Tonight, Alice joins the hunt.

"There are some pretty good ones, Captain." The blond man casually kicked the two newcomers aside, his hands freely groping the body of a woman with a beautiful face, a tall and curvaceous figure, and long, wavy hair that reached her waist. "Forget about the other two. This woman has a very developed brain and the potential to become a psychic. I'm even a little tempted."

"A psychic..." the little monk muttered to himself. "Alright, let Arot play with her for a few days when we get back to the main god space before breaking the hypnosis. If she can still pull through by then, I'll try to take her in. If not... then she can become food for my pet along with the other two."

He turned his head and carefully examined the woman who was standing still after being hypnotized.

"She's quite pretty, I'm starting to have my eye on her. Before Xue Nai hypnotized her, I heard her introduce herself and I think she was Japanese. Her name was something like Sesshouin Kiara... I think that's how it's pronounced. Oh well, bad luck to you."

He turned his head and looked at Hamnata at the end of his line of sight.

"I wonder what we'll gain this time. Please don't let me down... Zhongzhou Team," he muttered to himself.

As he uttered the Romanized words, the eyelids of the psychic behind him, who had been silent with her eyes closed since hypnotizing the newcomer, twitched slightly. Beneath her tightly closed eyelids, the woman's eyes shimmered with a myriad of colors.

Author's Note:

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I really want to write more and post it as a couple more chapters...

I really wanted to change my recommendation votes to monthly tickets and extra chapters... but never mind, I won't take it back now _(:з」∠)_

Chapter Twenty-Two: Now it's my turn.

When that warning sign surfaced in his mind, a chill ran down his spine, a sudden surge of crisis erupted, and a gust of wind swept towards him, Zheng Zha's thoughts almost came to a standstill.

Why now?!

Wasn't it all planned out in advance?

What are Saito Hajime and Zhao Yingkong up to?!

Several thoughts flashed through his mind. He subconsciously raised his hand, and the gene lock opened instinctively. Everything in his field of vision became incredibly slow under the intense activity of his brain.

He saw a boulder the size of a human head suddenly appear nearly ten meters in front of him. It moved with incredible speed, tearing through the air and creating milky-white ripples in its wake. Just as he unleashed all his strength, preparing to block, the boulder was already upon him.

He could even see the cracks and patterns on the surface of the stone.

It's too late!

The next moment, a semi-transparent shield suddenly unfolded in front of him! With the sound of the amulet Alice had given him cracking, the momentum of the incoming stone abruptly slowed. Zheng Zha then twisted his upper body, executing a less-than-perfect iron bridge move, just enough to let the stone graz his nose!

Enemy attack!

Without a second thought, he slid his dagger into the stone pillar, stabbed it, and then abruptly fell, assuming a defensive stance even before hitting the ground. Immediately following, a second stone hurtled towards him!

He gave a soft shout and swung his dagger, cleaving the incoming rock in two. The recoil from the rock sent a shiver down Zheng Zha's spine. Without hesitation, he rolled and took cover behind a natural rock formation. Only then did he feel a warm sensation on his face—the force of the first rock had grazed his nose!

"What the hell are these guys doing!" Zheng Zha roared, shouting loudly in the mental connection in his mind.

[Zhan Lan! Tell me what happened to Saito Hajime! Why did Imhotep resurrect at this time? Weren't we supposed to keep an eye on Evelyn?!]

Several seconds later, Zhan Lan's panicked voice came from the other end of the mind link.

[I don't know what happened! O'Connor suddenly stormed over, saying he wanted to see you and Miss Alice. Saito and I were about to try and stop him when Imhotep inexplicably came back to life!]

[Wait! It's Evelyn! Saito Hajime was translating the page about resurrecting the dead when O'Connor arrived, and she just happened to read out that incantation! But what a coincidence!?]

[Never mind why! Take your books, the battle is about to begin! Tell Zhao Yingkong to protect the newcomers!]

Zheng Zha cursed under his breath. Just then, he noticed the hostility emanating from afar vanish abruptly. Instead, another extremely powerful malice emanated from underground, sending chills down his spine and making his blood run cold!

Damn it, it's Imhotep!

A dense buzzing sound came from afar, and swarms of locusts, as thick as a black cloud, swept in. Just looking at them was enough to make one's scalp crawl, let alone getting close. Zheng Zha even saw the swarm of locusts sweep over the corpses of several dead horses left behind by the tomb keeper, leaving only bare white bones in the blink of an eye!

He muttered a curse under his breath, then met up with Zhang Jie and Lingdian, who had rushed over upon hearing the news, and ran towards the tomb without looking back.

