The protagonist continued to fly south, and soon flew to the hilly area where parasitic ants were entrenched.
Although there is almost no threat when flying in the sky, the protagonist still cautiously hovers around the outside and confirms safety before going deeper.
He first chose a shrub where scale insects had been found before. After careful observation, he found that only a small number of scale insects were eating on this shrub, and no trace of parasitic ants was seen.
After continuous heavy rains, only the luckiest and strongest scale insects can survive, so the scale insects have declined significantly, which the protagonist had expected.
Even the aphid resources in "Dongyang City" have suffered a lot in the past few days, and the supply of honeydew has suddenly become even more scarce. Even male and female ants have temporarily suspended their daily honeydew rations. It seems that before the next rain, we have to order the grazing worker ants to move the aphids to underground nests to avoid rain.
However, the parasitic ants even gave up obtaining honeydew from the precious scale insects, which the protagonist did not expect.
What would make them willing to give up such important luxury resources? All the protagonist can think about is that the nest is under threat.
The protagonist immediately drove Xiaoqing to the valley on the southern slope of the hill.
Along the way, the protagonist lowered the flying height. As long as it was maintained at a height of about half a meter, the parasitic ant's vision would not be able to effectively capture the protagonist's figure, and it was still very safe. At this distance, the protagonist can see every move on the ground more clearly.
As he gets closer to the parasitic ant's nest, the protagonist notices that the soil here is getting more and more humid, and large and small pools of water begin to appear densely. It seems that the damage caused by the rain here is unclear.
The protagonist quickly found the entrance to the parasitic ant nest, which was located on a slightly dry highland. However, the terms "dry" and "highland" are only relative terms. Looking at the surrounding land, the protagonist can imagine what it is like underground in this lair.
Countless parasitic ants swarmed out of the entrance and exit, and without exception, these parasitic ants were covered in mud.
The parasitic ants carried ant eggs, ant pupae and food in their mouths. Under the command of the big worker ants along the way, they formed an endless stream of ants and climbed up the slopes of the hills further south.
The protagonist followed and flew probably less than twenty meters. The protagonist saw the destination of these parasitic ants.
This is a huge rock halfway up the hill. In the gap between the huge rock and the soil, countless parasitic ants come in and out.
It seems that these parasitic ants have established a new nest here. Judging from the scale of the move, they are preparing to abandon their original nest in the valley.
These parasitic ants used to live in plain areas. When building a nest, they only need to find a high ground slightly above the ground. But their nest-building experience led to fatal mistakes in hilly areas.
Because when they moved, the parasitic ants felt that the plants at the bottom of the valley were more abundant (because the water source was more abundant) and it was easier to obtain food, so they found a slightly higher area at the bottom of the valley and built their nests.
The short-lasting heavy rains at the beginning of the rainy season had not yet exposed the shortcomings of this nest's flood protection. However, once it rains continuously for several days, the special terrain of the hills will cause all the water to flow to the bottom of the valley. This water flow is much more violent than in the plain areas at the same time.
Now even plain nests like "Dongyang City" have been affected, not to mention this one has become a parasitic ant nest as big as a reservoir.
The parasitic ant nest suffered heavy losses in the rain disaster. Almost half of the space was filled with water, and countless food supplies and ant nests were destroyed by the flood.
After learning from the painful experience, it was a rare long sunny day today, and these parasitic ants couldn't wait to move to higher places.
The protagonist asked Xiaoqing to stop on the top of the boulder above the new parasitic ant nest. There are currently no parasitic ants wandering here and it is still safe.
He carefully studied the moving procession of parasitic ants below.
The protagonist estimated that despite the rain, there were thousands of parasitic ants on the ground alone. Most of them were moving, and a small number had already started wandering out in search of food.
It seems that if you want to completely defeat and eliminate this parasitic ant nest, you will need a large number of troops. The combat effectiveness of these parasitic ants is far stronger than that of pavement ant barbarians or ordinary big-headed ants, and when attacking them, they have to face the threat of thread parasitic fungi.
At this time, the protagonist noticed a strange phenomenon.
He found that when the parasitic ants moved, they actually moved the bodies of their companions.
Among these corpses were corpses that had obviously been dead for a long time. They were completely covered by mycelium. They may have been moved from the ant cemetery. There were also corpses that had just died in the rain, and they looked very new.
"Why did they bring the corpses here? Are they running out of food and want to eat the corpses of their own companions?" the protagonist guessed.
But soon, he discovered that the parasitic ants had just piled the ant corpses near the entrance of the new nest, and rebuilt them into a small pyramid.
This pyramid is located in the blind spot of the protagonist's vision before, and he only saw it after riding Xiaoqing to follow it.
The "Pyramid of Ant Corpses" is already quite large at this time. Just like what the protagonist saw in the memory of the captive before, the dense mycelium almost covers all the ant corpses.
Whenever a new corpse is brought in, the hyphae grown from the parasitic mycorrhizal roots quickly climb up the corpse at a speed that is almost visible to the naked eye, completely covering it.
The covered corpse looked like a melted candle, with thick pus flowing out from underneath, exuding a pungent stench, which made the protagonist very uncomfortable.
At the same time, all the adult thread-parasitic fungi on the pyramid are growing extremely strong, and some thread-parasitic fungi that have expanded to the same thickness as the stems of foxtail grass suddenly "explode".
With a "pop" sound, a bunch of slender spore threads were sprayed out and settled in all the nearby places they came into contact with. Soil, rocks, and plants have all become places where spore threads temporarily reside.
The protagonist knows that this is the reproduction of parasitic bacteria. Although it is the first time for him to see this scene, it is not difficult to guess.
It's just that most of the ants in the parasitic ant nest are infected except the newborns. Can these spore threads still find a suitable host?
The mystery was quickly solved.
Perhaps attracted by the foul-smelling pus flowing from the "Ant Corpse Pyramid", soon a dung beetle (dung beetle) and a butterfly with wings like dry leaves (dead leaf butterfly) arrived here almost at the same time.
The two of them do not disturb each other. The butterfly uses its long siphon-like mouthparts to suck the pus from the ground, as if it is agar-agar jade dew. The dung beetle roughly crumpled the piles of ant corpses into balls and swallowed them into his stomach.
Neither the dung beetles nor the butterflies noticed that while they were happily eating, countless spore threads of parasitic fungi were already contaminating their bodies as they continued to move.
