The Insect Queen is basically the manufacturing machine of the Insect Horde. Other than her abilities to merge with the void and traverse it, her combat strength is pathetic.
So.
Once the Xuanhuang Pagoda pinned her down, she struggled symbolically for a moment, then seemed to resign herself.
Meanwhile, on the other side...
More than a hundred Fusion-realm demon cultivators all possessed the power to shatter the void.
After Ian Song pointed out the locations of the other seventeen Insect Queens hiding in the void, they split into seventeen teams of five or six each, then blinked over to those sections of void together.
Then, they all struck at once, directly shattering those pockets of void.
The seventeen Insect Queens hiding in those voids let out only a single sharp scream before being blasted into mangled chunks of flesh; in an instant, all seventeen Queens were dead.
The Insect Horde army, having lost the Queens' control, instantly fell into chaos. Some continued charging toward the city walls, but most scattered in all directions like headless flies.
On Ian Song's side...
He studied the Insect Queen for a moment, but the more he looked, the more disgusted he felt. He considered storing it in the Divine Temple for research, but the thought of bringing such a revolting lump of meat inside made him deeply uncomfortable. So, he simply slapped it to death.
On the city wall...
Seeing the insect army thrown into chaos, Victor Chao knew Ian Song must have succeeded in killing the Queen.
Just then...
A shadow flickered.
Ian Song appeared atop the wall.
“Young Master Chu, did it work?” Victor Chao asked impatiently.
“Yeah.”
Ian Song nodded.
Hearing this, Victor Chao was overjoyed. With a grand gesture, he commanded, “Full army advance! Hunt down the Insect Horde!”
Without the Queens' control, the scattered insects couldn't form any real fighting force, so the pursuit lasted a full two days.
Over three billion insects were killed.
More managed to escape.
Victor Chao didn’t mind; without Queen control, the escaped insects were no longer a real threat. In other words, humanity had won—and it was a resounding victory.
He got up and opened the courtyard gate, inviting Vivian Ouyang—still veiled in white gauze—inside.
But he knew the real reason for humanity’s easy victory: Ian Song was the greatest hero of this battle.
In the days that followed, Victor Chao let the soldiers rest for two days, then led the army to reclaim the lost cities and sweep the wilderness for stray insects.
Although these insects couldn’t harm the soldiers, they still posed a threat to civilians, so they had to be cleared out.
But this cleanup would likely take a long time.
One day...
Inside Victor Chao’s command tent at Blackrock City, Ian Song sat face-to-face with Victor.
He didn’t need to personally oversee the city recovery and insect cleanup; his generals could handle those details.
“Commander Victor, how much do you know about the Insect Horde?” Ian Song asked.
His mission was to exterminate the Horde, and the best way was to kill all the Insect Queens.
As long as the Queens died, no new insects could be bred, and most ordinary bugs only lived a month or two. Only evolved insects had longer lifespans.
So, if all the Queens were killed, within a year ninety percent of the Horde would die off. Then, cleaning up the high-tier insects should complete the mission.
But after hearing Victor Chao’s explanation, Ian Song realized things weren’t as simple as he’d thought.
It was true that the Insect Horde was bred by Queens.
But once a Queen died, the Horde could perform a ritual to the Insect God and create new Queens.
“So only by killing the Insect God can we truly exterminate the Horde?” Ian Song frowned.
Victor Chao nodded. Then, after a moment’s silence, he continued, “About two hundred years ago, humanity assembled nearly a hundred peak experts and invaded the Horde’s territory to slay the Insect God. More than twenty peak experts died, but the Insect God only suffered minor injuries.”
“What exactly are ‘peak experts’?” Ian Song asked curiously.
Victor Chao explained, “Peak experts are the strongest mortals below gods. In martial arts, after Sun‑Soul comes Law‑Phase, then Saint Sea, then Demigod. Demigod is the peak expert stage.”
“I see!” Ian Song nodded. “Humanity must have god-level experts too. Why don’t they just kill the Insect God?”
Victor Chao thought for a moment and replied, “Apparently the gods have agreements—they can’t attack each other at will, and human gods can’t intervene unless humanity faces true extinction.”
“So that’s how it is!”
Ian Song’s heart sank. The damn System had given him a quest to exterminate the Horde, but with the Insect God around, that mission seemed impossible.
If his guess was right, the Insect God had already surpassed an ordinary Human‑Immortal.
He himself wasn’t even at Human‑Immortal level. If he used all his trump cards, he could barely kill a standard Human‑Immortal, but the real problem was that the Horde had more than one Insect God. One was tough, two was dangerous.
If he ran into three, he’d have to run or hide.
After that, he chatted with Victor Chao about many things, learning secrets most people would never hear.
When Ian Song learned there were at least seven or eight Insect Gods, he wanted to curse the System.
Leaving Victor Chao’s tent, Ian Song returned to his private courtyard, brooding over how to complete this extermination mission.
First, he had to raise his own strength.
The best way was to push his Immortal‑Dao cultivation to the early Tribulation realm.
Once he reached early Tribulation, he’d have the power to kill an early Human‑Immortal.
Second, he needed to keep improving his martial cultivation.
This world’s martial arts were clearly stronger than those of the Immortal‑Dao world.
A regular Sun‑Soul here was equal to late Nascent‑Soul.
A peak Sun‑Soul matched the Fusion realm.
Law‑Phase martial artists were somewhere between late Fusion and mid‑Tribulation.
Saint Sea experts matched peak Tribulation realm.
Demigods were comparable to early Human‑Immortals.
In short, the martial world’s power structure was: Sun‑Soul, Law‑Phase, Saint Sea, Demigod.
He needed to reach peak Sun‑Soul as soon as possible, then Law‑Phase, then Saint Sea, then Demigod.
Once he hit Demigod, he’d be strong enough to face the Insect God.
But Demigod was still a mortal stage—he’d need to break through to Human‑Immortal, then Immortal realm, and beyond.
He also needed to improve his artifact mastery, especially with the Xuanhuang Pagoda.
The pagoda’s power was incredible—if he could fully refine it, even the Insect God might not be able to resist.
With these goals in mind, Ian Song began his closed‑door training.
He didn’t know how long it would take to reach Demigod, let alone Human‑Immortal.
But he was determined to keep going—after all, the System’s quest wasn’t optional.
No matter how hard it got, he would fight to the end.
—End of Chapter—