Chapter 170 - 162: Battle of the Insect Dao Network and the Thunder Beast

Chapter 170: Chapter 162: Battle of the Insect Dao Network and the Thunder Beast

The three Mountain-Splitting Thunder Beasts didn’t head directly to the battlefield.

As the Insect Swarm struck out in all directions, expanding outward to plunder any Demon Fiends, minerals, and Spirit Plants containing Energy or special Materials, there was simply no room for the Thunder Beasts to display their prowess within a radius of thousands of miles. Thus, for the Thunder Beasts to enter the fray, they needed to be transported thousands of miles away.

Given their massive size and heavy Crystal Armor, although they could barely take to the skies by manipulating Heaven and Earth Primordial Qi, they wouldn’t even manage a dozen miles before draining all their internal reserves of Heaven and Earth Primordial Qi. Running on the ground was out of the question. The terrain was filled with winding mountain ranges and dense jungles; even at the speed of a Thunder Beast, it would take days to arrive.

Earth Escape was even less feasible. Short bursts of subterranean travel or using it in combat was fine, but utilizing it for long-distance travel was completely unrealistic.

Therefore, they marched straight toward the Tunneling Worm currently incubating inside the Snake Valley Base.

ROAR!

Amidst an earth-shattering roar, the Tunneling Worm’s incubation egg shattered. A colossal worm, over fifty meters in diameter, shot up into the sky before rapidly burrowing into the ground.

If one could see the subterranean scene, they would witness the head of this Tunneling Worm—resembling a titanic earthworm—rapidly carving through the earth like a tunnel boring machine. After plunging five or six hundred meters deep, it abruptly changed direction, extending swiftly outward. Throughout the process, the earth was as fragile as tofu, effortlessly pushed aside. The Tunneling Worm’s body grew longer and longer, constantly stretching.

No! ’Stretching’ wasn’t the right word; it was elongating.

As it lengthened, the Fungal Mat roots and Fungal Mat Tumors that had long penetrated deep underground rapidly linked to its body. Like capillaries, the Fungal Mat Organization continuously supplied it with Energy. While it broke through the earth, Runes similar to those of the Mountain-Splitting Demon King gleamed on its head and torso, manipulating Heaven and Earth Primordial Qi to force the earth to part on its own. This assisted the Tunneling Worm’s extension, drastically increasing its speed—a speed even faster than the Earth Escape of the Mountain-Splitting Thunder Beasts!

Most terrifying of all, the Tunneling Worm could split. From its extending head, it divided directly into four different directions, continuously branching out as it advanced. From a point to a line, and from a line to a surface.

Guided by the Insect Nest’s Conductor, it took less than a day to form the prototype of a super insect tunnel network that crisscrossed the Wilderness Mountain Range before continuously extending outward.

Of course, it was only a prototype. The Energy absorbed by the Fungal Mat, which covered thousands of miles of the Wilderness Mountain Range, was being consumed at a staggering rate. Even the outwardly expanding Insect Swarm had to transport their spoils back, yet it was still far from enough to meet the tunnel network’s consumption. They could only maintain a few main arteries.

There was no helping it. The resources required to build a complete insect tunnel network were far greater than those needed to incubate a Leviathan!

However, the results were equally astonishing. When the fastest outward-extending Tunneling Worm rushed out of the Wilderness Mountain Range and linked seven or eight Insect Nests along the way, the Insect Swarm’s mobility and resource transportation capabilities experienced an immediate, qualitative leap.

At the northern edge of the Wilderness Mountain Range, in Earth Scorpion Valley.

On the surface, this place seemed like nothing more than a barren valley of jagged rocks. In reality, a hundred meters underground, a massive clan of Twin-Tailed Giant Scorpions lay entrenched. The carapaces of these Demon Fiends were as hard as refined iron. Their pincers could crush gold and shatter jade, and their tail stingers were highly venomous. They were also adept at burrowing and stealth. Their nest, reaching depths of hundreds of meters, had a complex, intricate structure that was easy to defend and hard to attack.

