The ants have encountered some trouble recently. Although it is not directly caused by the drought, it is also caused indirectly by the drought.
"Old Heart" had just finished his second meeting in one day. The lengthy meeting and heavy topics made him a little exhausted both physically and mentally.
Within the Belly Ant Clan, daily affairs are jointly decided by "Lao Xin" and two other senior kings. But if major matters are involved, the three Lao Wangs alone no longer have the right to decide. "Old Heart" and the other two Lao Wangs will organize a meeting of all male ants.
This time, after the small meeting of the three Lao Wangs, a plenary meeting was held. Based on the particularity of this topic, the "old heart" of the meeting had already expected the decision, and the consequences of the decision were also obvious.
That's why the "old heart" feels so tired.
Speaking of which, if it hadn't been for today's incident, the Belly Ant Clan would have been living a good life for a while this year, and it seemed like they could continue to do so.
Although another group of alien ants landed, and they were not as weak as the previous ants, they completely defeated the army sent by the abdominal ants.
But a blessing in disguise was that these alien ants were not greedy. Although they also asked for some sand gold, the ants subsequently made a lot of money from the trade with the alien ants.
The exotic ants can provide concentrated honeydew that is extremely sweet and can be preserved for a long time, which is far better than the light honeydew produced by the brown-helmeted wax scales raised by the ants themselves.
Not only do the ants enjoy it themselves, but they can also trade it with the red imported imported fire ants in the host country.
The sweetness of this concentrated honeydew is irresistible to any ant species, and the fire ants are willing to pay any goods they have to trade this honeydew.
All the foreign ants need are some common food or supplies. Red imported fire ants control a vast territory and multiple satellite countries, so these products are not a problem. The Belly Ants can earn two or three times the profit through resale trade, which is even more cost-effective than trading with excess gold from tribute.
It is for this reason that "Old Heart" and other Lao Wang agreed not to report news about this group of foreign ants to the red fire ants in the suzerain country.
Yes, if it weren't for the huge benefits, "Old Heart" and the others would have planned to violate the agreement reached with the Divine Envoy King's Legion and report truthfully to the sovereign country.
They are a more civilized ant race, and they are not as honest and ignorant of deceit as the ant race in the homeland of the Angel King's Legion.
Only when the honeydew trade showed great benefits did the ants dare to hide the news about the foreign ants at the cost of being discovered and punished by red fire ants in the future.
Anyway, fire ants rarely come to the river bank. If they do come, it will be said that these foreign ants have just arrived. They live some distance away from the woods and golden beaches where the ants are active, and they will not be removed in time. It is understandable to find out - "Old Heart" and they even thought of the reasons for lying, showing extremely high IQ and EQ.
If he reports truthfully to the red imported fire ants of the suzerain country, the "old heart" knows that the powerful red fire ants will definitely be able to conquer this group of foreign ants, just like they have conquered countless unruly ant tribes before.
In that case, the fire ants can directly demand the honeydew from the foreign ants, and the ant family will lose the huge profits from the trade.
Relying on the honeydew trade, the ants have lived a good life for more than two months. Although all the brown-helmeted wax scales in their territory have been killed for their meat, no ants care. Who gives them a better life? More honeydew yet.
In exchange for the honeydew, in addition to the resources that the foreign ants wanted, the remaining food was put into the warehouse by the ants themselves.
Therefore, even in a drought year like this year, the ants are living a more prosperous life than in previous years.
Until yesterday, the male ant messenger sent by the red fire ants came to the nest.
This ant was hatched from ant eggs paid tribute by the ant clan. He regarded himself as a loyal slave of the red fire ant, but could not be said to be friendly to the "old heart" who was originally a member of the same clan.
He came to convey a request on behalf of the red imported fire ants of the suzerain country: the red fire ants asked the red fire ants to continue to pay an additional batch of tributes on the premise that they had already paid their tributes in advance this year.
The tribute was huge, including gold that was roughly equivalent to what the ants collected in twelve days, two thousand ant eggs, twenty snail shells of concentrated honeydew, and some food.
In previous years, the abdominal ants would definitely not have been able to come up with so many supplies. This year, with the supply of foreign ants and the reserves of the previous few months, they were able to get it together by selling iron.
It is the combination of good fortune and misfortune that the Belly Ants have shown great wealth in trade in the past two months, which made them successful in getting noticed by the suzerain country.
The result of "Old Heart"'s decision was to agree to pay the tribute. Facing the ferocious and fierce red fire ants, the ant family really couldn't muster the courage to refuse.
"Old Heart" tried his best to extract some useful information from the tentacles of this male ant that did not agree with him. Only then did he learn the intention of the red imported fire ants to suddenly demand a large amount of tribute.
It turns out that the red imported fire ants are not just targeting the ants, but also other client ants, including the digging ants, wood ants and Japanese black brown ants that the ants know, are also demanding additional tributes.
It's just that because of the financial resources shown by the Belly Ants, their clan has to pay more extra tribute.
The reason why the red imported fire ants suddenly mobilized a large amount of food and supplies from the vassal ant tribes was not only because of the drought that caused the food harvest in their territory, but also because the red imported fire ants planned to launch another attack on the forest overlord Bachie ant tribe.
According to this male ant, the red imported fire ant scouts have discovered that the drought has caused greater losses to the banana ants that rely on green plants. Now is the time when the old enemy is weak, and the aggressive red imported fire ants will naturally Won't miss this opportunity.
After sending this male ant away, "Old Heart" and the others began to get busy. They must deliver the tribute to the main nest of red fire ants within three to six sunrises.
Speaking of which, the protagonist previously discovered that the ants in this area, such as the ants, use hexadecimal for counting. Six sunrises, that is, six days, is their way of calculating dates, which is similar to the human week, and The four seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter are calculated in parallel in a year-long calendar.
In his hometown, the protagonist knows that both big-headed ants and leaf-cutting ants use decimal system, so a team has fifty warriors instead of thirty-six or forty-eight warriors.
Ants have six joints in total, and if you include the antennae, there are eight. It seems scientific that ants adopt a hexadecimal or octal system, just like humans have ten fingers and therefore use a decimal system.
From this point of view, it is very abnormal for the ants in their hometown to use the decimal system!
