The person who came to report was actually a male ant, not a worker ant or a soldier ant.
He was very excited, his head shook, and a pair of tentacles moved wildly. It wasn't until the God Envoy King appeared that he hurriedly came over, their tentacles intersecting, and delivered the message.
"Copper discovered?"
After receiving the information, the protagonist understood why the male ant was so excited, and why he actually came to report it in person.
On normal days, male ants would never do the work of worker ants. This is not what their status and class should do.
But today we can make an exception. As a commander, this male ant naturally knows the combat effectiveness bonus of his soldiers equipped with copper jaw knives. Ants are martial, and matters related to military matters deserve an exception.
The protagonist hurriedly asked him to lead the way to take a look. He didn't even bother to check the specific information package. Anyway, it was said that the discovery location was not far from [Xinyang City], so he had to take a look for himself.
Therefore, the protagonist ignored the information sent by the male ants, which showed the finished product image of "copper" instead of images of "copper ore" and "malachite".
The expedition team discovered copper on a river beach.
Qinghe turned a big bend here on the [Xinyangcheng] Peninsula and then turned back to its original direction. Due to inertia, the west side of the peninsula has been washed away by strong currents for a long time, forming cliffs.
On the east bank, the water flow hits the opposite bank. This is the area where the river backfills the water. The water is relatively gentle. The sediment carried by the river water leaves a light yellow strip after the floods recede year after year. river beach.
Shellfish and shrimps can often be found on the river beach, and they are also an important source of food for the Divine Envoy King's Legion in [Xinyang City].
This beach is not limited to the east coast of the peninsula, but extends intermittently all the way. Following the flow of the river, there are river beaches hundreds of meters or even longer to the east.
When the protagonist looked out from the big poplar tree, he didn't pay much attention to this direction. Looking back now, he only remembers that until the view was disturbed by fog and blocked by obstacles, the beach still didn't reach the end.
The ants found "copper" on the beach about a hundred meters east.
There is "copper". This is the only metal that can be smelted by the Divine Envoy King's Legion. Naturally, it is of great significance to the Divine Envoy King's Legion.
The protagonist knows that there is no copper in their final destination, the swamp area, at least no copper mine has been found yet. Copper happened to be discovered here. You can take the opportunity to smelt a batch of copper weapons and tools, breed some more ants, and bring them all back to the swamp to increase the copper inventory.
Once we return, with the transportation capabilities of the Divine Envoy King's Army, the complex terrain and ant forces along the way, it would be as unrealistic to come back to dig for copper ore as it would be to dig for copper ore within the control of the Destroyer in our homeland!
The protagonist follows the male ant and his subordinates, not even the angels - the angels themselves were slightly injured in the struggle because they were stuck with glue.
They walked along the edge of the beach. There was not much vegetation blocking the way, and it was not easy to be swept in by the occasional big wave in the river.
When we finally arrived at the beach, we were still some distance away, and we could see the glittering gold on the beach. The yellow river sand seemed to be mixed with a large number of golden particles.
Now that the plum rain has passed, the weather in early summer is sunny and the beach is shining like a "golden beach"!
The protagonist's heart moved.
When he picked up the first metal particle with his big jaws, he felt a little dumbfounded.
This is indeed a kind of metal particle, golden in color, shiny and very "valuable".
But these are not copper. If the copper particles stay in this humid environment, they will easily develop patina. It should be green and will never remain yellow like it is now. Nine-six flavors
These metals are gold!
A metal that, in the human world, could arouse fanatical worship, as well as killings and fights. This is a metal that has been given different meanings by humans.
But what use is this gold to ants?
You can't eat or drink. In this world, ants don't need general equivalents for exchange and trade. It's better if the two races don't fight to the death when they meet.
The protagonist was so dumbfounded that he dropped this piece of gold.
This gold was probably brought here by the water of Qinghe River. But when I was drifting on the boat before, I had never seen such a golden beach on the river bank.
It should have been brought by a nearby tributary flowing into the Jin River.
If you look to the southwest, there are continuous mountains with towering peaks that almost reach into the sky.
Judging from the direction of this mountain range, it is likely that it is integrated with the hills to the south of the hometown and the mountains near the swamp.
There is gold in the mountains. Maybe the gold comes from the place he wants to go back to!
Although he felt that gold was useless, the protagonist also asked the accompanying ants to collect a little bit. He would not object to using gold to make something for himself. These are natural gold particles and appear to have very few impurities.
Although it is difficult for the ants' combustion chambers to melt these metals with high melting points, forging alone is enough to process soft gold!
This is the remaining trace of human nature in the protagonist's heart, the desire for gold.
Compared to the Golden Beach, the protagonist is more interested in a small forest not far to the north of the beach.
He had seen these trees before, in the leafcutter ant territory by the river.
These are several metasequoia, water pine, and ash trees, which are the same main tree species in the water forest where the Bachie leaf ants are located. There are only one or two weeping willows here and there.
On an ash tree just outside, he could see with the naked eye that there were brown wax scales on the surface. The sweet excrement of this insect can be used as a substitute for aphid honeydew.
If the metasequoia trees here also have coffee beetles, rose sawflies and green leafhoppers, then this is a suitable hunting ground.
Compared to gold, these insects are more valuable.
Seeing the brown wax scale, the protagonist suddenly thought that he could also hatch a batch of aphids and scale insects, and graze on nearby useless weeds to produce honeydew.
It would be best to suck up some of the thick weeds on the peninsula!
The protagonist wants to open up a piece of farmland on the peninsula and plant crops that can collect grass seeds.
Most of the vegetation on the peninsula can be cut and cleared with a copper jaw knife, but some weeds are so tough that it's not worth the risk of damaging the few coppers.
Now that it is a humid and rainy season, there is no way to set fire to clear the open space.
If aphids can suck these plants to death, it will be the best of both worlds, and the withered plants will be easy to clean up.
The protagonist never thought of this before. This is the disadvantage of being the only one to make decisions, but he really does not have a smart enough male ant to assist him. After all, the IQ level of the ants is still far lower than that of the protagonist himself.
