"No! This is our Mayfly Race's Sacred Nest — itsspawn are literally endless! How could a Gold Mayfly possibly possess such a thing? We must break through immediately!" The bellow of shock and fury erupted from the colossal insect that Six-Legs had transformed into.
In that brief interval, hundreds more of the grotesque bugs had been pierced through and killed by the black light radiating from its body.
"Where would we even flee to? These creatures aren't much slower than us. If they keep pestering us like this, we'll inevitably run dry on Magical Power sooner or later." The Blood-robed figure stood atop the Purple Blood Puppet's shoulder, his expression grave.
"Back the way we came — straight for the passage we entered through. As long as we can hold out until we reach the entrance, we can return to the River Styx domain and escape the sea of insects the Sacred Nest has conjured." Six-Legs answered without the slightest hesitation.
"Six-Legs, have you lost your mind? Even if we go all out, the journey back along the original route will take a full two or three months! Are we supposed to keep fighting these bugs the entire time? And what about the Demon Tomb? What about our demonic treasures?!" The white-haired beauty's voice turned shrill.
"Hmph! Fellow Daoist Lan — what good are demonic treasures if we're dead? At worst, once we make it back, I'll hand over some of my own possessions to compensate you and Fellow Daoist Earth Blood. Right now the Sacred Nest is only manifesting its lowest-tier sacred insects. We can still barely carve our way through. But the moment it conjures something higher-ranked, we won't be able to leave even if we wanted to!" Six-Legs roared angrily.
If the current situation didn't demand the combined strength of all three of them to have any hope of escape, he would likely have fled with the River Styx divine milk long ago.
After all, no one understood better than he did just how terrifying the Mayfly Race's Sacred Nest truly was — a weapon capable of annihilating an entire clan.
What Six-Legs did not realize, of course, was that the thing he was facing was not the genuine Sacred Nest at all, but merely a replica. Even so, its power was far beyond what the three of them could brute-force their way through, and the sheer dread it inspired had planted the desire to flee the River Styx domain the instant he laid eyes on it.
Hearing Six-Legs's words, the white-haired beauty, though thoroughly unwilling, could say nothing more in protest.
The Blood-robed figure raised no objections either, clearly in agreement.
And so, all three unleashed their techniques simultaneously.
The colossal insect that Six-Legs had become — its once perfectly smooth body suddenly blazed with black light as countless bone spurs, each over ten feet long, surfaced across its hide. They were pitch-black as ink and wickedly sharp.
The great insect's body contracted and swelled in a single violent pulse. It opened its maw and spat out ring after ring of black halos visible to the naked eye.
The moment those halos left its mouth, they expanded enormously, roaring into the swarm of bugs and sweeping across countless creatures.
A startling sight unfolded!
Wherever the halos passed, every single insect seemed to lose all balance, toppling and tumbling from the sky in a rain of flailing bodies.
An enormous stretch of empty air was instantly cleared ahead.
The Purple Blood Puppet, mountain-sized as it was, gaped wide at the oncoming swarm. A pillar of purple-red light more than a dozen times thicker than the beam from its eyes erupted from its throat.
Everything the pillar touched collapsed and disintegrated, reduced to flying ash in an instant.
The puppet swung its massive head, and the grotesquely thick beam swept with it, cutting down even more insects in its arc.
The area it cleared in a single sweep seemed even larger than what Six-Legs had achieved.
The last to act was the white-haired beauty.
Seeing the other two hold nothing back, she ceased hesitating as well. She flung the bizarre hammer she held toward the insect swarm in another direction, then formed a series of hand seals to activate it.
The strange hammer detonated within a shroud of green flame, and eight white bone skulls materialized. They spun in place, swelling to the size of wagon wheels, then let out a shrill wail and gaped wide.
What these skulls spat forth was no longer green ghostly fire, but gales of bone-white, bone-chilling frost wind.
Wherever that wind swept, a layer of frost first settled on every insect's body. Then, with a crisp crackling sound, they froze solid, transforming into white ice crystals of various sizes before tumbling silently from the sky like rain.
With three Deity Transformation-stage cultivators striking at once, the assault forced even the seemingly infinite tide of monsters to stall, clearing a vast open zone in their vicinity.
More than ten li away, the human-faced mantis let out a cold snort. One of its blade-like arms rose and pointed toward the silver object hanging in the air.
The half-moon-shaped object spun, and the swarm pouring from within surged by more than half again.
But at that very moment, Six-Legs and the white-haired beauty converged toward the center. Their Magical Power fused into one, and they condensed into a single enormous sphere of light. With a violent tremor, the sphere shot forward through the corridor they had carved, reaching the edge of the insect sea in just a few flickers.
Then the sphere broke apart, and three streaks of blinding radiance burst free of the swarm amid a continuous string of explosions.
They tore toward the horizon in a desperate retreat.
The human-faced mantis clearly had not anticipated that its opponents would flee without a fight. Fury twisted its features, and it let out an unearthly, piercing shriek. The swarm immediately gave chase.
Each of the green insects beat their wings at a dizzying speed as they flew, their velocity astonishing — streaks of emerald light tearing through the sky, not a whit slower than Six-Legs and his companions.
The mantis's form blurred slightly, and it vanished from where it had stood. The next instant, it materialized atop the half-moon object in the air, then flickered with spiritual light and sank into it without a trace.
The "Sacced Nest" hummed thunderously. The torrent of insect-phantoms spewing from it paused briefly, then the object itself transformed into a ball of silver light and rocketed away.
Surrounded on all sides by an uncountable swarm of insects, it vanished over the horizon.