Chapter 444 - Chapter 444: Chapter 436 Clever Breakthrough_1

Chapter 444: Chapter 436 Clever Breakthrough_1

It poked its head out a bit from the basket and lay on Qin Niu’s back, peeking out with half of its head.

Just at that moment, the swarm of bees rushed towards Qin Niu again.

Like lightning, it shot out its long tongue, targeting a Poison Stinger, ready to capture it.

But the strike of its tongue came up empty.

Keep in mind that the Red-eyed Golden Toad’s capture skill is as high as Grade Seven. Moreover, it has been catching insects for food since it was young; this is its bread-and-butter skill for eating. How could it miss capturing a Grade Four or so Poison Stinger at such a close distance? How is that possible?

“Master, this swarm of bees is very strange! It’s like a single entity. When my tongue wrapped around one of them, it was as though I had wrapped around a mountain,”

The Red-eyed Golden Toad tried hard to describe its capturing experience.

No wonder it failed to capture its target.

The Poison Stinger it aimed for merged with the entire swarm into one entity. When its tongue wrapped around it, the entire swarm tumbled, and the Golden Toad’s tongue couldn’t possibly hold on to the target.

It seems I need to find a way to break the Insect Formation.

Qin Niu didn’t expect the two Insect Masters sent by Master He Shan and Chairman Li to be of much help.

“A mere swarm of bees, daring to be so presumptuous, annihilate it!”

The two Insect Masters sent by Chairman Li were both around forty years old with not weak cultivation. They seemed to have reached the pinnacle of the Innate Realm.

The two men looked quite similar and were likely a pair of twin brothers.

The insects used by the slightly plumper Insect Master on the left were a group of Bear Bees.

Their bodies were enormous, each the size of a chicken egg, buzzing loudly as they flapped their wings.

Like a fleet of bombers.

The bodies of these Bear Bees were densely covered with fur, each strand gleaming with a metallic luster, making them resemble flying hedgehogs.

Bear Bees have one major weakness: they rarely live in colonies, primarily leading solitary lives.

There are only three to five Bear Bees even in the occasional colony.

Yet this Insect Master managed to compensate for this weakness and released a swarm of five to six hundred Bear Bees, forming a large, impressive, and dark mass in the sky like a big flock of birds.

Their momentum was quite astonishing.

To consolidate Bear Bees into a colony is no easy task.

Moreover, these Bear Bees have clearly undergone multiple rounds of evolution and have some impressive mutations.

Their mandibles are like two iron pincers, as if they could easily tear through the hardest of shells.

And the long brown Poison Stinger at their tail end moved in and out, contracting and extending.

Just looking at it chilled one to the bone.

The grade of these Bear Bees was at least Grade Five, and that was a very conservative estimate.

If compared to the body size of the Corpse Bee generals and the Steel-winged Wild Bee, these Bear Bees were slightly larger. Their grade might not be Grade Five but Grade Six.

The thought of five to six hundred Grade Six Bear Bees was terrifying.

It seems that the Insect Masters of the Black Tiger Gang are not as weak as one might have imagined, with hidden dragons and crouching tigers among them.

Because their status is still not as high as Chairman Li’s.

Power is respected everywhere.

This also indirectly suggests their abilities as Insect Masters are weaker than Chairman Li’s.

The other, thinner Insect Master controlled a group of longicorn beetles.

Don’t be fooled by the fact that longicorn beetles are also from the order Coleoptera; they have two long antennae like the tails of wild roosters and a slender build that gives them quite a ‘general’ look.

In reality, longicorn beetles are among the weakest in the order Coleoptera.

Even the often-disrespected dung beetle or the smaller Seven-spot Ladybird can bully these big longicorn beetles.

Longicorn beetles are like the proverbial silver spearheads that are not actually usable.

Generally, nobody wants to raise longicorn beetles as Insect Pets.

After all, apart from personal preferences, practical use must be considered when raising insects.

Raising a bunch of useless waste Insect Pets that can’t beat anyone, how do you acquire cultivation resources? How do you make money? How do you gain a higher status?

These are very real issues.

If this guy is raising a whole bunch of longicorn beetles as Insect Pets and his head isn’t messed up, then these longicorn beetles must possess some special abilities.

Although longicorn beetles have poor fighting ability and can’t beat other Coleoptera insects, they are the bane of most trees.

Their larvae have a unique ability: boring.

