The hurricane stopped in an instant, revealing the yellow-faced man inside.
He stood frozen in place, the ice shield and green protective barrier completely gone. A transparent hole the size of a fist had appeared in his chest where his heart should have been, the area around the wound charred black as though something had seared right through it.
The man looked down at his chest and involuntarily touched the wound with his hand, his face filled with shock, as if he still couldn't believe what he was seeing.
But just then, the jet-black spear let out a sizzling sound and transformed back into a dense swarm of flying ants, which surged toward the man without mercy, knocking him to the ground and instantly covering his entire body.
The man managed only a few screams before falling completely silent.
After a moment, the swarm of flying ants suddenly rose into the air, returned to where they had been, and settled back down, becoming indistinguishable from the grains of sand once more.
Where the man had fallen, there was nothing — the swarm had devoured him completely clean.
Han Li, standing far away on the mountain peak, had witnessed the entire scene from start to finish with perfect clarity.
Though shaken to his core, Han Li's expression grew oddly contemplative.
"Iron Fire Ants! That must be it. I never expected to run into this kind of spirit insect here." Han Li muttered to himself in a voice so low only he could hear.
When the flying ants first appeared, Han Li had not yet recognized what those black insects were.
But when they proved fearless against the yellow-faced cultivator's flying blade treasure and then condensed into a spear, he finally identified them as "Iron Fire Ants."
After all, flying ant-type spirit insects were not rare in the cultivation world, and their appearances were nearly identical. Unless a cultivator specialized in insect-controlling techniques, most people couldn't tell them apart.
In reality, however, the abilities and deadliness of different flying ant spirit insects varied enormously.
A weaker swarm of flying ants could be easily swept away by a Qi Condensation stage cultivator wielding an ordinary magical tool.
More formidable ones would make even a Core Formation cultivator frown and keep their distance.
And this particular spirit insect, ranked thirty-seventh on the Strange Insects Register, was one of the deadliest types of flying ants there were.
Other than the legendary "Heavenly Crystal Ants" ranked ninth, the Iron Fire Ants were perhaps the most fearsome.
These flying ants were not only impervious to blades and spears but also immune to most magical attacks.
Apart from mid-tier or higher water-attribute and ice-attribute spells and a handful of spells from other elements, almost nothing could harm them. Their defense was nearly as absurdly powerful as that of the Gold Devouring Beetles, and when it came to withstanding direct attacks from magical treasures, they actually surpassed them.
Of course, they didn't have the Gold Devouring Beetles' monstrous ability to devour spiritual energy, but in exchange they possessed the terrifying ability to spit black flames and to combine as a group into different formations.
An Iron Fire Ant swarm with these abilities was, in a sense, a fire-attribute magical treasure that could freely reshape itself at will.
With their terrifying offensive power, ordinary defensive treasures and defensive spells simply could not withstand their full-force strike. The yellow-faced man's brutal death was not exactly unjust!
Although Iron Fire Ants were not like the Gold Devouring Beetles in being classified as an extinct spirit insect, they were still exceedingly rare in the cultivation world.
And even when someone did happen to spot them, the swarms numbered only in the hundreds or perhaps a thousand or so.
This was because the environment in which Iron Fire Ants lived was extraordinarily harsh.
They required not only scorching volcanic regions but also large deposits of copper and iron ore nearby in order to survive. Once removed from such an environment, Iron Fire Ants would rapidly weaken, and before long their special abilities would deteriorate completely, reducing them to little more than ordinary flying ants.
If this were the only obstacle, there would still be plenty of cultivators eager to command these flying ants. Creating a similar environment or simply finding one to breed and raise them in was a small price to pay for the Iron Fire Ants' enticing abilities.
But one fatal limitation of these flying ants left every cultivator who had designs on them empty-handed.
Whether wild or domestically raised, Iron Fire Ants simply could not be bound to a master.
Whenever someone attempted to use any kind of binding ritual to control them, the Iron Fire Ants would detonate themselves one by one, without a single exception.
This shattered every would-be master's dream!
As for the exact reason, opinions varied. Some said it was because these flying ants had a fierce and unyielding nature that made them refuse to be subjugated by others. Others claimed it had to do with the Iron Fire Ants' physical constitution, and so on...
Of course, this information about Iron Fire Ants was little known in both the South Sky region and the Starry Sea of Chaos.
Because for nearly a thousand years, few people had encountered Iron Fire Ants, and the size of the swarms had been steadily shrinking. They could be considered a spirit insect on the verge of extinction!
At that moment, Han Li gazed out at the black desert, his mind filled with what he knew about the Iron Fire Ants, standing there in a daze.
So it seemed the Iron Fire Ants were the black desert's natural trap.