After leaving the library, Rick gained a deeper appreciation for Tanzan City's enormity. They'd walked nearly two hours but still hadn't found the bank Lav mentioned.
"This city is massive—being big isn't convenient. It takes ages to get anywhere." Rick carried the exhausted Lav on his back, strolling down the desolate street.
"Those must be transports. People probably traveled in these." Lav pointed to the crookedly parked metal boxes lining the road.
Curious, Anna yanked open a door. "Is this an insect cart? Doesn't look like it."
"Some other vehicle—no insects needed."
"No insects? Then what powers it?"
"How should I know?" Lav rolled her eyes, snuggling deeper into Rick's back, sparking another wave of jealousy in Anna.
Suddenly, Rick stopped, peering at the letters on a massive building ahead. "Bank... It's the bank!" he shouted after confirming.
His cry drew Lav and Anna's attention from the strange vehicles.
"Huge!" was the first thought with which the three were struck upon seeing the building. It dwarfed any structure Rick had seen—even Kester Insect Association's grand building looked like a shed beside it.
Inside, the echoing emptiness of the hall felt eerie, but the dozens of tattered service windows hinted at past prosperity. Facing this 100,000-square-meter structure, Rick and Anna felt lost. Anna, who'd read the mayor's financial journals, knew there was money—lots of it—but the journals didn't say where.
"Let's go in," Lav suggested finally.
Rick handled the door-breaking. With three slashes of his scythe-like insect limbs, the alloy door beside the service window groaned and collapsed, kicking up dust.
Anna, driven by greed, rushed in first, prying open a tin box by the counter. "Huh? What's this?" She gaped at stacks of colorful paper.
"Nice—we can stop burning books. This makes good firewood, no tearing needed," Rick teased.
"You..." Anna turned green with anger, kicking the box over. Paper snowed down.
"Check upstairs." Anna, realizing her mistake but unwilling to give up, stormed up the stairs. Rick and Lav followed with wry smiles.
At the end of the second-floor corridor, iron gates stood ajar for unknown reasons. Rounding the corner, they saw a massive steel vault door, also unclosed, with a cart loaded with sacks wedged in it, keeping the door half-open.
Anna pushed in to confirm her fears. Rick stayed outside, eyeing the hastily abandoned cart. "They left in a hurry. Something must have happened before the city sank." He again wondered: where did everyone go?
A shrill scream from the vault jolted Rick inside. "What's wrong?"
He found Anna frozen beside torn sacks, surrounded by a blinding golden glow. She grabbed a handful of coins, watching them slip through her fingers, her face more miserable than if she were crying.
Rick was confused. "You found it—why the long face?"
"Look at this!" Anna tossed him a coin, then collapsed by the gold rack like a deflated balloon.
Rick started to say, "It's a gold—" but stopped. The coin resembled a Gold Beetle Coin, but it was made of soft gold, worthless in their era—cheaper than iron, useful only for grinding into powder to paint walls.
"Your treasure is great... for painting walls." Rick tried to comfort her, but it sounded like mockery.
Thwack! Anna hit a 50-kilogram sack of coins on Rick's head and stormed out, fuming.
"Ouch! Better to keep quiet..." Rick rubbed his head and followed.
Leaving the bank that shattered Anna's dreams, they headed for the Royal Academy of Sciences, luckily not far—just around the corner. The dome building exuded a mysterious, ornate aura.
Beyond the rusted iron fence lay a gray expanse of misshapen dead trees. Perhaps a beautiful botanical garden 300 years ago, time had turned it into a ghostly landscape, lending the academy's solemn mystery a sinister edge.
Entering, Lav shivered, fearfully grabbing Rick's hand, her palm sweaty.
"Scared?"
"Nope... not at all!" Lav forced out.
"Don't worry, I'm here." Rick patted her shoulder, pulling her toward the domed Royal Academy building.
Thanks to reading countless scientists' journals in the library, Lav roughly knew the direction and their destination despite this being her first visit. They barged directly into the third-floor laboratory.
