Lord of the Desert

Chapter 447 Brood
"Duke Zhou, Shi Zishou also speaks from the heart."

Xiao Chu spoke to ease the situation.

"Destroying the hive is certainly difficult, but simply locking down its location has great strategic significance. In the Zerg tide, the commander is the dispatching core, and the hive is the resource operation core. At least half of the units in the Zerg swarm are distributed around the hive..."

She explained a few words and gave Wang Shengrong a look, indicating that he should continue.

At this moment, a voice suddenly interrupted.

"Destroying the hive is certainly not easy, but killing the queen is not necessarily easy."

Zhou Wenyang lifted his back from the chair.

No matter how he tried to persuade someone, there were still people who spoke against him. He felt extremely uncomfortable and was about to start scolding him when he found out that the person who said this was Hong Fan.

So I had to lean back gently.

Among the dozens of people present, the one who hated Hong Fan the most was probably Dai Wangchen, either because of jealousy or because of the natural induction of his fate.

But no matter how unwilling he was, he could not help but think of the bold words he said on the night of March 7th and the blazing star that subsequently crossed the sky.

The hall was quiet for a moment.

Xiao Chu perked up.

Wang Shengrong stopped talking.

Gu Yixin and Wei Yuanbai leaned forward, obviously waiting for what was to come.

Common sense becomes common sense only because it has been proven countless times, but Hong Fan's casual words forced everyone to treat it with caution.

Shi Yuanwei was a veteran who had been in the business for many years. He immediately realized this special atmosphere and understood that his "old colleague" had a special status in the scene.

Just like when he was in the Martial Arts Academy in Xijing.

"You have an incredible speed that cannot be matched by Yuanci, so it shouldn't be difficult for you to escape."

Xiao Chu paused for a moment and said.

Shi Yuanwei was stunned when he heard this, wondering how Her Royal Highness the Princess could say such nonsense so casually.

What was even more strange was that the other people looked normal as well.

[Is this some kind of code? ]

Shi Yuanwei was puzzled.

The atmosphere was serious at the moment, and since he had just spoken out of turn, he didn't dare to ask more questions.

"But given the terrain and military strength of the mother nest, even Young Master Hong would find it difficult to do anything."

Xiao Chu spoke in a conservative tone.

"Your Highness is wrong."

Hong Fan rubbed his chin.

"I haven't seen the mother nest in person, but from what Sima Wang said just now, it is nothing more than a dark and complicated tunnel. For ordinary warriors, this terrain is naturally extremely difficult, but it's different for me..."

He smiled.

"I am the Star Lord of the Sand World."

"The structure of the underground palace dug by the insect swarm in such a short time cannot be too grand. With the size of Zhe Lei and Han Yun, they either cannot enter the tunnel, or they can only crawl after entering."

Hong Fan judged.

"But there is also Emperor Xiao."

Gu Yixin took over the conversation.

"He can get in, but he is the only one among the three enemy magnetic forces who is not an insect. In the dark underground, in the crisscrossing tunnels, how is Xiao Tanghuang going to determine my location?"

The more Hong Fan spoke, the more confident he became.

"Insects can't talk, so we can't exchange information with them. And no matter how fast they move, they have to follow the tunnels. I have the authority and can open the way at will!"

These words left everyone speechless.

It is of course a great joy to have the hope of beheading the queen insect, but it is hard to believe that such joy comes too easily.

······
That day, two hours later.

One hundred and twenty miles southwest of Erbai City.

In the twilight world, thousands of black crows are flying across the sky like a curtain.

On the top of a bald mountain, huge rocks were shrouded in the setting sun, dark red like hot black iron.

Hong Fan hid in the crevice under a rock, overlooking the endless stream of insects several miles away.

Time passes slowly.

Until the setting sun sucked away the last bit of light and heat in the wilderness like a huge mouth, and then the world fell into the abyss.

Hong Fan climbed up, covered all his vital signs with cold sand armor, and then approached the mother nest.

The insects are becoming more and more dense, and six hundred meters is the limit.

So he took a deep breath and escaped into the ground through the sand.

A congenital master can hold his breath for a quarter of an hour without strenuous physical activity, and Hong Fan's speed of movement underground is three meters per second, which is equivalent to an ordinary person walking at a brisk pace.

So he didn't even have to think about oxygen.

The perception of the sand world was released, forming a spherical shape with a radius of forty meters.

Three minutes later, Hong Fan approached the edge of the underground palace.

As expected, the diameter of the circular passage is about two meters, and the soil layer of 20 to 30 centimeters on the left and right walls and the top surface has been solidified in some way to prevent collapse.

Generally speaking, the Sand World does not have the ability to directly sense living organisms, but Hong Fan clearly knows the location of the Zerg in every tunnel around him - based on the depth of the knife's foot penetrating into the ground, he can even "weigh" the size of the insect.

