The little secret is dead!
Under the dim and cold light of fluorescent fungi, the protagonist stared blankly at the stiff body lying on his back in front of him.
Her antennae were drooped, her jaws were open, her huge compound eyes were devoid of any energy, and her carapace had a pale sheen.
The two worker ant servants who served her have disappeared. The protagonist was immediately very angry. These two damn worker ants didn't even tell him that the little secret was dead, and left the little secret here alone, who knows where he went!
But when he thought about it, the protagonist could only sigh. These worker ants must be given specific instructions before they will obey them. The protagonist only asked them to take care of the seriously ill little secret before, but did not tell them to report the funeral in time. Now that Xiao Mi is dead, these two "hard-working" worker ants have no tasks, so they naturally go to rest or do other work.
Even if the protagonist wanted to hold them accountable, it would be difficult to pick them out among the many worker ants in "Dongyang City". The protagonist and them had too little lighting to remember them.
Instead of throwing Xiao Mi's stiff body into the garbage dump where corpses are usually dumped, the worker ants already treated her with respect like a male ant or a queen.
In the big-headed ant kingdom, the corpses of worker ants and soldier ants are randomly discarded in garbage dumps, which are the so-called ant mounds. If it cannot be discarded in the wild in the winter, it will be stored somewhere in the underground nest and then discarded in the next spring.
Male ants and queen ants are better off. Although there is no written funeral system, the corpses of male ants and queen ants are usually discarded alone in a corner of the ant mound instead of being mixed with the corpses of the worker ants. This is a bit of a hierarchy. Take comfort in it.
If there is a famine, the corpses of the queen and male ants, because they are larger, richer in nutrients, and softer, will be used as emergency food and given priority to the living queen, males and young ants. The carcasses of other worker ants are also used as food.
As the protagonist looks at Xiao Mi's body, scenes from the past emerge, and a feeling of depression and sadness that has rarely been seen since his rebirth and time travel spreads.
Life ends, and it's just the beginning. In a few years, King Fuye, Gun, and Lan Bofei will all reach the end of their lives!
Even he and the protagonist don't know how long his body can live, one year or two years? Although now, the protagonist feels that he is extremely powerful and free from illness and disaster. But you might wake up one day and find yourself faltering and weak. The life of an ant is too short, and aging occurs so quickly that the protagonist can't help but be afraid.
But there is no point in thinking about this. As a "person" who has died once, the protagonist can only be grateful for the extra "life" even if it is only a few years. At least he has seen a world and civilization that is completely different from the human world. This is an experience that no other person has ever experienced.
Looking at Xiaomi's stiff body, the protagonist wants to hold a funeral for her, the most primitive funeral. At least her body should be buried in peace with some simple burial objects. For example, a piece of pottery, a gravel knife, these simple tools embody the labor that Xiao Mi once did. In this way, Xiaomi's body can be prevented from being eaten by ants or other hungry insects, and a whole body can be left behind.
So, the protagonist went out and summoned two passing worker ants, asking them to fetch the burial objects first, and then temporarily seal the nest until the funeral was held in the spring of next year.
But just after the worker ants left, the protagonist discovered that the originally bulging abdomen on Xiao Mi's body was actually shriveled. After seeing the abnormally bulging abdomen before, the protagonist once thought that it was the source of the disease, just like many humans who suffer from parasites or malnutrition will have a huge abdomen.
The protagonist is powerless to do anything about the disease and can only try to provide high-quality diet to Xiao Mi, but her belly shows no signs of shrinking at all.
But at this moment, this belly was as dry as a deflated balloon.
The protagonist suddenly thought of something. He stared at the top of Xiao Mi's abdomen. Under the orchid fluorescence, he finally saw something abnormal - a crystal white egg quietly trapped in soft silk. The silk was white, and so was the egg. It's white, so if you don't pay attention, the protagonist almost misses it.
This is an ant egg, Xiaomi's egg, and the protagonist suddenly wakes up.
The little secret is still alive! At least she left her genes behind!
The protagonist was a little excited. He never thought that Xiaomi would pass on his genes and life in this way, but now it all happened before his eyes. Xiao Mi is a worker ant. Even though he is a big worker ant, it stands to reason that he cannot lay eggs! ?
Later, after a long time, the protagonist figured out the reason why Xiao Mi laid eggs.
In most ant nests, although the worker ants are also female, their gonads are immature due to the suppression of hormones secreted by the queen, so they are unable to reproduce. There are only a few species of ants, there is no dedicated queen, and all females are reproductive ants.
If the queen ant in a nest unfortunately dies and no new queen takes over, the nest will come to an end. Without the queen's hormonal suppression, the gonads of the worker ants mature one after another. Since there are no male ants to fertilize them, they are left to produce unfertilized eggs, which can only hatch into male ants but not queens or workers. Therefore, in a dying ant nest, there are often an unusually large number of male ants. They do not work and consume extra food, which accelerates the collapse of the ant nest.
As a big worker ant, Xiao Mi always enjoys food that is not inferior to that of the queen ant. The nutrition of the big worker ants is very good. As long as the conditions are right, the gonads of large worker ants will mature faster.
The queen ants in each nest must rely on the help of worker ants who serve themselves to spread hormones that inhibit the gonad development of other female ants in the nest to prevent too many queens from entering the nest.
However, the site of Xiaomi's scientific research group was heavily guarded and the queen's worker ants could not enter. Therefore, the big worker ants of the scientific research group all developed and matured in this environment. It's just that because the scientific research team is busy and consumes a lot of energy, these large worker ants have no time and energy to lay eggs, and this aspect of their physiology has been suppressed in another way.
The protagonist can guess how Xiao Mi chose to give birth to an egg after realizing that her time was running out. So in the last time, she was so peaceful and calm.
As the smartest group among the ants, and also the group whose thinking is closest to humans, Xiaomi used this method full of human plots to extend his life in a sense!
The protagonist looked at this ant egg that could hatch into a male ant, and was filled with emotions for a while.
