107: The Wail of the Worm Queen

Over at Star Palace, things had temporarily settled down due to the arrival of their Little Ancestor, Lin Yingluo.

The Asura Clan had been driven away, the Emperor powerhouses had also retreated, leaving only the tasks of clearing the battlefield, treating the wounded, and rebuilding their homes.

Although the losses were considerable, the disciples were all full of vigor, their faces showing both the relief of surviving a catastrophe and a mysterious confidence that “we have someone above us”—didn’t they see?

The Palace Master’s daughter was an Immortal Emperor!

The kind who could slap an Asura Emperor flying with one palm!

This backing was indescribably solid!

While Lin Xuan was arranging the aftermath, he also had to constantly keep an eye on his precious daughter.

Little Yingluo was curious about everything; one moment she would run to watch Chu Xinghe repair formations, the next she would wander over to Nuan Nuan to watch her cultivate spirit plants, scaring everyone into working cautiously, afraid that if they didn’t do something well, they might displease this Little Ancestor and get a slap themselves… Who could endure that!

Fortunately, although Yingluo’s power was terrifying, her mindset was that of a seven or eight-year-old girl—lively, active, with no ill intentions, just a bit… overly energetic.

Lin Xuan was both blissful and had a headache.

But just as Star Palace was bustling and gradually restoring order, in some other unknown corners of the Immortal Realm, two major events, significant enough to affect the entire war, were quietly unfolding.

The Broodmother’s lair was not in the main space of the Immortal Realm, but hidden within an extremely secret subsidiary sub-space, protected by layers of spatial folds and Asura Clan restrictions.

The environment in this space was extremely harsh.

The sky was dark red, with corrosive blood clouds drifting.

The ground was cracked, with viscous, foul-smelling rivers of pus flowing.

The air was filled with an nauseatingly sweet stench and the terrifying rustling sounds of countless insect eggs hatching.

At the center of the space was an enormous lair, constructed from a mixture of countless biological skeletons, minerals, and some kind of living tissue.

Deep within the lair, the Broodmother’s true form lay prostrate.

It was a massive mountain of flesh, indescribably ugly and disgusting.

It had no fixed form, like a constantly wriggling, expanding, and contracting pale white tumor, its surface covered in dense, tiny holes, with countless large and small, bizarre insects crawling in and out of these holes, ceaselessly busy.

It emanated an aura of extreme greed and hunger, constantly devouring the world origin and life energy transported from various lower realm passages, then transforming it into a special, violent energy easily absorbed by the Asura Clan, which was then transmitted through some spatial connection to the Asura Clan army on the front lines.

It was the Asura Clan’s super refueling station and armory.

Normally, this place was filled with the busy chirping of insect swarms and the humming of energy conversion.

But today, something was wrong.

The Broodmother’s enormous mountain of flesh was violently, painfully twitching and convulsing!

The sounds it emitted were no longer hungry chirps, but sharp wails filled with pain and terror!

It was that very sound that had previously spread across most of the Immortal Realm, even startling the Emperor battlefield!

Looking closely, one would discover that on its pale white skin, at some unknown point, strands of extremely subtle, yet unusually tough and bright golden threads had appeared!

These golden threads, like living things, were frantically spreading and weaving through its body; wherever they passed, the Broodmother’s flesh, filled with filth and greedy power, withered, necrotized, and turned to ash over large areas, as if encountering its nemesis!

Even more terrifying, these golden threads seemed to be extracting its life essence and soul power!

The Broodmother desperately mobilized the lair’s energy, generating massive amounts of stronger guardian insects to pounce on the golden threads, attempting to bite them off or devour them.

But it was useless!

As soon as the guardian insects touched the golden threads, they instantly melted away like ice and snow meeting the scorching sun!

It also tried to sever the passages connecting to the lower realms to block the source of the golden threads’ energy, but found it impossible!

The golden threads seemed to have directly locked onto and invaded its core at the fundamental level of rules!

Its simple and greedy mind could not comprehend what kind of power this was?

Why could it so perfectly counter it?

This was simply not any known power in the Immortal Realm!

It could only struggle and wail in vain, feeling the rapid loss of its own power and vitality, and… a deep-seated fear from its soul towards the origin of those golden threads!

Its wailing was not just due to pain, but also because of a premonition—its doomsday was likely approaching.

And once it died, it would be a devastating blow to the entire Asura Clan’s war potential!

The location of the underground seal was even more secret and ancient than the Broodmother’s lair, possibly not even within the current spatial layer of the Immortal Realm, but rather in some spacetime crevice or underlying law node.

There was no light here, no sound, only an absolute, dead silence of darkness.

And a heavy sense of suppression that had endured for eons, bringing all things to stillness.

Here, time and space seemed to be frozen.

The only thing present was an enormous, unimaginably complex, three-dimensional sealing matrix composed of countless interwoven ancient runes, flickering with faint light.

Each of these runes contained unimaginable power, and together they formed a perfect balance, suppressing the object at the very center of the matrix.

That object had no specific form; it was more like a mass of extremely compressed, chaotic-colored “nothingness” that constantly tried to surge but was firmly held down.

The aura it emitted was neither life force nor death qi, but a more primal, bizarre state between “existence” and “non-existence.”

Even a single trace occasionally leaked out was enough to make an Immortal Venerable lose control of their mind.

This seal had existed for an incredibly long time, so long that even those who set it up might have been annihilated in the river of time.

But it still operated tenaciously, fulfilling its duty.

However, at some unknown point, perhaps due to the perennial Immortal-Demon War and the clashes of Emperors shaking the underlying space of the Immortal Realm, perhaps due to the contamination of alien energy brought by the Asura Clan invasion, or perhaps… some other more hidden reason.

This perfectly balanced ancient seal showed an extremely subtle, almost imperceptible loosening.

A crack, thousands of times finer than a strand of hair, appeared silently at a crucial rune connection node.

It was this extremely subtle crack that caused a momentary, almost negligible stagnation in the operation of the entire sealing matrix.

And at the very instant this stagnation occurred—

Buzz—

A fluctuation, countless times clearer, colder, and more deathly silent than what the Emperors had sensed before, suddenly permeated from the suppressed “chaotic nothingness”!

Although it was only a tiny trace, it caused the entire dead silent dark space to violently twist and shake!

Within that fluctuation, there seemed to be the coldness of the universe’s end, the stillness of all things returning to ruin, and a… indifferent negation of all existence.

Immediately after, that tiny crack seemed to… expand a little more.

Although still insignificant, this was an extremely dangerous sign.

Once the balance began to break, the speed of collapse might accelerate.

No one knew what this seal was suppressing.

No one knew what consequences it would bring to the Immortal Realm, to all the myriad worlds, if this thing completely broke free.

But undoubtedly, this was absolutely not a good thing.

The Broodmother’s wailing and the anomaly of the underground seal, these two events happening in secret places, seemed like some kind of omen in the dark, indicating that this great storm sweeping across the Immortal Realm had not ended with the Asura Clan’s temporary retreat, but might instead… be sliding into an even more unknown and dangerous abyss.

Inside the main hall of Star Palace, Lin Xuan, who was accompanying his daughter to watch spirit plants grow, felt an inexplicable pang in his heart, as if something extremely bad had happened.

He subconsciously looked up, gazing into the vast void outside the hall, his brows tightly furrowed.

“Daddy, what’s wrong?” Little Yingluo, sensitively perceiving his mood, tugged at his sleeve.

“Nothing,” Lin Xuan retracted his gaze, patted his daughter’s head, suppressed the unease in his heart, and smiled, “Perhaps… Daddy is a bit tired.”