From outside, the lab resembled a transparent jar, with countless glass partitions holding various instruments—most even Lav couldn't recognize. Chiseling open the unyielding glass door with his dagger, Rick was met by a wave of snow-white fluff like overgrown weeds. He plucked a clump from the air—it was incredibly soft, like the premium down of down insects in Kester City.
"What's this?"
"Insect silk... highly similar to the filaments insects spin, but no known insect can produce this much..." Lav observed the fluff for a while, struggling to conclude.
"Rick, come see this!" Anna called out, carefully parting the fluff on the ground.
Rick hurried over. Amid the white fluff, a patch of red stood out—broken stone slabs. Judging by the patterns, they were likely steles. "So unique—the stele is red." He muttered.
"Probably wasn't originally. This color is from corrosion." Lav leaned in, pointing to the honeycomb pores on the stone surface. "Looks like it was covered in acid—strong acid. But judging by the stele's age, it predates Tanzan City, and its design style clashes completely with this lab. Why is it here?"
"Let's break it open." Rick had no habit of cherishing antiques. A light smash caused several cracks, and red fragments fell.
Coiled within were white spiral objects like bouquets, arm-length, each with a round hole at the tip, white silk trailing from it—remarkably like silkworm cocoons.
"These... are insects!" Rick touched them cautiously, but the white clusters crumbled at his touch, dissolving into powder and drifting away.
"Idiot! Who told you to touch them!" Lav had wanted to examine them, but Rick's recklessness destroyed these unhatched larvae.
"How was I supposed to know they'd fall apart?" Rick raised his hands innocently.
"You..." Lav glared at him. "If you see anything else, don't touch it!"
"Fine! Fine! I won't touch anything." Rick pouted, folding his arms behind his back.
After searching the lab, besides the strange stele and unrecognizable instruments, they found nothing else. Entering another lab, Lav felt right at home—microscopes, injection guns... all tools for insect egg modification and use.
Excited, Lav rubbed her hands and rushed to a microscope. This model was far less functional than hers, roughly on par with a portable one. The egg under the lens had withered, but as an insect expert, Lav could vaguely identify its type.
"Huh? This is just a common insect, but... it seems different..." Lav frowned, pondering before moving to another microscope.
While Lav was engrossed in her discovery, Rick and Anna rummaged through the lab—they hadn't forgotten the 300-year-old eggs Lav mentioned. Instead of eggs, they found a stone disk in a sealed cabinet, inscribed with twelve insect symbols and an unrecognizable symbol at the center.
"What's this?" Rick knocked on it—clunk clunk—evidently hard.
"Looks like an insect classification chart." Anna knew less about eggs—she'd just obtained hers. But her innate sensitivity to certain things made her notice one pattern: "This ant looks special, like a Black Tiger Ant."
"Black Tiger Ant?" Rick held up the disk. "Black Tiger Ants have bigger fangs, short antennae, and an upward-curving horn on their forehead. But aside from that, it does resemble one."
"What are you looking at?" Their conversation finally distracted Lav, who rushed over, fearing they'd break something.
"Huh?" Lav's eyes fixed on the disk, peering at it in surprise. "These are the twelve progenitor insects!"
"Progenitor insects? What's that?"
"The twelve fundamental lineages of current insect species—the progenitors of all insects. Every insect today descends from these twelve."
"What about the symbol in the middle?"
"That symbol has long puzzled insect experts. A matching gene sequence exists in almost all insect genomes. Our current technology can alter most genes in insect eggs, changing their appearance and abilities, but this gene remains unmodifiable. Many believe it's the key difference between insects and ordinary bugs, the reason they're so powerful."
Pausing, Lav added, "An insect master once experimented on himself and found two such genes in his body—one from his implanted insect, and one his own."
"His own!" Rick's eyes nearly popped out. "Humans have this too?"
"Ordinary people don't have it—only those who reach the insect master realm do. Well, that's the case so far; no exceptions have been found."
