The Palace Sand Ant Nest
*Clang!*
Xiye's cat-pupils gleamed with cold amusement. Gripping his sword in both hands, he drove the blade at Lu Yuan's waist.
Lu Yuan's expression hardened. He raised his sword to meet the blow — and was shoved back several steps.
Xiye didn't retreat an inch. While Lu Yuan scrambled to deflect each strike, step by step being pushed toward the wall, Xiye feinted sideways — then reappeared in an instant, blade sweeping horizontally for Lu Yuan's throat.
Lu Yuan's pupils shrank. Every muscle in his body went taut. He stamped his foot and threw himself sideways.
The sword missed his neck. It caught the side of his waist instead, parting skin. A thin thread of blood welled up.
He exhaled quietly. Good thing he'd been drilling his footwork. Without that, there was no guarantee he'd have cleared it.
Another crash of blades — and he found himself backed against the wall.
His hand closed around a dark bottle. He tipped his head back and drank it down.
*Thud.*
The Common Defense Serum.
A Common Grade defense serum boosted defensive capacity by roughly twenty percent.
The moment it went down, Lu Yuan felt it — the liquid dissolved into a formless wave of Spirit Power inside his body, coalescing into an invisible barrier. He could feel exactly how much his defenses had just jumped.
On top of what he already had, adding another twenty percent was genuinely absurd.
When Xiye saw him drink the defense-boosting serum, his expression shifted. "Damn it — he actually bought serums!"
The Combat Technique that had faded from his body blazed back to life — a reddish flush spreading across his skin. He planted his foot and launched forward, sword slashing horizontally for Lu Yuan's throat.
*Clang!*
Lu Yuan caught it on his blade. The force hit him like a battering ram — far heavier than before. He staggered back another step.
"Hey, human!" Nanqi called back, laughing. "With that turtle crawl of yours, you think you can catch us?! Try again in your next life!"
*What am I, a freaking turtle?!* he thought.
But his defense right now? With the serum active? The blade simply wasn't getting through. Wave after wave of strikes came, relentless, and he deflected every one, retreating steadily, buying time.
He waited for a gap — shoved through Xiye's assault — and backed off.
A cold, murderous look settled across his face as he stared at Xiye, and beyond him, Moli and Nanqi further down the tunnel.
*'F***ing hell,'* he seethed inwardly. *'I dropped ten thousand on that serum. If I let you three get away after that, I've got no right to call myself a man.'*
He charged straight after them.
The moment he burst forward, the three were already thirty meters gone.
Lu Yuan cursed himself under his breath.
He had to admit it — his speed was simply worse than theirs. And now both the cat-kin swordsman and the archer had drunk Speed Enhancement Serums on top of everything, which made it worse.
As for Nanqi — he was riding on Xiye's back, so the speed serum Xiye had taken carried him just as fast. And freed from having to run himself, Nanqi could keep both hands free for combat. As Lu Yuan watched, Nanqi casually lobbed a fireball from his perch on Xiye's back and incinerated a Black Scorpion lunging from a side passage without even looking.
The torchlight in the underground palace tunnels was dim. Beyond a certain distance there was only darkness. If they gained another stretch of ground, Lu Yuan would lose sight of them entirely.
He gritted his teeth and kept running.
The Superior Speed Enhancement Serum — fifty thousand Spirit Crystals a bottle. And more than the cost, it was his emergency escape card, the last resort he'd saved for moments of genuine life-threatening danger. Blowing it here felt like throwing away his lifeline.
He was already down ten thousand on the defense serum. If he used the speed serum and these three didn't even drop anything worthwhile, he'd be looking at a sixty-thousand hole. All the grueling work he'd done before had netted him just over ten thousand worth of materials.
One round of stupid spending, and it was all gone.
He really couldn't accept that.
Yet he couldn't bring himself to stop chasing, either.
Ahead of him, the three cat-kin Hunters ran and talked.
