It’s hard to imagine just how fascinating the expression on my face would have been if during the last exploration, the second layer’s spatial veil had actually been opened.
Just as Shen Qing felt goosebumps all over his body, Song Chi’s voice suddenly came through.
“We must figure out a way to kill that queen insect first,” he said.
Hearing the words “queen insect,” Shen Qing’s gaze shifted, looking toward the eye-catching, several-tens-of-meters-tall tumorous nest in the distance.
Judging from the height of this tumorous nest, the rank of the queen insect inside should not be too high; after all, the bodies of the insect race’s queens are extremely bloated and massive, far surpassing common insects of the same rank.
According to the official data of Torch Human Civilization, a Zero Rank queen insect typically has a size within ten meters, while a First Rank queen insect can often grow to several tens of meters, and the size of some peak First Rank queen insects can even reach nearly a hundred meters.
Clearly, the rank of the queen insect before them is most likely not above Second Rank. Creatures of such rank shouldn’t normally cause two First Rank Torch warships to be so wary, but the key point here is that this is a queen insect.
Even a queen insect without sufficient energy supply, whose eggs don’t pose much of a threat, is not something other creatures of the same rank can compare with.
Apart from the ability to lay eggs in large quantities in short cycles, most queen insects typically control a highly powerful and elite insect guard legion. Every insect in this guard legion will be the strongest and highest ranked in the entire nest.
They didn’t know if the queen insect in the second layer of the ruins had such a guard legion. If there wasn’t one, that would naturally be good news. But if there was, it meant they still hadn’t been awakened, because so far, no First Rank insects had been seen among the tens of thousands that had already awakened.
To prevent the appearance of this uncertain insect guard legion, they must act first. After all, just the tens of thousands of Zero Rank insects had already caused them enough headaches; if an elite army of First Rank insects were to join the fray, their chances of getting the item in the crystal box not far away would most likely be virtually zero.
Without further discussion, both men exchanged a glance and then nodded to each other. They immediately stopped clearing the unbroken smaller insect nests below and their airships dashed straight towards the huge tumorous mass a kilometer ahead.
At the same time, they turned their guns and once again opened fire full blast at the giant tumorous mass.
However, the subsequent result was a big surprise for both of them, and their expressions turned particularly ugly.
“Damn it, how could a First Rank queen insect’s nest be so sturdy…” Song Chi grumbled through clenched teeth.
The main cannons of the Cang Qiong and Qingfeng, both First Rank, could only leave a very shallow mark on the giant nest, which was completely unexpected for the two of them.
Meanwhile, in the communication projection, the image of Song Chi spoke up:
“It’s indeed impossible for a First Rank queen insect’s nest to be so sturdy, unless this queen insect was more than First Rank when it first built the nest.”
Riding on this hypothesis, both men proceeded to speculate and eventually found that the more they deduced, the more reasonable it became. It was then that they determined the specific situation of this queen insect.
According to their deductions, this queen insect had been trapped in this enclosed space for quite a while. With the lack of energy supply over the years, to maintain its own life, the queen insect had to consume the energy stored in its body, and its bloated form gradually decreased over time.
As the energy in its body was consumed to a certain extent, to make up for the continuously diminishing body energy, the oversized nest also began to slowly reduce until finally, both the queen insect and the nest itself shrank to their current size of several tens of meters.
Having speculated this far, the two were largely convinced of the outcome and, at the same time, their resolve to deal with the queen insect as soon as possible grew even stronger.
A queen insect whose rank was very likely Second Rank, Third Rank, or even higher, even though it had lost most of its life energy due to various reasons and had now fallen to First Rank status, was still not something that could be measured by ordinary First Rank creatures. If they failed to kill it now, Song Chi and Shen Qing themselves might soon find themselves in grave danger.
Since the remote bombardment was ineffective, the two decided to let the airship continue to approach and carry out a sustained bombardment at close range on the same spot, not believing that they would still be unable to break through the flesh wall of this nest.
As Cangqiong and Qingfeng swiftly approached, the rows of flesh-tumor nests below burst simultaneously, and then a host of new insect creatures, vastly different from the tens of thousands previously encountered, suddenly appeared.
