# 357
Chapter 357: Infiltrating the Enemy
Seeing Li Deyang so resolute, Lin Qiye was taken aback. After a moment of thought, he nodded.
Once they were ready, the group began rappelling, inching down the sheer cliff face.
Although they had plenty of ways to reach the bottom of the rift—Baili Pangpang’s 【瑶光】, for instance, or Lin Qiye’s own verses—they knew nothing about what waited below. Recklessly flaunting their Forbidden Ruins might expose them and draw a swarm of ants.
From the start, their target had been only the queen. With hive-type mysteries, kill the core and the rest collapse. Avoiding the workers was the smartest play.
To stay hidden, Lin Qiye even left the soldier-ant crate above; if it kept chatting with its kin, stealth would be impossible.
They descended for a long time before Lin Qiye’s mental power finally brushed the bottom. He frowned and signaled.
Everyone stopped.
“What’s wrong?” Baili Pangpang whispered.
“…The entire floor of the rift is packed with them.” Lin Qiye swept his gaze across the gloom, face grave. “A quick count gives at least four hundred.”
“Four hundred?!”
All four paled.
“How?!” Cao Yuan exclaimed. “Even a Sea-Realm swarm shouldn’t spawn that many!”
“Not on day one, no.” Lin Qiye sighed. “But remember—this crack appeared two years ago.”
“You mean they landed back then and have lived here ever since?” Li Deyang’s face was ashen.
“Almost certainly.” Lin Qiye nodded. “Two years of the queen breeding nonstop—this number isn’t surprising.”
“And that’s only what I can sense; the real total’s higher.”
Silence fell.
They could handle forty workers, but four-odd “川”-Realm ants in this narrow slit? No escape, no victory—only ant food.
“If this horde reaches the cities, the whole region falls,” Li Deyang muttered. “Only a special squad could stop them.”
He turned to Lin Qiye. “With numbers like these, even you four can’t cope. We’ve found the nest; we should pull back and let the specials handle it.”
Sound advice: record, retreat, survive. Charging in and dying would gain nothing.
The four exchanged wry smiles.
Call in a special squad?
They were the special squad.
They couldn’t slink back and tell Ye Fan, “Sorry, it’s too much—send someone better.”
Their first mission couldn’t end in punch-line retreat.
“We’re not going back,” Lin Qiye said. “Bypass the workers, behead the queen—odds are decent.”
Cao Yuan and the others nodded.
“But how do we locate the queen?” An Qingyu asked. “The rift’s long, dark, and treacherous; one slip brings the swarm.”
“I’ll turn into a worker and scout,” Lin Qiye said calmly.
“Qiye, are you sure?” Baili Pangpang blurted. “If they spot you, hundreds will hunt you…”
“I know what I’m doing. Wait here—no heroics.”
He shrugged off his pack and bulky parka, handed everything to Baili Pangpang, and stood in a thin black shirt, twin Straight Blades strapped to his back. Unclipping from the rope, he leapt into the gloom.
The others watched until darkness swallowed him, worry in their eyes.
Mid-fall, a flash of sorcery rippled over him—Lin Qiye became a red worker-ant.
He’d fought these ants enough to know them inside-out; the mimicry was flawless.
Scuttling along the wall, he soon saw the floor: narrow, crawling with red workers flowing in opposite tides like scarlet rivers. Just the sight made scalps prickle.
When his ant-form dropped in, a few workers paused, confused, then accepted him and resumed their march.
Lin Qiye merged with one column, copying their gait. Direction unknown, he’d search one way, then the other if needed.
Five minutes later the walls squeezed tighter. At the rift’s far end he spotted a colossal white ant—four meters tall, a small snowy hill, lying motionless as if asleep.