Ye An

The hill was covered with ice from top to bottom, and the sides seemed to have been damaged by some kind of mutant beast, leaving three parallel claw marks.The surface is filled with snow and ice, in stark contrast to the color of the dirt.

The ferret kept barking, waving its little paws vigorously, pulling Ye An's cloak, and constantly sending out the message of "good stuff".

Ye An was so disturbed that his brain ached, he had no choice but to grab the little guy, patted it on the back, then walked around the deep pit, found a relatively gentle slope, pulled out a short knife and plunged into the soil, and started to descend climb.

The mutant dog tried to follow, but was stopped by Ye An.

"Stay on top and be vigilant, keep an eye on your prey."

The head dog wagged its tail and barked twice, then turned around and ordered the group of dogs to gather the prey together, all lying on the periphery of the prey, and not allowing any outsiders to approach.A mutated dog couldn't calm down and started to play around. After being barked twice fiercely by it, it immediately drooped its ears and became honest.

The pit was much deeper than Ye An imagined, and the hill at the bottom of the pit was also very steep. The edge was extremely sharp, no different from a knife. If you accidentally fell, you would definitely be injured.

Ye An climbed down little by little, because the earth wall was frozen, it was difficult to find a point of support, and he would slide down uncontrollably after climbing a certain distance.In order to stabilize his body, he had to pull out another dagger, gave up using his legs for support, and moved only with the strength of his arms.

Click!

The blade was wedged into the permafrost, cracks appeared in the ice and crushed snow on the upper layer, and the tiny crumbs flew towards Ye An's face and flew into his nose, causing him to sneeze, accidentally choked on the cold wind, and coughed repeatedly.

The ferret slumped over his shoulder, whimpering in concern.Sensing the ferret's emotions, Ye An breathed evenly, and comforted him, "I'm fine."

The ferret calmed down, and suddenly jumped onto the rock wall after a while. Under Ye An's surprised gaze, he dug out step-shaped shallow pits with his small claws, leading to the bottom of the pit.

"Thank you."

Understanding the intentions of these little guys, Ye An took a deep breath, plunged the dagger into the soil wall again, stepped on the shallow pit dug by the ferret, and reached the bottom of the pit smoothly.

To his surprise, the soil under his feet was not frozen, but very soft, which was very different from the surrounding soil walls.

Ye An squatted down, grabbed a handful of soil, and the delicate touch slid through his fingers, faintly and slightly warm.

"illusion?"

Ye An was not sure. After walking a certain distance, he picked up several handfuls of soil one after another, making sure that his feeling was correct. The soil at the bottom of the pit did carry heat, which was completely different from the frozen soil.

After slapping off the mud in his hand, Ye An approached the hill and found that the top of the hill was already higher than his head.Looking at the side of the hill, he spread his fingers to compare the remaining claw marks, and deduced the size of the mutant beast that destroyed the place. Several answers flashed through his mind, and finally he settled on the anteater.

"Is this an ant nest?"

The surface of the hill is extremely hard, and it is not easy to destroy it.

When Ye An was feeling troubled, the ferret climbed up his legs, all the way to his shoulders, its little claws grabbed his hair, and kept telling him that there were good things down there.

Under the urging of the ferret, Ye An walked around the hill, but couldn't find any tricks, so he could only take the most direct and simplest way, wrapping the corner of the cloak around his hand, stretching his fingers several times , and then clenched tightly, clenched his fist and slammed on the surface of the hill.

With a bang, the ice and soil layers on the surface of the hill were smashed open with his fist, and Ye An's hand sank into the mountain, never reaching his wrist.Withdrawing his fist and shaking off the soil and gravel, Ye An moved his wrist twice, glanced at the gap that was smashed open, and quickly made a fist and smashed it.

Several times in a row, the hill was smashed into a big hole, and the hole was full of cracks, which spread to the surroundings with Ye An's strength.

boom!

There was another blunt sound, and Ye An used all his strength to smash the hill into two pieces. The fan-shaped top collapsed along the section and fell to the soil.

The remaining part was deeply buried in the soil. Ye An looked down and found that the bottom of the mountain was full of excavated tunnels, intertwined with each other, forming a seemingly chaotic but implicitly regular traffic network.Half of the tunnels were destroyed, probably because they were forcibly broken through, leaving gaps about one meter in diameter.

According to common sense, if there is such a big commotion, if there is really an ant colony underground, they should have swarmed out to attack him, the destroyer.However, until Ye An smashed the tunnel with his fist, not a single ant appeared.

He tried to release his will, but he still couldn't capture any emotions. The bottom of the hill seemed to be an abyss. There was no life, and even if there was, it would have died long ago.

The ferret jumped off Ye An's shoulders, stood on the edge of the hill and observed for a while, gesticulating with each other's little paws, making calls at different heights, and then jumped into the widest tunnel one after another, disappearing in an instant.

Through the connection with the ferret, Ye An could vaguely capture the scene under the hill.

Deep, dark, and criss-crossed tunnels.

When several tunnels intersect, the ferret will stop and observe carefully, and will choose one of them after a long time, and rush forward at a faster speed.

