Chapter 652

The giant black crystal seemed to be the source of the War Great Tree's power. Once it was dug out, the War Great Tree only held on for less than ten minutes before its energy was exhausted. Not only did the secretion of tree gum within its body drastically decrease, but the bark on its surface also began to wither, dry up, and peel off. It could no longer recover from the damage caused by its clash with Ang, and soon, the War Great Tree collapsed with a thunderous crash.

"Collapsed" was merely a figure of speech; there was no "ground" here. It simply lost its energy source and could no longer support such intense consumption. It could only watch helplessly as the insects gnawed it down to nothing but a stump.

Matis hopped over, wanting to collect the insects, but discovered they possessed incredibly powerful vitality. After absorbing several billion of them, it became bloated.

"Master, can't eat anymore... full..." Matis said.

After transforming into an Insect God, Matis's intelligence was actually quite low, and it was usually quite dull, much stupider than Hemuer, so Ang didn't summon it often.

This time, it was because it had gnawed on the Tree of Life before and had experience, so Ang had called it out. Unexpectedly, it was a blessing in disguise, as it had gorged itself.

Full? Ang tilted his head.

Negris and the others had already gathered around. Hearing this, they speculated, "It's estimated that these insects gnawed on a Super War Great Tree, leading to an excessively high life energy level. Matis can't contain such powerful life force. What should we do? With so many super insects, what are you going to feed them?"

Several billion insects were only one percent of those that had burst out. There were still hundreds of billions of finger-sized insects left, each gleaming coldly, their carapaces seemingly evolved as well, flickering with a metallic luster and appearing very sturdy.

With such a massive quantity, just feeding them wasn't an easy task. Were they supposed to find a War Great Tree for them to gnaw on every now and then?

Having eaten until their life energy levels had even risen, these were no longer satisfied by ordinary food.

Ang looked at it with a puzzled expression, opened his Divine Realm, commanded the insects to fly inside, and closed it.

What he poured back out was a Divine Realm full of insect corpses. Ang continuously cast Elemental Separation, separating the water elements from the insect corpses. What remained were dried-out husks; as long as he set a fire to them, he would obtain strengthened insect ash.

However, there was no air or fire element in the void, so he couldn't burn them. Ang temporarily stored them in his dimensional space, planning to process them once he returned to the main plane.

Negris felt awkward. How could he have forgotten this dead skeleton's love for insect ash?

The emptied Divine Realm was used to load live insects again, then emptied out to separate them, and the insect husks were stored away. Repeating this four times, he obtained four Divine Realms full of insect husks, and a large pool of "water"—or perhaps juice—separated from the insect corpses. It was likely from gnawing on the War Great Tree, and it was a vibrant green.

Besides that, there were four black crystals the size of a fist.

"Black crystals? Why are there black crystals? Did they condense from the insect corpses? Or from gnawing on the War Great Tree? What is going on?" Negris exclaimed in surprise.

Anthony was the first to notice something wrong: "Something's not right. They don't have those little twinkling lights inside. Master, what about that big one?"

Big Cat, the Little Angel, and the Little Zombie pushed that large black crystal over. Everyone discovered that it also lacked the twinkling lights.

"Lenaxi, take out your Oscillation Crystal Core and let's have a look." Anthony was the first to think of the problem.

Lenaxi originally wanted to refuse; the Oscillation Crystal Core was too important to him. Most of his reputation as "Spirit Abyss Lenaxi" was built on that black crystal. If he lost it, his strength would drop by at least two-thirds.

However, looking at that three-meter-tall giant black crystal, and then at the four fist-sized black crystals in front of Ang, he couldn't refuse.

Especially those four fist-sized black crystals—they hadn't existed before. Could these people actually manufacture black crystals?

Carefully taking out his black crystal fragment, everyone took a look. Sure enough, there were no twinkling lights on it either.

Negris turned to Ang and asked, "When you pulled it out that time, did you see the star-points on it?"

Ang tilted his head. When he pulled it out that time, it was transmitted back by the oscillator in the blink of an eye; he hadn't seen it clearly at all. Besides, such a small fragment had nothing to do with farming, so Ang wouldn't have noticed it anyway.

Seeing that he couldn't get an answer from Ang, Negris had to turn to Lenaxi: "Using it, is there any difference from before? Has the effect of the spirit oscillation weakened?"

Lenaxi replied, "No, no, there's not a single change from before. It's still just as easy to use."

"That means the black crystals before didn't have star-points either," Negris said.

Feti raised his hand and asked, "Could there be another possibility? Lenaxi's spiritual power is too weak to unleash the black crystal's maximum effect, so whether it has star-points or not makes absolutely no difference to him."

Lenaxi was immediately displeased: "What do you mean by that? I am Spirit Abyss Lenaxi. If I can't unleash its maximum effect, who else could?"

Feti shrugged: "The Master could."

Lenaxi turned to Ang, unconvinced.

Ang tilted his head, and dozens of spiritual tentacles probed out, swaying menacingly like a cluster of Saya.

He could control four tentacles to farm and fight simultaneously, but if precise control wasn't needed, extending dozens or hundreds of spiritual tentacles was no problem at all.

Lenaxi knelt on the spot, respectfully presenting his black crystal fragment with both hands.

It was easy to make someone like him submit; one only needed to crush him with overwhelming superiority in the area he was most proud of. Facing such a terrifying gap, the proud and arrogant Lenaxi couldn't even muster the feeling of jealousy.

Ang took it, activated a dozen tentacles, and then returned it to Lenaxi with a look of disdain.

"Sure enough, he couldn't unleash the maximum effect. But whether the original had star-points is hard to say. We can only tentatively speculate for now: like the Emperor's bones, only those with twinkling lights are called 'Chaotic Black Crystals'? Are those twinkling lights inside the 'Chaos'? Can these without twinkling lights only be considered black crystals?" Duoluoken analyzed.

Anthony continued: "So, this kind of black crystal is actually quite numerous? For example, void-level creatures like the War Great Tree might have them? Did the insects gnaw on the torso of the void-level tree, thus condensing these black crystals?"

Negris slapped his waist and said, "That makes sense. So, void-level creatures might all have black crystals? Or rather, black crystals are the hallmark of void-level creatures? If we raised the Tree of Life to the void level and then burned it, would it also be possible to condense a black crystal?"

As he spoke, he cast a malicious gaze toward the Tree of Life.

The Tree of Life had already grown accustomed to Negris's peculiar sense of humor and ignored him. It said slowly, "Why don't you... ask it yourselves? I'm going to look for my father-stock's relics."

As it spoke, it took slow, lumbering steps, twisting and turning as it walked toward the pile of rubble where the War Great Tree had originally been. However, for a Tree of Life that was already a thousand meters tall, walking like this had an indescribable sense of incongruity.

Everyone turned their gaze toward the "stump" that was all that remained. Only half a face was left on the stump, and its one surviving eye looked at everyone without a trace of emotion.