Chapter 570: The Dominator’s Brood: A Floating-Land Harvest

With a peak sixth-tier floating-land spanning nearly a thousand light-years and the Ancient Broodmother moving her nest here over a century ago, plus her absurd ability to breed, the number of bugs crawling across this floating-land has reached an astronomical level.

In just a few minutes, over a hundred thousand bugs had swarmed the battlefield in the sky.

Roar!

High above, the phantom of the Law Dragon Whale lifted its head and let out a mighty cry.

Formed by perfected Law of Space, this Dragon Whale phantom dwarfed anything that came before—not just in sheer size, but in raw power.

Inside that phantom, several Song Family dreadnoughts and a Starry Sky Dragon Shark huddled together. Protected by the phantom, they relentlessly fired their warship cannons, blasting more and more bugs out of the sky.

Down on the floating-land surface, plenty of mid and low-tier bugs were trying to attack the Heavenly Ruin, including a Dominator Worm, but Song Chi’s summoned Angel King’s Spirit Apparition barred their way.

Time dragged on. As the bug horde kept multiplying, the Angel King’s Spirit Apparition was gradually gnawed away by tens of thousands of vicious maws.

Seeing this, Song Chi considered activating the “High-Energy Particle Storm” of his Neutron-Star Core Armor. With such a wide area of effect, he was sure he could clear vast numbers of bugs.

But he hesitated—one wrong move and the severely wounded Ancient Broodmother below could be shredded for good.

So instead, he activated the “Frost Phoenix True Spirit Guard” from the Frost King’s Crown.

But compared to the Angel King’s Spirit Apparition, this eighth-tier Frost Phoenix was much weaker. At this rate, it’d last at best a dozen seconds.

Song Chi knew it was because he hadn’t grasped the Ice Law. The earlier apparition had benefited from his mastery of Light Law, but the Frost Phoenix got no such boost.

He set these thoughts aside, rapidly activating the Celestial Authority Ring again and again.

By now, he’d lost track of how many times he’d unleashed the slave mark.

Suddenly, the Sky-Domain AI’s melodious prompt rang in his ears.

“Enslavement successful. This Ancient Broodmother’s life signs are extremely weak. Advise immediate transfer to the Life-System Medical Repair Pod.”

Only after the prompt did Song Chi feel a new thread of psychic connection. It came from his freshly enslaved Ancient Broodmother below.

The thrill was real, but he kept his cool.

He instantly activated the Celestial Authority Ring’s “Form Expansion,” shrinking the Ancient Broodmother into a palm-sized form. Then he had the Heavenly Ruin fire a powerful tractor beam.

With the tractor beam engaged, the warship’s hatch slid open and a Void Shadow Assassin Warrior streaked out.

Slipping through space at blinding speed, the warrior stabbed the “Summoner’s Seal” right into the Ancient Broodmother.

From the ship’s control room, Song Chi triggered the Soulcalling Demon Golem module. The shrunken Ancient Broodmother was pulled back aboard.

Barely had this happened when the Frost Phoenix apparition shattered overhead. Instantly, a Dominator Worm and hundreds of thousands of mid and low-tier bugs rushed at the Heavenly Ruin with nothing left in their way.

Buzz!

Just as the bug swarm was about to swallow the Heavenly Ruin whole, the Space-skipping Pearl activated.

A ripple of space—barely noticeable—flared, and the Heavenly Ruin blinked away, reappearing among the family fleet high above.

“I did it—the enslavement worked! But the Ancient Broodmother’s injuries are too grave. She’s in a deep coma, already transferred to the medical pod. For now, she’s in no shape to control these bugs!”

“Forget the horde—let’s pull out!”

Led by the Calm-Sea Dragon-Xiang and shielded by the perfected Law Dragon Whale—plus mini versions summoned by Song Chi and the others—the Song Family ships and Starry Sky Dragon Shark carved a bloody path through the million-strong insect tide.

Desperate to shake off the now-frenzied bugs, six warships and the dragon shark raced through the starry sky for half a month straight.

Several hundred light-years from the sixth-tier floating-land, they finally hid themselves in a remote asteroid belt.

They’d shaken the bugs, but no one was in a hurry to return to Dragon-Spine Continent.

Their main objective in hunting this nest was to harvest a Dominion Soul. The second was to try enslaving the Ancient Broodmother.

Now, even though the enslavement had succeeded, their prize was isolated and powerless, which definitely wasn’t in the Song Family’s plans.

The whole point had been to exploit her unlimited spawning ability. With so many bugs right here waiting, letting them go would be a crime.

Inside the Heavenly Ruin, Song Chi had already installed the silver medical pod module he’d borrowed from Xingzu. With its powerful healing, the Ancient Broodmother would recover in two or three months—then she could control those millions of bugs. Now that would be a windfall.

If they could seize them all, just the profits from prime bug meat alone would blow past anyone’s wildest dreams.

……

The next day, Song Wujian’s voice chimed in over the group comms.

“We’ve finished dissecting two Dominator Worm corpses—over ten tons of tier-seven bug meat. Add in the two from the Flame God Clan’s storage bracelet, and we have thirty-five tons of the stuff in hand.”

