My Community Transmigrated Again

”Master, it’s very nervous and a little scared. I think it got frightened,” Pangding said to Qin Ziwen, turning its head after massaging the Ant Queen for a moment.

Qin Ziwen noticed the Ant Queen was much more relaxed now than she had been at the beginning.

Even when communicating with Lei Wenbo, she hadn’t appeared this relaxed.

’As expected, it takes an Insect Man to truly understand another Insect Man.’

”What do you think her condition is now?”

Qin Ziwen and Pangding were communicating in a human language, which the Ant Queen couldn’t understand.

She could only hear the Insect Man before her—one she felt a subconscious affinity for—muttering something incomprehensible with the human.

The unfamiliar sounds made her subconsciously uneasy.

”Don’t be afraid. My master may kill without blinking, but he’s definitely a good person,” Pangding said, lowering its head to gently stroke the Ant Queen’s head in a soothing manner.

The Ant Queen didn’t dare to object. All she felt was a slight pain in her stomach.

Pangding stroked her head. ”As long as you’re willing to submit to Master, he can help your bloodline transform. You can become a High-Level Ant Queen and make the Insect Man bloodline great again.”

Other Ant Queens might not have understood, but she knew what a High-Level Ant Queen was.

’I don’t believe a human can help me. Also, my stomach hurts a little.’

Pangding could sense the Ant Queen’s wariness was quite strong, but it wasn’t in a hurry.

After all, this Ant Queen was already an adult, not a juvenile.

The minds of adult Insect Men were mostly set, so changing their way of thinking was difficult. It wasn’t impossible, of course, but it would take time.

Besides, if there was one Ant Queen in this underground world, there was a high probability of a second.

”You’ll understand Master’s greatness in time.” After soothing her for a while, Pangding turned to Qin Ziwen. ”Master, she’s very guarded, but I can sense no malice from her.”

”As long as she’s willing to lead the way, it’s fine.” Qin Ziwen wasn’t concerned. Home was no longer in its initial stages of development.

Even ordinary Extraordinary Units weren’t that scarce anymore. Only top-tier Extraordinary Units counted as core reinforcements.

The Ant Queen returned to her nest and summoned her Ant-men. Seventy to eighty of them gathered, standing in a dense cluster.

Qin Ziwen didn’t see any Red-armored Ant-men among them.

These Ant-men cleared a path, arriving at a crevice in the cave where they cleared away all the tangled vines growing around it.

The ground gave way to a huge pit. Judging by the marks around it, the opening was at least a hundred years old.

The Ant-men ducked into the hole, butts in the air, to clear the path ahead.

The tunnel twisted and turned. The air grew increasingly humid, and a faint, stale, musty odor hung in the air, like rotting wood mixed with the scent of corroding metal.

Qin Ziwen followed behind the Ant-men, the beam of his flashlight cutting through the darkness.

Wherever the beam passed, the rock walls were draped in sticky, gray mycelia. Occasionally, they could see a few startled centipedes scurrying away in a panic.

The Ant-man at the front suddenly stopped and looked back. ”There’s a draft.”

Lei Wenbo said, ”President, I hear wind ahead.”

Qin Ziwen said, ”Keep going. Everyone, be careful. Let the Insect Men take the lead.”

The Ant Queen’s antennae twitched, and the Ant-men at the front continued onward.

The temperature in the underground passage continued to rise.

After a sharp bend, they passed through an opening in the rock, and the view ahead suddenly opened up.

They found themselves on a ledge overlooking a vast, crimson expanse below.

A wide, subterranean lake of lava brightly illuminated the underground world.

Qin Ziwen finally understood where the heat in the cavern above had been coming from.

Qin Ziwu’s face was bathed in a red glow as he stared at the churning lava lake below. Even from a hundred meters up, waves of searing heat washed over them.

And in the glaring red light, the silhouette of a dead city sat half-hidden among the collapsed rubble at the edge of the lava lake.

Parts of the city were buried in rubble, while other sections remained exposed.

The massive ruins of the buildings were strangely twisted, as if they were sheets of tin foil that had been violently crumpled.

The air was thick with the smell of sulfur.

BUBBLE... BUBBLE...

The lava lake was boiling, and huge bubbles rose to the surface.

Qin Ziwen looked at the Ant Queen. ”You all mentioned a curse. Where is it?”

Lei Wenbo translated, and the Ant Queen hastily responded with a series of chirps.

A moment later, Lei Wenbo turned back. ”President, she says she doesn’t know either. This is her first time here. Her bloodline memory only contains information about that city. It used to be by the lava lake, was very prosperous, and was home to many of the Gray Race.”

”It’s that complicated.” Qin Ziwen frowned and looked back at the Ant Queen. ”Send some Ant-men down to check out the city.”

The Ant Queen had no choice. Her antennae twitched.

Soon, the two Ant-men at the head of the group crawled out of the cavern and began to slowly climb down the steep cliff face.

They moved slowly, taking nearly ten minutes to reach the bottom.

After reaching the ground, the Ant-men made a wide circle around the lava lake, cautiously approaching the city ruins.

From the perspective of the group on the cliff, they looked like two small black dots moving across a map.

Just as the two small black dots reached the outskirts of the ruins, they abruptly halted, stopping dead in their tracks.

Then, the two Ant-men fell backward, stiff as boards.

”Gone just like that?” Cao Biansheng was stunned.

”Looks like it,” Qin Ziwu said with a frown.

Cao Biansheng said, ”I didn’t see a thing. They just walked over and collapsed. Could something be hiding in the ruins?”

Qin Ziwu mused, ”Or it could be an invisible enemy.”

’Could it be Ghosts or some kind of phantoms?’ Qin Ziwen wondered. ’But I can’t be sure based on just this. It could also be another enemy with a long-range attack. I need to investigate further.’

So he said to the Ant Queen, ”Send a few more Ant-men down. Have them circle around, split up, and try to enter from a different direction.”

The Ant Queen was displeased. She didn’t want to send her subjects to their deaths, but if her subjects didn’t go, she would be next.

So, she ”generously” sent four more Ant-men down. The chosen ones were silent; upon receiving the order, they set off immediately.

Twenty minutes later, the four Ant-men, who had approached from a different direction, collapsed one after another on the outskirts of the ruins.

The manner of their deaths was identical to the first two Ant-men.

They all froze, then toppled over stiffly, as if their very souls had been torn from their bodies.

”Brother, did you see that?”

Qin Ziwen let out a soft sigh. ”No, I can’t make sense of it. But it does raise a question. This thing seems incredibly malevolent—step within a certain range, and you just drop dead. If this is the ’curse’ they talked about, then where are all the bodies from over the years? This isn’t a game where dead monsters just automatically respawn.”

As soon as he said this, everyone around him froze.

He was right. They had seen it clearly. The outskirts of the ruined city were nothing but stone. There wasn’t even a single blade of grass. So where had all the previous bodies gone??

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