According to the messenger's report, after receiving the order from the protagonist, Tuozi gathered his subordinates and only assisted in foraging near the "Salt City", and no longer went to the expanded salt marsh to collect salt grains to avoid unnecessary losses.
He also truthfully conveyed the protagonist's suggestions to the king of "Salt City".
However, due to the constant arrival of salt transport teams from various places, there was an urgent need for large amounts of salt. The king was probably under a lot of pressure. In order to meet the salt demand of the whole kingdom, he took the risk of sending worker ants out to try to find the few salt grains far away from the water.
For ants, river crabs actually do not move very fast. If their eyesight is not too poor, these river crabs may not always be able to catch the petite and agile ants. There are stones crisscrossing the waterfront, and it is difficult for ants to distinguish whether the blurry objects in the distance are stones or crabs. By the time the crabs get close, it is too late to escape from the attack range of the crab claws, so they are easily caught.
If the ants are moved to a flat terrain away from the water, they will be less likely to be preyed upon as they become more vigilant. This was the king's wishful thinking, but it backfired.
It is difficult for worker ants to collect a large amount of salt grains on these safe terrains. After all, these salt grains are left after the evaporation of salt water, and the water level of the salt marsh has been kept at a high level due to the irregular eruptions of hot springs, which flooded the ants. Most of the high-yield "salt fields". The salt that the ants can collect are tiny salt particles that were blown away by the wind before, so naturally there isn't much. Salt production in "Yancheng" has dropped sharply in the past few days, and is even less than one-tenth of usual levels.
There are more and more salt transport teams stranded in "Yancheng". These salt transport teams all want to bring back enough salt for the nest to use for the whole winter, but the output of "Yancheng" is only a drop in the bucket.
In desperation, the king of "Salt City" ordered the ants to venture close to the salt marsh, trying to sacrifice some ants in exchange for precious salt.
For the Big-headed Ant Kingdom, the meaning of the existence of "Salt City" is to provide salt. The small amount of food produced in its territory is enough to supply the consumption of two to three thousand ants in this nest. No matter how many worker ants are lost, as long as there is a food source, after a period of time Time can be replenished by the queen ant. Therefore, even if the lives of fresh worker ants are exchanged for salt needed by other nests, in Wang's view, it is not a loss-making transaction.
Just like that, in the next few days, a large number of worker ants swarmed into the salt marsh, grabbed a grain of salt and ran away. Many worker ants with poor eyesight often suffered a narrow escape from river crabs. Another one or two hundred worker ants died under the crab's claws.
The river crabs apparently also discovered that there was a sufficient amount of ant prey in this area and began to move here in large numbers. In contrast, prey is scarce around salt marshes. Most insects cannot survive in this saline-alkali environment for a long time. The only creatures crabs can catch are creatures that come here to replenish salt and stay for a short period of time. Many of these creatures are agile. , good eyesight and responsiveness, the hunting success rate of river crabs is not high.
In contrast, ants are easy to catch, and these big-headed ants do not contain formic acid or venom in their bodies, making them a delicacy that river crabs can enjoy with confidence.
What's even more deadly is that there were only a few hundred crabs active in the salt marsh before, but as the peak of the breeding season approaches, more and more female crabs come to the salt marsh and lay their eggs in the relatively warm salt marsh. As for the salt content in the water, it’s no big deal. Most crabs can adapt to the salinity of seawater. Even though river crabs are freshwater crabs, they can also survive in salt marshes.
As the number of female crabs waiting to lay eggs increases, food becomes increasingly scarce around the salt marshes, and worker ants looking for salt become a small number of stable food sources.
As more and more river crabs gathered, the team sent to look for salt in "Yancheng" suffered more and more casualties. Wang had to stop this behavior of exchanging lives for salt, because the replenishment rate of new ants could no longer keep up with consumption. .
But at this time, the retreating ants attracted the following river crabs to the vicinity of the nest. This place is not far from the salt marsh after the water level has been raised.
The river crabs, which had lost track of their prey, followed the foraging worker ants nearby and finally discovered the location of "Salt City". The river crabs smelled the food hiding underground, and more than a dozen river crabs began to gather here, digging through the soil with their large claws and eight legs, trying to dig out the ants hiding underground.
It was at this time that Tuozi realized something was wrong and sent five messengers to ask for help. In the end, only one arrived at his destination.
This is also how the ants contact each other when facing an emergency - sending multiple messengers to break out and report the news.
After all, the probability of a single messenger getting into an accident on the road is not low, and many messages often fail to reach their destination. If it is a general message, it is okay to send a courier to deliver the letter. At most, the sender can just send a replacement courier after realizing that there has been no reply for a long time. But for important information, multiple messengers must be used as backup to ensure that the message is delivered in time.
The protagonist simply established a messenger system, requiring that ordinary information must be delivered by two messengers who set off one after another, and important news must be delivered by three to five messengers. For particularly important messengers, more messengers can be sent according to the situation. Messengers should move along ant trails and are not allowed to move in the early morning and evening except in emergencies. Instead, they should choose to spend the night in a nearby nest or safe place. This ensures the delivery rate of information.
Not only messengers who operate on the ground, flying knights are also often used as messengers by the protagonist. Although many flying knights are not happy, these objections are suppressed by the protagonist's growing prestige. And as the second batch of flying knights taught by the protagonist enter the service, the proportion of flying knights who are willing to obey the protagonist unconditionally is also increasing.
Although the flying knights deliver letters very quickly, they may be chased by insects or accidentally fall into spider webs. For this reason, the protagonist also chooses to increase the number of flying knights when sending messages to ensure the message delivery rate. At the same time, he orders the flying knights to fly at a medium altitude as much as possible. Although the wind is strong, they can avoid more predators such as dragonflies that appear at low altitudes. , and also avoid traps such as spider webs.
After some rectifications by the protagonist, the efficiency and delivery rate of the messengers of the God Envoy King Legion have been greatly improved, and it is rare that messages fail to be delivered.
Return to the river crab.
After the protagonist learned that both "Yancheng" and Tuozi were in danger, he was also anxious. He immediately ordered Xiaoqing II to be brought to the ground and prepared to set off to understand the situation.
It had been half a day since the messengers set out. If He Crab had acted quickly, "Salt City" might have fallen into the hands of the monsters.
Hua Mulan immediately took action and sent two guards to the fly stable to bring out Xiao Qing II. The protagonist quickly walked along the main passage of the nest to the ground. Along the way, the ants smelled the information smell emitted by Hua Mulan and moved out of the way!
