“Ugh—!”
Ella’s throat was seized.
Dieyi’s fingers clamped down precisely on her windpipe.
One of her fingernails extended into a long, thin blade that pierced into her neck.
Not deep.
Just deep enough to break the skin, just enough to press against her carotid artery.
She could feel the tip of that blade trembling slightly in time with her heartbeat.
With every pulse, the blade tapped gently against the vessel wall, as if reminding her that it could slice through at any moment.
Dieyi’s right hand gripped her throat, lifting Ella’s upper body off the floor.
Ella was forced to tilt her head back.
Her silver hair fell behind her, exposing her blood- and dust-stained face to the dim light of the ship cabin.
Her lips trembled under Dieyi’s gaze.
Those crimson pupils, identical to her own, were staring at her intently.
“Cancel the order.”
Dieyi’s voice was soft, as gentle as telling a disobedient child to “put down the toy.”
Her thumb pressed slightly harder, tilting Ella’s chin upward and exposing her throat even more, pressing the blade tighter against it.
“Or I’ll kill you right now.”
Her lips were almost touching the tip of Ella’s nose. Every word carried a warm breath that brushed across her face.
“Think carefully, Your Majesty Insect Mother.”
Her gaze slowly slid down from Ella’s face, across her blood-soaked silver hair, over the wounds the chains had dug into her wrists, across her waist that had become far more slender than before, and down to her half-kneeling legs wrapped in black stockings.
“You’re not in your old body anymore.”
Her thumb gently stroked Ella’s carotid artery, feeling the vessel throb beneath her fingertip.
“Right now, you…”
The corners of her lips curved upward.
“If you’re killed, you’ll really die.”
Those words made Ella suddenly realize something she had been subconsciously ignoring. Her body had changed—inside and out, from top to bottom, in every way.
She was no longer the Insect Mother who could run rampant within her nest. She was now just a powerless girl bound by chains…
A young girl who couldn’t even stand up.
Ella’s lips twitched.
Her eyes lingered on Dieyi’s face for a long time—long enough to count every tiny scale clinging to her eyelashes, long enough to see her own reflection in those crimson pupils: a disheveled, blood-stained, silver-haired girl twisted by fear.
Finally, she made a decision.
Her consciousness sank into the insect nest network.
Cancel the order.
All units, cease movement.
The moment the command was issued, she felt the high-speed moving signals in the network begin to slow down, stop, and hover in place—like a swarm of drones that had suddenly lost their signal source.
Then she raised her head and asked the question in a hoarse, blood-tinged voice:
“What exactly do you want?!”
Her voice cracked on the last word, breaking into sobs and gasps.
“Tell me!”
Her eyes were so red they looked like they would bleed. Tears welled up, but stubbornly refused to fall.
“Spare the insect nest!”
Dieyi looked at her.
For a very long time.
Then she smiled.
“Revenge. Revenge! I already told you!”
“Against you, this damn creator!”
She released her grip on Ella’s throat and instead seized the back of her head, forcing her to turn around.
“Now!”
Her fingers dug into Ella’s blood-matted silver hair and violently twisted her head in one direction.
“Watch carefully!”
At the same time, she used her other hand to open the window in the room.
Salty sea breeze rushed in, carrying an unsettling calm.
Only then did Ella realize she was inside a ship’s cabin.
Now, with the window open, everything became clear.
She could see the ship’s railing, the endless sea beyond it, the sunset reflected on the water, and below that sunset—the insect nest she could recognize at a glance.
Her insect nest.
The island she had spent ten years building with countless swarm secretions and every single day and night of her life now rested quietly on the sea, like a sleeping behemoth.
And around it…
In the air, on the ground, and even beneath the sea surface, hundreds—perhaps thousands—of combat insects stood motionless after losing their orders.
Nest Tyrants were pouring out from every corner of the nest.
Their six thick limbs crushed everything in their path.
Their five-meter-tall bodies cast huge shadows on the ground, and every step made the earth tremble.
Flying insects blotted out the sky.
Their wings reflected countless glinting points of light under the sunset, like a moving nebula.
Those beneath the sea—the ones specially cultivated for underwater combat—left white trails in the deep blue water, like countless accelerating torpedoes.
Then the world turned white.
An overwhelmingly blinding light erupted from the direction of the insect nest.
The light burst out from every corner, every corridor, every wall simultaneously, as if a sun had been stuffed inside the nest.
The light pierced the sea, pierced the sky, pierced Ella’s pupils, burning an eternal white onto her retinas.
Then came the shockwave.
A massive shockwave kicked up enormous waves. The waves did not roll in from the sea surface—they exploded outward in every direction from the center of the blast, like a flower of seawater and flames blooming at supersonic speed.
The ship began to rock violently.
Miscellaneous items inside the cabin clattered and fell everywhere.
The chains slammed against each other with harsh metallic clangs.
And only then…
Did the sound of the explosion reach them.
But to Ella, the sound no longer existed.
It wasn’t that she couldn’t hear it—her consciousness simply hadn’t allocated any attention to the “hearing” channel.
All her focus, every ounce of her soul, was submerged in the insect nest network.
If, in her perception, the insect nest network had once been a vast starry sky—with her as the brightest central star and every insect in her swarm a planet orbiting around her, some close, some far, some bright, some dim, but all present, all there, all twinkling at the edge of her consciousness—
Then now…
The starry sky had gone dark.
Those planets, those points of light, those existences she had lit up one by one over ten years…
All of them had vanished.
Not a single one remained.
For the first time in ten years, tears welled up in the corners of Ella’s eyes.
A tear slid down from her crimson eye, cutting through the bloodstains on her face, passing over the bruise on her cheekbone from the kick.
It lingered for a moment at the curve of her chin before falling.
Her hands, bound by chains, rose uncontrollably.
The metal rings dug even deeper into her wrists, and blood mixed with tears dripped down her fingertips.
She reached toward the window.
Toward the sea where her insect nest had once stood.
Toward the slowly rising mushroom cloud of flames and ashes.
Her fingers trembled in the air, as if trying to grasp something that had already disappeared forever.
Her lips moved a few times, but no sound came out.
Dieyi stood behind her, watching the outstretched hand, watching the tear sliding through the bloodstains, watching those crimson pupils that had lost all their light.
“How does it feel?”
Her voice floated down from above Ella’s head, soft as if asking someone who had just watched a grand fireworks display.
“Your Majesty?”