The protagonist is waiting in the corner of the room with the young winged male ant. I saw more and more male ants entering the nest. There are two entrances to the nest. The protagonist followed the police and entered through the passage in the nest with the fire, while the other male ants entered through the other entrance.
There were more and more male ants, and they all stood neatly on the periphery of the cobblestones, gradually forming tighter and tighter circles, still surrounding the oldest male ant in the middle.
"Is that male ant the oldest king?" the protagonist asked the male ant next to him who still had wings like himself.
"Yes." The young male ant replied.
"Lao Wang, how old is he?"
"It is said that the oldest king spent twenty winters." The voice of the young male ant was full of reverence.
Twenty years is short enough. The protagonist measures it by human standards without any malicious intent. For human beings, twenty years old is just the initial stage of life. Death at this time will be regarded as an untimely death, such as the great poet Wang Bo.
But for ants, twenty years old is already a long life. There are many types of ants. Some worker ants can only live for a few weeks, while some can live for three to ten years. Queen ants can live for several years or even ten years. Male ants often leave the nest after mating and die quickly. .
In the ant society where the protagonist now lives, male ants not only do not die after mating, but can survive in the nest for as many years as the queen, and have become the de facto ruling class of the ant kingdom. But no matter how you measure it, the legendary twenty-year-old Lao Wang is indeed the birthday boy.
"Why do you have wings?" The protagonist was bored and started to find something to say. The group of male ants that came in one after another only knew how to bury their heads and did not make any extra moves.
"I'm not married yet. Of course I have wings, and so do you." The young male ant was confused as to why the protagonist would ask such a useless topic.
"I see that the other ants have gone to the cobblestones. Why don't you go up? You still have to accompany me."
"Only the king is qualified to go up and communicate with the oldest king." The young male ant replied.
"How many kings are there? Haven't they all arrived yet? I've seen so many." The protagonist is very depressed. Waiting is always difficult, especially when he sees more and more ants forming a dense circle. With so many people surrounding Lao Wang, this is really a picture that would kill someone with trypophobia.
"There are five hundred kings in our kingdom!" The young male ant was very proud, "It is the most powerful big-headed ant kingdom." He expressed the numbers very clearly, unlike some male ants who could only say a lot or a lot. It's just that the numbers spoken by this young male ant are in hexadecimal, probably because ants have six jointed limbs. The protagonist understands this data naturally, and can easily convert it into the customary decimal system in his mind. . Maybe this is also a golden finger given by the God of Time Travel, which at least makes it more convenient for readers.
Wait, this sentence is very informative. The protagonist immediately asked: "Our country is called the Big-headed Ant Kingdom. It is really a nondescript name. Are there other Big-headed Ant Kingdoms?"
"Yes, there used to be three big-headed ant kingdoms, and now they have become our sub-nests." The young male ant began to give the protagonist a history lesson.
"Deputy Nest, they were wiped out?" the protagonist asked curiously.
"No, they just failed. Both the king and the queen were killed." The young male ant conveyed a feverish victory mood.
"Then it's still wiped out!"
The young male ant conveyed a strange emotion: "No, as usual we captured the eggs of the new queen and sent the king to rule the deputy nest."
In this way, the protagonist roughly understands that although the king and queen of the defeated enemy country have been killed, their remaining eggs that can hatch new ant queens are still there. After the new ant queen hatches, the main nest faction The departed king can breed with this new queen to produce ants that have genes from both the main nest (big-headed ant kingdom) and the former enemy country. A large number of soldier ants and worker ants that still survive in the enemy country will serve the new king until die and are replaced by new soldier ants. This method of conquest is somewhat similar to some ancient barbarians. After they conquered a place, they would kill the local men, marry local women, and give birth to offspring with their own male blood. The children of the conquered people would be used as slaves or used as slaves. Being trafficked.
"Besides the big-headed ant kingdom, are there other ant kingdoms?" The protagonist continued to ask the second question. You should know that there are many kinds of ants.
The young male ant's mood became angry and high-spirited: "Yes, there are evil pavement ant barbarians on the other side of the river."
"The pavement ant barbarians?" the protagonist asked again: "Ah, I'm sorry, I haven't gone to school yet, and I don't understand a lot of things."
"Why did the King of Public Security bring you here..." Although the simple young male ant did not understand, he accepted the protagonist's explanation that he had never gone to school. After all, the protagonist was only less than ten days old after hatching from the pupa. .
"The pavement ant barbarians live on the other side of the river. They have the color of rotten soil. They are short and despicable. They are the mortal enemies of our country." The young male ant explained.
"Then why did our country fight with the barbarians?"
"Because they are a foreign race!" the young male ant replied matter-of-factly. Well, these ants also have ideas that would be different from those of my species. The protagonist thinks of the war between Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals. There are countless wars between Homo sapiens, and Homo sapiens and Homo erectus are in a never-ending situation.
"How big is the river?" the protagonist asked.
"The river is so wide that you can't see the other side. From the westernmost sub-nest to the easternmost sub-nest, there is water from the river."
In terms of the male ant's eyesight, even if it is so wide that the other side cannot be seen, it is not necessarily very wide... and the length cannot be roughly determined based on the words of the young male ant.
"The river is so wide, how can our country attack the barbarians?" the protagonist asked again.
"When the river freezes in winter, it's time for our country to fight to the death with the barbarians." The young male ant was full of fighting spirit: "After our wedding this year, I will participate in the war."
"Uh, okay, I also want to know how many years our country has been at war with the barbarians..."
"How many years?" The young male ant was confused now: "The oldest king never taught me this. Counting six oldest kings, our country completely eliminated the barbarians south of the river..."
What a protracted war. Even if an oldest king lives for ten years, it would still be sixty years ago that the big-headed ants and the pavement ants have to fight across the frozen river every winter.
Hey, wait, winter? What does the protagonist suddenly realize he has overlooked? Shouldn't cold-blooded insects like ants sleep underground in winter? Won't you freeze to death if you run on the river?
Just as I was thinking of this, I saw that as the last male ant entered the scene, the oldest ant in the middle of the cobblestone floor also lowered its tentacles to the ground.
The kings are all here and the meeting is about to begin.