They had downed two Dominator Worms in this fight—not counting the Black Scorpion Dominator Song Chi took out solo, and the one gravely wounded by Song Shiyuan.

The group perked up at the news.

Tier-seven bug meat did wonders for fifth and sixth-tier Guiding Techniques, boosting Battleship and Dreadnought Captains. “Each of us gets five tons. Xiaochi contributed the most—he gets two extra. The last eight tons go to the Merit Tower. This stuff isn’t really helpful for tier-seven techniques, so I’m passing on my share!”

No one objected to this very fair split, but the tier-seven bug meat wasn’t the main prize. Song Wujian quickly went on:

“Also found a top-tier neutral energy crystal in one of those Worms!”

The second those words dropped, everyone on the comms sucked in a sharp breath.

Energy crystals are a rare warship evolution resource—a top-tier one can boost a dreadnought’s odds of advancing to Star-Annihilator-class by ten percent or more.

That’s why, to a Dreadnought Captain, this is an even bigger deal than a gold component.

“So we’ve got two top-tier energy crystals now?”

That was Song Xingru. The meaning was obvious—the Flame God Clan’s storage bracelet with the two Dominion Worm corpses had already coughed up one such crystal.

Hearing this, everyone in the chat exchanged glances.

Song Wujian was the one to speak up at last.

“How about this? The two top-tier energy crystals go to Xiaochi and Xiao Yan…”

He paused a moment, then added,

“You’ve all seen Xiaochi’s contributions to the family. As for Xiao Yan, he handed over that Flame God Clan relic—and from it, the family harvested two Gold Upgraded Fire Sources, two Black Supreme Components, several Gold Sanctum Domain Components, and tons of fire sources. Both of them getting a crystal is well deserved!”

……

Time flowed on, and soon, two months had passed.

Thanks to the full power of the Silver Medical Pod, the Ancient Broodmother’s injuries finally eased.

Seeing this, the Song family decided the time was right. Without further delay, they set course for that sixth-tier floating-land.

A sickening stench of acid and decay filled the heart of the floating-land. Everywhere were torn limbs and gnawed bug corpses, half-eaten and scattered about.

At the center—once the core of the hive—there were still plenty of bugs locked in all-out war.

It looked like some kind of twisted bug-cultivation ritual: hundreds, thousands died, but only the strongest, most vicious emerged as elite bugs.

“With no queen to command them, these bugs really go berserk!”

Watching quietly from above, the Song family’s brows furrowed. In just over two months, the million-strong swarm had shrunk to a tenth of its size—hard not to sigh at that loss.

They’d planned to use these bugs as cannon fodder for the coming war of civilizations, but now only a few hundred thousand were left.

The only comfort was that, when the Ancient Broodmother’s shrieks rang out, even the blood-crazed bugs below snapped out of their frenzy and gathered obediently beneath them.

Even though there were only six hundred thousand bugs left, their quality had soared: over half a million were mid-tier or above, with more than a hundred maxed-out sixth-tier bugs.

And there were still three Dominator Worms. One, though, was clearly a recent arrival, having ascended during the earlier survival-of-the-fittest brawl.

Which meant that, in fact, they’d lost one of the original three Worms.

Using the Broodmother to communicate, the family eventually found a half-devoured bug corpse lying in a chasm dozens of thousands of kilometers away.

Trying not to wince, Song Wujian hauled the corpse aboard the Calm-Sea Dragon-Xiang.

There wasn’t much left of it to extract Dominion Origin Blood, but if luck held, there might still be tier-seven bug meat, or maybe a little Dominion Soul to be had.

That Dominator Worm had already been maimed by the Starry Sky Dragon Shark and finished off by one of the other three.

After collecting the dominator corpse, the Song family warships unleashed a swarm of puppet warriors and enslaved creatures to clean up the battlefield and harvest the bug corpses scattered thick on the ground.

Millions of dead bugs, and while most were already picked clean, plenty were still intact—ripe for harvesting.

That was their job now—carving out and collecting whatever prime bug meat remained. Occasionally, they’d turn up an energy crystal of various grades—great boosts for the Torch Captains.

Hauling the haul back for the Merit Tower meant more resources in clan members’ pockets—and a sharp uptick in the family’s power. Win-win.

For ten whole days, they worked nonstop until every corpse was dealt with. Then they combed the entire peak sixth-tier floating-land for any hope of salvage.

But the outcome was clear: the core origin of this floating-land had already been eighty percent consumed by the Ancient Broodmother. Add to that the devastating strike from the Calm-Sea Dragon-Xiang—there was no saving it. Collapse was now inevitable.

So they chose to make the most of it, leaving Song Shiyuan behind with the Origin Core Siphon to extract the land’s last twenty percent core.

It’d be destroyed soon anyway—far better to keep those resources for themselves. After all, this was a peak sixth-tier floating-land. Even just a fifth of it made lesser lands look like pebbles.

And the family was still throwing everything into cultivating Dragon-Spine Continent. Why let it go to waste?

Why push cultivation on Dragon-Spine Continent?

Simple—the family had no peak sixth-tier land of their own yet, and starting from scratch would take far too long.

Not to mention the true prize: the Dragon Whale Hall, a legend-in-the-making Oddity.