It wasn't until the evening of the same day that Gun and the others, who were in charge of the search, led their team back to "Dongyang City". They reported that they had not found any clues or unusual places. All the ants in the sub-nest of "Dongyang City" seemed to have disappeared out of thin air. , leaving only the empty "Dongyang City" to the protagonist.
This gave the protagonist a headache. He originally planned to return to "Dongyang City" and rely on his identity as the Divine Envoy King to do various experiments and construction here without any restrictions from the King's Conference, and eventually turn this place into a Become your own main base and live a better life.
However, experiments and construction will inevitably require a lot of labor. There were at least seven or eight thousand ant colonies in "Dongyang City" at the beginning, which could barely support the protagonist's efforts. But the entire sub-nest now only has about 1,300 ants from the Angel King's army brought by the protagonist, which is far from enough.
Moreover, there is no queen ant in the secondary nest, and without the eggs they lay, there is no way to recruit new ants. The lifespan of ants is short, and they suffer a lot of losses in daily labor. If they are not replenished, they will be exhausted sooner or later. Although the protagonist has never seen an ant queen in Dongyang City before, the ant eggs and young ants in each nest indicate that there is a queen performing her duties here.
However, the protagonist had already planned what happened to the ant queen. He insisted on breaking the convention of the Big-headed Ant Kingdom in the name of God's will. The twelve female ants he took in and brought back were originally intended to be a friendly help to those who failed in the wedding flight ceremony. Now it seems that they can do just that. Fill the vacancy of the queen ant.
However, things like arranged marriages still need to be discussed with Gun and the others. Don't do it if you don't want it and I don't want it. It won't be beautiful. This matter needs to be discussed in the long run.
There is currently one way to immediately replenish worker ants, and that is the pavement ant eggs brought back by the protagonist.
Although these are eggs laid by the enemy, they may not be useless to me. When the protagonist watched a documentary before, he knew that there is a species of ants that cannot work on their own. They specifically attack other species of ants and capture a large number of eggs and pupae to take home. When these ants hatch, they have the same smell as this ant. Will willingly serve as slaves to these slave masters who only know how to fight.
This is what the protagonist had in mind. Now after these ant eggs have been moved away from the original ant nest, they have been placed in an unsuitable environment, so the ant eggs have not developed. As long as these ant eggs are placed in the original incubation room of "Dongyang City", they will hatch quickly. The pavement ants born by then will have the aura of "Dongyang City" and will regard themselves as such. Residents of the secondary nest.
The protagonist took advantage of the darkness to count the pavement ant eggs. These ant eggs had been placed in an empty incubation room, and there were 48 eggs in total. The protagonist paid attention to the several worker ants who were responsible for taking care of it, and asked them to pick up some ant droppings and put them in the corner of the nest. This is the strongest smell of ants…
There are still a few days left for these pavement ants to hatch, so there is no rush. The protagonist asked the worker ants to take care of them and left.
The next day, the protagonist asked Gun to take ten teams out to search for food. The team acted as the smallest unit to avoid being attacked by the enemy after being alone. After all, the entire sub-nest of ants suddenly disappeared, so we should still be cautious.
The protagonist believes that with the tactics and combat effectiveness of the Divine Envoy King's Legion, as long as they are not attacked by a large number of enemies, a small team can persist until reinforcements arrive as long as they send out messengers and establish a defense line.
The protagonist himself took some worker ants and started building construction. The first thing to be built is the combustion chamber, which will house the fire. It is not a long-term solution to prevent rain from being placed where the fire is temporarily placed.
The combustion chamber he planned is an independent nest chamber separated from the sub-nest. There are several small passages connected to the living area of the sub-nest. This can prevent the residents of the city from being affected by fire in the event of a fire. Inadequate production of carbon monoxide poisons ants. Moreover, the separately arranged combustion chamber can be more conveniently converted into workshops and industrial areas in the future.
The protagonist asked a large number of worker ants to dig a chopstick-thick tunnel downwards about one meter west of the only entrance and exit of "Dongyang City". This tunnel will be used as a chimney.
The entrance to the chimney is on a high ground and is not easily flooded by water. A wide and deep drainage ditch is dug next to the chimney to direct rainwater to nearby low-lying areas to prevent stagnant water from pouring into the chimney. Since it was a major construction project, the protagonist simply dug a similar drainage ditch at the entrance of "Dongyang City" and connected it to the drainage ditch at the chimney mouth.
After the chimney flue was dug downward for about half a meter, the tunnel turned a large S-shaped vertical bend, first turning upward, and then turning back to its original direction. In this way, if there is heavy rain pouring into the flue, the rainwater will also collect in the low-lying area at the S-shaped bend and will not pour directly into the combustion chamber.
In order to drain the collected rainwater, a slightly smaller drainage channel was dug diagonally downward at the corner, and dug deep into the ground until the loose soil layer was dug. The soil here is like a sponge, absorbing and accumulating a large amount of water during the rainy season. During drought periods, the ants can also obtain valuable shallow groundwater from here.
After the flue turns, continue down for about half a meter, and you will reach the planned combustion chamber location. The combustion chamber planned by the protagonist is one meter high, with a circular floor, one meter in diameter, and a bell shape in the vertical direction.
Such a combustion chamber is several times larger than the combustion chamber of the main nest, which also means that the ants must dig nearly one cubic meter of earth, which is a huge project.
Another tunnel will be dug next to the combustion chamber leading to "Dongyang City", and the ants responsible for replenishing fuel and cleaning ashes will enter and exit from here.
At the end of the day, the drainage ditch on the ground has been basically completed, but the construction of the underground combustion chamber has just begun. The protagonist estimates that it will take nearly a month to complete everything. During this period, the protagonist can only pray that it doesn't rain. If it does rain, he has to move the fire back into the nut shell for protection.
The day-long hunting team had quite a harvest. Each team moved a large amount of food into the nest.
Because all the ants in the sub-nest disappeared mysteriously, a large amount of food in the territory of "Dongyang City" fell on the ground and was not collected. There are dead insects, grass seeds, fungi and fruits. The food search party returned with a full load with little effort.
Especially the team that went to take care of the aphids came back with chubby bellies one by one and fed honeydew to the ants they met one by one.
The results of the food search team in one day were enough to feed more than a thousand ants in the entire sub-nest for half a month. The food crisis was temporarily resolved.
The project could not be completed for a while. When the protagonist saw that it was getting late, he asked the construction team to go back to their nest and let them fill their stomachs on their own.
The protagonist sent someone to summon all thirty-two male ants to the conference room.
