A dark mass loomed overhead, the entire swarm of insects closing in, relentlessly advancing towards Flying Cloud City. At their current speed, they would reach the city in less than fifteen minutes.
Simultaneously, more Spirit Devouring Insects emerged from the sky, coalescing into dozens of insect clouds that rapidly dispersed in all directions, hunting down the fleeing wild beasts on the ground.
Zhang Ling even spotted a flock of fourth-tier White-Headed Birds not far away, surrounded by Spirit Devouring Insects, and devoured clean in an instant.
A constant buzzing filled his ears as a swarm of about a thousand Spirit Devouring Insects flew towards his position. In the blink of an eye, the green light screen of the small array eye was covered with Spirit Devouring Insects.
Faced with this scene, Zhang Ling did not attack immediately, but carefully observed the swarm of fierce insects.
Within a few breaths, he roughly assessed the strength of the Spirit Devouring Insects. He then lightly flicked the floating flying sword beside him, and a sword light flashed, instantly killing more than a dozen Spirit Devouring Insects.
These Spirit Devouring Insects were tough all over, indeed not comparable to his Earth Spirit Bees. Their physical strength alone was no less than that of a low-grade magical artifact.
And these were just the most common Spirit Devouring Insects. Some, with black-cyan wings and light purple wings, were even more ferocious.
Seventy or eighty of them could deal with early to mid-stage Foundation Establishment cultivators. Fortunately, there weren't many, or even a Golden Core cultivator like him would be in trouble.
The Spirit Devouring Insects enveloped the entire green light罩(光罩: shield) airtightly, frantically gnawing at it. Each of them glowed with golden-black fluorescence, rapidly devouring the spiritual power on the light罩(光罩: shield).
In a short time, the spiritual power on the green light screen dropped by one or two tenths.
Zhang Ling snorted and naturally wouldn't let them break the light罩(光罩: shield) so easily. With a flip of his hand, a black jar appeared. He struck it with spiritual power, and the jar floated outside.
With a bang, it burst, releasing a cloud of gray mist that covered an area of twenty or thirty zhang. The Spirit Devouring Insects inside squeaked screamed, as if they had suffered a serious injury.
After the gray mist disappeared, a small half of the Spirit Devouring Insects surrounding the array's light screen vanished, falling to the ground motionless.
Zhang Ling chuckled, and threw out a few more jars. For a time, a layer of gray mist spread across the top of the mountain, and all the Spirit Devouring Insects flying inside were met their doom.
Only a small number of two-winged Spirit Devouring Insects still flew erratically, clinging to the array's light screen and devouring spiritual power. But their speed seemed to have decreased a lot.
Zhang Ling thought to himself that these fierce insects were also very resistant to poison. The black jars he threw out contained a poisonous mist with potent toxins.
This was the poison sac collected from several Poisonous Frog Beasts that were killed in the second wave of beast tide and refined into poisonous mist.
Ordinary cultivators would die immediately upon contact with this poison mist, and only high-level cultivators could use spiritual power to dispel and resist it. Unexpectedly, these Spirit Devouring Insects also had strong resistance.
A buzzing sound came again from overhead, and another swarm of Spirit Devouring Insects rushed over.
Zhang Ling snorted, and with a wave of his left hand, a cyan-black vine grew out. The vine grew to a length of more than ten zhang, and then the top branched into two different vines.
One scarlet vine with triangular leaves turned into a flame whip with a wave.
One turned iron-black, with sharp thorns growing on it, like a thick iron bramble, whipping and creating crackling sounds in the air. The ordinary Spirit Devouring Insects were instantly smashed into fragments as soon as they approached.
At the same time, Zhang Ling pointed at the two flying swords beside him, and the flying swords also transformed into a large expanse of sword light, rushing into the insect swarm. In the blink of an eye, thousands of Spirit Devouring Insects were killed.
But the situation did not improve. The outside was already surrounded by the entire insect swarm, which was endless and impossible to kill completely.
And this situation was not unique to his small array eye, which was under heavy attack by Spirit Devouring Insects. The other eleven Golden Core cultivators who had taken on the task of guarding the array also encountered attacks.
Several array eye positions were even so densely packed with insect clouds that they had been besieged several times. If it weren't for the fact that they were all guarded by Golden Core experts, they would probably have been unable to resist.
The surrounding hundred miles were already covered by dark insect clouds, with Spirit Devouring Insects everywhere, both in the sky and on the ground. If the attacks continued unabated, these people would not be able to resist for long.
At the same time, the insect clouds approached Flying Cloud City, with the Spirit Devouring Insects first attacking the wild beast groups on the ground.
After resistance from the cultivators on the city wall, the number of wild beasts had been greatly reduced. With the arrival of the Spirit Devouring Insect swarm, the wild beasts were even more in chaos, and most of them no longer attacked the city wall, but began to flee in all directions.
These wild beasts, which basically had no intelligence, sensed the danger in the face of the massive Spirit Devouring Insects. For a time, everyone on the city wall, including the mortals, watched this scene in astonishment.
After a while, there were few wild beasts left. Most of them were devoured by the Spirit Devouring Insects, and high-level wild beasts would turn into a pile of white bones in an instant once they were surrounded by the insect clouds.
After devouring the wild beasts, the Spirit Devouring Insect swarm set its sights on the city-protecting grand formation of Flying Cloud City, crashing into the city-protecting light screen with a buzzing sound that echoed through the heavens and the earth.
Their crashing force was not great, but they clung to it and devoured the spiritual power on the grand formation. As more and more Spirit Devouring Insects joined the ranks of devouring, in a short time, the city-protecting grand formation was completely covered and turned pitch black, crawling with endless Spirit Devouring Insects.
The cultivators and mortals naturally did not just watch, and started a new round of resistance. Various spiritual lights burst forth, explosions and rumbling sounds continued to ring out, and the war was ignited again. The methods originally used to fight the beast tide were now used to fight the insect tide.
However, the condition of the crowd was not very good, especially the mortals teams, who were all exhausted. Even if they were strong and sturdy martial artists, they were extremely exhausted physically and mentally after several hours of high-intensity combat.
The low-level cultivators were not much better. Only the Golden Core experts could barely remain calm, but their perception was more acute, and their divine sense could sense a wider range.
Seeing the endless Spirit Devouring Insects constantly pressing in, the faces of the high-level cultivators also changed, and everyone's expression became serious.
Before long, the outside of Flying Cloud City had become like a black fog, with Spirit Devouring Insects everywhere. The entire city-protecting grand formation was also being gnawed by the Spirit Devouring Insects, flickering and becoming very unstable.
This instability was different from the beast tide attack. It was comprehensive. After all, there were too many Spirit Devouring Insects, crawling all over the city wall area. The pressure faced by the city-protecting grand formation at the same time was stronger, and once it was breached, it would be a complete collapse.
Without the protection of the city-protecting grand formation, the entire Flying Cloud City would be submerged by the endless Spirit Devouring Insects in an instant, and the low-level cultivators and the large number of mortals in the city would definitely have no chance of survival. High-level cultivators who fell into the insect sea would also have few survivors.
In the middle section of the city wall, Sect Leader Sun and others naturally knew the current situation.
After sensing through the array that a large number of Spirit Devouring Insects had entered the array range, a fierce light flashed in Sect Leader Sun's eyes. He exchanged a glance with the people next to him and issued an order.
"Senior brothers, the time has come. We should also let these fierce insects see the power of our sect's Flowing Cloud Grand Formation."