The Insect Swarm had discovered this Demon’s Nest through aerial reconnaissance, but because of the enemy’s formidable strength, they had temporarily held off on clearing it out. Now, the time had come.

A few miles outside the scorpion valley, the ground suddenly and silently caved in. A massive head, filled with sharp mandibles, drilled out and unleashed an earth-shattering roar before violently shrinking back into the earth. It left behind a deep, dark tunnel entrance over fifty meters in diameter. Centered around it, the purple Fungal Mat expanded outward like flowing water, transforming the surrounding environment into the Insect Swarm’s home turf.

The flesh-lined walls of the entrance were smooth, covered in mucus-secreting biological tissues that emitted a faint glow. Heavy footsteps echoed from the depths of the cavern.

THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!

Three Mountain-Splitting Thunder Beasts, draped in thick, earthen-yellow Crystal Armor and resembling moving mountains, marched out of the tunnel one by one with steady, oppressive strides. Surging out closely behind them was a massive horde of cockroaches with carapaces gleaming with a dark metallic luster, alongside thousands of relatively smaller units like Rapid Insects and Thorn Snakes. In the sky, dozens of Thunder Rocs circled in a vigilant patrol.

This immense commotion immediately alarmed the tens of thousands of Twin-Tailed Giant Scorpion Demon Fiends living within Earth Scorpion Valley.

Deep within the mountains, the slaughter between Demon Fiends was extremely tragic and bloody. Sensing the invaders, the entire Twin-Tailed Giant Scorpion nest instantly boiled over. Countless dark brown figures surged out from rock crevices and subterranean caves, converging into a scalp-numbing brown tide.

ROAR!

The three Mountain-Splitting Thunder Beasts unleashed heaven-shaking bellows. Facing the surging swarm of scorpions, these forty-meter-tall behemoths didn’t hesitate in the slightest. The moment they stepped out of the tunnel, they launched a charge in the most barbaric manner possible!

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The earth groaned and trembled beneath their trampling. The three Thunder Beasts’ mountain-like bodies crashed head-on into the brown scorpion tide with a momentum that threatened to crush everything in their path! Their four terrifying tusks, each over thirty meters long and resembling giant Reaper’s Scythes, lowered forward, transforming into the purest of line-breaking weapons during their charge.

CRACK! SQUELCH!

The giant scorpions bearing the brunt of the assault found both their proudly resilient carapaces and their flailing giant pincers to be as frail as paper before the terrifying weight, speed, and sharp tusks of the Mountain-Splitting Thunder Beasts. Carapaces were effortlessly pierced and shattered; limbs were ruthlessly torn apart and crushed.

The Thunder Beasts ignored the tail stingers striking their carapaces—which only managed to splash up venomous mist and sparks—and advanced steadily like an unstoppable wall, crushing their way toward the densest parts of the scorpion swarm. Three bloody paths were instantly plowed through the tightly packed scorpions, sending severed limbs and dark green bodily fluids splattering in all directions.

The cockroaches, Rapid Insects, and other units followed closely behind, engaging in a frenzied massacre. This wasn’t a battle at all. It was an utter, completely lopsided slaughter.

The Qi Sea Realm Scorpion King hiding in the rear hadn’t even had time to strike before seeing the clan it had painstakingly cultivated for decades thoroughly massacred.

Flee!

However, it didn’t know that the Insect Swarm had locked onto its position from the very beginning. The moment it burrowed underground to escape, one of the massive Mountain-Splitting Thunder Beasts leaned back slightly. It then channeled its entire strength and weight through its four terrifying tusks, viciously "chiseling" into the ground!

The earth quaked and the mountains shook!

The ground at the point of impact instantly shattered and splintered, like a biscuit smashed by a Giant Hammer! An area over fifty meters in diameter abruptly caved in, revealing the intertwining scorpion nest tunnels and panicked Twin-Tailed Giant Scorpions below!

