Chapter 1254: One Chance
After finishing her words, Zhou Mo looked at him, seemingly waiting for that "ant" to reply.
It didn't take long before a response indeed began to arrive. The person's voice sounded relatively young; he really hadn't spoken with anyone in a long time. The voice transmitted into Zhou Mo's mind had even garbled grammar.
But Zhou Mo still roughly understood the other party's meaning.
She listened for a moment, quickly raised an eyebrow, and then nodded.
"What did he say?" Yan Zhichun asked from the side.
"Tsk, you lucky bastard hit the jackpot," Zhou Mo said, turning her head. "This guy's practically the 'ant leader'."
"Uh..." Yan Zhichun paused. "So he can control the 'ants'?"
"Pretty much," Zhou Mo nodded. "The gist of what he said is that if they can make all the 'ants' sense an eyeball on the Longhorn Beetle, they'll start moving."
Yan Zhichun nodded after hearing this, but immediately felt something was off.
The Longhorn Beetle had activated "Concealment." Given her current predicament, there was no way she could cancel "Concealment." So how could she make the "ants" sense her eyeball?
But besides that, there was another more important issue to clarify.
"They can't talk. How is he going to notify all the 'ants'?" Yan Zhichun asked again.
"Tsk, I don't know either. Let me ask."
After a short while, Zhou Mo replied, "I asked. He said he can demonstrate it for you."
They watched as the ant slowly crouched down, placed both hands on the ground, and began tapping lightly.
His tapping rhythm was strange—some taps were heavy, some light, with pauses in between.
"Light, heavy, heavy, heavy."
"Light, light, light."
"Heavy."
"Heavy, light."
"Morse code...?" Yan Zhichun frowned. "J—kill, S—slay, T—Longhorn, N—beetle?"
"You know that?" Zhou Mo asked. "Tsk, I told you someone else would get lost coming here."
"I happened to have read about it in a book."
"Oh..." Zhou Mo paused and added, "But you wouldn't understand our 'cats' whistling, right?"
"You—"
Yan Zhichun had no time to bicker with Zhou Mo. She simply realized she had once again underestimated the "ants."
How realistic and tragic was this?
They couldn't speak like normal people, so they had truly learned, like insects, to communicate through touch. After all, they had countless days to move around here. If they couldn't find a way to communicate, loneliness and fear alone would be enough to drive them mad.
But the "ants" were completely deaf. How could this Morse code be conveyed to the hundreds of companions all around?
Just as Yan Zhichun was thinking, she saw the "ant" continuously repeating these four rhythms. Soon, the nearest "ant" began to mimic, tapping out the exact same rhythm.
Then, the ones farther away followed suit, continuously repeating the rhythm and passing it to the closest person beside them.
It was then that Yan Zhichun noticed the "ants" had a deliberate formation. They seemed spaced at fixed distances—neither close enough to touch each other, but close enough to feel the vibrations of others tapping the ground.
In just a minute, nearly every "ant" in the entire area had started repeating those four rhythms. Each person's sound was soft, but at a certain moment, they suddenly became perfectly synchronized.
"Light, heavy, heavy, heavy."
"Light, light, light."
"Heavy."
"Heavy, light."
This stirring sound was like the pulse of the entire earth, beating tensely in time with everyone's hearts.
"Ants..." Yan Zhichun murmured as she watched this rare sight. "Everyone here wants to live..."
Now that the plan had surfaced, the next step was to fully execute it. After all, the information the ant had given them was enough; they wouldn't know the answers to any further questions.
"How do we get the Longhorn Beetle to reveal one of her eyeballs...?"
"Tsk, what are you talking about?" Zhou Mo asked.
Yan Zhichun shook her head. "Never mind. Zhou Mo, tell this 'ant' to have them stand by. I'll create an opportunity soon."
"Alright." Zhou Mo nodded, then leaned down and muttered a few words.
After hearing this, the "ant" changed his tapping rhythm again, as if transmitting a second message to all the "ants."
Yan Zhichun moved to the side, crouched behind another "ant" to conceal herself, then looked down at the ground.
At this moment, she had to focus completely. She needed to understand the working principle of the "ants" and their direction of attack.
Black Sheep was already injured. Although he had hit the Longhorn Beetle, if things continued, no one could say who would die first. She didn't know the Longhorn Beetle well, nor whether this person, when cornered, would choose a fight to the death or play it safe.
As Yan Zhichun pondered, she noticed a few spots of blood in her field of vision.
She reached out and touched the bloodstains on the ground. It felt like another piece of the puzzle had clicked into place.
The "ants" were supposed to be collecting eyeballs. So why wasn't a single "ant" moving now?
There were dozens of people from the "Extreme Path" gathered here. Every one of them had eyeballs. Why weren't the "ants" attacking them?
Not only that, but even judging by her own preserved memories from the "Endlands," she had never heard of any incident where "ants" harmed people. In fact, most "ants" deliberately avoided light sources and crowds.
In other words, although the "ants" wanted "eyeballs," there was a fundamental rule: they would not take the eyeballs of living people.
This rule had to exist. Otherwise, whenever the "ants" came out at night, they would inevitably target all eyeballs. Over time, the "participants" would fight back fiercely, and the "ants" would die in large numbers—this didn't align with the Azure Dragon's intentions.
The Azure Dragon only wanted this place to become a hopeless assembly line, where everything that could break a person would happen step by step.
So the "ants" were programmed only to take "unwanted" eyeballs.
"No... that's not entirely it." Yan Zhichun lifted her head and looked at the numerous bodies of the "Extreme Path" members in the center of the square. She felt that this rule needed further revision, since the eyeballs of corpses were also considered ownerless.
A more precise formulation would be: "Ants will not take eyeballs that belong to a human body."
Whether they were "Dao" or those "Heavenly-level" eyeballs transplanted onto bodies, in the end, they were all external objects. The "ants'" goal was to find these external objects.
"So that means..." Yan Zhichun stared at the ground, her mind racing. "If the Longhorn Beetle won't show herself voluntarily, we need to throw someone else's eyeball onto her, and that eyeball must not be affected by 'Concealment.'"
Although Yan Zhichun laid out the conditions one by one, she had to admit the operation was extremely difficult. She couldn't find any clue for the moment.
In the distance, Black Sheep and the Longhorn Beetle, after their last clash, had both become cautious. Black Sheep stopped shouting and merely watched his surroundings warily, while the Longhorn Beetle had hidden somewhere, continuing to conceal her form.
Yan Zhichun had a feeling that if they didn't find a solution before their next clash, Black Sheep would definitely lose. Even if he could counterattack, he wouldn't be able to get back up.
"There's only one chance. I need to prepare for both possibilities..." Yan Zhichun looked up at the remaining teammates in the distance. "It's time to put the 'Extreme Path' cooperation to use..."
After saying this, she paused, suddenly thinking of something.
There weren't just members of the "Extreme Path" here; there were also a few outsiders—aside from Officer Li and Su Shan, there were Bai Jiu and Luo Shiyi.
"Zhou Mo!" Yan Zhichun said. "I'll give you a few names. If they're still alive, go touch them for me."