137: Chapter 137: Heading to the Execution Ground

Li Xuan and K fell to their knees on the dirt.

An unreasonably massive amount of Mental Energy slammed into the depths of their consciousness.

It was raw, unadulterated domination.

Monstrous waves surged within Li Xuan's Sea of Consciousness.

The Mental Energy had no physical form, yet it carried a cold, mechanical, and unyielding will.

Before this power, his diamond-grade Divine Sense was not even a toy.

K's electronic eyes flashed red, and his System firewall was torn apart in an instant.

The highest level of control authority was forcibly taken over.

The two Nether-Uranium Heavy Armor Beetles lay prostrate on the ground, not daring to make a single move.

Li Xuan's six compound eyes rolled, looking at K beside him.

K looked over as well.

Both saw shock and horror in each other's eyes.

An immeasurably vast collective was connecting to their consciousness through this mental network.

A set of coordinates.

A command: Assemble at these coordinates.

Li Xuan gritted his teeth, his Sea of Consciousness aching intensely under the immense pressure.

He was sick of this feeling of being controlled.

Earlier in the River of the Underworld, they were forced to become part of the Bone Fish, unable to even control their own life and death.

They had just made it ashore, and now they had to deal with this again!

"Deactivate mimicry!" Li Xuan transmitted his voice to K using his remaining Divine Sense.

"Change back to human form and cut off this mental connection! Otherwise, we'll become a part of them again!"

The Time Demon Origin surged within Li Xuan's body, and a grayish-white light shimmered along the edges of the beetle's carapace.

He prepared to forcibly exit the mimicry state.

Bang!

One of K's mechanical limbs slammed onto Li Xuan's dorsal carapace, dispersing the Origin power he had just gathered.

"Are you crazy?!" K's electronic voice exploded in Li Xuan's mind, carrying a rare sense of urgency. "You can't deactivate it!"

"This Mental Energy has already locked onto us!" K quickly pulled up the analytical data and projected it directly into Li Xuan's consciousness.

"The opponent's scanning frequency is all-encompassing."

"Once you deactivate mimicry and lose the cover of the Zerg gene sequence, we will be classified as anomalies!"

Li Xuan's movements stiffened.

"Look at the magnitude of this Mental Energy!" K continued transmitting, his tone grim.

"Let alone the two of us half-cripples, even if the Captain and the others were all in their prime, they would still be facing certain death before this power!"

Li Xuan fell silent.

The grayish-white light on his carapace faded as he accepted reality.

In the face of an absolute disparity in power, any struggle was futile.

"What kind of damn place is this Divine Domain!" Li Xuan cursed in his heart.

"Merging at the drop of a hat! Mental control at the drop of a hat! Can't we survive without Body Integration?!"

He, an elite of the Time Demon Race and a Genius Sword Cultivator of the Cultivation-side, had actually been reduced to pretending to be a bug just to cling to life.

Complaining aside, his body was very honest.

The oppressive feeling of this mental command grew stronger and stronger, leaving them no room for hesitation.

"Let's go," Li Xuan transmitted.

The two Heavy Armor Beetles moved their limbs and crawled rapidly across the wasteland, following the guidance.

Along the way, they saw more and more of the insect race crawling out from underground.

Mad Sickle Shadow Blade Beetle, Psionic Plasma Bug...

All the insects maintained absolute silence, converging into black rivers that surged in the same direction.

Li Xuan and K blended in, completely inconspicuous.

Two hours later.

They crossed over a purplish-red hill.

The sight before them made both Li Xuan and K halt in their tracks.

Ahead of them lay a vast plain.

At this moment, the plain was completely filled with black.

The insect race.

An endless sea of insects.

Dense carapaces gleamed with a metallic luster under the dim light.

Insects of all shapes and sizes were arranged in neat phalanxes.

There was no whispering, no redundant movements—only a suffocating, solemn aura of death.

With a rough sweep of the eyes, their numbers easily exceeded a million!

A million-strong army of insects!

Moreover, the aura of every single bug was at least at the high-tier Silver rank!

At the very front of these phalanxes stood several thousand Soldier Insects with even larger bodies and more terrifying auras.

They were the commanders of this army, precisely controlling the movements of each phalanx through the mental network.

Pushing and jostled by the flow of insects behind them, Li Xuan and K were forced to merge into this black ocean.

They were integrated into the edge of a phalanx composed of a hundred thousand Nether-Uranium Heavy Armor Beetles.

"We're finished," K's electronic voice sounded in Li Xuan's mind, filled with despair.

"What's wrong?" Li Xuan asked.

"Data model deduction complete," K's voice said flatly. "With such an immense scale, there are only two possibilities."

