A ceaseless hot wind blew from ahead. Darkness filled his vision, and Han Ning felt his body plummeting in a free fall.

"Yin Yi, Yin Yi, are you okay?" Han Ning worriedly communicated with it using his Spiritual Power.

"Ling~" A weak response from Yin Yi echoed in his Spiritual World.

He suddenly felt something and twisted his body around, opening his arms.

The next second, a cold body burrowed into his embrace.

Yin Yi trembled gently in his arms, its body emitting a faint green glow.

Through the light, Han Ning could see that Yin Yi’s body was covered in fine cracks. It was curled up in his arms like a small kitten, letting out weak whimpers from time to time.

"I’ll make sure your injuries are healed."

He said no more, simply resting his head against Yin Yi, quietly feeling its emotions.

"AHH!"

Lin Tianhe’s frantic screams echoed one after another in the darkness.

About seven seconds later, a light, hot breeze blew up from below, wrapping around their bodies and slowing their descent.

Their feet touched solid ground.

Ahead of them appeared a wide cave entrance, five meters high and over four meters wide.

A chubby, red, and corpulent head with section-like folds peeked out from the cave. It opened a mouth full of serrated teeth and exhaled a continuous blast of hot wind.

"Wh-wh-what... How can there be an earthworm this big?" The moment he saw the big, fat head, Lin Tianhe, who was at the front, froze in his tracks.

"CHITTER!" The large ant ignored their shocked reactions, chirped a few times over its shoulder, and scurried under the fat head on its own.

"Let’s go. It probably won’t attack us."

’We’ve come this far. What else can we do but go forward?’

The four of them braced themselves and passed underneath the fat, eyeless head of the giant worm.

Once inside the cave, they saw that the fat worm’s body was actually over ten meters long.

Its plump body lay beside the cave path, radiating intense heat.

The tunnel was much longer than anyone had expected. As Han Ning walked on, he felt the temperature ahead rise steadily, and large beads of sweat formed on his forehead.

Just as the heat became almost unbearable, a cave mouth emanating a hazy red glow suddenly appeared dozens of meters away.

They quickened their pace and passed through the opening.

Before them lay a brilliantly colored, dream-like world.

Countless transparent and semi-transparent stones, all emitting a faint red light, were embedded in the smooth rock walls.

Looking up, their vision was filled with the light radiating from the red stones. They couldn’t see the ceiling, even at the edge of their sight.

Han Ning estimated that the ground they were standing on was at least several hundred meters below the real Mushroom Forest.

This was a vast cavern, roughly half the size of a soccer field, with eight surrounding cave openings ranging from three to twenty meters in height. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

Large, fiery-red ants, each at least a meter long, shuttled between the caves in an orderly fashion. They carried glittering red stones in their mouths, moving back and forth, looking incredibly busy.

"My God... Is this an underground ant nest?"

Expressions of astonishment appeared on the faces of the four people standing at the cave entrance.

"CHITTER-CHITTER!" The large ant at the front turned and chirped at them, as if signaling for them to follow.

Then, it expertly scurried toward a cave to the northeast.

At the entrance, two huge ants blocked their path. They were at least two meters tall and over three meters long. Their Armor glinted like Red Jade, they were wreathed in roaring flames, and a pair of wings as thin as a cicada’s grew from their backs.

They fixed their four insect eyes, which burned with an orange-red glow, on the large ant and Han Ning’s group, letting out a low chittering sound.

Even from several meters away, Han Ning could feel the searing heat rolling off their bodies.

The large ant communicated with the two Fire Ants for a moment. Afterward, one of the Fire Ants led the large ant into the cave.

Before long, the two ants trotted back out and chittered at Han Ning and his group incessantly.

"Are they telling us to go in? Are we going to meet the Ant Queen?" Han Ning had some knowledge of the social hierarchy within ant colonies.

They were generally divided into worker ants, Soldier Ants, and the Queen.

Worker ants were the most common type in ant society. Their main duties were to provide food for the entire colony and clean the nest.

They were the most numerous and formed the cornerstone of the entire colony.

Soldier Ants were the warriors of ant society. Their primary role was to protect the colony from external threats. They were fewer in number than the workers but were generally powerful, possessing stronger bodies and sharp mandibles.

The Queen, or Ant Queen, was the most important member of the society. She was responsible for reproduction. There was only one Ant Queen. She was the largest in size and possessed special reproductive organs, shouldering the heavy burden of propagating the ant society.

All worker ants and Soldier Ants must obey the Queen’s commands.

"Could be... These two guards are probably Soldier Ants?" Lü Xiuning wasn’t entirely sure. He waved his hand, his tone suddenly becoming lighthearted. "Well, we’ve come this far. Might as well go meet the legendary Ant Queen."

"Yeah."

Han Ning subconsciously tightened his hold on Yin Yi in his arms and followed the three ants into the cave.

They had not walked more than a dozen meters when a vast cavern hall suddenly appeared before them.

The hall was filled with a faint red light, bathing the otherwise pitch-black environment in a crimson glow.

A wave of scorching air washed over them, turning their faces flush and causing the leaves of the nearby Silver Lotus Wood to wither and droop.

In a space of several hundred square meters, countless large, white, football-sized eggs were packed together.

Many ants had already hatched, crawling slowly around their broken eggshells.

At the very front, an ant easily over fifteen meters long rested among a small mountain of red stones. Its elliptical lower body was constantly producing a large number of white ant eggs.

A continuous stream of ants carried stones, placed them next to the stone mountain, and then silently crawled away.

The Ant Queen had a pair of enormous, ruby-like eyes. Her entire body was encased in a red carapace, and two pairs of translucent wings covered in red veins grew from her back.

Searing, surging lines of fire coursed through the crimson veins, constantly emitting waves of suffocating heat.

Just by meeting its gaze, Han Ning felt an immense pressure, as if he were being targeted by a Giant Beast. The hair on his entire body stood on end and trembled.

In an instant, their clothes—which had already been alternating between damp and dry—were soaked through with sweat again.

Beads of sweat dripped continuously from their foreheads, hitting the ground and evaporating almost instantly in the high temperature.

’Whew... She’s at least Above Awakening Level.’

Han Ning took a deep breath, making the judgment in his mind.

"CHITTER-CHITTER~"

The Ant Queen fixed its enormous pupils on the humans before it and let out a melodious chirp.

The four of them didn’t understand. They could only look at the Ant Queen in confusion.

Their communication with their own Soul Beasts relied entirely on mutual emotional sensing.