The second the ground collapsed under Lin Fan, he didn't panic at all.
He just gathered his life energy and utilized his wind laws to float just out of reach of the mandibles of the Desert Horror.
The Desert Horror reached out and tried to snap its mandibles at Lin Fan's feet, but Lin Fan stayed just out of reach of the Desert Horror the entire time.
Lin Fan looked down at the Desert Horror under him and seeing it this close, it really did look ugly. The head was like the giant head of an ant, but the mandibles were much bigger than normal and took up a large part of the lower half of the head, scrunching up the features.
But another thing he did notice was that the sides of the pit created by the Desert Horror was covered in sand. It seemed like when the Desert Horror had made this pit, it had turned the dirt and rock in the pit into sand somehow.
Lin Fan didn't wait any longer as he took out the Iron Eater Bone Artifact and transformed it into a dagger. There was a golden glow that surrounded it before Lin Fan threw this dagger right down in the head of the Desert Horror.
The Desert Horror was only in the Silver Realm, of course it couldn't resist the dagger that Lin Fan threw that had the power of the Platinum Realm. The dagger flew right into the Desert Horror's forehead like a hot knife cutting through butter.
The mandibles of the Desert Horror clacked together a few more times as the final signals from its brain were sent, but it soon slumped over in the pit as it lost all signs of life.
Lin Fan pulled back with his hand and the dagger he threw out came back into his hand before disappearing.
Since Lin Fan had already made a bond with the Iron Eater Bone Artifact, he could freely control it to return to his hand whenever he wanted. Also whenever it was away from him, he could will it away and it would come back to him, allowing him to summon it again.
Lin Fan landed on the edge of the Desert Horror pit and looked down to find that there was a hole that was blocked by the corpse of the Desert Horror.
A single Desert Horror corpse was far from being enough to study since this was nothing more than one of the gatherer ants. To truly study them, Lin Fan had to capture the queen, so there was no choice but to enter the tunnels of the Desert Horrors.
However, Lin Fan wasn't worried at all.
Since this Desert Horror was only at the Silver Realm, this meant that the queen and the royal guards would only be in the Gold Realm.
For Lin Fan who was already in the Platinum Realm, but could match those in the Legendary Realm and Angela who was far past just the Legendary Realm, there was nothing these Gold Realm beasts could do to them.
Not to mention that Lin Fan had already stabilized after making the breakthrough to the mid Platinum Realm and was getting close to breaking through to the high Platinum Realm. With his recent cultivation gains, he was confident in defeating the envoy from the Alchemy King Hall easily now, even without being forced to use his trump card. Of course, he would still have to use his trump card against that final attack since there was a giant gap between levels in the Fragmented Soul Realm.
Lin Fan turned back to Angela and gave her an inviting gesture, aiming that gesture at the hole like he was inviting her on a date as he said, "Shall we?"
Angela revealed a faint smile before taking his hand and they both jumped down.
Angela with a flick of her hand controlled the wind laws to move aside the Desert Horror's corpse and opened up the way. Falling down into the hole, they fell for a bit before firmly landing on the ground beneath the hole.
Looking back up, it seemed like there was a reason why the Desert Horror's corpse had gotten stuck. This was a large tunnel and the hole was actually quite high above them, reaching ten meters above their head. If the Desert Horror hadn't been stuck in the hole, it would have definitely fallen down. However, looking at the ant leg tracks on the ceiling, it was clear that they had their own way of moving around.
There wasn't much light in this tunnel, so Lin Fan summoned Xiao Huo and had it create several fireballs that acted as torches for them, lightning up the entire tunnel.
Looking around, they found that there were only two ways to go, so they just chose one way and headed off, not knowing whether it was right or wrong.
Of course, the Desert Horror colony naturally could smell the new scent that had entered their tunnels, as well as the blood that the dead Desert Horror shed, so it didn't take them long to find the invaders to their tunnels.
As Lin Fan and Angela walked along hand in hand, they felt the tremors in the tunnels they were in and they could tell that they had been found. Based on the tremors, it seemed like there was a stampede heading towards them, but they didn't panic at all.
