All the heavens, starting as the ruler of the universe

Inside the tallest building in downtown Hurricane City.

Unlike the dilapidated shacks in the outer city, the buildings here are extremely high-tech and luxurious, so different that they seem like they could not exist on the same planet.

The three men who had been released by Lin Yan earlier were kneeling on the ground. In front of them was a man in his fifties with gray hair and a scar on his face that ran diagonally from his brow bone to his jaw.

"None of you three noticed how that man appeared?"

As the city lord, he was certainly aware of his subordinates' abilities. Although these three were not particularly strong in combat, their combined abilities in surveillance and detection were absolutely top-notch.

The person kneeling on the far left shook his head: "No, we've been watching that area the whole time. It just appeared out of thin air. There was no light, no sound, no movement, nothing at all."

"There are two possibilities. One is that this person has the ability to teleport, and at a level far higher than yours. The other—" He paused, "is able to block your ability detection."

The three people exchanged a glance, but none of them dared to say anything.

The city lord walked to the window. Outside the window was the inner city of Hurricane City, with its clean streets, bright lights, and pedestrians coming and going.

Further away is the outer city, where dilapidated shantytowns are crammed together like a pile of moldy mushrooms. Further still are ruins, shrouded in gray, where nothing can be seen clearly.

"What about the Insect King?" he asked. "Did they go?"

"He's gone," said the man in the middle. "The one in the white robe said he'll take care of the Insect King."

The city lord remained silent for a long time.

The room was quiet. The three people were kneeling on the floor, their knees were numb, but they dared not move.

"The Insect King is not so easy to deal with," the city lord finally spoke.

"If it were easy to solve, I would have gone myself. That thing has been entrenched here for ten years, and every time it awakens during those ten years, it takes the lives of a group of people."

"Since that guy dared to make such a boast, let him give it a try. If it works, it'll save us trouble; if it doesn't... well, at least we'll know what that thing looks like now."

The city lord recalled the time when the Insect King first arrived. He was young and impetuous then, ignoring everyone's objections, he went alone, only to return in disgrace with a wound on his face.

He snapped out of his reverie and looked at the three people kneeling on the ground.

"Go, call the third squad over and have them guard the perimeter of the parking lot. In case that guy fails, at least block the bugs and prevent them from escaping."

"Yes." The three men received the order and breathed a sigh of relief.

—————— Divider line.

Entrance to the underground parking lot.

Zhang Jingyuan had no idea how many insects he had chopped down.

The machete on his right arm has changed several forms—wide blade, narrow blade, serrated blade—but each one corrodes and becomes unusable after a short time. He can only activate his supernatural ability to change to another form.

The shield on his left arm was never retracted; it remained in front of him, blocking the insects that swarmed in from all directions.

But there were too many insects; they didn't come one by one, but surged in wave after wave.

At first he was able to handle it, but as the number of insects increased, several of them crept up behind him and bit him.

"Brother Lin!" he called out, but his voice was drowned out by the chirping of insects.

"What, don't you want to test your abilities anymore?" Lin Yan floated in the air, looking down into the depths of the ground.

"I'm not going to test it anymore. These things are too annoying. Without a wide-range damage ability, I can't get rid of them at all." Zhang Jingyuan casually chopped down a bug that pounced on him.

"I'm afraid even a large-scale damage ability wouldn't be able to clear them all." Lin Yan landed on the ground, raised his hand, and instantly crushed all the insects into meat patties.

"What do you mean, Brother Lin?" Zhang Jingyuan, panting, returned to his original form and asked in confusion.

"Summoning insects isn't her special ability; her special ability is opening subspace portals, and on the other side of those portals are all sorts of insects," Lin Yan told Zhang Jingyuan about his discovery.

"Then why can't it shut down this subspace?"

"I'm afraid not. Her superpower isn't very compatible with her soul, so she can't control it on her own." Lin Yan was also quite interested in this subspace passage.

"Let's go take a look." After saying this, Lin Yan walked forward, and the swarming insects were pushed to both sides by an invisible force, revealing a path leading into the depths.

Zhang Jingyuan quickly followed. As they continued to move forward, he discovered that there were more and more kinds of insects inside, but they all seemed to be restricted in their range of movement by an invisible force.

"What's going on?" Zhang Jingyuan asked, puzzled.

Although he chopped down a lot of insects outside, they were mostly common crustaceans and reptiles, utterly insignificant compared to those here.

"The insects you've been cutting down outside are just small fry; you haven't encountered the real main force yet." As Lin Yan walked, starlight seeped from his body, constantly drifting towards different insects.

Only then did Zhang Jingyuan get a clear look at the insects.

Some resemble mantises, but their forelimbs are covered with barbs, each as long as their arm; some resemble spiders, but their backs are covered with huge, translucent tumors, through which you can see what is wriggling; and some have no fixed shape at all, just a dark, constantly rolling mass of flesh that corrodes even the rocks, emitting hissing white smoke wherever it goes.

What gave Zhang Jingyuan the creeps the most was a semi-transparent insect.

The insect's body seemed to be made of void; it wasn't transparent, it was "empty"—you could see directly into the wall behind its body.

It has no fixed outline, its edges are blurred, it does not crawl on the ground, nor does it fly in the sky, but wanders in space, like a fish in water, drawing ripples in the air.

"What...what is this thing?" Zhang Jingyuan's voice trembled slightly.

Lin Yan's starlight drifted toward the insect, circling its body a few times. "Its body isn't in this space; it's in the interlayer of the subspace. What you see is just its shadow."

Zhang Jingyuan swallowed hard, not daring to ask any more questions.

He followed Lin Yan down the path, which grew wider and deeper, no longer within the parking lot area, but a cave dug out by insects.

The walls were covered with a sticky secretion that emitted a faint glow, making the entire passage seem eerie, like walking into the intestines of a giant beast.

Just then, Lin Yan stopped, and Zhang Jingyuan, who was behind him, also stopped, slowly craning his neck to look ahead from the side.

It was a vast space, so vast that he couldn't perceive its boundaries.

The dome was as high as the sky, and it was covered with countless cocoons, like an upside-down beehive.

The ground was covered with a thick layer of secretions, which felt soft and spongy underfoot, like stepping on the flesh of a living creature.

The air was thick with a fishy smell, mixed with an indescribable sweetness, making people dizzy.

But what shocked Zhang Jingyuan the most was the thing in the center of the space.

It was a little girl.