Honkai Impact: Starting from Wandering with Kiana

"Holy crap, you haven't really mutated, have you?!"

Chapter 269 has some intelligence, but not much.

"What time is it? Why can't you be serious?"

Seele rolled her eyes, then grabbed the slime from the insects on the ground and smeared it all over Jiuxiao's body.

"These insects probably distinguish their companions by smell or these liquid mediums, which is why they didn't attack me."

"It can be like this... but this slime is really disgusting."

"Just go back and wash up... wait, why are they still attacking you?"

Although Seele also coated Nine Heavens with slime, the insects did not stop attacking as they had done to her and Bronya.

"Uh, maybe there are still their queen insects under me..."

Jiuxiao stood up, revealing the little queen insect beneath the adult version of the queen insect corpse that he had been pressing down on.

The little insect queen roared angrily at Jiuxiao, but perhaps because it had evolved towards intelligence, its physical strength and power were far less than one-tenth of the previous insect queen. Jiuxiao easily lifted it up by the back of its neck with one hand.

Perhaps due to the effect of the slime, even though the Queen of Insects witnessed Seele applying the slime, her gaze towards Nine Heavens gradually lost its fierceness and instead showed a hint of maternal love.

The queen's change in attitude also affected the smaller insects. They gradually stopped attacking and slowly hovered around Jiuxiao and the queen.

"Buzz—" (My children, why have you betrayed me...)

The little queen insect stretched out her short arms and hugged Jiuxiao's hands, her face showing a mixture of reluctance and other emotions.

Seele didn't attack it, so it still considered Seele its "good child." Meanwhile, the rebellious Nine Heavens beat and scolded it, but the Queen of Insects, overflowing with maternal instinct, couldn't bring herself to be angry with her own child.

"A pitiful species... Even if they possess a certain level of intelligence, once their senses are clouded, they are still influenced by instinct even when they see things with their own eyes."

Jiuxiao sighed helplessly. How long has it been... One second they were mortal enemies, the next they were radiating maternal warmth...

"Seele, where are Bronya and the others? Prepare to evacuate. Once you're all gone, I'll destroy this castle."

"Because of the previous riot of insect eggs, their way out was blocked by the insects, so they are looking in the pit for other ways."

"I'll just fly them up here."

"Ah."

With one hand holding the Queen of Insects who kept calling out softly in hopes of calling back her child, Jiu Xiao and Xi'er walked together toward the deep pit where they had fallen earlier.

The insects surrounded the two, even forming a staircase with their bodies to lead underground for them to walk on. Some insects even piled up to serve as handrails for Seele and Jiuxiao.

"I never thought insects could be used like this... Did you control this? That's amazing." Seele pressed her hand on the insect-shaped armrest in surprise. It was soft and smooth, and felt quite nice to the touch.

(The game's text describes these bugs as disgusting, but in the game and during the boss battle with the bug queen, these little bugs are actually cute monster loli girls.)

"Did you do this? You have such wisdom..."

"Buzz—" (Yes, this is all information that our companions obtained by devouring the minds of humans. It was originally prepared with great care for that person, but that person has never even given us a second glance...)

"Buzz—buzz—!" (Children, you two are very intelligent, can you please stop rebelling... If you are willing to come back, I can give you the position of the King Insect. If it is you, the clan will definitely be even stronger!)

"Ah, this..." "This too..."

Jiuxiao and Xier were both astonished by the Queen's words. "Are you kidding me? We were just covered in your insect's fluid, and you mistook us for your own kind, but now you're going to abdicate in favor of us..."

However, compared to the position of the Queen of Insects, Jiu Xiao was more concerned about who the "master" the Queen of Insects mentioned was. Was there an even more terrifying existence in this area?

"Who is the lord you mentioned?" Jiuxiao asked the Insect Queen.

"Buzz—" (That person is indeed that person!)

The queen blinked. How could her child be so stupid as not to know who that person was? Shouldn't that be etched into every gene in every cell?

But the next moment, the queen's body suddenly convulsed, and she was so weak that she could barely open her eyes.

"Buzz...?" (Something is attacking the core... Go protect it...?)

Before the queen could finish speaking, she lost all signs of life and fell to the ground like a limp rag, her limbs hanging limply by gravity.

The insects that followed them also instantly ceased all activity and died en masse.

The ladder built by the insects collapsed instantly, and the dead insect corpses fell from the sky like a shower of flowers.

The pits that the insects had dug to place their eggs have now become their mass graves.

Jiuxiao caught Xier as she fell, and the two landed gently on the ground.

"What happened? Is this a chain reaction? Has their control center—the real King Insect—died?"

Seele was a little uncertain. According to the previous information, shouldn't the Queen exist as long as there are eggs? What was going on with this mass death?

