"Zero, is that really you?" After calming down, Bai Zhongqi asked while holding the woman in his arms, his voice tinged with nightmarish disbelief.
The woman smiled gently, tightly embracing Bai Zhongqi, and said, "It's me, yet it's not me."
Bai Zhongqi looked at her, listening to her explain.
"That damned Xiao Yu ambushed you at the Wuyagong. I'd rather have destroyed my body and severed my connection to the Supreme Command than let him control me. Fortunately, my soul is stored in the Soul Stone. Once the Soul Stone is endowed, it contains a soul with my consciousness and thoughts. Thus, even without a body, I continued to live in the Soul Stone as a soul. Your Majesty, do you know? The thing you just hit with my Soul Stone is quite a formidable entity."
Bai Zhongqi expressed surprise and asked, "What is that disgusting white worm?"
Zero revealed an incredibly stunning smile and said, "Do you know the eight great calamities?"
Bai Zhongqi nodded, "Of course, I know. But the Galaxy has different standards for classifying the eight great calamities. The First Universe and Second Universe also differ; the three most widely recognized are the AI revolution, Void Demons, and the Swarm. The appearance of any one of them is enough to cause massive upheaval in the Galaxy."
Bai Zhongqi looked at Zero in astonishment, touching her body, and said, "Are you saying, that worm is the Swarm?"
Zero nodded her head with a full smile, "Yes, that's precisely the juvenile Empress of the Swarm, and the origin of the Swarm calamity. Each Swarm calamity begins with the hatching of an Empress worm egg that had been growing for thousands of years. In the ensuing process, the juvenile Empress continuously devours other creatures, acquiring their DNA. Every time it obtains the DNA of a species, the Empress spawns a plethora of such creatures. By consuming powerful cosmic monsters, the Swarm can even master some high-level technology. Naturally possessing an almost infinite reproductive capacity and rapid expansion rate, and being impossible to communicate with, they turn everywhere they go into wasteland; thus, the Swarm is universally loathed as a public enemy in the Galaxy."
Bai Zhongqi was already aware of these things. He looked at Zero, who seemed to have become even more beautiful, and asked, "But that big worm turned into you."
Zero replied with a slight smile, "You should thank yourself for smashing my Soul Stone into the head of the Empress. It had just been born and was very weak. You were the first creature it consumed, and it hadn't even finished. The power of the Soul Stone is incomparable to it, so I destroyed it and turned its body into mine. So now, I am the Swarm Empress."
Bai Zhongqi felt as though he was in a dream upon hearing these words. He could hardly imagine that Zero had taken the body of the Swarm Empress and became a bona fide Swarm Empress.
Her face slightly flushed, yet she seemed very pleased and said, "Naturally, I couldn't face you looking like a bug, so using the human DNA I just acquired, I transformed myself into a human."
Bai Zhongqi helped her to stand up and said, "Well, that could be considered a blessing in disguise. However, we need to figure out where we are. This place is eerie and terrifying, but it's clear we're no longer in the Void. How did we come out of the Void? Could it be that we've returned to the Second Universe?"
Zero shook her head, "I don't know. I was unconscious before you planted me into the head of the Empress."
"Doesn't the worm's memory contain anything about this place?"
"Not at all. Each predecessor Empress would secretly lay an egg when near destruction, and after thousands of years of incubation, a new Empress would be born. The new Empress wouldn't know where it was born but would inherit some of the knowledge and experience of its predecessor. As a result, each Swarm calamity is more devastating than the last. However, I still need to consume a lot to awaken the knowledge and experience of the predecessor Empress."
Bai Zhongqi nodded, "So that's how it is."
Ling grasped Bai Zhongqi's hand, speaking to him with earnest, "Chancellor, whether there is a Supreme Command or not, you are my Chancellor, my body, my mind, everything of mine belongs to you. With the power of the Swarm, we will surely be able to take revenge on the usurpers, and I will help you take back everything that belongs to you!"
Bai Zhongqi was greatly moved, feeling Ling's sincerity and passion surging within him, and said, "Good, even if we have to start from scratch, just the two of us, we will definitely succeed. What is mine, I will take it back!"
Just as Bai Zhongqi was about to say something more inspiring, Ling suddenly gently pushed him away, then quickly stepped forward and snatched up a lizard, which coincidentally looked somewhat like a small velociraptor from the ground.
Without a word, Ling swallowed the lizard, causing Bai Zhongqi's eyelids to twitch.
Ling looked at Bai Zhongqi apologetically and said, "Ah, you've seen me make a fool of myself. At my larval stage, I need to consume a lot, to acquire the DNA of different organisms, so I really couldn't resist."
Bai Zhongqi's neck turned cold as he said, "You aren't thinking of eating me too, are you?"
Ling's face flushed red, shaking her head, "No, because the big bug earlier already got your DNA, so I don't have any desire to eat you anymore."
Bai Zhongqi sighed in relief, "That's good to hear; otherwise, I would have to offer you some of my flesh to consume right now."
"With the new DNA, I can start to create my servants now."
As she spoke, Ling walked to the cocoon she had broken out of, and Bai Zhongqi then realized that there was something inside it. It looked like a part of the female reproductive organ, but it was just that one part, which seemed quite bizarre.
Ling said with a blush, "I didn't want to carry my Insect Nest in my body like a real insect, so I took the liberty of separating it. This is my Insect Nest, it's still very small right now because the nutrients are too few."
No sooner had she finished speaking than a lizard, identical to the velociraptor-like one from earlier, crawled out from within.
Bai Zhongqi was astonished, "Are you saying that you can give birth to whatever you eat?"
Ling replied, "Exactly, which is why other civilizations are so frightened of the Swarm. The Insect Nest itself has a terrifying production power, no less than Atomic Substance Construction, but unlike Atomic Substance Construction, which shapes materials at the atomic level, the Insect Nest utilizes biotechnology to directly create organisms with specific functions. Eventually, the Insect Nest could even grow as large as a small planet, directly producing warship-class insectoids capable of crossing the Universe and engaging in Star Battles, and the production speed is astonishingly fast."
It was at this moment that Bai Zhongqi truly understood why the Swarm was called a natural disaster. Other people's warships were built, while the Swarm's warships were born, and as long as they consumed any living creature, they could gain all the abilities of that creature.
At this time, Bai Zhongqi suddenly thought of a method to lead the Swarm down a path of evolution like never before.