Beehive Island was a peculiarly shaped sea island.
The entire island was a massive, dark-yellow beehive, its surface riddled with countless holes, and its interior even more intricately structured, with tunnels running in every direction.
A Sixth Transformation Gu Immortal—wolf-backed and bee-waisted, clad in emerald battle armor—was currently inside the beehive.
This person was none other than one of Miao Mingshen's followers—the Bee General.
Whoosh whoosh whoosh!
Dense clouds of Red Thread Earthworms blanketed the sky, hurtling toward the Bee General in a torrential barrage.
The Red Thread Earthworms could launch themselves by coiling and springing, achieving tremendous speed. All the Bee General could perceive were streaks of red light flashing past.
The Red Thread Earthworms' assault was exceedingly fierce. Swarms of them could drive even Desolate Beasts into retreat.
The Bee General fought while falling back.
He was under tremendous pressure, and before long, his forehead was drenched in sweat.
His combat strength far surpassed that of Desolate Beasts, and he possessed numerous killing moves. However, the task he had accepted was to suppress the Red Thread Earthworm disaster on Beehive Island and restore the entire island's ecological balance.
If the Bee General held nothing back and unleashed a devastating offensive, he could certainly eliminate the Red Thread Earthworms before him with ease.
But doing so would deal catastrophic damage to Beehive Island, and the merit he earned would be pitifully small.
"Damn it." With his hands tied by scruples, the Bee General had no choice but to retreat three times over, flying out of the beehive and hovering high in the air.
The swarm of Red Thread Earthworms was still in hot pursuit, launching themselves through the air to chase him down.
From countless openings, torrents of red threads spewed outward. The Bee General sighed, ascending higher and drawing further from the beehive, until the Red Thread Earthworms finally gave up and returned.
The Red Thread Earthworms tumbled from the sky but didn't die from the fall. Their bodies were soft yet resilient. After coiling on the beehive's surface for a while, they all burrowed back inside.
They didn't follow the beehive's existing tunnels—they simply drilled straight through the rock walls.
This was naturally devastating damage to Beehive Island.
"There are too many Red Thread Earthworms, and there are probably Desolate Beasts lurking inside as well. After all, the task I accepted was a medium-grade one."
"There's another difficulty—the tunnels inside the behive grow narrower the deeper they go, which puts me at a severe disadvantage."
Beehive Island had already been riddled with holes by the Red Thread Earthworms. If the Bee General fought inside, he would likely destroy the entire island.
The Bee General was silent for a long time before finally making up his mind.
He opened his immortal aperture's portal and summoned a massive swarm of wild bees. These wild bees were formidable—every single one boasted Fifth Transformation combat strength. Their leader radiated an imposing aura, clearly a Desolate Beast-grade wild bee.
The wild bees' abdomens had a peculiar shape—not oval, but shaped like spinning tops, widest at the middle, then tapering from the waist down to the tail, growing progressively smaller.
The surface of their top-shaped abdomens bore striking black spiral patterns.
All the wild bees were covered in thick, dense down, and their wings were large and broad.
These were Yellow Top Bees.
The Bee General kept a vast number of wild bee species in his immortal aperture, and the Yellow Top Bees held an especially special position among them.
Ordinary wild bees, though they gathered in swarms, were always of the same species. Different species of wild bees did not cohabitate.
Yet the Yellow Top Bees could not only live alongside every other bee species—they could also, during their breeding cycles, bolster other bee species, helping them grow their populations.
The Yellow Top Bees could be considered the core bee species of the Bee General's immortal aperture.
The Bee General was an Eastern Sea Gu Immortal, blessed with abundant cultivation resources. His immortal aperture housed numerous bee colonies and over a dozen Desolate Beast-grade wild bees. The Yellow Top Bees had always received his focused cultivation, but he possessed only three Desolate Beast-grade Yellow Top Bees.
This time, deploying this entire swarm of Yellow Top Bees had cost him dearly.
Under the Bee General's command, the Yellow Top Bee swarm buzzed like a mass of yellowish-brown cloud and swiftly drilled into the beehive.
Bee colonies still existed on Beehive Island, though they were completely outmatched by the Red Thread Earthworms in scale.
With the Yellow Top Bees' help, the existing bee colonies faltered in confusion for a moment, then launched a fierce counterattack, launching a devastating assault on the Red Thread Earthworms entrenched in the lower portions of the beehive.
This was a life-or-death battle for the survival of their species, and naturally it was brutal beyond measure.
Beehive Island shuddered continuously as large cracks rapidly appeared across its surface, expanding violently.
The Bee General had long been prepared. He immediately sprang into action, employing various methods to repair the beehive.
He let the bee colonies take the offensive while he relegated himself to the role of caretaker.
He was fortunate—once the Red Thread Earthworms had suffered losses to a certain degree, the single Desolate Beast-grade Red Thread Earthworm retreated without a fight, leading its kindred to voluntarily leave the beehive.
The Bee General watched from above as millions of Red Thread Earthworms converged into a massive red current in the seawater, heading off into the distance. He let out a long sigh, and the boulder finally lifted from his heart.
He hesitated—should he continue pursuing and eliminating the Red Thread Earthworms, or let them go?
While he dithered, the Red Thread Earthworm swarm had already plunged into the deep sea.
The Bee General abandoned the pursuit.
Fighting in the deep sea would set off a chain reaction—this stretch of waters was home to a great number of sea beasts.
"Better not to stir up more trouble. I should just repair this beehive island."
The repairs consumed another full day and night.
Not only was Beehive Island fully restored, but the Bee General had also reinforced many critical sections. At the same time, he drew out large quantities of honey and special flowers and grasses from his immortal aperture to restore the ecosystem.
When he was finished, Beehive Island looked entirely renewed. Not only had ecological balance been restored, but it now held even greater potential for development.
"This is already a mid-grade resource point," the Bee General remarked with feeling.
If circumstances allowed, he would naturally want to claim Beehive Island as his own. But this concerned a merit task, and he was bound by the constraints of the Blessed Land—so the Bee General could only reluctantly abandon the idea.
After teleporting back to the Merit Stele, the Bee General checked his merit count and found that completing this task had boosted his merit by over eighty points.
He was stunned, then immediately felt a pang of regret: "It didn't reach one hundred merit—so my performance wasn't perfect. I should have wiped out the Red Thread Earthworm swarm back then. Letting them go means Beehive Island will probably be invaded by them again someday."
"That's not right either. The task was to restore Beehive Island's ecological balance—did I really accomplish that? Actually, I didn't."
"The so-called ecosystem—while Beehive Island is its core, the surrounding waters are also part of its ecology. I only focused on transforming Beehive Island itself and never touched the surrounding sea. That was my mistake."
With this thought, the Bee General sighed.