Insect corpses littered the ground.

Ahead, the blood grass thinned out across an area several hundred square meters wide.

More than twenty insect corpses of varying sizes lay strewn across the red soil.

There were giant butterflies, mantises, and the same type of beetles they had just encountered.

Pale green insect blood covered the ground, emitting a pungent odor.

Bright yellow shell casings and spatters of scarlet human blood were scattered randomly about.

In the center of it all, a cubic building constructed from massive grey stones came into Han Ning’s view.

The surface of the massive stones was engraved with twisting patterns, looking like a chaotic mass of entangled worms.

A trail of messy footprints led toward the center of the square building, to a grayish-white stone door that stood open, leading inside.

"A civilization... This has to be the work of a reasonably intelligent species," Han Ning said, taking a deep breath.

"Let’s go! Yue Ming and the others could be in danger." Lü Xiuning’s eyes were fixed on the messy tracks on the floor. Without a moment’s hesitation, he started toward the building.

"CHIRP~"

Lü Xiuning’s Tree Demon glowed with a faint green light, floated ahead of its master, and was the first to enter the stone door.

Just to be safe, Han Ning had Yin Yi go in first as well.

Han Ning followed close behind Teacher Lü.

They entered a pitch-black, empty hall. Its walls, just like the exterior, were covered in a series of incomprehensible, twisting lines.

Like outside, more than a dozen insect corpses lay scattered about, all completely dead.

In the center of the hall stood a bizarre stone statue of an insect.

The sculpting style was crude, almost abstract, but they could vaguely make out a strange creature. It was about three meters tall with twelve compound eyes, yet it possessed the delicate, oval-shaped face of a human woman.

Her head was smooth and hairless, and a black line that resembled a crack ran down each of her cheeks.

The limbs on either side of her body resembled a spider’s, lined with two rows of sharp, bent chelicerae.

Below the head, her body was ovular like an Ant Queen’s, her abdomen round and swollen.

Most horrifying of all, a pitch-black slit had split open in the center of this bulging abdomen.

From within the gap, a small, infant-like head protruded.

But the infant’s face was covered in a dense, grotesque cluster of compound eyes.

Its head and cheeks were covered with countless twisting black lines that, from a distance, looked like tiny, writhing worms.

Han Ning’s gaze unintentionally swept across the bizarre statue’s twelve compound eyes. He suddenly felt a jolt in his mind as a strange chill shot up from the base of his spine. The hair all over his body stood on end.

For a fleeting moment, he felt as if he were being stared down by a sinister, terrifying monster.

Just as quickly, the strange sensation vanished.

’A monster!’

Han Ning tore his gaze away and quickly warned his companions, "Don’t look at its eyes! There’s something wrong with them!"

Evidently, his warning came too late.

Everyone had been instinctively drawn to the statue in the center of the room the moment they entered the hall.

Fortunately, while the statue was unsettling, it didn’t seem to pose any real threat.

Lü Xiuning and his two companions turned pale, their foreheads beaded with cold sweat, clearly affected by the statue.

"It reminds me of some kind of patchwork monstrosity. It doesn’t look like a natural creature at all—more like a monster stitched together!" Luo Chen said, averting his gaze, his voice trembling slightly.

Lin Tianhe said nothing, simply closing his eyes and taking deep, steadying breaths.

Lü Xiuning also looked away from the statue. Staring into the pitch-black corridor ahead, he frowned and said:

"It’s less a creature and more like a totem from the ancient myths of our Xia Country. At the dawn of civilization, lacking a sense of security, intelligent species develop a fear of nature and powerful entities. They then reinterpret these elements, constructing something akin to Divine Beings."

"Let’s go. Yue Ming and his team should be down there."

He looked below the statue.

A hole gaped in the earthen floor, revealing a winding tunnel leading to who knows where.

The faint glow emanating from the Soul Beasts illuminated the pitch-black space.

TAP, TAP, TAP~

In the quiet tunnel, only the sounds of their four sets of footsteps and their breathing could be heard.

Every ten or twenty meters, they came across another insect corpse on the ground.

As he walked, Han Ning observed the rock walls of the tunnel.

The sharp edges of the tunnel had been worn smooth, but the surface was still pitted and uneven.

The floor was the same.

As they ventured deeper, Han Ning felt the path begin to slope downward, and strange, incomprehensible lines started to appear on the rock walls.

By now, they were all fairly certain that this place was the ruins of some intelligent civilization.

However, they were no longer in the mood to care what the lines on the wall depicted.

Because... from the darkness ahead, the roar of gunfire erupted. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

"Quick, Yue Ming’s team is in there!" Lü Xiuning exclaimed upon hearing the noise, immediately quickening his pace.

The four of them ran for another hundred meters or so. The downward slope gradually leveled out.

The long, narrow tunnel came to an end.

A stone door about three meters high and two meters wide, its surface covered in blood-red vines, blocked their path.

From behind the stone door came the continuous crack of gunfire, the whistle of Silver Thorns cutting through the air, and human shouts.

Yin Yi flew forward and lashed out with its vines, trying to push the stone door, but it didn’t budge an inch.

"The door is shut. They might have run into a trap." ’Damn it, the Insect-man civilization knows how to build traps...?’ Han Ning cursed under his breath, then shouted, "Destroy the stone door directly with Flower Thorns!"

"Everyone, help out," Lü Xiuning added.

"CHIME~"

Yin Yi retreated a few steps. Twenty one-meter-long Emerald Flower Thorns materialized before it, spinning at high speed before they were unleashed in a frantic barrage against the stone door.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Under the successive bombardment of twenty Emerald Flower Thorns, the surface of the stone door gradually filled with a web of fine cracks.

Seeing this, Luo Chen and Lin Tianhe’s two Tree Spirits charged, slamming their massive bodies into it.

THUD! THUD! THUD!

After more than a dozen consecutive impacts, the stone door finally shattered, crumbling into dozens of rock fragments that scattered across the ground.

The scene within was revealed.

It was a spacious hall.

The dome above had been weathered by sand and stone; half of it lay collapsed in the center of the hall.

Lining the central aisle of the hall stood a total of six one-meter-tall insect statues of various shapes.

They were all carved from a stone that resembled Green Crystal Stone.

Dim light filtered through fine dust and thick vines, casting a faint beam onto a three-meter-tall green statue in the very center of the hall.

This statue’s appearance was nearly identical to the bizarre statue in the hall on the ground level.

On the other side.

A dense cloud of black mist had cornered Teacher Liu Yueming’s group in a corner of the hall, relentlessly attacking them.