......................................................

"Their combat strength is decent, but their reaction time is average." The young monk from the Indian team frowned, looking towards Hamunaptra, shrouded in dark clouds in the distance. "They seem quite surprised by our arrival. And I just saw signs of a crack in the protective shield... Did they purchase low-level legendary magic armor?"

"Captain, should we attack them?" the muscular man named Imani asked in a deep voice. "I used ninety percent of my strength in the first strike. If it weren't for that protective shield, that guy would have been seriously injured at least."

“Don’t underestimate him,” the little monk said coldly. “Your enhancements are too focused on strength, and your reaction time is lacking. Although that person was caught off guard at first, he was able to react and make a defensive move in mid-air, and even withstand the slightly weaker second attack. I suspect he might be the captain of the Central Continent Team, or one of the strongest members. You might not have the advantage in a one-on-one fight.”

“How about adding me?” The white man dressed as a doctor toyed with a scalpel. “I love energetic young people like this.”

The little monk raised his eyebrows.

He suddenly looked at another young man in the group and asked, "Lam, if you project your psychic steel needles with all your might, what are your chances of breaking through the shield that can withstand 90% of Imani's power?"

“Thirty percent…no, forty percent,” the young man named Lamb replied. “If the distance is within a hundred meters, perhaps even fifty percent.”

“Fifty percent…that’s a lot of uncertainty.” He looked at Hamunaptra, shrouded in darkness, and made up his mind. “The Central Continent team is a newly awakened squad. The time the Supreme God gave them to gain momentum must have been to determine that we were the stronger side. And now is the time for Imhotep's resurrection, but they seem completely unprepared…”

“Shenai!” he whispered. “Prepare a mental shield for us.”

“If the Central Continent team scans us, we’ll return to Cairo first and then make contact. If there’s no mental scan by the time we enter Hamunaptra, it means they don’t have a single psychic. We’ll take advantage of that and launch a surprise attack!”

He suddenly waved his hand, and an invisible membrane erupted from Xue Nai's brow, enveloping the entire Indian team. Their figures became blurred, and their aura seemed to merge with the desert. Even the sand scorpions and rattlesnakes that had previously hidden in the sand sea due to the killing intent emerged from their hiding places, crawling around as if there was no one else around.

The young monk summoned an enormous multi-headed serpent, which carried the Indian team toward Hamunaptra at high speed.

"It will take about two more minutes to get here." Alice waved her hand, and a plane mirror formed by the convergence of optical signals quietly disappeared.

"A bunch of idiots. They've blocked out optical signals and their presence. But they haven't concealed sound, heat, or matter waves at all. And they think they can pull off a surprise attack like this?"

She looked outside the temple, and a cacophony of insect chirping swept over her like a tidal wave. In an instant, swarms of scarabs poured out from every crevice of the temple, rushing towards her as if to devour her whole!

"Stop."

The insect swarm came to an abrupt halt.

"Go to the southwest, to the entrance of the tomb. Kill those hiding in the shadows," Alice commanded. The swarm retreated as quickly as it had entered, the rustling sound fading into the distance.

“So I have about three minutes now.” Alice clenched her fist slightly. Just now, she had completed the first stage of cracking Hamunaptra. She could already command the mausoleum guards and scarabs at will, and soon she would be able to manipulate the architectural structure and magical traps within Hamunaptra.

It's faster than expected. However, the progress isn't as good as it should have been when the Indiana team attacked.

"Well, although Xiao Honglu's plan has been messed up by Zhang Jie and the Zhongzhou team is too busy to take care of themselves, since the Yinzhou team has been lured here, then it's no different from the previous plan."

She determined the direction and headed towards the core of Hamunaptra.

“I have one minute to find Imhotep, and another minute to take him down. And the next thing to do is deal with the Indiana team. No… I mean, take on that woman in the Indiana team.”

She noticed the hypnotized newcomer, and she believed that the other person might have sensed her presence as well.

She found a strange sense of déjà vu in that woman.

It evokes a certain feeling of a dead old woman with a certain purple hue.

Author's Note:

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At 11 o'clock, my count was 4466. Subtracting the initial 1351, I got 3115. According to arithmetic progression, the seventh update would require 3150. So, I'll calculate based on seven updates. However, this is already the fifth update today, so I guess I've made it through.

Hmm, I can't write like this tomorrow. I wrote too quickly today, and I feel like I made quite a few mistakes, and the writing quality has also dropped. So tomorrow I'll stick to a more normal approach...

