Entering from the reception area, through the doorway specially left in the wooden partition, you can see the living area, or the dining room to be precise.
Using wooden partitions to separate rooms does not provide good sound insulation, but it can play a basic role in isolating sight lines, especially in a nest room where the light is not strong. Fortunately, the protagonist's room is heavily guarded, and the ants' hearing is not very developed, so there is not much need for soundproofing.
The living area is mainly where the protagonist eats and drinks, so there are leather stools and a simple stone table with some tableware on the stone table.
The stone table has not been processed in any way and is made of pure natural shale. It is of the right height and size and has a very flat surface. The ants found it according to the protagonist's instructions and brought it back to serve as the protagonist's dining table. In order to carry this large dining table, the main passage outside the protagonist's house was specially widened.
Although the hardness of shale is relatively low, generally with a Platts hardness coefficient of 1.5~3, and the structure is relatively dense, the Platts hardness coefficient can reach 4~5. Some hard shale has a higher hardness, but they are all softer. Stone. But the hardness is completely enough for ants. Anyway, except for the protagonist who descended from heaven, other ants cannot damage this table.
There are some tableware on this table, which are made of pottery and natural plant texture. Pottery is mainly made of plates, bowls, etc., which are fired in a combustion chamber. Currently, the ant craftsmen under the protagonist are able to make relatively good pottery, although the output is not high.
The ones with natural plant texture are mainly bulky items. For example, a water reservoir is made of a nut shell similar to a round chestnut. The bottom is flat to facilitate placement. A hole is drilled in the upper end with a gravel drill. It is usually plugged with a wooden plug. It can hold several drops of water, which is good for ants. It is a large water reservoir.
There are now two nut water reservoirs on the table, one for clean water and one for honeydew.
The reason why pottery is not used to store water is because there are tiny holes on the surface of pottery from which water can overflow, making it difficult to store water for a long time. However, with the existing technology of Ant Craftsmen, the scrap rate for making large pottery is too high. After all, small pottery can easily be burned through in a fire, while large pottery is prone to uneven fire, resulting in cracking and scrapping.
The protagonist has no way to get the ants to start firing porcelain now. The glaze can still be solved, but firing porcelain requires a higher temperature. The small fire that burns natural wood like the ants currently requires ants to take care of it. It is difficult to reach a firing temperature of more than a thousand degrees. Even if it could be reached, all the ants working nearby would be roasted to death, and the fire would be without a caregiver.
The natural nut material shows its benefits at this time - suitable size and good water barrier, although drilling is more laborious. Fortunately, even if the protagonist uses this thing, there is no need for large-scale promotion.
In the protagonist's long-term plan, there is an idea, which is to use natural walnuts to make large water storage containers, weave storage baskets out of rattan and wood, and rely on beetles to carry these water storage containers and storage baskets to accompany the army's movements. A lot of logistical problems can be solved.
You know, the current ant army always goes out after eating and drinking enough, so that they don't need to eat for about three days. And if the battle is expected to last longer, they can only rely on capture, or let the soldiers march with a small amount of food in their jaws.
As a result, the food that can be carried or captured is, firstly, small and secondly, unstable, which seriously affects the effectiveness of long-term operations. There have also been extreme situations where troops transporting food were suddenly attacked. It was difficult for soldiers holding food in their jaws to react in time and form an array. Even if they repelled the enemy attack, they still had to waste time and effort to pick up the food discarded on the ground. return.
With specialized transport beetles, many logistical problems can be solved, especially since these beetles are vegetarians and do not require additional food. They only need to find suitable trees to suck sap or eat ant excrement. This is much less troublesome than the transportation of mules and horses in ancient human society. The mules and horses also need to prepare food. If the mules and horses are carrying heavy loads, they can't just eat grass. They need to be fed with a large amount of concentrated feed. The grass itself takes up a large proportion of the transportation space.
Let's go back to the protagonist's "restaurant", where he eats one or two meals a day. Ants can basically eat one meal to keep them full for three days, but the protagonist cannot do that. He needs at least one meal a day, and a second meal when he exercises or thinks too much.
The protagonist speculates that he possesses human thinking and the special skills of a god descending to earth, which consumes a lot of energy and requires far more food than ordinary ants. In particular, the protagonist finds that he now has a strong preference for high-calorie foods.
When he first traveled through time, it was difficult for the protagonist to accept the diet of ants, and he could only survive on water and nuts such as sunflower seeds.
Later, after encountering a mantis who was in despair, Hua Mulan gave him honeydew, a luxury product in the ant's food. After getting used to the sweet honeydew that can quickly replenish energy, the protagonist has become addicted even after knowing that this drink is the excrement of aphids.
After accepting aphid honeydew, other foods are gradually accepted, such as insect meat. But the protagonist still only eats the meat of mealworms and other insect larvae, and is not sensitive to the meat of adult insects.
Let’s take a look at the protagonist’s daily recipes.
The content of the protagonist's two meals is almost the same. The drink is honeydew or water, and the staple food is porridge.
These porridges are usually cooked with grass seeds. In the combustion chamber, there is a large clay pot specially equipped for the protagonist.
The large pottery pot is one of the few large-scale pottery successfully fired by ant craftsmen. It is about the size of a standard human bottle cap. Whenever it is used, the large clay pot will be moved to the edge of the fire through a stone support. Ants will pour water into it through the water reservoir, and then add various ground grass seeds, chopped vegetable leaves and mushrooms. Class, and salt, cook it into a pot of salty porridge - well, the protagonist is a southerner and doesn't like sweet porridge.
Because the clay pot is too small, it cannot be placed directly on the fire, otherwise the water will evaporate before it is cooked.
Even so, the porridge cooked in the clay pot is only enough for the protagonist's two or three meals, and most of the water evaporates during the cooking and subsequent cooling process.
When the porridge is warm and not hot anymore, the ants will use wooden tools similar to pots and spoons to pour the porridge into a large pottery basin, and then give it to the protagonist.
This porridge is placed on the main character's table, usually for up to two days. Either it is removed and cleaned after eating, or it is taken away in the afternoon of the next day to avoid mold growth. Fortunately, the protagonist is used to cold food, and is satisfied with a hot meal once in a while. After all, it is too troublesome for ants to cook a meal.
Dishes cleaning is also the responsibility of the protagonist's exclusive worker ants, who cannot do any dirty work. They use clean water to clean the dishes. After all, there is less oil and no detergent is needed.
As for side dishes, they are mainly insect meat, nuts, roots and vegetables, some roasted and some eaten raw.
