"Egg Pancake, can you keep Mimicry active continuously?"

Han Ning said in a low voice, lying on Egg Pancake’s warm back.

CHIRP...

Egg Pancake shook its head, indicating that it didn’t know how long it could maintain the ability.

"I see... Well, keep it active for now. Let me know when your Spiritual Energy drops below half."

CHIRP!

Egg Pancake nodded.

...

After following the markers left by the other students for about half an hour, Egg Pancake slowly came to a halt.

Its body materialized out of thin air, inch by inch.

"Chirp~"

Egg Pancake turned its head.

"Mm, I get it. About half an hour to use half its Spiritual Energy, so roughly an hour to deplete it completely. That’s a pretty long duration."

The current Mimicry was only at Level I Skill Level. Once Egg Pancake got a bit stronger, it might be able to maintain Mimicry around the clock. ’That would be incredible.’

"Now that the test is done, let’s head back..."

Han Ning scanned the ground around them. He didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, which meant the students exploring to the south had reached this point without any major incidents.

Just as he was about to signal Egg Pancake to turn back,

his eyelid twitched suddenly.

At the edge of his vision, he saw several figures running frantically toward them.

Emerald green bodies, two arm-like vines...

It was several Silver Lotus Woods, sprinting at full speed.

Each Silver Lotus Wood had a person tied to its vines.

"It’s He Yang and the others! Egg Pancake, go!"

"CHIRP!"

Egg Pancake dropped the Demon Eye Frog’s corpse, kicked off with all four legs, and shot toward the Silver Lotus Woods with a WHOOSH.

The distance between them closed rapidly.

On the other side, He Yang, who was wrapped securely in the vines of a Silver Lotus Wood, immediately signaled his own Soul Beast to stop after spotting Han Ning on Egg Pancake’s back. "Huh? It’s Han Ning! Everyone, stop for a moment."

"Teacher Zheng, Ah Yang, what happened?"

As the distance between them closed to ten meters, Han Ning looked at the five people ahead. They were unharmed and seemed to be in relatively good spirits. Then he looked behind them and saw nothing, leaving him baffled.

’No Soul Beasts are chasing them, and no one is injured, so why does everyone look so anxious?’

Teacher Zheng was a woman approaching thirty, a teacher specializing in bio-engineering.

She was also one of the few female teachers at the academy who frequently led teams into the field.

Teacher Zheng and the other four jumped down from the Silver Lotus Woods’ vines and walked over to Han Ning.

Han Ning studied their anxious, weary expressions, his confusion growing.

"Teacher Zheng, please, tell me what’s going on."

"Okay." Teacher Zheng nodded and spoke in a rush. "Over two hundred kilometers south of here, we ran into two injured Insect-men. Their appearance was very different from the one that attacked our dorms."

"Oh?" Han Ning was surprised.

"And they weren’t particularly aggressive toward us. In fact, one of them, a female-looking Insect-man, even helped us fend off a swarm of insects that attacked us."

"But right now, they’re under attack by another, extremely aggressive group of Insect-men. Their leader is incredibly powerful."

At this, Teacher Zheng glanced at Yin Yi beside Han Ning and exclaimed, "Even more powerful than your Yin Yi!"

"It can summon three terrifying giant insects, each nearly twenty meters tall. The destructive force of every one of them is at least comparable to a missile. A single casual strike can blast a crater more than ten meters deep into the ground."

"Could it be an Insect Master?!" Han Ning’s expression turned grim upon hearing Teacher Zheng’s description. "If it’s that strong, how did you all manage to escape?"

"Insect Master? That’s a fitting name. And the Insect Master’s appearance is even more human-like."

Teacher Zheng swallowed hard.

"The Insect-man protecting us seems to be an Insect Master as well. It’s also very powerful, but because it was already injured, it was no match for the other group. We figured, since those two Insect-men saved our lives, we couldn’t just be ungrateful. So we decided to come back and see if we could all figure out a way to rescue them."

’A casual strike that can blast a crater more than ten meters deep...’

Han Ning recalled testing Yin Yi’s Soul Techniques yesterday. Its most powerful attack, Cyan Wood Radiance, had only managed to dig a pit 1.5 meters deep...

The difference in power between them was clearly immense.

"You’ve been away from the academy for almost three days, so you probably don’t know that a lot has happened."

Han Ning briefly told them about the recent battle with the insect swarm.

"We’ve already made an enemy of one Insect Tribe, so it’s not wise to make enemies with another."

’From the sounds of it, there are still Insect-men who are friendly toward humans. It wouldn’t be a bad thing to build an alliance with some of them.’ With this in mind, he continued,

"However... I can go with you to take a look. We can see if there’s a chance to rescue them."

"Everyone was injured... Yue Ming and Zou Yu are on the verge of death, and so many Silver Lotus Woods were killed?" Upon hearing this, the expressions on Teacher Zheng’s group turned grim. She let out a long sigh and said, "I suppose this is the only way."

"Yin Yi, carry them all. Teacher Zheng, you give the directions."

There wasn’t enough room for everyone on Egg Pancake’s back, so the only option was to have Yin Yi carry them with its vines. That would be the fastest way.

"How long has it been since the fighting started?"

"It’s been several hours. I don’t know if they’re still alive," Teacher Zheng said with a bitter smile.

"Several hours..."

Han Ning had a strange expression.

’It’s probably way too late.’

Yin Yi and Egg Pancake moved with incredible speed.

Following Teacher Zheng’s directions, about an hour later,

a magnificent, cyan-colored grassland appeared before Han Ning’s eyes.

Unlike the Blood-colored Grassland, the color of the grass here seemed much more normal. Still, cyan... was still a bit strange.

The moment they entered the grassland, Han Ning’s Spiritual Power flared.

He felt a terrifying pressure radiating from ahead.

The Spiritual Particles in the air seemed to have become extremely turbulent, as if a powerful energy source was wildly erupting with Spiritual Energy.

BOOM!

A surging, circular shockwave spread out from the distance, rolling toward them.

In the blink of an eye, the three-meter-tall cyan grass ahead was flattened.

"Such a powerful Spiritual Energy fluctuation. There’s a huge battle going on up ahead. Looks like we’re not too late after all."

Han Ning’s expression was grave. He signaled Egg Pancake to enter Mimicry again and had Yin Yi surround it as they cautiously advanced toward the source of the Spiritual Energy eruption.

After traveling another ten-odd kilometers,

ahead, a dense carpet of insect carcasses stretched as far as the eye could see.

The foul-smelling, greenish insect blood stained the dark earth a grotesque color.

Within the white mist in the sky, a thirty-meter-long behemoth was letting out a high-pitched shriek.

Closer to them was a creature covered in cyan scales. Its head and body were long and serpentine, with four thick insectoid limbs and a row of sharp spikes running down its back.

Its head was triangular, and its eyes, like fine jade, burned with a brilliant cyan light. It had a high-bridged nose, a mouth open to reveal sharp teeth, and two slender feelers dangling from its lower jaw.

Four large, rounded wing membranes grew from its sides.

"ROAR!!"

Surging cyan particles swirled around it. With each swing of its claws, violent cyan shockwaves erupted, their aftershocks carving deep trenches into the grassland below.

"Is that... an insect... or a... dragon?!" Han Ning’s pupils contracted.