When Hexia and her team were exploring the ruins, emergency bells echoed through Shilin Mountain Castle dozens of kilometers away.

From the snowy cliffs atop the mountain castle, to the fortress built along the slopes below, and to the bustling city area, the bells spread like wildfire. Countless people stopped their work and rest, uneasily stepping out of their houses and onto the streets.

Climbing the towering stone tower within the castle and overlooking the distant woods and mountains, a black 'fog' continuously drifts and gathers. As it climbs the peaks along the slopes, it descends with a massive distant humming sound, its numbers overwhelming, covering the green forests and grasslands of the mountains with a layer of 'black veil'. If these black dots gather, it forms a dense black wall, blocking out the sunlight and obscuring vision.

'Buzz buzz buzz—'

That is the sound of insects vibrating their wings. They gather like the demons in legendary tales, forming dense arrays like quicksand, rushing toward any living creature visible in the mountains.

As the dense black dots sweep past, horses on the roadside are gnawed to skeletons within a minute. Pedestrians along the way flee in terror, but are quickly caught up. The insects burrow into ears, nostrils, and collars, terrifying screams and wails echo across the mountains, the shrill sounds making the guards on the city walls tremble.

This was not yet the end. As the black dots swept across the earth like a curtain, they gradually converged towards the living creatures at Shilin Mountain Castle, the humming sound of vibrating wings growing ever louder.

Signal fires and smoke were urgently lit throughout the city, the roads resounded with panicked footsteps and the shouts of the guards.

"Quick, everyone, bring out anything that can burn and set it alight.

"The more smoke, the better!"

"Insects! A swarm of insects is coming!"

Some people were still bewildered, but from the hasty and anxious actions of passersby and guards, they too felt uneasy. A variety of cries and the sounds of objects being thrown also permeated through the city.

Wearing several layers of thick veils as outer garments, transcendent members of the Grey Feather Species were summoned to the top of the fortress tower in the city. Overlooking the rapidly approaching black insect swarm from the mountain, the leader of the Grey Feather Species raised his hands, and a hot current blew past everyone, slowly condensing a gigantic fireball in the air.

At this moment, other transcendent Grey Feather Species also began casting spells, various-sized fireballs appeared around the high tower. The heat and light they emitted attracted the eyes of many people in the city; some knelt to pray, some shouted excitedly, and some sighed in relief upon seeing it.

Then, the fireballs skimmed through the air, trailing long flames as they headed toward the open ground and hills beneath the city walls.

Violent explosions erupted, rocks and soil splattering several meters high, flames spread and expanded along the city walls, engulfing large portions of the black insect swarm, dealing heavy losses to the black fog attempting to scale the walls.

More burning fireballs, trailing long flames, fell continuously, exploding beneath the city walls, using their searing heat and suffocating waves to consume the approaching insect swarm.

Seeing that most of the swarm under the walls had been cleared, although many insects still entered the city, they could not cause catastrophic disaster. The guards on the lookout towers breathed a sigh of relief, grateful for the shelter of the Grey Feather Species. Yet, as dusk gradually fell, in some unknown corners of the mountains, a few black insect swarms, concealed under thick forest foliage, once again crossed the towering mountains, overlooking the stone mountain castle opposite the valley.

——————

Underground Ruins, Spherical Dome Hall.

Suspended in mid-air, the Mechanical Angel slowly condensed her eyes, representing conscious activity, within which elusive symbols rotated. Her body was fully constructed from a special mechanical alloy, her limbs black like a girl wrapped in tight black clothing, her soles and palms were jet nozzles, jet nozzles were also distributed at the skirt hem and winged back, allowing her to perform highly complex and agile flight paths in the air.

However, at this moment, she was not performing complex flights. The flickering light in her eyes was like a scan, taking in the entire environment and creatures of the hall into view, feeding into the internal central processor. With the operation of the algorithm core and thought model, the intelligence representing the environment at this moment, and the identities of the individuals, quickly emerged within the neural model.

[New Earth Calendar, November 2nd, 5976, 13:43:55, Atomic clock time calibration...

[Aijieka Network connection failed, unable to obtain time calibration sync...

[Unable to obtain empowerment from Mechanical Sun·Soft, initiating Autonomous Decision Mode...]

[Loramiya, loading personality core...]

"Loramiya, hostile biological entities detected, initiating cleanup according to the first directive, connecting to combat units..."

The rooms along the sides of the passage suddenly opened, and the dormant mechanical bodies flickered with various beacons, each joint undertaking self-tests and activation.

"This is bad, this thing is going to kill us." Guy gripped his knife, eyes fixed on the Mechanical Angel in mid-air with hands spread, while the rest were in a state of tension and unease, bodies half-crouched, ready to flee or fight at any moment.

"Boom."

The sound of mechanical structures operating came from the passage behind the five, those mechanical bodies that had been dormant for a thousand years were coming to life, albeit with great difficulty, as if rust hindered joint movements, but the sound of steel striking the floor was so clear in the quiet underground, it made their hair stand on end.

For the newborn races that have lost much of their technology and regressed for hundreds of years, these mechanical bodies born in that intensely warlike era of the Fifth Epoch, each served as an incredibly efficient life reaper, the fear of these cold-blooded killers almost ingrained in the survivors' very DNA.