"First, they have completed a major campaign and are returning in triumph."

"Second, they are assembling to prepare for an invasion of another high-tier species' territory."

K paused before continuing, "Judging by their marching formation, energy reserves, and the emotions transmitted through the mental network..."

"...there is a 99.9% chance it is the second."

"An invasion war."

K's mechanical limbs trembled slightly. "A million-scale war."

"What we are about to face is absolutely an earth-shattering battle. With our current state, our probability of surviving the first wave of charge is zero."

K had already given up.

In his calculations, this was a complete dead end.

However, Li Xuan's six compound eyes lit up.

Unlike K's despair, a surge of excitement welled up deep within Li Xuan.

"You calculated wrong, metal block," Li Xuan transmitted, his voice filled with uncontrollable excitement.

"Wrong where?"

"Wrong because your vision is too narrow!" Li Xuan looked at the grand army ahead.

"We struggled at every step in this damn place before, having to fight for our lives even when we ran into a random crab."

"Why? Because we are outsiders! We have no background, no backing!"

Li Xuan waved a forelimb.

"But now it's different! We've blended into this million-strong army! This is our best protective talisman!"

"With a war of this scale, the opponent's territory must be the most central and fertile region of this Divine Domain!"

"The concentration of Spiritual Qi and the Heaven And Earth Treasures there will absolutely exceed our imagination!"

Li Xuan's tone grew increasingly fanatical. "The antidote! The antidote that can cure that kind of genetic collapse must be there!"

"This isn't a dead end; this is a massive Opportunity! These bugs are leading the way for us!"

K fell silent for a long time.

"Your logic has a fatal flaw. High returns come with high risks."

"Even if there is an antidote, can you survive the clash between a million-strong army and the local overlord to get it?"

"How will we know if we don't gamble?" Li Xuan sneered. "Cultivation is inherently a Heaven-Defying act."

"Wealth is found in danger—a pile of scrap metal like you will never understand!"

K did not argue further.

He knew Li Xuan was already carried away.

An assembly horn sounded through the mental network.

Several thousand Dominator Bugs growled in unison.

The million-strong army moved.

The earth trembled.

Sandwiched within the phalanx of a hundred thousand Heavy Armor Beetles, Li Xuan and K began to advance.

They didn't need to think about the route, nor did they need to remain alert to their surroundings.

They had hundreds of thousands of companions shielding them on all sides.

This feeling was actually surprisingly refreshing.

Along the way.

The flocks of Demon Vultures circling in the sky fled in panic upon seeing the black steel torrent below.

There were no obstacles.

They swept through everything in their path.

Such was the prestige of the overlord of the Divine Domain.

The further Li Xuan walked, the more excited he became.

He keenly sensed that the concentration of Spiritual Qi in the air was skyrocketing.

"Do you feel it?" Li Xuan transmitted to K. "The Spiritual Qi has grown denser! And it doesn't have that cold, corrosive feeling."

"The area ahead is definitely a treasure land!"

The spiritual energy in Li Xuan's body even began to circulate on its own, absorbing the free energy in the air.

The antidote.

There must be an antidote.

Li Xuan firmly believed in his judgment.

As long as they got the antidote and found the Captain, they could turn the tables.

The army continued to advance.

The surrounding environment began to undergo visible changes.

The purplish-red soil turned into charred black rocks.

The surface temperature rose sharply.

The carapaces of the Heavy Armor Beetles sizzled as they stepped on the rocks.

K's electronic eyes constantly scanned the environmental data, the red light flashing more and more frequently.

"Warning! Environmental temperature has exceeded three hundred degrees and is still rising."

"Warning! Unknown high-energy Law fragments detected in the air, highly destructive to the body armor."

K's voice sounded in Li Xuan's mind: "Li Xuan, something is wrong."

"What's wrong?" Li Xuan was dismissive. "It's common sense that high-grade spiritual lands are guarded by extreme environments."

"What is there to fear from a high temperature? We are Heavy Armor Beetles right now; we can withstand this heat."

"It's not just the temperature," K reminded him. "Look at the formation ahead."

Li Xuan raised his head.

His compound eyes pierced through the swarm ahead, looking at the very front of the army.

The carapaces of the Blade Insects rushing at the very front were actually starting to emit black smoke.

Yet they did not stop.

Not a single bug shrank back.

They still maintained their neat formation, marching with mechanical steps toward the unknown region ahead.

Li Xuan's heart suddenly skipped a beat.

He finally sensed a trace of incongruity.

The atmosphere of this million-strong army was too calm.

There was no pre-war frenzy, no desire for prey.

There was only... a numbness of heading to the execution ground.