Gold Devouring Beetles
Han Li had kept his wondrous insects in several tens of concealed stone rooms of differing sizes. Fearful that they would escape, he had set up a small formation in each of them so that they wouldn’t break down the walls.
According to Han Li’s thoughts, as these wondrous bugs were young despite having high rankings, these ordinary restrictions should be enough to contain them. But now, his formations were no longer present and the stone doors were filled with hexagonal shaped holes.
Han Li was aghast and willed Crooked Soul to take a large step forward and open the nearest stone door, revealing a completely empty room devoid of life.
Han Li let out a light sigh. Although he had already prepared himself, he still felt rather depressed.
After sweeping his gaze over the room, he turned around to look at the stone door. Then he wordlessly walked out and squatted in front of the broken door.
The stone door was very strangely damaged, with small holes of similar sizes densely scattered across it. But what Han Li didn’t understand was why the holes were so rough, unlike the smooth cuts magic tools would produce.
Han Li wrinkled his brow and slowly stood up.
He slowly shut his eyes and swept his spiritual sense throughout the rest of the rooms. Having found that the others rooms were the same, Han LI felt quite a bit of heartache.
But suddenly, his face moved. He opened his eyes to reveal a cold glint and walked towards a different hidden room.
The room was also empty, but Han Li entered without any hesitation and crouched, picking up something from the limestone floor and placing it in his palm. He then brought it up to his eye and saw that is was a bean sized insect shell that twinkled with a silvery light. It was very beautiful and appeared to be entirely created out of silver. Han Li then touched the insect shell to find that its shell was extremely smooth and very hard.
After lowering his head in contemplation, he was certain that this wasn’t the insect shell of anything he was raising.
Han LI’s face grew solemn, and he narrowed his eyes.
From the center of this room, Han Li started to search every inch of his Immortal’s cave with his spiritual sense. Han Li was confident that he’d be able to find something.
After a moment, Han Li made a surprising discovery in his medicine garden. A sparkling silver sphere hung on the thick trunk of a flower tree, an undoubtedly recent addition to the Immortal’s cave.
Han Li called out to Crooked Soul and gloomily walked towards the medicine garden.
The silver sphere wasn’t very large and was only the size of the head of a small child. But its sparkling, bewitching silver light was extremely eye-catching.
Han Li stood at the medicine garden’s entrance and attentively stared at the silver sphere in silence. He felt that he had heard of this silver sphere before, but he couldn’t recall anything about it at the moment. Regardless, he was certain that this object was related to the silver insect shell he had previously found.
‘Insect shell!’ Han Li’s mind suddenly thought of something.
He hastily patted his storage pouch and a green jade slip appeared in his hand. This was the document of detailing the insect cultivation experiences of the Controlling Spirit cultivator that previously occupied Crooked Soul’s body.
After submerging his spiritual sense into it, Han Li immediately found that the description of a rank twelve insect seemed relevant.
“Gold Devouring Beetles, ranked twelve amongst the wondrous bugs. Travels in vicious swarms. It loves to eat other wondrous bugs and is adept at consuming the five metals1 and Heaven-Earth Spiritual Qi. They also cannot tolerate heat or cold. It is extremely vicious and tends to amass into a sphere. It tends to perch on spiritual trees. Jade and wood are capable of capturing it. Spider type wondrous bugs are capable of restraining it…”
After reading through the passage several times, he felt pleasant surprise and couldn’t help but take another look at the silver sphere.
Although there weren’t detailed instructions for raising this wondrous bug, he was completely sure he would’ve been willing to trade all those wondrous insects ranked lower than the Goldenback Demon Mantis for it.
According to what the jade slip said, the Gold Devouring Beetle was capable of eating through anything, apart from jade or wood. As such, seizing them is quite difficult, but Han Li fortunately had two Bloodjade spiders. Although they were ranked far lower than the Gold Devouring Beetles, they should still be able to restrain it. The jade slip had mentioned that newly hatched silver Gold Devourer Beetles are especially vulnerable to spider type magic beasts ranked at least high grade one, much like his own two spiders.
