After the flames approached the river bank, not only the flying knight couldn't stay in the sky, but the protagonist couldn't stand the scorching airflow and was forced to hide inside the relatively cool "Linshui City".
Inside the city, the protagonist has no idea what is happening outside, he can only imagine.
It's not just imagination, before hiding inside the banyan tree, the protagonist has seen the cruel scene of some of his subordinate ants being burned by the approaching fire.
Only at this time did he feel that having very good eyesight was not all a benefit. He could clearly see his people struggling and fleeing, but they were unable to escape, and there was nothing he could do.
Under the heat and flames, these hard-working farmers, brave warriors, and outstanding hunters could only curl up in pain and let the red and yellow flowers of death lick their bodies and burn their souls together.
You can't feel the changes in the outside temperature inside the banyan tree. Only when you get close to the entrance of the cave can you feel the obvious temperature rise.
The ants dare not go out. The outside world must be like hell at this moment. Although wildfires spread quickly, the fire lines will pass through them in a short time. But that high wall of fire was not the whole disaster. The endless ashes and flames that followed were equally terrifying. No living thing could stay on the scorched earth that had just been burned.
The city began to feel suffocating, a sign of lack of oxygen.
Wildfires consume a lot of oxygen, and the sparks that have not been extinguished in the ashes are still competing with the surviving creatures for the remaining oxygen.
The protagonist is powerless and can only endure the uncomfortable low-oxygen environment with his subordinates. Fortunately, this was just a wildfire, not an incendiary bomb or a cloud bomb, and it wouldn't cause everyone to die of suffocation.
Perhaps God has mercy on the surviving creatures, or perhaps the scorching flames stirred up the airflow and evaporated a large amount of water vapor into the sky. After being trapped in the city for an unknown number of hours, the protagonist seemed to hear the patter of rain.
So a scout was sent out, and he quickly reported back - it was indeed raining outside.
The rain was so majestic and thorough that after experiencing the fire, the ants experienced the ordeal of cold rain again.
Although it was daytime, the ants could not go out, count their losses, or search for the bodies of their dead companions.
It wasn't until sunrise the next day that the intermittent rain finally stopped. The protagonist came outside the banyan tree and saw a completely different world.
The south bank of the river was already a gray-black land. All the ground was soaked with black ash and mud, and only a few trees still maintained a trace of green on their tops. None of the weeds, farmland, or shrubs were spared, and only a few black remains showed that they had once existed.
There are puddles on the ground, and the puddles are also dyed gray-black, with turbid water flowing.
The ants began to go out. After a day and night of rain, although the ground was muddy, there was no high temperature.
They need to find the bodies of their dead companions to bury them, but that's not the point. In wildfires, a large number of insects will certainly be killed, and these insect corpses will be important food.
The ants must seize the time to transport this food back, dry it, and then store it.
Such a large-scale wildfire will definitely kill many creatures. The number of prey that can be caught in the second half of the year will be greatly affected, and some losses must be made up now.
The protagonist saw that the leaves of the big banyan tree near the south bank of the river were also a little brown, which was burned by the hot air.
Fortunately, the island on which "Linshui City" is located is made of rocks and there are no flammable materials. Otherwise, sparks floating around may cross the river and ignite the place.
Even the north bank of the river was not spared. The river, which was only a dozen meters wide in total, could not completely block the passage of Mars.
Now, both sides of the river are a scorched earth. If the protagonist had not sent flying knights to alert the "Bridgehead" before, the "Bridgehead" would have suffered heavy losses without being prepared.
The protagonist rode on Xiaoqing II and patrolled both sides of the river.
The situation on the north bank of the river was slightly better. The fire area was only about 10,000 square meters. Later, the fire stopped due to rain. The approximate range is the "bridgehead" and one or two nearby sub-nests of the paving ant barbarians.
It's different on the south bank of the river. The protagonist is flying several meters high in the air, and everything in his sight is black.
The protagonist flew all the way and found that there were scorched earth within several kilometers, and these burned areas were the hinterland of the Big-headed Ant Kingdom, a originally fertile and fertile land.
It seems that the impact of this wildfire will last for a long time and will have a huge impact on the domestic and foreign affairs of the Big-headed Ant Kingdom.
Returning to "Linshui City", the protagonist once again postponed his plan to go to the main nest. Now the post-disaster reconstruction work is more important.
Later in the evening, Darong and Lanbotu sent messengers to report the situation.
As for the "Bridgehead", dozens of worker ants and soldier ants died. The damage was not significant, but the ecology surrounding the nest had been completely destroyed.
"Linshui City" lost more than 300 worker ants and soldier ants, mainly during farm work. The farmland has been completely burned, and the nearby vegetation has been basically burned away.
Fortunately, after a fire, there are always tenacious vegetation that can survive and bring hope of new life. Fire is sometimes just a self-renewing natural force of nature.
The seeds of some tree species left before the fire can re-germinate and grow on the burned land. In particular, the seeds of poplar, white birch, leaf pine and red pine are particularly easy to survive. All of these species require full sunlight to thrive, and post-fire land is unshaded by vegetation, so there is plenty of sunlight, perfect for new trees to grow.
Poplars and birches can sprout and grow rapidly from stumps and burned roots, and the seeds of these species can be blown away by the wind and re-germinate great distances.
The pine cones of shortleaf pine and lodgepole pine are very hard and have a waxy protective layer on the outside, which allows them to survive fire and continue to germinate. Black spruce fruits are also semi-hard and will germinate into forests in the years after a fire.
The soil after the fire is rich in ash, which is rich in nutrients. The mineral soil is exposed, the weeds and shrubs that originally competed for nutrients are burned out, and there is sufficient sunlight, which is conducive to the regeneration of these trees.
In addition to trees, the vitality of weeds is even more amazing and tenacious. When trees are still sprouting, weeds can sprout from the grass roots that have not died in the ground, from the surviving seeds that have been buried deeply and have not been roasted, and they have been sacrificed by their competitors. In the open space, it has become the main local vegetation.
Even various insects, despite heavy casualties, can restore their population size within a few years through reproduction and migration.