Xiye's tone was flat. "That human must hate us to the bone by now."
Moli shot Nanqi a sideways look and said nothing.
"We haven't escaped yet," someone murmured.
"Fair enough. Though I can't believe we've run into him twice. Didn't expect him to grow this fast — last time he was clearly struggling against just Xiye alone."
"He's probably some kind of genius."
Nanqi bared his teeth. "Genius, so what? We just avoid him. He's Guardian Type — with speed that slow, it's not like he can actually hunt us down."
Xiye's mouth twitched.
From ahead in the darkness came a low, gravelly rumble.
Lu Yuan's eyes lit up. Stone Men!
He spotted two rubble piles in the distance. The Stone Men were already hurling chunks of rock toward the fleeing cat-kin trio.
A smile crept onto his face.
It died immediately.
Before either Stone Man even finished transforming, two consecutive fireballs hit them dead-on from Nanqi's outstretched hand.
Both rubble piles, transformation unfinished, became actual rubble.
The swordsman and archer hadn't even needed to intervene. Nanqi had dealt with them from Xiye's back without breaking stride.
Stone Men were just too weak.
Lu Yuan cursed himself under his breath.
The gap kept widening. The three were now fifty meters ahead. In the time he'd been watching the Stone Men fail, they'd pulled an extra twenty meters away. He could feel the chase slipping out of reach.
He made a silent, iron-clad vow: when he broke through to First-rank, the first gene he inscribed would be a speed type. No exceptions.
Thankfully, there were no forks in the tunnel yet. If there had been, they'd have already lost him. But keep going far enough, and eventually there would be.
After that, being shaken off was only a matter of time.
He gritted his teeth and kept going.
The three were closing on the wall of darkness ahead of them.
Moli's face suddenly drained of color. "They're coming!"
Before she could finish, the floor beneath her foot cracked open. A large pit yawned beneath her and she plunged straight down.
Not just her — Xiye and Nanqi on his back went down with her.
About five meters, then they hit the ground.
Xiye's pupils shrank to pinpoints. "Find a way back up — now!"
"No good!" Nanqi's voice was urgent. "That human is right up there — he wants to tear us apart!"
They looked around.
Dim tunnels stretched away on both sides, swallowed by darkness. And from the depths of those tunnels, things were coming.
Enormous ants. Solid yellow from head to stinger, each one nearly a meter tall, built like giant dogs. They crawled out of the darkness in a steady stream, antennae sweeping back and forth.
Moli's expression turned rigid.
"Damn it," Xiye said. "An ant nest."
"How are we this unlucky?!" Nanqi shouted. "An ant nest?!"
From his perch on Xiye's back, Nanqi fired a fireball to blast a Black Scorpion that lunged from a side passage, then scanned the tunnels on both sides with wide eyes.
Moli and Nanqi's eyes filled with despair.
"We haven't escaped yet."
Palace Sand Ants.
The corridors of the ant nest had no torches. Even with the enhanced eyesight of a Gene Warrior, visibility barely reached five meters.
The Palace Sand Ants' deep black eyes were locked onto the three cat-kin Hunters, their antennae sweeping in slow, methodical arcs.
*Pheromone identification: intruders.*
A moment passed. Then several ants let out piercing shrieks and charged.
The ant nests of Sandy Rock Underground Palace spread across the entire dungeon without exception — among its most formidable presences. Individual ant strength ranged from ten percent tempering all the way up to ninety-nine. They were one of the most dangerous groups in the palace.
Seventy meters above, Lu Yuan stood at the edge of the collapsed pit and watched them in cold silence.
He turned and ran toward where Moli and Nanqi had fallen.
A small, sharp spark of anticipation kindled in his chest.
No fork in the tunnel yet. Nowhere for those three idiots to go.
Maybe this path didn't even have an exit.
His Gene Warrior-enhanced hearing caught something — a soft, rapid skittering, closing fast from below.
The corners of his mouth curved.