From Joy of Life, the Tian Gang is reversed

Chapter 467 The Swarm's Dream, I Am the Swarm

Grek Arkin, a typical American nerd, is obsessed with insects. Like Clark, he has secretly loved Lana for many years but dared not take action, only able to secretly watch her to gain psychological satisfaction. Until three days ago, due to an accident while driving, the insects he cultivated with kryptonite escaped, granting him superhuman strength.

He became more confident.

However, this confidence, built on power, was interrupted by the appearance of the Heavenly Eye Society before it could be fully expressed.

As an insect-type contaminant with extremely keen senses, he felt the watchful eye of the Sky Eye Society, forcing him to keep a low profile and significantly reduce the scope of his original plans. Today, having been keeping an eye on Lana, he followed her gaze to the Fordman residence and saw the Sky Eye Society there as well. Initially, he was somewhat pleased, but as the Sky Eye Society departed, he grew disappointed…

He had originally planned to follow Lana, just like he had come, but he hadn't expected that Lana wouldn't go back. Not only that, but she also let him eavesdrop all night...

Whitney is so amazing...

No, why would I think about something like this?

Jealousy can drive people to madness, let alone someone who was already mad.

Although he and Lana hadn't exchanged many words, there was still a strong sense of NTR (Netorare, a sexual relationship between a man and a woman), and it was a case of being fully conscious in front of her husband...

If he weren't intimidated by the Sky Eye Society, he probably would have rushed up and killed Whitney long ago!
Fuming with rage, he returned home and tossed and turned, unable to sleep. It wasn't until dawn that he finally fell into a deep sleep, still seething with jealousy. Then, he felt himself sinking.

Not in water, but in some kind of viscous, warm, living substance exuding a putrid, sweet stench. The familiar bedroom was no longer all around, but an endless, pulsating, dark red fungal carpet. The carpet's surface was covered in slippery slime and slightly opening and closing structures like tiny breathing pores. Each pulsation was accompanied by a low, overlapping hum, like the resonant hum of millions of insects flapping their wings, striking directly into the depths of the soul, bringing an indescribable sense of oppression.

Air, yes, it's air.

He was filled with intense emotions, unaware that these were actually pheromones.

Of course, as an insect enthusiast, he knew what pheromones were, but as a pure human, he couldn't sense them before.

Now, he feels it.

The pungent, irritating scent of greed, hunger, and primal evolutionary desire was strangely alluring, making Grek instinctively want to inhale more, as if it were the elixir of life.

There was no starry sky overhead, only a constantly writhing biomass dome flowing with dark green and deep purple phosphorescence, like the huge, living lining of a cavity. Occasionally, viscous droplets would fall, corroding small, hissing pits on the fungal carpet.

“Where…where is this?!” Grek’s consciousness screamed, but no sound came out of his throat, as if it were entangled and blocked by the tentacles of the fungal carpet. He tried to struggle, but found himself firmly fixed to the ground by countless tough, cold biomass hyphae with tiny barbs, like a larva waiting to be cocooned.

In my ears, the chaotic chirping and murmuring of insects seemed to carry some kind of power, or more accurately, some kind of knowledge…

A massive, cold, inhuman flow of information—

Gene splicing, biomass conversion, insect nest network construction, unit specialization, and how to use kryptonite radiation as a catalyst and energy source to accelerate and stabilize this unnatural evolutionary process—the core formula!

This knowledge, like a living virus, was forcibly injected into Grek's consciousness, leaving an indelible mark on his mental world. He felt as if his head was about to explode, with countless hissing insect shadows, twisted gene chains, and cold mathematical formulas colliding and recombining wildly in his mind.

I don't know how much time passed, but the surrounding scenery began to change drastically.

The fungal carpet began to boil, and countless translucent, wriggling biovesicles swelled and burst from beneath it, releasing a misty vapor that emitted a kryptonite-green light.

In the mist, Greck opened his eyes and saw countless familiar Smallville insects—beetles, crickets, ants, moths—their forms undergoing terrifying and violent mutations!

In the green mist, the beetle's exoskeleton softens and reassembles, covered with ferocious bony spikes and an exoskeleton that gleams with a metallic sheen; the cricket's jumping legs mutate into sharp sickles; the ant's body expands wildly, its mouthparts split open, revealing serrated fangs; the moth's wings dissolve, regenerating membranous wings covered with blood vessels... They tear at each other, devour each other, and merge, driven by a violent evolutionary instinct, following some unnatural, optimized blueprint for killing and survival.

“Not enough, not enough, far from enough…” he murmured softly, a chilling light flashing in his eyes. “Smolwell’s insects, they have long been contaminated by Kryptonian debris, their genes are in an unstable state, they are excellent primitive templates, but there are not enough species. I need more samples, more populations, more evolutionary templates…!”

"I am the swarm...!!"

Startled, Grek sat bolt upright, drenched in cold sweat. His heart pounded in his chest, almost bursting out of its grip. He gasped for breath, his fingers digging deep into the hard wood of the bed frame.

"I am the swarm!!"

Before him was no longer his own bedroom, but... a crimson carpet of fungi, writhing and churning, emitting a faint glow of kryptonite, and countless pairs of cold, compound-eye-like eyes staring from it.

He lowered his head and opened his slightly trembling palm. He seemed to see a faint, eerie, fleeting dark green fluorescence lingering in his palm.

An indescribable impulse, a mixture of fear, ecstasy, and a sense of belonging to some great power, coiled around his heart like vines.

He abruptly turned his head to look out the window, where the chirping of insects filled the air. But now, the sounds no longer sounded like nature's symphony; instead, they became…

The cries of hunger, the prelude to evolution.

"I am the swarm!"

He murmured softly, got out of bed, and looked at the bedroom, which was covered in cobwebs and in complete disarray. The human side of his eyes completely disappeared.

His gaze swept across the bedroom, where the insect jars looked mysterious and eerie under the eerie green light of Krypton.

He walked up to one of the transparent glass tanks, reached out and grabbed a red-bellied tarantula...

"Let's start with you!"

The tarantula, which was about two centimeters long, struggled at first, but became docile in less than a second.

He took a ball of kryptonite emitting a rich green light, crushed it, and the green crystal-like kryptonite powder exploded, covering his entire hand.

“Fusion…evolution…” Grek muttered incoherently, his eyes burning with fervor, as he gently touched the tarantula with his hand, which was covered in kryptonite powder.

The mutation has begun!

The tarantula's body began to convulse and swell violently!

Its body begins to soften and stretch, and then, under the strong catalysis of kryptonite radiation energy, it hardens and proliferates again at a speed visible to the naked eye!
The new carapace was a dark, murky green, its surface covered with irregular, sharp bone spikes that looked like cooled lava, gleaming with a cold, metallic sheen in the dim light. Its eight originally robust legs had become even longer and more menacing, their joints covered with thick bone plates, and their ends evolved into razor-sharp, gleaming claws that could easily leave deep scratches on concrete.

Three minutes later, looking at the fully evolved tarantula in his palm, Greck smiled cruelly. He bent down and placed the tarantula, which had swelled to the size of an adult's fist, on the ground. "Go, go to the Fordman's house, and tear that guy to pieces!"

He didn't need complicated instructions. Through the biomass slime that had seeped into his blood and the rudimentary spiritual link granted by the will of the swarm, a thought filled with hatred and a killing command was transmitted directly to the newly reborn tarantula like an invisible thread: "The swarm needs a suitable mother!"

(End of this chapter)