“It’s the splatter bugs, watch out for dodging!!”
Song Chi, who identified them immediately, warned loudly. Unlike the previous ironclad bugs with extremely hard shells, these splatter bugs didn’t have tough shells or incredible strength, but they could spit a highly corrosive acid.
Even though textbooks often mentioned that Zero Rank splatter bugs have a limited range of acid ejection, this was only relative to the vast Starry Sea. In this enclosed space, less than a kilometer in height, the acid spewed by the splatter bugs could cover any position.
The two swiftly advancing airships suddenly halted and began to constantly rotate, dodging the dense acid shooting from below.
The corrosive nature of this acid was alarming, and with thousands of splatter bugs below, plus the fact that both Spectral Warships had already lost a significant amount of Shield Value, if they were to charge through bluntly, Cangqiong might have been okay, but Shen Qing’s Qingfeng would definitely not hold up, the Energy Shield was bound to be completely overloaded.
But then another problem arose. The giant fleshy tumor nest in the distance had begun to tremble lightly—the Queen Insect inside was awakening. If they were delayed too long by these splatter bugs, they would miss the chance to eliminate the Queen Insect ahead of time.
Once the Queen Insect was fully awake, leaving aside whether Cangqiong and Qingfeng could clean up all the Insect Race, including the Queen Insect, even if possible, it would definitely take a long time.
With less than ten hours left before their return, even if all the insect creatures were eliminated afterward, there would be no time left to open the Crystal Box.
Considering how Qingfeng took over ten hours to fully break the Crystal Box’s seal last time, even with Cangqiong and Qingfeng working together, it would require at least five hours, making it simply impossible to meet the time constraint.
Just as Shen Qing was struggling with the decision, Song Chi spoke up first.
“Big Qing, maybe we should retreat. Without area-of-effect main cannons, it’s hard to break through this net of splatter bugs’ attacks in a short time.”
It wasn’t that Song Chi had an ulterior motive, but under the current circumstances, either they could make an all-out attempt with a low success rate that was likely to involve great risk afterward, or they would simply give up this exploration. In any case, a decision had to be made quickly; hesitating would only increase the danger for both Spectral Warships.
Seemingly stimulated by the word “retreat” uttered by Song Chi, the indecision in Shen Qing’s eyes finally turned into resolve; he wanted to try.
If the first layer of the relic contained a Blue Quality Starry Sea Oddity, then the object sealed in the Crystal Box on the second layer must be of even higher Quality.
As someone who had only awakened a Colorless Seed of Torch and was firmly stuck at First Rank, Shen Qing was naturally not satisfied. In just one short year, he had upgraded Qingfeng to a First Rank Spectral Airship and as long as he cultivated methodically, breaking through to level 10 of the Spectral Energy Guidance Technique was virtually a given.
But that was all he could do. The Colorless Quality Seed of Torch ensured that Qingfeng could never cross the threshold of the Spectral Warship and reach the domain of the Guardian Class Spectral Spaceship. Consequently, the Ghost Energy Cultivation Platform bound to the warship’s own Rank would also be destined to only reach level 19.
A mere level 19 cultivation platform would make it very hard for him to break through level 20 of the Spectral Energy Guidance Technique and achieve a second Life Sublimation in the 160-plus years to come.
Therefore, at the end of the day, it was necessary to upgrade the Quality of the Seed of Torch.
But how difficult was it to upgrade the Quality of a Seed of Torch? Without a massive opportunity, an ordinary First Rank Torch Warship would not be able to gather enough resources to purchase an upgrade for a Fire Seed in a lifetime.
What is a great opportunity? Shen Qing may not know others, but he definitely considered what was sealed in the Crystal Box on the second layer to be one.
If the first layer could reveal a Blue Quality Starry Sea Oddity, then it was very likely that the second layer’s Crystal Box contained a Purple Quality Strange Object. With this thought, Shen Qing turned his head to Song Chi on the communication screen and said:
“Little Chi, I want to try!!!”
