When the cold wave stopped, the sun gradually warmed the earth again, and the daytime temperature rose to freezing point again, the protagonist ordered the first team of ten pavement ants to go north.
In this small team, every pavement ant wears cold-proof clothes and goes on the road after eating and drinking. Four of them carried a small nut shell containing smoldering charcoal, and four each carried a small net bag of dry food, enough to last the team for three weeks. The other two pavement ants are ready to take turns carrying fire and dry food.
Since the other big-headed ants could not go out, only the protagonist and other pavement ants covered in thick felt came to see them off.
It is strange to say that although he is a big-headed ant, the protagonist feels that he is so different - developed vision, the ability to actively breathe and the ability to generate heat independently in winter, these are all things that big-headed ants do not possess. Sometimes, the protagonist feels that he is still a mammal, a mammal with the appearance of an ant.
Closer to home, in the next half month, this small team will trek through the dangerous wilderness. Failure to return will mean death.
But ants never refuse orders from their superiors, even if the order asks them to die, or with a high probability of death.
Not just this team, in the next few days, the protagonist will send a team to the north every day, and a total of five teams will participate. As long as any team successfully returns and brings information, the sacrifices of other pavement ants will be valuable.
After sending away the last team heading north, the protagonist returned to the underground lair alone.
It gets warmer and noisier as you go lower. Even in winter, which is dead for the insect world, there are still shelters full of life.
For more than a week, the weather was sunny and sunny. Even if there were occasional strong winds, there was no snowfall. The team going north had a little more hope of survival.
The protagonist, day after day, looks forward to the news from the north.
——I am the dividing line——
After seeing off the team going north, the protagonist started running to the Beetle Stable every day.
There are now twenty hatched adult beetles here, including three large beetles and seventeen medium-sized beetles. The large beetles include one horned beetle and two stag beetles, while the medium-sized beetles are all kinds of scarabs, including red-footed green beetles, green-green scarabs, etc. There are also dung beetles, a common beetle commonly known as dung beetles.
Together with the gifts from the survivors of the big-headed ants and the rummaging around the field by the Angel King's army, a total of nearly thirty eggs that were suspected to be beetles were collected. However, in fact, after hatching, it was found that there were other insects such as beetles among them.
Cerambycidae is the general name for insects of the polyphagous suborder Cerambycidae. It has chewing mouthparts and its most distinctive feature is its long antennae, which often exceed the length of the body.
Longhorn beetles are herbivorous insects, and some species are pests. Their larvae live in wood and can harm plants, such as most pines, cypresses, willows, elms, walnuts, citrus, apples, peaches and tea, and some cotton and wheat plants. , corn, sorghum, sugar cane and hemp, etc.
The beetle is very powerful and is considered to be as strong as an ox, hence its name. Precisely because the longhorned beetle has a lot of strength and is herbivorous, although it is not suitable as a war beast, the protagonist feels that it can become a good draft beast. At first, he wanted to tame the longhorned beetle in the same way as a beetle.
However, beetles are obviously different from beetles, and this method of domestication failed. Moreover, the beetle was obviously disobedient and always wanted to dig out the narrow passage of the beetle stable to escape. In the end, the protagonist had to mobilize a small team of warriors from the Angel King to kill the beetle and throw the edible parts into it. granary.
Also suffering the same fate was the Gidin bug. Gidding bugs, commonly known as popping bugs and rusty bark bugs, belong to the order Coleoptera and the Gidinidae family. The adults bite the leaves, and the larvae eat the bark of the branches. The damaged areas will ooze gum. When the damage is severe, the bark will burst, hence the name "skin-exploding insect", and may even cause the entire tree to die. The size and shape of adults of Gitinia vulgaris vary depending on the species. The small ones are less than 1 cm and the large ones are more than 8 cm. The heads are small and the antennae and legs are very short. The larvae are long, flat, and milky white.
However, after killing the untamed gidding bug, the protagonist gained something extra. The Gidin beetle is an extremely beautiful beetle. Its body surface generally has a metallic luster of various colors. Most of the beetles are extremely colorful, resembling a charming and charming lady, and are also known as "rainbow eyes". The elytra of some species of gigantic beetles are metallic blue, copper-green, green or black. During the Victorian era, metallic beetles were often worn as living jewelry for women or men.
The protagonist discovers that these carapace shells can be used as decorations in the palace. After carefully carving them with a gravel knife, it becomes a beautiful work of art. The carapace fragments that fall off during carving become beautiful dyes when added with water, which can dye felt or textiles in a rainbow of brilliant and varied colors.
Except for longhorned beetles and gigantic beetles that cannot be tamed, other beetles can be tamed using the methods taught by the survivors of the big-headed ants.
The protagonist also discovers that none of the beetles in this world can fly. These beetles no longer have wings. What was originally a pair of elytra has now grown together and completely turned into a carapace similar to a tortoise shell. Perhaps it is because beetles in this world lack predators and no longer need to rely on flight to avoid, and a strong and seamless carapace is more conducive to survival, so such an evolution has occurred - the protagonist made such a guess.
In order to prevent the beetles from becoming untamed in their underground nests in winter, the giant-headed ant survivors also taught a technique, which is to feed these beetles the pulp or juice of some specific fruits, so that these beetles will become drowsy and reduce their activity.
In this way, you only need to feed these semi-hibernating beetles with food, water and sleep fruit once a week to keep them peaceful.
However, the Angel King's legions are not idle either. The legions planned to be formed with the beetles have come to the beetle stables in batches to conduct adaptive training next to the sleeping beetles.
It's okay to be accompanied by infantry. They just need to get used to the existence of beetles, and the fighting method is still the same as usual.
The infantry on the beetle's back need to learn to quickly get up and down the beetle's back.
In order to make it easier for these infantry to get up and down, and to give these sling-throwing warriors a stable platform, the protagonist plans to install some saddlery on the back of the beetle. The remnants of the big-headed ants do not have such saddles, and their warriors are accustomed to fighting on bare-backed beetles.
But the protagonist believes that just as the saddle liberates the cavalry and the vehicle on the elephant's back also provides help to the elephant knight, suitable saddles can also help the beetle warriors enhance their combat effectiveness.
As a result, the development of beetle saddles was put on the agenda.