The Thunder Beast then ruthlessly charged underground! Whether it was rock, soil, or the hastily gathered Twin-Tailed Giant Scorpions attempting to block it, everything was thoroughly crushed and sent flying before its unstoppable momentum and tusks. The panic-stricken Qi Sea Realm Scorpion King was instantly skewered by a tusk, utterly devoid of any power to resist.

From the very beginning, the battle had displayed a crushing superiority. The entire conflict took less than three minutes from start to finish before the Twin-Tailed Giant Scorpions’ resistance was thoroughly routed.

The surviving giant scorpions panicked, attempting to flee deep underground. But the Insect Swarm was equally adept at Earth Escape. The Fungal Mat roots extending from the Tunneling Worm burrowed into the ground like living creatures, beginning to erode and convert the land.

Having completed their first live combat test, the three Mountain-Splitting Thunder Beasts didn’t linger. They dove straight into the Tunneling Worm, allowing one of the spherical insect eggs to envelop them. Then, propelled by the muscular contractions within the Tunneling Worm, they accelerated faster and faster until they were moving at several times the speed of sound, heading toward their next battlefield.

As for mopping up the remaining enemies and retrieving resources, the subsequent waves of the Insect Swarm would naturally take over.

"Indeed, the power of the Thunder Beasts is enough to change the layout of the Insect Swarm’s battlefields. On an ordinary battlefield, they can simply crush everything in their path. Even a Peak Qi Sea Great Demon like the Mountain-Splitting Demon King could be slain in a single strike. The crushing superiority brought by their sheer strength and size is simply not something ordinary Demon Fiends can contend with," Qin Yu, who was constantly monitoring the battlefield, muttered, shaking his head slightly.

The Mountain-Splitting Thunder Beasts hadn’t even unleashed their true strength in this battle before it was over. Their designated role was defense and shock assault! Their purpose was to break Arrays on large-scale battlefields and destroy the Mountain Protection Arrays and fixed structures of large Sects like the Cyan Profound Sect.

After all, normal Qi Sea Realm experts could fly. Few would be foolish enough to engage in a head-on clash with a mountain-like Thunder Beast. But a Sect was different. A Sect’s stronghold couldn’t be moved.

With the formidable defense of the Mountain-Splitting Demon King and their Earth Escape ability, the Insect Swarm’s deductions concluded that even an Array like the Poison Shadow Mysterious Array in Snake Valley wouldn’t hold out for long. This was because the Mountain-Splitting Thunder Beasts could directly destroy the Array Foundations!

With the Insect Nest’s Conductor guiding them from the rear, their understanding of Arrays allowed them to directly attack the Array nodes.

If the opponent was an agile, flight-capable Demon Fiend like the Seven-Colored Spirit Deer or the Red Feather Demon King, the effectiveness of the Mountain-Splitting Thunder Beasts would be drastically reduced. Naturally, highly mobile enemies would be dealt with by other units in the Insect Swarm.

"Continue to Enhance the Mountain-Splitting Thunder Beasts’ control over the earth. Their primary goals are defense, shock assault, and breaking Arrays!

"Using the Thunder Beast variant—the ’Poisonous Beast’—as a carrier, integrate a miniature Poison Shadow Mysterious Array and the Five Poison Sect’s Gu Poison. The evolutionary goal is to create a mobile Poison Array core. This project will be named: Highly Poisonous Thunder Beast.

"Using the Thunder Beast variant—the ’Violent Dragon Beast’—as a carrier, integrate the Wind and Thunder Tribulation Destruction Scripture to Enhance its combat and shock assault capabilities. Through death and rebirth, it will complete evolutions targeting specific threats. This project will be named: Undying Thunder Beast."

The Thunder Beast wasn’t just a single unit; it was an entire series that could be evolved according to different needs—offense, defense, battlefield control, and more.

"Next up is waiting for the Leviathan to appear. By fusing the Leviathan with the Dragon Race bloodline, its ’Call the Wind and Summon the Rain’ Talent will further elevate the Leviathan’s battlefield control capabilities."