Dozens of seconds, over a hundred meters.

There was no light and no sound underground, but all the data sensed by the Destiny Star had been constructed into a three-dimensional map in Hong Fan's mind - which included not only the tunnels, water systems, and rocks dug by the insect swarm, but also his own travel trajectory.

In the center of the underground palace, dozens of meters deep, four huge underground caves dozens of meters square suddenly appeared. [Target confirmed.]

Hong Fan turned around and left, breaking into a passage dozens of meters away where no Zerg were stationed.

Breathe, breathe.

The air is humid.

The stinging starts in the nasal cavity, goes down along the trachea, and eventually causes a slight corrosive feeling in the lungs.

It feels uncomfortable, but fortunately it’s not a big problem.

The passage was silent, and the temperature inside was around 30 degrees Celsius, much higher than on the ground, but far less than what Wang Shengrong had described - probably because the underground palace had been built not long ago, and biochemical reactions such as egg laying and hatching had not yet begun on a large scale.

The darkness was as thick as ink and pitch black.

Hong Fan listened to the rustling sounds of the soldier insects in the distance until his blood and lungs were filled with oxygen again.

In silence he fell backwards, sinking into the flowing sand.

In the passage at the edge of the underground palace, fat worker insects were moving forward in groups, but were suddenly pierced by an array of ground spikes rising from beneath them.

Negative pressure, blood loss, gradual loss of body function...

The signs of death trigger the worker insects' alarm mechanism, which releases specific hormones from their stomata, attracting nearby patrol insects.

Over the next few minutes, the same situation was repeated several times in different locations.

The distribution of the swarm was shifted without anyone noticing.

At the same time, Hong Fan had arrived at delivery room No. 1.

Through the soil he could feel a giant object over twenty meters long pressing on the compacted ground, almost motionless.

The last thin layer of soil quietly separated.

Thousands of slight and tiny friction sounds are heard.

The hot and humid air with a temperature of over 40 degrees Celsius was pervasive, with a disgusting sour smell.

Hong Fan raised his finger and used the blazing fire energy released from his fingertips as a light source.

The black veil fades away, revealing everything.

The ceiling of the delivery room is very high and nearly round in shape.

A long worm several times the size of a bus was lying on its side, divided into three sections from front to back.

【This is the queen insect.】

Hong Fan lip-synced silently.

As a specialized reproductive body developed from the secondary metamorphosis of ordinary soldier insects, most of the mother insect's exoskeleton was crushed and peeled off by external forces, removing restrictions on the enlargement of its body.

The cost is equally shocking.

The limbs degenerated and fell off, the flesh lost its support, and the huge body collapsed to the ground like a soft bag, with even the external mouthparts unable to open and close.

Hong Fan held his breath and moved his gaze, facing the mother insect's huge, dark, gaping mouth that was over a meter wide.

It looks like a winnowing basket propped up on the ground.

It had no expression on its face and its head was motionless, as if it had been dead for a long time.

But Hong Fan knew nothing.

Because densely packed fat worker insects crowded on the other side of the delivery room, using their own flesh and blood and the broken metal ore in their stomachs as sacrifices, they walked into the mother insect's mouth in an orderly manner, deep into its stomach, and turned into food for war under the corrosion of strong acid and the grinding of thick stomach walls...

The sour smell in the air probably comes from here.

They are feeding the queen, and the food is themselves.

Hong Fan stood there in ecstasy.

He watched the third segment of the queen insect's trunk slowly bulge and wriggle.

A huge insect egg was discharged wetly from the tail cavity and was carried by the worker insects.

The creepy feeling became concrete at this moment.

Eat, reproduce, raise...

This should have been an emotional process, but in Hong Fan's eyes, everything was more like a fully automated factory made of flesh and blood.

At the other end of the delivery room, the soldier insects seemed to have caught the faint reflected light and turned around to come over here.

[Does the swarm have a heart? ]

Hong Fan was silent and lost in thought.

[Or their creator is their heart...]

The tidal swarm of insects is more like a set of horrific external limbs than a combination of countless creatures.

According to legend, the tree god has a body of hundreds of miles and infinite power, and the swarm of insects are like prosthetic limbs that he spent thousands of years building for himself.

Why did He do this?

Hong Fan couldn't figure it out, so he had to burn all his thoughts.

Fire jade, blazing tide.

Flames burst out with the explosion, instantly raising the temperature in the delivery room to over a thousand degrees.

All organic matter, living or dead, burns at this moment.

Soon, the four delivery rooms were engulfed in flames one by one.

The handsome insects angrily commanded the boiling swarm of insects to search the passage, and the fastest Hanyun arrived above the mother nest half a quarter of an hour later.

Unfortunately, all measures were of no avail.

Deeper underground in the underground palace, Hong Fan had quietly gone towards the direction of the second mother nest.

(End of this chapter)