Chapter 251: Chapter 251: The Stone Statue

After the bugs had devoured all the corpses, the Blood-Face Bug abruptly took flight with a flutter of its wings.

Lin Shen originally thought it was about to leave the area, but to his surprise, it only hovered in the air while the other bugs followed suit, each speeding toward the Blood-Face Bug.

“What does this mean? Are they fighting amongst themselves after eating? Are they not satisfied and turning to cannibalism?” Lin Shen was astonished within.

What shocked him even more was that, upon colliding with the Blood-Face Bug, the black bugs actually merged with it.

Lin Shen couldn’t describe what he was seeing; it was as if the two bugs were overlapping each other.

One by one, the bugs crashed into the Blood-Face Bug, continually merging together in a bizarre and magical sight.

In no time at all, the myriad of bugs had disappeared, leaving only a single Blood-Face Bug behind.

The Blood-Face Bug fluttered its wings, wobbling in the direction it chose to fly.

“What exactly is going on? Were those black bugs, clones created by the Blood-Face Bug? Can the Blood-Face Bug create shadow clones? But that can’t be right; clones are illusions with no physical form, so how could they consume the bodies of the Green Crystal Warriors? And all those bodies, if they were devoured by clones conjured by a single bug, how does it digest them?” Lin Shen was full of question marks.

After some thought, Lin Shen quietly followed the Blood-Face Bug, wanting to find out where its lair was so that he could deal with it another time.

The Blood-Face Bug flew ahead in a shaky manner, while Lin Shen discreetly followed from a distance, careful not to get too close, for fear of being discovered.

A Crystal-based Creature capable of creating tens of thousands of clones was more frightening than some Ascended Creatures.

Fortunately, the Blood-Face pattern on the bug’s back was always glowing, which made it easy to track from a distance and ensured he wouldn’t lose sight of it.

At this point, Lin Shen was only worried that the Blood-Face Bug’s lair was too far away. If an hour passed and it hadn’t returned to its lair, that would be quite frustrating.

Thankfully, that didn’t happen. About ten minutes before the countdown ended, the Blood-Face Bug landed somewhere and vanished in the blink of an eye.

Lin Shen approached cautiously and was surprised to discover that where the Blood-Face Bug had disappeared stood a human-shaped stone statue.

To call it human-shaped was a stretch—it resembled a child’s snowman, with just a head and a body, and no limbs at all.

If you didn’t look closely, you might mistake it for a long column of stone.

It was considered a statue because it definitely had facial features, clearly not formed naturally.

Lin Shen didn’t dare to get too close and simply observed the stone statue from afar—standing only two meters tall with wildly exaggerated features.

The place where the Blood-Face Bug disappeared must be the location of the stone statue.

But Lin Shen watched for a while and still couldn’t spot where the Blood-Face Bug was.

After looking more carefully for some time, Lin Shen had a rough idea of where the Blood-Face Bug might have gone.

The stone statue’s ears indeed had holes, and Lin Shen speculated that the Blood-Face Bug must have crawled into one of these ear holes.

“How is there a stone statue here, and why would the Blood-Face Bug consider it its lair? Could it be that someone has been raising this Blood-Face Bug here deliberately…” Lin Shen was filled with speculation.

As these thoughts crossed his mind, he suddenly heard human voices and the sound of hooves not far away.

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Lin Shen quickly spotted a troop heading their way – at first glance, he thought they were from the Ultra-Burning Corps because they were all mounted on great black oxen, wearing Ultraburn Helmets and Battle Clothes.

Upon closer inspection, something seemed off – they should be Mutators, significantly smaller in stature compared to the Ultra-Burn Tribe, and without any horns on their heads.

Lin Shen was also wearing Battle Clothes and an Ultraburn Helmet – but his were red and of a higher grade than those of the people approaching.

Just as he puzzled over who these people might be, he heard their conversation.

As soon as he heard their voices, Lin Shen immediately recognized who they were.

“How did they end up here?” Lin Shen was surprised; he was very familiar with these people, they were from the Dark Bird Base associated with the Qi Family and the Wang Family.

The two leading figures were, without doubt, Qi Shuheng and Wang Tian’er.

“The Goddess Consort was just taken back to the Bai Family; she probably wouldn’t have gone to the Dark Bird Base, would she? Without the Dark Bird controlled by Bai Shenfei, how did they find their way to Gourd Mountain?” After pondering briefly, Lin Shen considered a possibility.

It was very likely that Qi Shuheng and Wang Tian’er had not left after following Goddess Consort last time and had remained hunting on Realm King Planet.

It seemed that they had quite a successful haul, managing to acquire so many Ultraburn Helmets, Battle Clothes, and beast mounts.

Lin Shen estimated that Qi Shuheng and Wang Tian’er may have advanced to Crystal Base level by now; otherwise, just with their own skills, they would be no match for ordinary soldiers of the Ultra-Burning Corps.

“What a terrible place this is; we’ve been running through this desert forever and still can’t find a way out. We haven’t even seen the shadow of a Base Variant Creature. Just our bad luck,” complained Wang Tian’er, whose voice Lin Shen could hear from afar.

“I’ve seen Zuo Qinglong and others have been through a desert like this before, but they had a Frost Giant Tree in their area. Here, there’s nothing at all. It’s hard to tell if it’s the same desert,” Qi Shuheng’s voice also carried over.

Lin Shen found their conversation rather strange.

This area should be swarming with Crystal Base Warriors, yet from what they said, they hadn’t encountered a single one on their way here, which was curious.

“Could it be that after the Six Paths Phoenix killed so many Crystal Base Warriors last time, it scared the others away from this region?” Lin Shen thought it unlikely.

But if that wasn’t the reason, why had Wang Tian’er and his group not encountered any Crystal Base Warriors?

It might be explainable for Mutated Humans to be scarce, but Green Crystal Warriors were supposed to be everywhere. The fact that they hadn’t seen even one was highly unreasonable.

“Could it be because of the Blood-Face Bug?” Lin Shen thought of a possibility and felt a chill in his heart.

If it was indeed because of that Blood-Face Bug that so many Crystal Base Warriors had vanished, then the bug was perhaps even more horrific than he had imagined.

As for Wang Tian’er, Qi Shuheng, and their company – it was hard to say whether they were extremely lucky or unlucky, but they had quite coincidentally headed towards the location of the statue.

“There’s a statue over there…” Qi Shuheng and the others had spotted the statue.

They were quite cautious, studying it from a distance for a while before sending over their pets to scout.

After discovering nothing out of the ordinary, they assumed it was safe near the statue and prepared to venture over to see what it was exactly.

Aside from the Realm King Tower, there were hardly any man-made objects on Realm King Planet – a sudden statue aroused their curiosity naturally; it might be something valuable.

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