The tunnel seemed to have no end, and the ferrets ran deeper and deeper. Ye An roughly estimated that they had penetrated five or six meters underground and were still advancing.

Finally, after passing No.30 intersections, the ferret screamed excitedly, rushed to a long and narrow hole, broke through the gravel and soil blocking the hole, and took advantage of its size to get in smoothly.

The cave is very spacious, the bottom is covered with brown and white fungi, the canopy is either closed or opened, and the mature spores are scattered in the cave, like puffs of smoke.

The ferret burrowed into the hole and immediately shed the mushroom pile, and the fur on its body was soon contaminated with spores.

Seemingly disliking this feeling, the ferret patted it hard with its paws, and even stepped on the mushrooms in the hole in a fit of anger.Instead of helping, this made the situation worse, attracting more spores to fly and soon dye their fur another color.

Ye An could feel the emotions of the ferrets, and despite the distance, he tried his best to appease them, but unfortunately the effect was minimal.There was really no other way, Ye An started to widen the tunnel and jumped in.

The underground tunnel is wider than expected, and the soil wall is very smooth, but it is impossible to stand up and walk.

Ye'an bent down and crawled forward on knees and elbows, following the route the ferrets walked, and soon came to the hole they had dug.

Knowing that Ye An was coming, the ferret barely suppressed his irritability, turned around and widened the hole.

Ye An waved his hands at them, signaling them to back off, then covered his mouth and nose with his cloak, and smashed his fists at the earth and rocks blocking the entrance of the cave.

After two clicks, a passageway that allowed him to bend down to enter and exit appeared in front of him.

Before Ye An walked in, he took out a bottle of potion and drank it into his mouth, put the empty wooden bottle back at his waist, and then stepped on the mushrooms under his feet with confidence.

The spores were flying wantonly, and if they hadn't been prepared in advance, they might have been blocked from breathing.

Ye An fastened the edge of the cloak tightly, bent down carefully, dug out a fungus from the ground, observed it for a while, took out an animal skin bag from his arms, and put the mushroom in it.

According to the ferret's feedback, this mushroom is not poisonous and should be edible.But it's not delicious, you have to wait until you try it.If the taste is good, you can take it back to the isolated island and try to grow it.

While Ye An was busy harvesting fungi, several ferrets had already moved on, occasionally stopping to bark at Ye An and waving their little paws for him to follow.

The cave is very deep, covered with fungi along the way, very soft to step on.

The further you walked in, the higher the temperature, and Ye An soon became hot and sweaty.In order to cover the spores, the cloak cannot be untied, which is quite uncomfortable.

Fortunately, as the temperature gets warmer, fewer mushrooms grow.After crossing a sunken pit, the mushrooms were completely gone, and Ye An was finally able to untie his cloak and gasp for breath.

There was a faint sound of water in front of him, and there was a milky white halo. Ye An followed the ferret forward quickly, turned the corner, and a stream ran across his feet.The white mist on the stream is misty, and it is all hot water vapor.Ye An accidentally touched it, and his fingers were immediately burned red.

"hiss……"

Ye An quickly withdrew his hand, looked at the red fingertips, and dared not approach the stream and white mist anymore.

The ferret walked backwards along the stream, leading Ye An upstream.

The soil on the ground became more and more wet and soft, astonishing heat burst out from the gaps, and condensed into white steam, as if walking on a volcanic pile.

The ferret became very careful, stopped jumping and running, slowed down, and carefully avoided every possible dangerous area.

Stepping on the paw prints of the ferret, Ye An came to a stone ball without incident.The stone ball was half-sinked in the soil, and the exposed part of the soil seemed to have been burned by fire, covered with a layer of scorched stone skin.

The ferret patted the surface of the stone and barked at Ye An twice.

"Hiding in there?"

The ferret straightened up and let out a louder cry.

Ye An didn't hesitate anymore, he drew out his short knife and slashed at the surface of the stone ball.The blade sank into it easily, but the resistance increased as it went down. After three consecutive cuts, the blade could no longer advance half an inch, and even a gap appeared on the blade.

"So hard?"

Fingertips brushed against the gap, Ye An put down the dagger, held the edge of the cut with both hands, and tried to break the stone ball along the gap with all his strength.

At first the stone ball remained motionless, but as he continued to increase his strength, the crisp sound finally came to his ears.The next moment, the stone ball was broken into two halves by him. The fracture was not a section of the rock, but scorched ants, most of which were carbonized and entangled, and could no longer be separated.

When it touched the center of the section, Ye An's heartbeat speeded up suddenly.

In the heavy package of the ant colony is the dead queen.Unlike her carbonized counterparts, although the corpse of the queen ant was scorched black, it faintly conveyed a familiar energy.

Ye An dug up the carbonized ant corpse, and held the ant queen wrapped in carbon skin in his hands.The moment he touched the queen ant, the carbon skin began to peel off, and a spar that retained the appearance of the queen ant was lying in his palm, and the tentacles, joints, and limbs were fully visible, which could be described as lifelike.

As he was amazed by the discovery, the ferret squealed again.

Ye An followed the call, and suddenly found dozens of such stone balls in front of him!