Longicorn beetle larvae can bore into the heartwood of trees, then eat their way through.

Eventually, this leads to the trees becoming hollow and dying.

The death of trees in the forest is a far greater threat from longhorn beetles than other pests. Even the caterpillars, known for their strong reproductive abilities, can hardly rival them.

Caterpillars are the larvae of various butterflies or moths, and if the climate is suitable and food is abundant, their reproductive speed is remarkably fast.

But there has never been a report of caterpillars causing the mass death of trees in a forest.

At most, they nibble leaves to shreds, leaving bare branches exposed, and are dubbed the “barbers” of trees.

While caterpillars can hinder the growth of trees, from another perspective, they also contribute to the entire vegetation system of the forest. If trees are too dense, small saplings and low vegetation beneath them struggle to get sunlight. They will die or have a hard time thriving.

Yet, after caterpillars strip the leaves from the trees, sunlight and dew are able to reach the saplings below.

This effectively supports the rapid growth of saplings, giving them a chance to stand out.

There are many large trees in the forest, and the system is relatively fixed; it’s difficult for small trees to grow into large ones without special opportunities to compete with old trees.

Only when the old trees fall or die do they get a chance to mature.

This is quite similar to the saying “when a whale falls, teeming life arises” in the ocean.

To some extent, caterpillars promote the diversity of vegetation in forests.

Longhorn beetles are different from caterpillars; they might look pretty, but they’re called the demons of the forest.

According to incomplete statistics, longhorn beetles cause many times more tree deaths annually than forest fires do.

Did this Insect Master rear a large group of longhorn beetles specifically to destroy forest vegetation?

The two brothers simultaneously took control of their respective insect swarms and attacked.

There were over a thousand longhorn beetles and four to five hundred Bear Bees, all attacking the bee colony at the same time.

The brothers quickly suffered a major setback, their expressions no different from Master He Shan. Their Insect Pets had just made contact with the bee swarm and it was like they were automatically fed into a meat grinder.

Elder Wu Shanle’s Insect Formation was too formidable.

It could enhance the combat power of Insect Pets by ten times.

Qin Niu had recognized the potential of Insect Formations early on from Old Master Huang’s combat methods. Later, he allowed his Termite swarm to evolve in this aspect, developing mental attacks and charges for the ant swarm.

Subsequently, he also developed Insect Armor.

But compared to Wu Shanle’s bee formation, the ones he studied himself were practically garbage.

“Brother, let’s quickly retreat our insects, or they’re all going to die.”

After suffering a great loss, the thinner Insect Master called out to his brother in panic to withdraw their insects.

Even though the two brothers reacted swiftly, their insects suffered over fifty percent casualties in a very short time. Only now did they realize how formidable Elder Wu Shanle’s insects were.

That Qin Niu had been able to withstand Wu Shanle’s bee formation for so long was already impressive to the brothers.

“Master Qin Niu, if we really can’t hold on, let’s retreat first! Wu Shanle’s bee swarm is very tricky; we are no match for him.”

The brothers were forthright people, with courage even smaller than a mouse’s.

After taking a big loss, they immediately thought about fleeing.

When the sky falls, there will naturally be tall ones holding it up.

They had no intention of playing the part of the hero.

“Let me try again!”

Qin Niu still had plenty of tricks up his sleeve.

If it weren’t for Wu Shanle’s cultivation at the Spirit Qi Realm, Qin Niu might have already attacked Wu Shanle himself.

“Green-Head Summoning Bee, let’s see what you can do.”

Qin Niu was the grandmaster of bee play, and he had thought of a brilliant way to break the bee formation.

His Green-Head Summoning Bee had the ability to summon wild bees to fight, as long as their grade was no more than three levels below its own.

Wu Shanle’s bee swarm surely wasn’t comprised of wild bees.

But it was worth a try.

Qin Niu didn’t believe that Wu Shanle had signed a soul contract with every single bee. That was unrealistic.

If so, then he had a chance to break the enemy’s bee formation.

Once the Green-Head Summoning Bee came out, it didn’t dawdle.

It immediately launched its specialty skills—summoning and luring.

As it danced in the air, what had been an impregnable bee formation began to agitate. One by one, Poison Bees, drawn by the summoning and luring, flew towards the Green-Head Summoning Bee.

Naturally, the bee formation broke.

“Come back, come back to me!”

Elder Wu Shanle panicked and immediately took out a whistle and blew it.