Chapter 437 - Chapter 437: Chapter 437: Heavenly Tribulation (1/2)

Chapter 437: Chapter 437: Heavenly Tribulation

In the early morning, a GL8 drove into Chongyun Village.

Once the car came to a stop, Zhou Rui, Mijoe, and Gao Shu got out, bringing their gear with them, and began to trek into the mountains.

Their destination is the area where the lightning storm occurred the night before yesterday. However, they did not need a guide. They used the tablet manufactured by “Divine Technology” and followed the route it displayed.

Upon arrival, the trio proceeded according to the established plan, taking photos and collecting other samples.

The information they obtained naturally far exceeded that of the average person who watches the news. They clearly pinpointed the location where the two fugitive bodies were discovered, and even had photos taken at the scene by the police at the time.

Standing at the spot where the bodies were found and comparing it with the photos on the tablet taken at the time, Mijoe frowned and said, “Has anyone struck by lightning ever suffered like this?”

Zhou Rui nodded, “If struck directly by lightning, it’s possible… but the probability is rather small.”

However, his attention was not focused on where the bodies of the fugitives were found or the traces of lightning strikes, but on a patch of “untouched land” not too far away.

The location where the two fugitives were discovered had experienced multiple lightning strikes. The nearby trees were practically destroyed and the ground bore traces of lightning strikes.

It was clear that these two fugitives were merely casualties of the area of effect (AOE) of the lightning storm. At that point in time, this area was a death zone.

Curiously, there was a small section, distinctly different from the surrounding area, that was perfectly intact.

If this area was a bit further away, Zhou Rui wouldn’t have noticed, as lightning strikes aren’t like rainfall. They simply can’t cover every corner of a certain area. However, the area where the fugitive bodies were found was subjected to the most concentrated lightning strikes, with nearly every part affected, as if something was luring lightning to strike here. Thus, the existence of a perfectly intact patch of land amidst the center of lightning activity seemed strange.

Zhou Rui was about to walk over to take a closer look, but suddenly noticed a few insects fluttering up from the ground.

For a moment, he was stunned. His first reaction was that these insects resembled the “flying ants” he had caught on one of the pedestrian streets in Tongshi Town.

Zhou Rui rubbed his eyes, thinking he was seeing things. However, after he walked over and squatted down, he discovered another insect crawling out of the ground.

He hurriedly grabbed it and took a closer look. Sure enough, it was the same strange “flying ant” he had caught on the pedestrian street.

Zhou Rui knelt on the ground, hunched over to closely inspect it, noticing that the soil here was particularly loose. Despite the heavy rain two days ago, it didn’t seem to have been “washed away”.

“What did you find?” Mijoe and Gao Shu moved closer, squatting beside him and whispering.

Zhou Rui showed them the “flying ant” in his hand, his voice containing a hint of excitement: “This is the same ‘flying ant’ I caught in Tongshi Town the day before yesterday. It crawled out of this soil. Could this… be the same creature we were investigating earlier — the ‘giant raptor’ and ‘invisible insect’?”

“The same creature?” Mijoe frowned as she looked at the winged ant in Zhou Rui’s hand.

Though the main reason they were investigating this area today was because the lightning storm that occurred here two nights ago was similar to the one that occurred on Zi Huan Mountain. They wanted to find out whether the “giant raptor” also appeared here when the lightning storm hit. After all, Wushu Mountain, where the “giant raptor” was spotted a year ago, was not far from here.

If they found evidence of other “blood-eating creatures” in this area, it wouldn’t be completely improbable.

However, the problem was that she knew much more about “blood-eating creatures” than Zhou Rui, so she understood that if this type of ant was a “blood-eating creature,” it wouldn’t have been captured so easily by Zhou Rui, let alone have several of them in such a small area.

Zhou Rui, sensing her doubt, quickly added, “These are likely worker ants! Special, flying worker ants! Our target might be the ant queen that produced these worker ants! And perhaps… they’re the same ‘invisible insect’ we were investigating before.”

“Remember how we didn’t find a single ant at Wushu Mountain’s Main Peak, the place where the ‘invisible insect’ appeared? That could’ve been because the ‘invisible insect’ is a special type of ant! They drove the rest of the ant colonies out of their territory! But due to some special circumstances… like being chased by that ‘giant raptor’, the other worker ants ‘moved house’ and left first. But the ant queen… or rather, what we call the ‘invisible insect’ was so large that it didn’t manage to evacuate in time and was caught up with by the ‘giant raptor’!

“That night at Wushu Mountain, we saw the ‘giant raptor’ dig up the ground and capture the ‘invisible insect’ and fly away. But we don’t know if there was a follow-up fight and whether the ‘invisible insect’ managed to escape again.”

“Maybe it ran to Zi Huan Mountain afterward, the ‘giant raptor’ pursued it, and now it’s here.”

Zhou Rui was somewhat excited as he explained his speculation. When he spotted the flying ants emerging from the ground earlier, an image suddenly popped up in his mind: several giant winged ants, covered in black armor, monstrously big, burrowing out of the ground as if they were creatures from another dimension or hell itself, rising into the air.

He had dreamt about this scene last night and remembered it clearly when he woke up, but he didn’t give it much thought at the time. He thought he had this dream because he had encountered the “invisible insect” before and had found a rather peculiar ant the day before yesterday.

But now, standing amid this area devastated by the lightning storm, looking at the possible anthill, holding the “flying ant” he just caught in his hand, thinking about their previous trip to Citong City to investigate the lightning storm on Zi Huan Mountain, remembering the video provided by the information department that showed what seemed to be the “giant raptor”, he felt like the images from his dream were inspiring flashes of insight, giving rise to these speculations.

These speculations evoked a mix of excitement and fear in him.

It would be accurate to say that the excitement was significantly stronger, as he always enjoyed studying ants and was potentially on the verge of discovering a novel, amazing ant species.