127: Chapter 127: The battle is fierce, and the opponent is temporarily at a disadvantage.

Boom—!

The embers of the fire had yet to fade, and the black smoke from the burning spore-silk web rolled like ink, blotting out the sky.

Yet, deep within the nest behind the scorched earth, compound eyes lit up one after another, dense and countless, like a galaxy pouring into an abyss.

The insect tide had arrived.

It was not one wave, nor two; it was an endless stream of arthropods pouring out from the hive's orifices. The sounds of carapaces rubbing together, antennae scraping the ground, and venom glands dripping fused into a scalp-tingling drone.

The ground shook, the air trembled, and even the metal frame of the "earth dragon" mech groaned under the high-frequency resonance.

Chen Wuwang stood on a collapsed rocky ridge, his Mechanical Prosthetic Eye scanning at high speed, blood-red patterns flashing deep within his pupils.

He saw it—in the air, swarms of Flying Bees with wingspans half the height of a person, their compound eyes glowing with a cold, eerie green light; on the ground, Heavy-Armored Soldier Ants arranged in three columns, their shells a deep brown with serrated blades at the ends of their limbs, pulverizing rubble with every step; high up on the rock walls, Stinger Bugs crouched on the edge of the nest, their abdomens swollen as they gathered strength, locking onto the center of the battlefield.

The numbers... far exceeded their estimates.

"Tighten the formation!" He roared his first command, his voice piercing through the explosions and screeching like a hammer striking into the chaos. "Everyone, retreat to the entrance passage! Don't let them flank us!"

Before the words had even faded, three Flying Bees dove down, their sharp claws aiming straight for two clansmen who were in the middle of replacing their Spirit Stone modules.

A flash of sword light appeared. Chen Xiaodao leaped into the air, his left arm's mechanical joints humming as they charged, and he ferociously unleashed the third form of the Meteor Sword Intent, "Starfall"!

Squelch—

Three insect heads flew into the air, and the mangled bodies fell to the ground, twitching.

But his foot slipped as he landed. A string of sparks erupted from his left arm's joints, and an alarm for power supply malfunction blared sharply in his mind.

Gritting his teeth, he forced a System restart and relied on instinct to block horizontally with his sword, barely parrying the tail-stinger assault of a fourth bee.

"Xiao Dao!" Chen Wuwang caught sight of this out of the corner of his eye, his heart tightening, but he was too far away to rescue him.

A loud crash came from the right defensive line. A transport mech was overturned by a giant soldier ant, its armor torn open. A clansman struggled to crawl out of the cockpit, but just as he stood steady, he was tackled by another Worker Ant.

There was no scream.

The man backhanded his dagger, holding it firmly against the insect's maw, and then fiercely pressed the self-destruct Talisman at his waist.

Boom!!!

Fire erupted, the shockwave blasting away three nearby insects and swallowing the clansman's figure. In the thick smoke, only a scorched half of an arm guard lay quietly on the ground.

"Lao Liu—!" A veteran roared, charging forward with bloodshot eyes, only to be held back tightly by a companion.

"Don't throw your life away! Hold the line!"

The defensive line was trembling, but it had not collapsed.

If someone's mech was damaged, they stripped off weapons to use spirit-energy short spears; if someone's spiritual energy was depleted, they relied on tactical cooperation to drag down the enemy. A young clansman, seeing this scene for the first time, turned pale, his hand gripping his gun trembling, only to be fiercely slapped by a scarred veteran beside him.

"What are you shaking for? Did your parents send you here to be a coward? Keep firing!"

That slap seemed to wake his soul. The youth abruptly looked up, roared, and his Talisman gun spewed flames, blasting a Stinger Bug climbing the rock wall into fragments.

Chen Wuwang stood on high ground, seeing it all clearly.

He knew that these people had not yet broken. Even though they were being pressed until they couldn't breathe, and even though casualties had begun to appear, they were still gritting their teeth and holding on.

This was not an order from anyone; it was the toughness of bone forged over three years of mining together, repairing machines together, and surviving insect plagues together.

But even tough bones couldn't withstand attrition.

"How much ammunition is left?" He muttered, his fingers swiping rapidly across his watch.

"Ranged firepower is under thirty percent, Spirit Stone module temperature is exceeding limits, and the cooling System is on the verge of collapse." The data returned by the System was cold and ruthless.

The underground tremors were growing stronger. The frequency had changed; it was no longer the chaotic crawling, but a rhythmic, heavy thud—as if some colossal creature was awakening.

