Chapter 5: The World of Insects

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio  Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

“Let’s go out, relax, and have a drink!”

Lu Zhiyu had been dragged out by Xia Fan to join her friends for dinner. After dinner, they went for a karaoke session and had beer and liquor. At first, Lu Zhiyu had felt embarrassed to be with the high school students, but he soon realized that there were also university graduates and adults there. Many of them were couples. Lu Zhiyu was shocked to find that modern high school students were much more open-minded than his generation.

After drinking a bit, a pretty and innocent-looking young lady started to make out with her university boyfriend. After a while, they excused themselves to the restroom and disappeared. The rest of the group started to get even wilder, especially Xia Fan. She sang and screamed. She also kept kissing Lu Zhiyu’s neck with breath filled with the smell of liquor, which terrified Lu Zhiyu and made him quite uneasy.

As Lu Zhiyu supported the stumbling Xia Fan, he could feel the stares of the people on the street. He had not kidnapped this girl, nor did he have any intention of taking advantage the drunk. Although Lu Zhiyu knew he did not do anything wrong, when he saw the police at the intersection, he could not help but stopped walking as if he was guilty. He then waited a bit further up the hill, some distance away, for the taxi.

While in the taxi, he was scrutinized by the taxi driver. When they were finally near Xia Fan’s house, Lu Zhiyu gave Xia Fan a tug and said, “Wake up, wake up!”

Xia Fan opened her eyes and asked, “Why?”

Lu Zhiyu remembered that Xia Fan lived in the development to the left of his house. “We’re back. I’ll see you home!”

Xia Fan pulled Lu Zhiyu’s collar and said, “No, I can’t go back. If I go back in this state, I’ll get scolded!”

Lu Zhiyu replied, “If you don’t go home, your parents will be worried.”

Xia Fan immediately replied, “It is alright. I am in boarding school and only go home every few days. My parents won’t know that I’m not staying at school today. Your house is big, isn’t it?”

With groggy eyes, Xia Fan looked at Lu Zhiyu and said, “Will you try anything funny with me, the sister of your first love?”

Lu Zhiyu pinched Xia Fan’s two cheeks and pulled them in opposite direction. He said, “Stop your nonsense. You are not even developed yet…”

Lu Zhiyu looked at her sexy body. She was wearing a mini skirt and stockings, and her white halter top showed off her cleavage. Her style of dress was very bold.

Xia Fan caught Lu Zhiyu looking at her and she straightened up. She squeezed her slender arms together in front of her body and said, “They’re big, aren’t they?”

“…” Lu Zhiyu was speechless.

There were two bathrooms in his two-story house, so they each took one. After taking his shower, Lu Zhiyu took out a clean blanket and tidied the room. He then realized that Xia Fan was still in the other bathroom.

“Hey, say something. Have you been flushed away?” he called out.

Xia Fan had a towel wrapped around her as she walked out. “Wow! It is nice to have a bathtub. It is so relaxing!” she said, smiling.

Lu Zhiyu shook his head and said, “I am not used to using that!”

He brought Xia Fan to the room that had been prepared for her and said, “You will sleep here tonight. The blanket and sheets are…”

The following morning, Lu Zhiyu carefully climbed out of bed and saw Xia Fan as she walked out of her room. She ran her fingers through her tangled hair and said, “Good morning!”

Xia Fan took out a set of clean clothes from her bag. After cleaning herself up and putting on her clothes, she left for school. Before leaving, she kissed Lu Zhiyu and said, “Thank you!”

Lu Zhiyu looked blankly at Xia Fan as she opened the door of the courtyard. Before she left, she turned to smile at him, leaving him in a daze.

After Lu Zhiyu returned to his study, he spread out the Scroll of the World, and looked at the scene in the painting space. It was winter with heavy snow and the sea had become frozen. There were now new and strange creatures under the sea.

This was a world completely formed by many different kinds of insects. Some occupied the sky, while others occupied the forest, the ground, and the sea. They were all over the place.

The queen ant was an amazing being. With her pheromones, she could change the genes of the younger generation, and thereby control the entire ant colony. Such ability made her a god-like being within her colony.

As the number of the colonies increased, space become limited and food also became insufficient, thus the environment became unsustainable. The colonies fought continuously, and each day there were colonies were wiped out and some queen ants were dragged out and killed.

However, today was very different. Lu Zhiyu realized that a group of insects kept crawling out from a strange-looking nest on a small hill in the painting space. There were many different kinds of them. Some flew in the sky, some swam in the water, and some went underground.

These were not born by the queen ant, but were produced using the nest. Lu Zhiyu felt that this was very strange. It seemed like that colony had evolved and developed intelligence and it tried to take control over its direction of evolution.

Lu Zhiyu found the situation abnormal, so he turned to the internet. He found a similar species, which was known as the “Zerg” in StarCraft.

As Lu Zhiyu looked at the painting space, he became puzzled.

Have they evolved? Who is controlling the insects? Is it the queen? Where did the intelligence come from? Is the queen the only one with intelligence or is each insect now has its own intelligence?

Lu Zhiyu activated his power and the silver sigil started to glitter. He immersed himself into the painting space and focused on this special group of insects. Lu Zhiyu found that his conciousness seemed to have separated from his body. He felt he had spent one whole day in the painting space, but in the outside world, only a few seconds had passed!

Lu Zhiyu saw a long, thin queen insect, with a huge head and four long limbs. The tail was long and a black exoskeleton covered its entire body. The queen insect had spared itself from being a machine of reproduction and possessed intelligence entirely of its own.

From his god-like perspective, Lu Zhiyu saw that the queen insect constantly sent her thoughts to the other insects, so that she could instruct them to attack the other insects, produce, conquer, combat, and self-supply.

“The world belongs to us!”

Lu Zhiyu could feel the ambition of the queen insect. However, he was even more surprised to find out that she could sense and control all of the other insects from her colony.

What power is that? Is it mind power? Or willpower?

After observing the queen insect for a while, he started to see the silver light emanating from her brain, and he started to see her thoughts.

The queen’s mind was able to channel to a special dimensional space!

Lu Zhiyu immediately dove into it and he felt his consciousness was alienated from the painting space. It had been compressed into a line! Lu Zhiyu followed this line to get to its end, and he felt his consciousness was swimming forward. Finally, he passed through an endless source of information before entering into a world that was filled with light.

Lu Zhiyu felt as if he would be assimilated by this silver light. With his entire consciousness becoming corroded and tainted, he was afraid that he might completely lose his own consciousness if he stayed any longer. Struggling, he tried to get out of this strange place, and after a long while, he finally returned to his body.

Utterly exhausted, Lu Zhiyu finally fell into a deep sleep.