“If there is no one else in the castle, then it must be Penglai Temple Jiuxiao and Bronya who did something.”

Jiuxiao put the dead queen insect into his backpack. This was probably the last queen insect. Giving it to Iselin should allow them to study a lot of things.

--------------

A few minutes ago, below the nest.

Due to the lack of power and facilities, only Xier among Jiuxiao's group was equipped with a flashlight.

With no light source and natural light blocked by the insect eggs overhead, Bronya and Penglai Temple Jiuxiao stood back to back in this pitch-black cave, cautiously following the insects as they explored underground.

Gradually, the two noticed that the insects' movements were somewhat strange. The insects' route was a round trip, but the insects that left were different from those that returned. Both their size and the number of those going back and forth were very unusual.

"Bronya, do you see that? There's a bright spot over there; it might be the exit."

Jiuxiao pointed to the depths of the cave, from which a dim light emanated. Although not very bright, it was particularly conspicuous in the darkness.

"A light in the darkness can sometimes be a trap, not just an exit. Stay alert, and if anything seems amiss, open fire immediately."

Bronya raised her spear, loaded a bullet, and began to accumulate Honkai energy.

Seeing Bronya's serious and prepared demeanor, Penglai Temple Nine Heavens inwardly berated himself, realizing he had been too lax and had much to learn.

Chapter 270 The Queen on the Throne

When the two got closer, they realized that the light source emitting light in the darkness was neither an exit nor a trap.

Instead, it is a crystal, and the light is simply the light emitted by the overflowing Honkai energy as the crystal continuously absorbs Honkai energy.

The insects that come from the hole approach and merge into the crystal. After three or four merge in, a larger insect will emerge from the crystal.

After these larger insects leave, they will find a place in the nest to settle down, then secrete mucus to wrap themselves up and become a new egg.

Having witnessed all this, the two immediately understood that the insect eggs were actually candidate queens waiting to hatch. Once the old queen dies, one of the eggs will hatch into a new queen.

"It seems that this crystal is the real Queen Insect. As long as we destroy it, there will be no new Queen Insect."

Bronya cocked her gun and aimed it at the crystal. "Attack the crystal might render our slime ineffective, making us vulnerable to a swarm of insects."

They said the slime was still working, so they would unleash their strongest attack together, hoping to shatter the crystal completely in one strike.

"Ah."

The hardness of a crystal is strongly correlated with its distance from the queen; the closer it is to the queen, the harder it is. Since the queen is not currently nearby, this means…

boom--

Under the simultaneous fire of the arrows from Penglai Temple's Nine Heavens and Bronya, the crystal shattered like a boulder hitting glass.

After the crystal exploded, all the insects suddenly stopped moving, and then the broken patterns on their bodies lost their light, and their lives vanished.

"Tsk, I never expected that the real King Insect was actually a hidden crystal... Is even the Queen Insect just its guard?"

Penglai Temple's Jiuxiao picked up a few scattered crystals, intending to take them back to the base for research. Perhaps Iselin could even process them into weapons or ornaments.

"It was just a lucky accident. If we hadn't entered the insect hive and hadn't been smeared with this liquid and mistaken for one of our own, we might have been attacked by a large number of insects outside."

"Let's go once we've collected them all. We'll send someone back later to retrieve the insects. Now, let's meet up with Jiuxiao and the others."

"OK."

Even after losing the crystal, the Queen can survive for a period of time and is fully capable of reconstructing a complete crystal.

Unfortunately, the little queen insect in Jiuxiao's hands was not a normally born queen insect; all her nutrients came from the old queen insect that gave birth to her. Therefore, the little queen insect died the moment Bronya and the others destroyed the crystal.

After meeting with Jiuxiao of Penglai Temple, the four of them held hands and were carried out of the insect nest pit by Jiuxiao.

But on that Houmu throne, an unexpected person was waiting for them.

The Thunder Queen—Raiden Mei—at this moment, like a proud queen, sat on her throne, looking down at the rebellious subjects, including Jiuxiao.

"Mei...?" Jiuxiao looked at the most familiar stranger in front of him and called out softly.

"Mei-neechan? Is that Mei-neechan?!" The moment Bronya saw Mei, she completely lost control of her emotions and wanted to rush to her side to take a good look at her.

But Seele held Bronya back tightly, preventing her from rushing forward. From any angle, Mei was now in grave danger.

Faced with the shouts of the group, Mei only glanced at Jiuxiao, a hint of doubt appearing in her eyes, but she quickly turned her gaze to Penglai Temple Jiuxiao.

“Hōrai-ji Kyuhō… I told you… if you don’t leave… I will kill you.”

Huh? Wasn't that a dream...?