The mission assigned by the protagonist to "Linshui City" was carried out by the local Wang Zhongzhong, but the effect was very average.
Most of the worker ants who dug holes in the soil of stone cracks failed. These stone cracks are basically formed by the cracking of the rock plate at the foundation of the island under the action of long-term seasonal changes and temperature changes. They can only lead to the inside of the rock plate. There is room for exploration and expansion.
There were only two passages that were drilled along the rock cracks and still contained soil. However, after going more than one meter underground, they quickly encountered the obstruction of groundwater.
This means that the groundwater level here is very high due to the influence of river water, which fundamentally eliminates the possibility of "Linshui City" expanding underground.
The preliminary experimental excavation work to expand the nest inside the banyan tree also did not go smoothly. The main obstacle is the ants' inability to shake the fibers of the wood.
In fact, the hardness of banyan wood is relatively soft among all woods, and dead banyan trees will quickly decay and become brittle after being left for a period of time. Therefore, banyan wood is rarely used in the human world to make beams, furniture, etc. Basically only Can be used to make fire.
But for ants, the fiber of a living banyan tree is rich in moisture and toughness, which is simply not something that their once proud jaws can handle.
Over the past few days, many worker ants and soldier ants had their jaws broken during the process of digging wood under the king's mandatory order. This kind of trauma is fatal. There is no post-traumatic plastic surgery in the ant world. With this level of injury, these ants will soon starve to death because they are unable to eat on their own.
Even letting other ants feed them would not work. Ants have no concept of work-related injuries. In the king's opinion, instead of leaving these disabled ants who can no longer work to waste food, it is better to wait for the queen to be born. Growing eggs saves trouble and resources.
The protagonist was speechless after hearing the news. In his opinion, these kings of "Linshui City" were just a bunch of bumpkins who lacked practical experience.
The main job of the general sub-nest throughout the year is to collect food routinely, so the king here does not have much experience in other aspects. Even if the "Linshui City" is occasionally expanded, the naturally decayed part of the surface of the banyan tree is fully utilized. This This kind of construction is not difficult.
But once they encounter a difficult part that must be overcome, these kings are at their wits' end. They can't come up with any solution. They can only let their subordinate worker ants and soldier ants attack hard and use the toughness of wood fibers to test the sturdiness of the ants' jaws. .
After discovering this situation, the protagonist immediately stopped their stupid behavior, but he didn't know what to do next.
The expansion of "Linshui City" is imperative. If a nest with enough space and temperature for the Envoy King's army to be stationed can't be built before winter, then the so-called defense plan will be a joke. At that time, the pavement ant barbarian army attacking "Linshui City" during the day in winter will only encounter a group of defenders who have been frozen to death and unable to resist.
The protagonist immediately flew back to "Dongyang City". He transferred half of the workers from the big worker ants and the pale gold worker ants who had been assigned to the construction team to engage in scientific research and technical work, together with some skilled worker ants from the construction team, and asked them to immediately Hit the road and rush to "Linshui City".
The construction workers arrived at their destination two days later and immediately went to work without taking a break.
According to the protagonist's request, these construction workers directed the local worker ants to conduct a comprehensive inspection of the huge banyan tree to find a suitable expansion site and formulate an expansion plan. Some of these construction workers have also participated in the expansion of "Tree Stump Fortress" and have similar experiences - although "Tree Stump Fortress" is made of dead trees, its construction difficulty is less than that of "Linshui City".
The hard work paid off, and soon these construction workers discovered a fact that made the protagonist both happy and speechless - there was a suitable nesting site not far from the entrance of the original "Linshui City".
It turns out that banyan trees are soft and not very dense, so they can easily breed borers. These borers will bore out criss-crossing passages inside the banyan tree, and in severe cases may even cause the entire giant, ancient banyan tree to collapse.
What the construction workers found were a few passages carved by the larvae of certain insects.
In fact, the earliest "Linshui City" was a city that the Big-headed Ant Kingdom captured from the Pavement Ant Barbarians. The Pavement Ant Barbarians used the natural insect-eaten passages they discovered to expand and build Linshui City.
Since the pavement ant barbarians are better able to adapt to the cold climate in winter, they can live in "Linshui City" for a long time.
After the big-headed ant kingdom seized this secondary nest, because the big-headed ants were afraid of the cold, all those who stayed here would be wiped out before winter. Year after year, no ants remember the past history of "Linshui City". The big-headed ants that are newly assigned here after the recovery every year do not know this secondary nest. They will only live in the original nest reluctantly, and at most they will occasionally expand a few nests in some decayed wood.
If the protagonist hadn't brought the construction team here to investigate carefully, such a simple expansion method for "Linshui City" might never have been discovered.
The problem that had been bothering them was solved, and the construction workers quickly selected a suitable one from the many insect holes in the entire tree.
Some passages were too small, or too close to the bark surface, or the openings were not conducive to entry and defense, and these were rejected. The worker ants also fill these unused tunnels with large amounts of clay to increase the strength of the banyan tree and prevent the barbarian army of pavement ants from exploiting these tunnels.
The tunnel finally selected has two openings in the bark, one opening is located in the middle of the trunk facing south, which can be used as an entrance and exit for the ants. There is also an opening at the top of the trunk that serves as a natural chimney for the combustion chamber.
The tunnels are large in scale, with only two entrances and exits separated by five meters, and most of the tunnels penetrate deep into the heart of the tree, which can effectively meet the thermal insulation requirements.
The scale of the original tunnel cannot yet meet the needs of all troops stationed and supplies, and there are no combustion chambers and various nest structures. However, fortunately, the banyan tree has a soft heart and a lot of decayed parts, so the worker ants can Relatively easy expansion.
According to the plan, the expanded nest near the bark of the tree is mainly used to store food. The natural low temperature here is conducive to the storage of food. The nest chamber near the center will serve as the barracks.
The middlemost nest connected to the chimney will be used as a combustion chamber. In order to prevent fire, this huge nest is surrounded by a thick layer of wet mud. After being dried by the fire, the mud layer becomes Fireproof soil layer.