Where the spore-silk web had been burned, green slime was oozing out along the rock crevices, rapidly congealing into new silk threads and spreading toward the center of the battlefield.

In the hive orifices that had been cleared by fire, new Worker Ants were already poking their heads out.

The regeneration speed... had accelerated.

"It's no use... Clan Head, we can't hold them off!" A clansman stumbled back, his shoulder armor corroded with a hole, blood streaming down. "If we keep fighting like this, we're all going to be buried here!"

No one argued. Everyone's face was roasted crimson by the high heat; their respirator filters had long since failed, and the air they inhaled carried a fishy sweetness and a burning pain.

The alarms for mech overheating rose and fell, like dying wails.

Chen Wuwang leaned back against the rock wall and closed his eyes.

In his ears were explosions, roars, insect chirps, and wails, weaving into a suffocating web.

His fingers unconsciously tapped the hilt of his dagger, once, then again, as if debugging a piece of code.

System... what was the instruction for midnight today?

He recalled. Three heavenly secret instructions: one about the timing of a spiritual rain, one about the Epiphany of a Loose Cultivator, and one more... he couldn't remember.

Useless.

These instructions never directly saved the situation; they only provided the keys to the layout, never the blade itself.

But right now, he needed a blade.

He opened his eyes abruptly, blood-red spiritual patterns flashing in his pupils and vanishing.

His gaze swept across the battlefield—the unburned spore-silk, the flowing green bodily fluids, the destroyed nest structures, and the swarms of insects constantly pouring out... Suddenly, he noticed something.

Those bodily fluids, when evaporating under high heat, caused the surrounding air to vibrate slightly. And whenever the concussion cannon struck the ground, the movements of the insects deep within the nest would lag for half a second.

Resonance?

His heart skipped a beat.

These insects relied on a collective consciousness to transmit signals. Their actions were highly synchronized, suggesting their neural network depended on some sort of biological frequency transmission.

What if... their nervous Systems were sensitive to a specific frequency?

Just as circuits fear harmonic resonance and buildings fear structural resonance, biological structures... might not be immune.

"Everyone, hold on!" He suddenly shouted, his voice tearing through the din of the battlefield like a thunderclap striking into everyone's ears. "I will find a way!"

This shout was not just a promise; it was an anchor.

Everyone still fighting heard it.

Xiao Dao, leaning on his sword and half-kneeling at the edge of the scorched earth, his left arm smoking, heard it. He looked up and saw Chen Wuwang standing on the rocky ridge, his back as solid as a mountain.

The veteran, clutching his Talisman gun, heard it. He grinned and spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva: "Did you hear that? The Clan Head says he has a way! I can still kill ten more!"

The youth's trembling hand steadied.

The defensive line did not retreat; instead, it pressed forward by half a step.

Chen Wuwang didn't say anything more. He stared at the writhing nest, his Mechanical Prosthetic Eye switching to spectrum analysis mode, capturing the faint fluctuations brought about by every explosion and every movement of the insect swarm.

He was looking for that frequency.

The point that could cause the insects' neural network to malfunction.

The underground tremors became more violent. From deep within, a low, deep drone echoed, as if some ancient creature were awakening.

He knew there wasn't much time left.

Spore-silk was regenerating, the insect tide was not diminishing, ammunition was running out, and spiritual energy was exhausted. Conventional tactics were already ineffective; he had to think outside the box.

He looked down at the green bodily fluids staining his dagger and suddenly muttered to himself: "Biological structures... they likely have a resonance weakness..."

Before the words had even died away, the rock wall on the left exploded. Dozens of newborn soldier ants burst through the wall, charging straight for the gap in the defensive line.

"Xiao Dao! The left flank!"

"Here!"

Sword light rose again, afterimages sweeping through the air.

Chen Wuwang leaped off the rocky ridge and landed on the front line of the scorched earth. He plunged his dagger into the ground, used it to pivot, and kicked away a Worker Ant that was lunging at him. He stood in the center of the battlefield, surrounded by fire, blood, slaughter, and the gasps of those pushed to their limits.

Yet his eyes were clear.

He was waiting, waiting for an opportunity to break the deadlock.

In the distance, the spore-silk web had re-woven itself into a sheet, glowing with an eerie green light. Underground, that low-frequency tremor was getting closer and closer, as if something were slowly raising its head from ten thousand years of darkness.