Chapter 147: Ant Swarm
What appeared in the mountain forest at midnight was a countless mass of ants.
However, unlike the kind that children could crush beneath a thumb, these dense, crawling ants were each the size of the village hunting dogs.
Even under the shroud of night, Hu Xi could still see their skeletal structures gleaming like natural armor, their surfaces etched with fine corrosive patterns and sharp bone spurs—hideous and razor-edged.
Their compound eyes flickered with a ghostly green light, brimming with a ruthless hunger for destruction. Their mandibles resembled two heavy curved blades that snapped open and shut—wherever they passed, shrubs were mercilessly shredded to pieces.
Even with a hasty glance, Hu Xi could see their presence spread across the entire mountain range; their number was so vast that it seemed to blanket the entire forest!
Before such a terrifying army of giant ants, no one could possibly remain calm.
When Hu Xi saw those fearsome beasts clearly, all thoughts of Hu Niuniu or courage vanished from his mind.
What vanished along with them was the sickle in his hand.
“Help! Father! Mother! Run! There are demons—ahhh!”
At his panicked scream, several ants twitched their antennae and turned toward him. In an instant, hundreds of them shifted direction, advancing toward where Hu Xi fled.
Not only were these ants enormous, but once they began moving, they were faster than Hu Xi’s desperate sprint.
Within just a few blinks, they had caught up behind him.
“Father! Mother! Run! There are monsters in the mountains!”
Hu Xi kept running for his life. He could already see the oil lamp glowing inside his home.
But the next instant, terror flashed through his eyes—
“Father! Mother! Don’t come out! Hide!”
Yet his warning didn’t reach their ears. On the contrary, upon hearing his voice, his parents hurriedly stepped outside.
Even through the doorway’s bar, Hu Xi could clearly see the two of them clinging to each other—their eyes filled with worry for him, and despair that they couldn’t flee fast enough.
How could Hu Xi not understand the reason?
“Clack, clack.”
The antennae brushed together, making a chilling sound. He could almost feel them brushing against the skin of his calves.
Hu Xi’s heart was filled with regret.
He suddenly thought—if only he hadn’t been lovesick, hadn’t been unwilling to accept it, hadn’t ignored the hunters’ warnings, hadn’t gone into the mountains at night—would all of this never have happened?
But it was too late for such thoughts.
A tearing pain burst across his calf and spread upward. Hu Xi’s legs gave out, and he collapsed into the muddy ground.
“Son!!”
His parents screamed with voices that tore at the soul.
They unbarred the door and rushed out as if they couldn’t see the swarm of ants behind Hu Xi, reaching out to grab their son.
Seeing his parents running toward him, Hu Xi could only struggle to raise his hand—
“Father, Mother, run…”
The next moment, countless twisted ants crawled over his body.
When Hu Xi reappeared in the night air, he was nothing but half a gnawed skeleton.
His parents went mad, beating at the ants that had taken their child’s life.
But these ants were true demonic beasts—how could an ordinary couple possibly harm them?
Countless ants crawled over the pair, stacking them into two human-shaped mounds.
A second later, half of each mound suddenly caved in.
Two seconds later, the mounds collapsed entirely.
When the ant army finally moved on, all that remained were two small, bone-white towers.
A few bones still jutted outward, facing the half-skeleton in the distance.
And the perpetrators, the vast army of ants, merely made the clattering sound of antennae and bones as they continued on silently—
Deeper into Hu Family Village.
Hu Xi’s dying scream had not only awakened his parents, but the other villagers as well.
“Hu Xi! You brat, what’re you hollering about in the middle of the night?!”
“Wanna get your behind poked with my laundry stick?!”
But when the villagers of Hu Family Village stepped outside, their curses froze in their throats.
Before their eyes, the swarm of ants surged like a flood of steel, smashing through fences and straw walls as if they were paper.
Their saliva dripped onto the ground, melting clothes and wooden boards, releasing a nauseating hiss and a foul, burnt stench.
“Ahhh! Monsters!”
Upon seeing the mountain-sized wave of giant ants, no one cared about scolding Hu Xi anymore—they turned and ran immediately.
But how could their zigzagging escape through the narrow village lanes outpace the all-crushing advance of the ant horde?
It was no surprise when the ants overtook them, covering their bodies—and soon, only small, white bone towers remained.
“Damn it! I’ll fight you to the death!!”
One brave man refused to die in vain. He swung a woodcutter’s knife and slashed at a soldier ant’s leg—only sparks flew, the shock so great that the knife flew from his grip.
In the next instant, several worker ants pounced, their razor mandibles gnawing like knives, corrosive fluid splattering. Within seconds, his struggles and screams ended, leaving behind a melting skeleton.
The chaos and destruction shook the entire village. Villagers lit torches and bonfires to drive the swarm away—but could only watch in despair as the ants toppled the fires and surged forward, unstoppable.
Houses groaned and collapsed, fields were trampled, crops uprooted, livestock pens shattered like paper, and the cries of cattle and sheep were soon replaced by the hissing corrosion and clattering of the ants.
The entire village was like a loaf of bread thrown into strong acid—rapidly, efficiently, and mercilessly “decomposed” and “devoured.”
The black tide of ants consumed everything, leaving behind only ruins, a pitted, corroded earth, and a lingering stench of blood and acid—the reek of death itself.
In less than the time it took for one stick of incense to burn, Hu Family Village had become an ocean of red and blood.
And the culprits—the ant swarm—continued to clatter away into the distance.
Behind the endless tide of ants were Mo Lin, Mountain Lord, and the Corrosive-Gold Ant Queen, along with other Earth-Rank demonic beasts.
The swarm before them was the beginning of Mo Lin and his companions’ assault on humanity.
Even though Mo Lin had survived being besieged by Dong Li and multiple Earth-Rank opponents, and had personally seen the Corrosive-Gold Ant Queen and eight other Earth-Rank beasts, he had to admit—none of that compared to the scene before his eyes.
Thousands of demonic beasts marching through the mountain forest—this overwhelming momentum was something even Earth-Rank beasts could not match.
“As expected of our army’s vanguard. With such an ant swarm, there will be no enemies before ‘Falcon Beak’.”