Chapter 1121: The Unusual Xiagai
Huge boulders and world fragments formed a flood that threatened to swamp Sun Xiaowu.
"[Goldenscale Palm]!" Sun Xiaowu clenched his fists. His arms glowed with resplendent light, and a layer of dense golden scales emerged over his skin.
As Sun Xiaowu attacked, so too did the golden mecha.
The huge mecha's punch was even more striking than that from ten thousand of Sun Xiaowu's mecha clones striking simultaneously. It stopped the flood in one fell swoop.
"[Wheel of Time]!" Fang Yi's spear took on the aspects of time and age. Temporal winds buffeted the spear, and a mysterious light began to circle the spear like lightning.
A wheel of light appeared behind Fang Yi, taking on the form of a clock.
Countless insects flew out from Ghroth's body, a different species than the night devourers.
They were very small in size, comparable to pigeons. They had no eyes or face. Their segmented tendrils waved in accordance to some form of cosmic rhythm. Their ten legs were covered up by black, glowing tendrils, and the lower halves of their bodies folded up to reveal near-circular wings on which triangular scales grew.
The dense swarm of insects seemed to form a river amidst the void.
"What could these puny bugs do?" Fang Yi snorted disdainfully, spinning the spear in his hand as the effect of the wheels of time stacked up. He launched his spear, crackling with wind and lightning, with incredible force. It sent wind howling and lightning flashing through the sky.
He thrust his spear forward once more, so quickly it left hundreds of afterimages in all directions.
Sun Xiaowu invoked [Blinding Flash], summoning ten thousand clones to deal with the bugs. These clones weren't accompanied by individual mechas; these were the simplest clones he could conjure, made of golden light.
Sun Xiaowu's application of [Adamantine Aegis: Invincible Martial God] was yet somewhat unwieldy, and he couldn't conjure so many clones at that level. Otherwise, he would surely do so and combine them with [Blinding Flash: Echo of Origins] to augment the size of his golden mecha by another thousand times.
Although the golden mecha to his back was extremely strong, using it to deal with these small bugs was like trying to shoot down mosquitoes with a railgun. Indeed, the golden qilin he had previously summoned was no match for the numerous, swarming night devourers.
These bugs were so small as to be particularly annoying to deal with for the gigantic mecha.
After Sun Xiaowu summoned his clones, the miniature insects whirred and transformed in an instant.
The next moment, before Sun Xiaowu could react, the heads of the clones all exploded.
Fang Yi's eyes widened as he realized something and hurriedly fled.
Purple lightning crackled around Fang Yi's body and concentrated around his head. As he screamed in pain, he spat out charred black bugs from his mouth. Sun Xiaowu shivered upon seeing it.
Fang Yi grimaced as he explained, "These bugs can take over your brain."
"The Xiagai insectoids!" Wilbow, observing from afar, revealed the insects' name.
"The Xiagai?"
Yang Ze and Wilbow were trying to waste time and wheedle information from each other as they waited for an opportunity to strike each other. However, after having wasted so much time, they had lost all their motivation.
Wilbow explained, "As I've said, there are two species of insects that live within Ghroth's body. One are the night devourers, and the other are the Xiagai, bugs that can invade living entitites' brains."
"Brainworms?"
Yang Ze shuddered at the thought of the frightening parasites.
Wilbow replied, "You can understand it that way. The Xiagai, through some mechanism or another, are able to access the brains of living entities. Initially, those controlled by the xiagai won't feel any different—but soon enough, they'll start to feel as though their actions have slowed down, and they might even start doubting themselves. It'll be written off as ailing responsiveness at first, but once they realize what's actually going on, it'll be too late. Part of their body will be controlled by the Xiagai."
Yang Ze grew alarmed. "The Xiagai can control humans?"
Wilbow nodded. "Indeed so. The longer the Xiagai remain in the brain, the deeper their control. Your companion is skilled to be able to detect the Xiagai so quickly. Many of their opponents are controlled without even realizing it."
Yang Ze gasped. "Truly a walking disaster—no, perhaps even a disaster made flesh! To have such catastrophes lurking in its body..."
Yang Ze's homeworld, Mars, had once suffered from an insectoid invasion, and he knew very well just how frightening they were. If allowed to grow, they were a force that could destroy entire planets.
In fact, the Xiagai that lived on Ghroth's body were even more frightening than the insectoid invasion that the Milky Way had suffered.
The insectoid invasion in the Milky Way had been dangerous because the insects could devour, evolve, and quickly reproduce. Even more startlingly, they were able to absorb the racial characteristics of the enemies they defeated, causing them to become exponentially more dangerous as time passed.
On the other hand, the Xiagai were particularly dangerous. They could directly invade other species' brains, frequently even without the host's knowledge.
By the time they made their presence known, the host would already be controlled.
From a scientific perspective, Yang Ze believed that the Xiagai had a specific ability that allowed them to burrow into others' brains.
Their sudden disappearance and transformation might be attributed to control over space, or perhaps rapid miniaturization of their body into nanoscale dimensions, allowing them to enter their hosts' brains, feed on them, and then slowly replace their hosts' brain function.
Through this means, they would gradually take over their hosts' brains. By then, if they were forcibly expelled, their host would immediately die.
Yang Ze shuddered. Even from what little he knew of these bugs, they were frightening to deal with. However, Wilbow wasn't done.
The Xiagai were a defensive mechanism for Ghroth to prevent his own body from being taken over, and he rarely released them to the outside world.
It was clear that Ghroth was shaken by the strength of these hunters, and he had been forced to expose this trump card.
Wilbow continued, "Allegedly, the Xiagai are pets fostered by the king of chaos, and might be lifeforms that originally lived in the world of primordial chaos.
Subsequently, the king of chaos bequeathed a swarm of these insects to Ghroth as a gift, and they took over his body.
On the battlefield, Sun Xiaowu was quickly edging away from Ghroth. He didn't want to become a parasitic host, not at all.
"[Goldenscale Palm: Split]!" Golden radiance struck the land. Sun Xiaowu's palms brimmed with golden light as a dense layer of golden scales covered his skin. His aura suddenly shifted, and his right arm glowed with resplendent light.
Sun Xiaowu took a step forward, then punched with all his might, generating a dominating wave of genetic energy.
The golden mecha behind Sun Xiaowu emulated his action. His punch formed a golden hurricane, one that felt as though it could pierce through an entire planet. A huge group of Xiagai perished.
After recovering, Fang Yi also struck.
"[Tiger's Howl, Dragon's Bellow]!" Fang Yi's spear took on the aspect of a dragon of the winds and a storm tiger as he charged forward...
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