Agriculture is an industry that uses the growth and development laws of animals and plants to obtain products through artificial cultivation. Among them, agriculture that cultivates plants is called planting industry, and agriculture that cultivates animals is called breeding industry.
If ants want to develop a farming industry, a ready example is leafcutter ants that can grow fungi.
But leafcutter ants are able to grow fungi because they have evolved with a high degree of division of labor. There are large worker ants responsible for chopping leaves, medium-sized worker ants responsible for transportation, small worker ants responsible for making leaves into culture media, and even young ants. There is also division of labor. The protagonist doesn't understand the secret, so he can't lead the big-headed ants on the path of growing fungi.
What if we sow grain like humans? This is a feasible way. The protagonist wants to wait until autumn to find a suitable piece of land, sow the collected grass seeds, and gradually find suitable plants for planting through experiments.
But this is a long-term project that will take at least several years to bear fruit.
What can be effective in the short term is the breeding industry. The aphids grazed by the big-headed ants near "Dongyang City" can provide a certain amount of honeydew every day. This honeydew is a high-end drink in the ant colony.
The protagonist already knows by this time that the sweet water he likes to drink is honeydew excreted by aphids, but he has become accustomed to it and accepted it. If he had just traveled through time, the protagonist would definitely not be able to drink it after knowing the truth.
But grazing aphids does not provide meat. According to the protagonist's knowledge, there are no ants that graze bugs for meat.
But the protagonist has a very good idea, which is to cultivate mealworms.
Mealworms are not picky about the environment. Digging nests under the ant nest can meet their temperature and humidity requirements. Mealworms also eat a variety of foods. They can usually survive by feeding them some grass leaves. If you throw in the garbage and corpses produced by ants, they will also eat them.
Moreover, mealworms grow quickly and have strong fecundity. They can raise three generations a year and are rich in nutrients. To ants, they are as good livestock as cattle, sheep, and pigs are to humans.
Now that the goal of breeding mealworms has been determined, the protagonist spent the next few days on this work.
On the one hand, some remote nest rooms in "Dongyang City" are expanded into breeding farms.
On the other hand, the protagonist sends several teams to the northern depression every day to try to search and capture live mealworms.
However, since the ants do not have the corresponding tools (such as nets), it is very difficult to capture a mealworm alive. After several unsuccessful attempts, a team unexpectedly discovered a mealworm laying eggs under a rotten tree, and brought several eggs back to the ant nest.
The protagonist is very happy, these eggs are the source of future livestock herds. Later, the protagonist changed the goal of the search team, from trying to capture live mealworms to digging deep into the ground to find eggs.
In the next few days, more than a hundred mealworm eggs were returned to the ant nest one after another. The protagonist selects some worker ants to take care of these eggs in the farm.
In addition, there is good news: pavement ant eggs are starting to hatch one after another. After receiving a report from the worker ants taking care of these pavement ant eggs, the protagonist rushed to the incubation room to check.
During the incubation process of the 48 pavement ant eggs, 5 showed signs of death and were cleaned up by the worker ants who took care of them. The remaining 43 were hatched one after another.
Looking at these young ants, which are white and plump like little maggots, it is not yet possible to tell whether they are worker ants or something else, but considering the location where they were captured, it is more likely that they are worker ants.
The construction of the combustion chamber is also progressing steadily. The twelve new queen ants have begun laying eggs, and more than 7,000 ant eggs are currently hatching. Everything in "Dongyang City" seems to be on track.
In order to prepare for the consumption of the upcoming ant colony explosion, the protagonist first asked the queen ants to significantly reduce the amount of eggs they lay, keeping it at three or four hundred a day.
At the same time, except for the construction ants and the ants who had to stay in the nest, the others were sent out in small teams to look for food.
Especially in the depressions in the north, there are countless mealworms hidden here. They can be found under any stone, inside rotten wood, and on grass blades. In addition, mealworms are easy to catch, so this depression has become an important hunting ground in "Dongyang City". Every day, dozens of mealworms are carried back to the ant nest, greatly enriching the granary.
In order to preserve the meat for as long as possible, the protagonist also asked the worker ants to learn the skill of drying insects on the stone slab next to the entrance and exit of the ant nest.
But this positive labor scene was quickly shattered.
On this day, when the protagonist was inspecting the first batch of hatched mealworms, the joy he had just felt because these mealworm larvae were eating normally was ruined.
A messenger came asking for help: The troops searching for mealworms in the depression were attacked by a giant mantis and asked for help.
Mantis! Mantis again?
The protagonist will never forget that when he led a team out for hunting for the first time, he had already successfully hunted a prey, but a green mantis suddenly attacked his team.
The protagonist can clearly remember the tragic death of the male ants and soldier ants who were killed by the mantis's sword. The protagonist will never forget the fear and helplessness that filled his heart at that time. It seemed that what he faced at that time was not a praying mantis, but the god of death with a scythe.
Now, this god of death appears again. Although I don’t know if it’s the praying mantis from last time, the protagonist has a strong hunch that it is it.
This god of death attacked the ants again, and his subordinates were confronting and fighting with the god of death. They asked for help. Without support, they would definitely not be able to survive.
going or not?
If you go, there are not many soldier ants in the ant nest now, only a small number of guards around the protagonist. The protagonist will inevitably have to conquer it himself, so he will have to face this death-like opponent again.
Not going? You may be able to escape disaster for the time being, but your subordinates will definitely suffer heavy losses. These are all veterans of the Divine Envoy King's legion. And the protagonist will never be able to escape from the clutches of this inner demon.
Go, I must, the protagonist thinks.
The fear and humiliation that were once felt have now turned into a raging fighting spirit. The protagonist immediately asked Hua Mulan to summon his own escort and hurriedly went to the northern depression.
The protagonist does not go out to die as soon as his brain gets hot, but makes a decision after weighing his strength.
In the previous counterattack against the pavement ants, the protagonist has discovered that his strength is far greater than that of ordinary ants. After activating the "Killing God" mode, the protagonist has the strength to fight one against a thousand. Although after activating the "Killing God", there will be problems such as being unable to control bloodlust and easily losing strength.
Later, the protagonist tested his own strength. He was able to lift a stone three to four cubic decimeters. This kind of power is not something that any insect can withstand.
This is where the protagonist’s confidence lies!