"Source of power!" For some reason, this phrase popped into Rick's mind.
"Hmm? What did you say?" Lav hadn't caught it and asked casually.
Rick had only had a sudden insight, and now when Lav questioned him, even he forgot what he'd blurted out.
"Idiot, forgetting what you just said." Lav muttered, flipping through the dusty experiment notes on the table. After reading the first paragraph:
"Meteorite sand? What's that?" Lav exclaimed, puzzled by the unfamiliar term in the notes.
"Meteorite sand!" The phrase was equally strange to Rick, but he suddenly visualized the endless expanse of black sand when he and Moya explored the Infernal Corridor.
"What does it look like?"
"Black gravel. Oh, the notes say there's a sample in the top drawer of the storage cabinet."
"Is this it?" Anna, adept at rummaging, found the spot immediately, holding up a bag. "Is this valuable?"
"Stop thinking about money, gold digger!" Lav said with disdain.
"Let me see." Rick snatched the bag, tearing it open and grabbing a handful of black gravel. The cold, hard grains in his palm thrilled him. "Yes! These nail-sized black stones—this is what I saw in the Infernal Corridor, a huge expanse so vast you couldn't see the soil beneath."
"Infernal Corridor, that forbidden land? You said there are many rare insects not seen elsewhere."
"Yeah, countless. In wild hunting grounds, a forest might have only one or two combat insects, but there, auxiliary insects are scarce—every insect is a ridiculously powerful combat breed."
"Then why didn't you catch any?" Anna interjected.
"Do I want to die?" Rick shot her a look. "Insect hunters with implanted eggs can't beat wild, original insects. I can't even defeat an adult scythe insect, and there, scythe insects are fodder—even Demonic-class top fighters like Heavenly Wolf Spiders are killed casually." Anna stuck out her tongue and fell silent.
"Right, the experiment notes mention meteorite sand—does it say how it relates to insects?" Rick steered away from Anna, asking Lav.
"Yes. According to the notes, Tanzan Region originally had no insects, or only ordinary ones." Lav opened the notes and read:
March 15th: Meteor shower crosses Leo's sky, heavenly meteor falls, southwest forest annihilated.
April 28th: High temperatures subside; lead team into meteor zone, discover several mutated insects.
May 12th: Research shows insect genes altered, mysterious genome appears; lead team again to extract samples.
...
In this year-long record, an ancient secret unfolded before Rick and Lav, revealing a truth they could hardly believe. If accurate, it meant that over 300 years ago, the Infernal Corridor and even Kester City region belonged to Tanzan Region—Tanzan City once covered the entire Forest Domain, a nation of incalculable size.
All changes originated from a meteor strike that ravaged Tanzan's southwest forest, destroying everything while inducing special genetic mutations in local insects, creating the progenitors of modern bugs.
"Infernal Corridor is where insects were born? But... the insect origin has always been thought to be the Armance Wasteland—how did it become the Infernal Corridor?" Lav shook her head, unwilling to believe the notes.
Rick saw it differently. Pointing to the first paragraph, he said, "It mentions a meteor shower—maybe multiple meteors fell, one landing in Tanzan to form the Infernal Corridor, while most crashed in Armance Wasteland, making it the recognized birthplace."
"Oh!～" Lav realized, astonished. "The Hundred Years' War lasted over a century and ended 150 years ago. Adding that to the 50-odd years before Tanzan City sank, it means the war over insect eggs broke out just 50 years after the city's fall."
"Right—the notes only record up to the end of that year, meaning Tanzan City sank the same year the meteor struck. Maybe that's why its insect secret wasn't discovered, and everyone focused on Armance Wasteland."
"Then... how did Tanzan City sink? Such a huge city couldn't just sink for no reason."
"Maybe this is why." Rick flipped to a note: July 23rd: Test Subject 9 goes missing...
Lav's eyes widened in horror. Rick pressed his lips together, finally finding the answer to his long-standing question. But if this were true, it would be an unprecedented disaster for them.