The weather is very good today, the sun is shining brightly on my body, making me warm.
I lay down on a blade of grass next to the nest, feeling tired and lazy, not wanting to move.
Several days have passed since the last duel over territory. That day, after I won, I went into battle again with my broken leg and defeated the opponent.
Then, our tribe obtained all the ownership of that piece of grassland, and then we stopped as soon as possible. Through a sacred duel, our two tribes formally demarcated their borders and divided up the valley that originally belonged to the other tribe.
A large and fertile territory in the valley was assigned to the tribe. This good news made the entire tribe extremely excited.
The next day, almost everyone in the tribe, old and young, came out to hunt in the valley and harvested a lot.
That day, we hunted more than ten prey, ranging from large moths and crickets to small inchworms and beetles. The compatriots, who had been starving for a long time, had a feast.
In the next few days, the harvest was also very rich, and the number of prey in the valley was not comparable to that in the barren hills.
The tribe members were finally able to have full meals every day, and there was finally a considerable amount of food stored in the granary of the tribe's lair.
We can cut up the excess prey, dry it, and store it as food for the winter.
In the past, for a small tribe like ours, spending the winter often meant that most of our fellow tribesmen would tragically die of hunger and cold, and their bodies would be eaten by fellow tribesmen who were also hungry to maintain the lives of the few survivors.
But now, as long as there are enough prey, we can survive the snowy winter.
Although our sun-dried stored grain does not taste very good, it often becomes moldy. However, moldy food is also food. In winter, if you throw the food out of the nest, the mold will naturally die.
Thinking of this, I thought of another delicious food.
That was captured when our tribe participated in a joint operation. At that time, several of our tribal coalition forces broke into a small lair of the fallen, which was a small camp established by some corrupted outsiders.
There was nothing particularly memorable about this battle. The Fallen resisted very little and were quickly wiped out by our elite warriors.
But here in this lair we get a delicious trophy.
This is also some dried meat, but it is not dried out, but is rubbed on the surface with salt.
We know that salt is occasionally precipitated on some rocks, and we will lick these flavorful minerals when we have the opportunity.
Dried meat is also very common, it is our most common food.
But the combination of these two common things turned out to be so delicious, which we didn't expect.
We were just starving at the time, and a battle had consumed a lot of energy. So even though the food looked strange, we ate it without hesitation.
But the deliciousness of the food won us over immediately.
It is said that after returning, some large tribes participating in the operation have begun to try to make this kind of salted meat jerky.
But our tribe can't do it. On the one hand, we can't find that kind of salty stone in our tribe's territory. On the other hand, when we could not even guarantee that we would have enough to eat before, we did not have the physical strength and energy to look for resources that could not fill our stomachs.
But it’s different now. We have a fertile territory. We have no shortage of food for the time being until the ant eggs that the well-fed queen frantically lays out grow.
Can we go to the valley to find some salt? I thought so.
As the "chief warrior" of the tribe and a major contributor to the territory, even if I don't go hunting every day, the tribe's granary can still be open to supply me with food.
However, I will still go hunting frequently to ensure my physical condition. After all, the broken leg is still staring at me eagerly, and she always wants to defeat me. As for Huang, although her life is difficult now and she is often ridiculed by the soldiers, she is also very ambitious.
My hunting skills ensure that I never go hungry. This was true when food was scarce, and even more so now.
Once I have enough food, I have a lot of time at my disposal. Lazy basking in the sun is a way to kill time, as is going to the salt mines.
Thinking of this, I felt a little excited and prepared to take another nap and wait for the midday sun to dissipate before setting off.
——I am the dividing line——
I slept for a while and was woken up. It was the annoying young queen who woke me up.
She has become a lot plumper recently. After all, there is enough food for her to eat with an open belly.
Moreover, she is the queen ant, and when food is plentiful, she will lay eggs.
As the youngest ant queen in the tribe, she is the hope of the future of the tribe. Only every two years, a new queen ant will be born in the tribe. If the weather is bad, this time will be extended. They bear the heavy responsibility of tribe reproduction.
The young queen ant was born this year just like me. When I was already a qualified warrior, the young queen also took part in the wedding flight.
During the wedding flight, the most noble queen must also mate with the weak male ant that we most despise, and then the young queen returns to the tribe.
The male ant she had mated with actually followed her, shamelessly wanting to enter our tribe and live here.
Each tribe will indeed absorb a small number of male ants and keep them in captivity unconditionally in order to mate with the queen ant under special circumstances when she cannot find a suitable partner for marriage, and the lack of tribe can reproduce and continue.
However, our tribe already has an old male ant. Although he is very old, he can still mate.
Naturally we will not accept another freeloader. This male ant had a tragic ending. He was bitten off his head by a broken leg, and his body was eaten by everyone.
However, there was nothing he could do. After mating, if no tribe accepts male ants, they will not be able to return to the tribe where they were born.
They don't even know how to hunt, so instead of starving to death in the wild, they might as well risk finding a tribe and give it a try. For every male ant that is successfully taken in, there are ten dead male ants. From this point of view, the old male ant was really a lucky guy.
Maybe, our tribe will take in one more male ant next year. After all, there is enough food and the old male ant is too old. Let’s see who is so lucky next year.
The young queen ant saw me when she came out to bask in the sun. After all, I was lying near the entrance of the nest, and it was difficult not to see me.
She is now bloated and has a particularly big belly. She is in the period of childbirth.
Because of her size, she can no longer go hunting with me like before. But staying quietly in the nest is not something she can tolerate because she is so active. She always likes to climb up to the ground to bask in the sun.
After seeing me, she happily came over to communicate with me, and I told her my plan to find salt!
