The entrance to the nest in front emits a warm orange light, which is the light of the flame. The protagonist suddenly felt excited. The goal he had been looking for during his long journey was very close at hand.
"The oldest Wang is in front. The young Wang who is not yet married, please do not send any messages after entering. Please follow my command." The police officer turned around and warned the protagonist, and the emotion conveyed was extremely solemn.
The protagonist hurriedly expressed his obedience, and then followed the police to the nest with flames. Step by step closer, the protagonist's heart is getting excited a little bit.
Is it fire? The smoke and the warm feeling should not be deceiving.
Passing through the doorway, it suddenly becomes clear.
The protagonist's attention was immediately attracted by the flames in the middle of this extremely huge lair. Yes, there is indeed fire.
Calling it a flame is actually a bit reluctant. These beating flames are unusually small, so small that it exceeds the imagination of the protagonist. Although it can be regarded as a relatively large fire for ants, it is only the size of a torch for humans. But the beating flames and warm light still make the protagonist happy, yes, the flame, the real flame is right in front of him. Even if he travels alone to a foreign land and faces a group of ants that are not human at all, he is extremely uncomfortable with everything from eating, drinking to having sex. As long as he is on the ground, he may encounter life-threatening danger at any time. There is no trace of human beings. Can he change? Adults have no clue either. But in such a desperate world, the moment the flames appeared, the protagonist felt the warmth of his former home, and suddenly had hope of struggling.
In contrast to the tiny flame, the space of this nest is unusually large, surpassing all the ant holes the protagonist has ever seen. This nest is as big as a human yoga ball. Considering the tiny size of the ants, the protagonist walking in is like a person walking into an empty theater. The protagonist is thinking about how the ants dug out such a huge space. This amount of labor is definitely a huge project even with the engineering capabilities of the hard-working ants, and how the dug nest will not collapse. The protagonist looked around the nest. As expected, the nest was completely covered with cobblestones, leaving only six entrances and exits and a chimney on the top. Perhaps it is these firmly packed pebbles that bear the weight of the nest.
There was nothing in the nest, except for the fire burning alone in the center. The fire was not big, but there was a lot of ashes accumulated underneath.
From a nearby entrance, worker ants were constantly coming in and out. They crawled to the fire with dry twigs and grass roots in their mouths, and tried their best to pass the fuel to the bottom of the fire. Several huge and strong soldier ants worked together to use longer twigs to push the fuel to the center of the fire, and then pulled some burned-out fuel remains to the side. These thin branches will be burned after being used a few times and become part of the fuel, but the soldier ants still have many spare branches around them. The worker ants who have delivered the fuel will pick and choose at the edge of the fire to find some less hot debris and charcoal, and transport them away to avoid accumulating too much ashes. The protagonist noticed that the worker ants who left took another entrance and exit directly opposite the one they came from. It is precisely because of the guardianship of these hard-working ants that this small pile of flames can be maintained day and night, lighting up the flame of the birth of a civilization.
Although the flame is small in scale, it burns firmly. Due to the large amount of impurities in the fuel, the thick black smoke floats along the top of the chimney to the outside world, forming the smoke column that the protagonist has seen from a distance before. Due to long-term smoking, the pebbles on the shell of the hemispherical nest have been smoked black and yellow.
There are six entrances and exits in the nest, one of which is the way for the protagonist to come in, and two are the passages for the worker ants to move in and out to carry fuel and garbage. There were two more openings in the wall. No ants came out from there, but there were waves of breeze coming in, causing the flames to sway slightly. These two openings should be ventilation openings.
The policeman walked around the fire and walked towards the last entrance opposite the entrance where they entered the nest. The protagonist quickly followed.
Go out from this exit and walk down a short passage also lined with white cobblestones. After a few steps, you enter a larger nest room.
This nest room has a layout that is familiar to the protagonist - a huge, complete and slightly raised pebble on the ground. If it weren't for the fact that the walls here were covered with scattered white pebbles and the size of the nest was many times larger than that of Lao Wang's classroom, the protagonist almost thought he had run back to Lao Wang's classroom again.
There are seven or eight wingless male ants in the nest. They form a circle on the cobblestone platform. In the middle is a male ant that does not look outstanding. This male ant looks very old. The protagonist obviously thinks that the appearance of ants of the same species is almost the same, but he can tell who is Hua Mulan and who is Wei 1 just by looking at it, and now he can actually tell them at a glance The age of the male ants has come.
Except for the old male ant in the middle, all these male ants have their heads lowered and their antennae are touching the cobblestone ground. Based on the protagonist's experience, this is their collective communication. This is also the only way the protagonist knows to have a group conversation. Otherwise, the ants must have their tentacles intersect to communicate complex meanings, and only two ants can have a conversation. If you want to carry out simple communication in a group, the group command technique of vocalizing and deflating through the abdomen that the protagonist has mastered before can come in handy.
After the policeman walked in, a winged male ant came up and connected with his tentacles. Then the police officer told the protagonist: "Wait here. The Lao Wang has just notified all the kings to come here. There is a new decree from the gods."
"Then how long do I have to wait?" the protagonist asked.
"Wait until the Great God's decree is conveyed." the policeman replied.
"Okay, I have another question, who is the king?" The protagonist once again transformed into a curious baby, and the ants had too much new knowledge.
"He is the old king who can command a hundred new kings." Well, the protagonist has been successfully confused by all kinds of new ones, old ones, oldest ones, and big ones.
"Then what is the decree of the Great God?"
"It is the most important divine decree." The policeman finally got annoyed and said, "New king, you need to learn the most basic knowledge of kings first."
The protagonist shook his antennae, but he only had two classes.
When the police officer saw that the protagonist was no longer asking questions, he asked the winged male ant to take the protagonist to the corner of the nest wall. He climbed onto the cobblestone platform and also lowered his antennae.