After a few seconds, at the end of the tunnel in front of them, coming from around the corner, there was a stampede of giant ants that were the size of rhinos charging right towards them.
Neither of them panicked as they just revealed smiles.
They let go of each other's hand and Lin Fan pulled out his two handed sword while standing in front of Angela.
When the first ants were about to reach them, Lin Fan suddenly dashed forward and swept out with his large two handed sword that was covered in a golden glow. The sword didn't stop at all as it cut through the bodies of every single ant in the front line.
Even after their comrades had fallen, the waves of ants behind the first wave didn't stop as they trampled over the corpses of their fallen allies, charging at Lin Fan still, but Lin Fan didn't stay there. Using the momentum of the sword swing, he let it carry him back and he spun as he turned around, turning around Angela with his blade.
During this time, there were blades of wind that were sent out with a wave of Angela's hand that cut down the second wave of ants.
When the third wave trampled over the second wave, Lin Fan had already spun around Angela and with the momentum of his giant blade, he swept it across the third wave, cutting them down just like with the first wave.
The two of them continued dancing this strange dance with Lin Fan turning and spinning his blade around Angela while she waved her hand and sent out blades of wind. It was like a strange dance of death that was like a whirlwind that cut through the waves of ants that kept coming at them.
Dancing this strange dance, the two of them cut down waves and waves of Desert Horrors as they continued moving down the tunnel bit by bit.
Normally Lin Fan didn't have Angela help him because most of the time, he was fighting people. If he were to allow Angela to help, there was the risk of exposing her identity which was not good for him.
However, this time they were only facing ants and these ants weren't that powerful to begin with, so there was no problem in letting Angela help since she didn't need to use that much power and there was no chance of exposing her identity in this planar crack. But the main reason why he didn't mind was because he was having fun dancing with her like this.
The two of them continued like this until they reached the final wave of ants. Once they stopped their dance of death, there were thousands of Desert Horror corpses that were left in their wake.
The two passed to look around their surroundings and seeing that there were no more ants around them, they held hands once again with smiles on their faces as they began moving down the tunnel once again.
The Queen Desert Horror had a special ability to observe through her subordinates and she had seen this slaughter of her brood through her observer. As the queen, naturally she had a certain amount of intelligence that was above the rest, so she could tell that these two humans were dangerous.
The Queen Desert Horror had withdrawn one tenth of her troops to form a final line of defense in the birthing chamber.
The Desert Horrors waited patiently for Lin Fan and Angela who took their time leisurely strolling through the tunnels.
Once they arrived and saw the line of defenses in the birthing chamber around the Queen Desert Horror, they didn't panic at all.
With tacit understanding, Angela flew up and picked Lin Fan off the ground. Once they were high up in the air, Angela began spinning Lin Fan around, going faster and faster until they created a whirlwind around them before throwing him at the line of ants.
When Lin Fan was thrown, he had his blade drawn and there was a tornado around his blade. Lin Fan landed right among the wall of Desert Horrors and with the combined wind laws from him and Angela that were around his blade, he blew all five hundred of the soldier ants away, leaving only the queen and her ten royal guards.
The royal guards wanted to take advantage of Lin Fan's landing to catch him off guard, but Angela in the air didn't give them that chance at all. The five guards that were in front were buffeted with a flurry of wind blades that Angela threw right at them, cutting them to pieces.
With the remaining bit of wind generated from those wind blades, the other five royal guards were pushed back slightly and pushed off balance.
Lin Fan quickly took advantage of this, changing his two handed blade into a smaller sword that he swept across the vitals of the five remaining royal guard ants, cutting them all down.
In just a matter of minutes, Lin Fan and Angela's combination play had taken down all the ants that had stood between them and the queen. This was a force that even normal Platinum Realm Experts would have found hard to deal with, but it was only a simple flip of the hand for the two of them.
Angela landed down beside Lin Fan and they slowly moved towards the queen.