already been ravaged by sandstorms for over a decade! You couldn't see it, you never saw it!"

The atmosphere once again became tense and hostile.

Meanwhile, Lin Xiao sat in his chair, lost in thought.

Tens of thousands of eggs... surging out of a mysterious Ancient Well...

Could it be that the currently rampaging Insect Swarm, the Scarab Beetles with splitting characteristics, originated from those eggs?