However, he first wanted to test whether this insect was as vicious as described in the jade slip.
Crooked Soul stepped forward in large steps and stood in front of him. Crooked Soul then emitted a blood-red light and opened his hand before suddenly flying over in a streak of red light. He ended up grabbing the sphere without any trouble, and it didn’t show any reaction in the slightest.
Han Li stroked his nose and felt slight disappointment. The Controlling Spirit Sect cultivator had bragged about this insect’s ferociousness, but why was it so slow?
After a moment of hesitation, Han Li had Crooked Soul test it using other methods.
With an ominous glint flashing from Crooked Soul’s eyes, he waved his hand and a green magic art struck the blood light surrounding the silver sphere. Suddenly, the blood light gradually turned purple and quickly combusted into an impressive devil fire.
The bewitching devilfire roasted the silver sphere. Eventually, the silver sphere appeared as if it were made from sand and started to break into specks of silver, producing a humming noise.
Han Li carefully looked at it and saw that the silver specks were soybean sized flying insects. Apart from sharp teeth that could be seen with the naked eye, they appeared exactly the same as a common beetle and didn’t seem noteworthy in the least.
Han Li was confused! Was this not the Gold Devouring Beetle? Could he have been mistaken?
But after looking at them for a moment more, Han Li was stunned.
Crooked Soul’s devilfire wasn’t burning the beetles at all. Not only were they unscathed, but incredulously, they were eating the devilfire at an extremely fast pace. In the blink of an eye, half of the violet flame had disappeared.
After recovering from his surprise, Han Li was wild with joy.
He instantly opened the leather bag at his waist and released his two Bloodjade spiders with a flash of light.
Without any hesitation, he gave the order to capture them alive.
The instance when the final flames of the devilfire were eaten away by the Gold Devouring Bugs, his two spiders shot out a shining white liquid from their mouths that turned into two three-meter-wide nets. They were much different than ordinary webs. Their extremely finely woven webs left gaps too small for the silver beetles to escape.
The Gold Devouring Beetles detected danger and immediately turned into silver arrows, fiercely attempting to shoot out of the web.
Pupu. The two spider webs firmly held against the assault from the silver arrows, turning the web into a ball and causing the Gold Devouring Beetles to grow frantic. After releasing a deafening screech, they started to tear at the spider webs with their teeth, intending to break free of the spider web and escape.
The two spiders gave me them no such opportunity and continued to spew out mouthfuls of white liquid. In the blink of an eye, the beetles were trapped in a huge ball of webs.
Han Li knew that the spider webs wouldn’t be able to trap the Gold Devouring Bugs for long, so he hastily took out a jade box and quickly jammed the ball of webs into it. Afterwards, he closed the box and placed it into his storage pouch.
Normally, demon beasts could only be contained in a specialized spirit beast pouch; otherwise, they would face suffocation from the lack of air in an ordinary storage pouch.
However, high ranking wondrous bugs were different as they had incomparable vitality and could survive in a storage pouch without air. Otherwise, that Controlling Spirit Sect cultivator definitely wouldn’t have carried so many of his insect larvae in his storage pouch.
Naturally, if he truly wished to use the beasts to fight, a specialized bag for spirit beasts would be best. Not only could he summon them easier, but it would also be more convenient to train them.
Most importantly, the specialized pouch was able to store demon beasts at a reduced size, where ordinary storage pouches while incapable of shrinking living things. Thus, even if it were a wondrous bug demon beast, they would still have to be stored in a spirit beast pouch if they were too large.
Having put away the jade box, Han Li swept his spiritual sense through his Immortal’s cave once more, fearful that he had missed something. Apart from discovering numerous dense, small holes in his storeroom, Han Li didn’t discover anything else.
Those small holes should’ve been marks left behind from when the Gold Devouring Beetles dug into his Immortal’s cave.
Since Han Li no longer dared to stay behind in this Immortal’s cave, he immediately left and soared off after retrieving his three magic formations.
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