Incidentally, there's actually a bug in the story: Zhan Lan didn't know how to use mental linking at this point... But since we've already written this far, we'll just have to leave it at that... Let's just say that she had a stroke of luck and figured out a weaker version on her own _(:з」∠)_

Chapter Twenty-Three: Don't be a coward! Wait... it seems we can't win.

As Alice stepped out of the temple, Zheng Zha, Zhang Jie, Zero, and the others who had gathered were sprinting towards the interior of Hamunaptra. Zheng Zha had already exited the state of unlocking the gene lock, and the bruise on his right arm from the recoil when he forcefully caught that rock had completely subsided.

"Quick! Rejoin the others first!!"

From the moment the three entered the tomb, they heard countless rustling sounds all around them, as if countless tiny things were rubbing against the ground. The closer they got to the depths of the ruins, the louder and closer the sounds became.

[Zhan Lan! Where are you?! Zhang Jie and I were already on the main road of the mausoleum at midnight. Let's find a place to meet up!]

He yelled in the mind link.

[We're nearby! Evelyn has hidden in the tomb with the scriptures! Turn around right now! The bugs are coming!]

"What!?" Zheng Zha was stunned. His sudden stop caused Zhang Jie and Zero to instinctively halt as well. In that brief moment of surprise, he saw O'Connor and several Americans emerge from around a corner, running desperately towards them. O'Connor's eyes lit up upon seeing them, and he immediately shouted, "Run! There are many behind us!"

So many? So many of what? Insects?

The next moment, everything went black before Zheng Zha's eyes—not the kind of blackout caused by cerebral hemorrhage, but a genuine complete darkness of everything in his field of vision. He saw countless black beetles following O'Connor like a tidal wave, their numbers hundreds or thousands of times greater than the layer of beetles that covered the ground in the movie.

If it gets swallowed, there probably won't even be a trace left.

At that moment, Zhan Lan's scream came from behind a wall not far from him.

"They've caught up!"

Zheng Zha was truly on the verge of tears. He disregarded everything else, unlocking his genetic lock and punching the wall with all his might. This punch punched a huge hole in the wall, revealing the despairing faces of Zhan Lan and the others, and the endless swarm of insects pouring out from behind…

【Finished...】

The thought had barely crossed his mind when, in the next instant, countless scarabs parted in front of the Central Continent Team and Evelyn, as if waves crashing against rocks, completely ignoring them and passing right through them.

"Gah?"

At that moment, Alice's voice suddenly rang in Zheng Zha's ears.

[The Indian team has infiltrated. I've controlled the scarab swarm to hinder them. You all protect yourselves. Find someone to bring the cat to the central cemetery to help me deal with Imhotep first. Then we'll deal with the Indians.]

Before they finished speaking, the dark swarm of scarabs vanished completely from their sight, leaving not a trace behind.

“Uh…” O’Connor’s jaw nearly dropped as he stared blankly in the direction the scarab swarm had gone. “These insects… so they don’t eat people?”

The others immediately huddled together, jumping and leaping, as if they had narrowly escaped death.

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Alice looked away. As she walked, she chanted incantations, waking the tomb guardians while simultaneously plunging the puppet strings directly into their bodies.

Her greatest skill was actually manipulating puppets. Of course, there was nothing wrong with using people as puppets. These tomb guardians were loyal warriors who had their internal organs removed and curses planted on them before they died, destined to be guardians of eternal damnation. It was the curse that allowed their bodies to function again, and for this reason, they were both soldiers and batteries to Alice.

"That solves the problem. Hmm... the magic reserves are still too low. There's no way to ignite a magic furnace in a place like this."

She wasn't entirely sure of the approximate strength of the woman from the Indian team who looked like a rookie. But she was certain that the woman posed a significant threat to her, perhaps even more so than Zhang Jie. If it weren't for the fact that the two Reincarnation teams were fundamentally incompatible, Alice wouldn't have even considered making an enemy of that woman.

Having lived for six hundred years, I can tell at a glance who is dangerous and who is harmless. Even if I don't notice those subtle details, my subconscious will give me hints.

She walked through a corridor and heard the sounds of burning and explosions in the distance.

Has the Indiana team already clashed with the Scarabs? Since they know it's Legends, then as a mature team, they should be carrying flamethrowers or other wide-range weapons, right?

I wonder if the scarab swarm can hold them off for even a minute...

"Tsk, although their demeanor is similar to that annoying guy, their methods should be completely opposite." From the video she obtained through magic, she roughly determined the distribution of the Indian team's combat strength. The leader was clearly the monk who summoned the snake, followed by the woman with her eyes closed and the doctor, who were slightly lower in status. Then came the veterans, one level below them, and finally, three blank-faced rookies who were clearly hypnotized.