Chapter 87: The Queen of the Sandball Ants

“Lord Lin Wei!”

A sudden female voice rang out.

Katherine looked at Lin Wei with a complex expression, her hesitation tinged with a trace of fear.

“Could you spare my father?”

She stepped out from the crowd, standing before Lin Wei and making her plea.

“Do you wish to die?” Amusement and indifference flickered in Lin Wei’s eyes. “Do you really think that after spending a few days with me, you have the right to do as you please before me?”

“My lord…” Katherine met his gaze, but ultimately could not bring herself to continue.

Seeing this, Bansaini turned to the royal guards behind them and said, “Take Hudson to my manor.”

The guards exchanged glances, then immediately obeyed. The memory of their captain’s death was still fresh in their minds.

…

Hudson had been detained by the witches of the Shadowed Forest!

The news spread through the noble circles of the Kingdom of Layton like a storm. Yet everyone who heard it chose, without exception, to remain silent. The commoners at the lower rungs of society were completely unaware of what had taken place, continuing to till their fields at sunrise and return home at sunset as always.

The daily order of the kingdom continued unbroken, not a single rebel force rising in the king’s absence. Everyone knew that even the smallest ripple would be crushed to dust in an instant by the Shadowed Forest’s methods.

In Bansaini’s manor.

“Lin Wei, should we apply to the Academy for further support?” Bansaini asked softly, gazing at Lin Wei.

This matter might involve a third-level witch apprentice, so Bansaini’s nerves had not relaxed for a moment.

“If we can’t even handle the affairs of a mortal kingdom, do you think the Academy would still send us reinforcements?” Lin Wei sneered.

He did not tell Bansaini that the Shadowed Forest itself would soon suffer a fatal blow. When that time came, they would be hard-pressed to look after their own, let alone send aid.

“Then what should we do?”

Now, every decision Bansaini made required Lin Wei’s approval.

“Wait,” Lin Wei replied softly. “Wait for the mastermind to come to us.”

Bansaini nodded. Their previous capture of Hudson had been solely to use him as bait. Although Bansaini felt uneasy about such a passive strategy, waiting for the enemy’s move, he could not refute Lin Wei’s judgment and had no choice but to acquiesce.

“Go and watch over Hudson,” Lin Wei told him, “and make sure there are no unexpected incidents.”

Bansaini wanted to refuse, but grudgingly opened the door and left.

“Coward…” Lin Wei scoffed.

The room was left empty, save for Lin Wei.

“It’s been a full day since I released the sand-grain ant,” Lin Wei murmured to himself. “Perhaps there will be some unexpected harvest.”

The sand-grain ant was an intelligence-gathering species that Lin Wei had created through experiments with alien creatures. Its main function was to collect the scents around a monitored target. By distinguishing these unique odors, it could identify anyone the target had come into contact with and thus map out their patterns of activity.

Lin Wei reached into the wide sleeve of his sorcerer’s robe and took out a tiny vial, no larger than a fingernail.

Pop.

He opened the lid, and a single ant, no bigger than half a grain of sand, crawled out. Its body was a deep yellow, unlike any common breed—it had eight pairs of legs, sixteen in total, making it resemble a centipede. Its belly was round and swollen, writhing incessantly, much like a spider before it spins its silk.

This was the sand-grain ant queen, though it looked more like a male ant.

“I truly owe my thanks to Celes. Since coming to this world, he has been one of the few who have shown me genuine kindness…” Lin Wei whispered. “Without him, even with the help of the intelligence core, I could never have advanced so quickly in the study of biological mutation, nor mastered the higher forms of alien creature fusion… May he survive the coming Fang and Bloodshadow raid…”

He gently placed the vial at his feet, pinching the strange sand-grain ant queen between his thumb and forefinger.

The ant queen struggled, trying to escape his grasp.

A surge of sorcerous energy shot from his fingertips like electricity, stimulating the ant queen’s body.

Her belly writhed more violently, swelling until it seemed about to burst.

Pop, pop, pop!

Suddenly, one after another, transparent spheres spilled from the ant queen’s mouth, resembling eggs.

Once she had expelled these egg-like orbs, the sand-grain ant queen fell motionless, so still that if not for the faint pulse of life, one might have thought her dead.

“She’ll be useless for another month—this time the drain was too much…” Lin Wei murmured. “The sand-grain ant queen can form a special resonance with the ants I release, then condense the scents they’ve gathered onto these transparent spheres…”

Carefully, he placed the exhausted ant queen back into the vial.

“Now then…” Lin Wei set the seven transparent spheres in his palm. If one didn’t look closely, they were almost invisible.

“First, Katherine…” Lin Wei channeled his mental and magical strength into one of the spheres.

In an instant, a cascade of different scents surged through his nerves like electric currents.

Soon, Lin Wei opened his eyes.

“No issues… From yesterday till now, Katherine has only been in contact with ordinary folk—the strongest among them might be a knight’s squire at best…”

The sphere that represented Katherine slowly vaporized, vanishing into the air.

“Continue…”

Lin Wei repeated the process one by one.

Soon, only the last transparent sphere remained in his hand.

“No problems with the previous ones…” A sharp gleam flashed in Lin Wei’s eyes. “I wonder if this final prince will yield any unexpected intelligence…”

Sorcery and mental strength flooded into the last sphere.

“What’s this—?”

In that instant, the sphere vaporized. Lin Wei’s eyes snapped open, and a chilling aura surged from him.

He bowed his head slightly, a knowing smile playing at his lips. “The scent of a third-level witch apprentice… Which prince was it that secretly met with one last night?”

Lin Wei’s original purpose in deploying the sand-grain ants had been to pinpoint the mastermind behind the disappearances. But after an entire day, the palace remained eerily still.

Intending to wring the last bit of value from the sand-grain ants, he had tried using the queen, expecting nothing more than a random check—but he had stumbled upon this wholly unexpected discovery.